he English, but for the Roman Church. When I
say that Pelham Humphries and Purcell were not religious at all, but
purely secular composers, thoroughly pagan in spirit, I imply--or, if
you like, exply--that the Church of England has had no religious
musicians worth mentioning. Far be it from me to doubt the honest piety
of the men who grubbed through life in dusty organ-lofts. Their
intentions may have been of the noblest, and they may have had, for all
I or anyone can know, sincere religious feeling. But they got no feeling
whatever into their intolerably dreary anthems and services; and as for
their intentions, the cathedrals of England might be paved with them.

Tallis has often been called "the father of English Church music." If
his ghost ever wanders into our cathedral libraries, let us hope he is
proud of his progeny. He, like his contemporaries, was a Catholic, and
he dissembled. About his birth it has only been conjectured that he was
born in the earlier part of the sixteenth century. He was organist of
Waltham Abbey in 1540, and remained there till the dissolution of the
monasteries, when he became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. He and
Byrde in 1575 got a patent giving them a monopoly of the printing of
music and of music paper, and they printed their own works, which it is
a good thing publishers abstain from doing nowadays. In 1585 he died. He
was a fine master of polyphony, and as a genuine composer is second only
to Byrde. William Byrde, however, stands high above him and all other
composers of the time. He was born about 1538, and died in 1623. His
later life would have been full of trouble, and the noose or the flames
at the stake might have terminated it, if powerful patrons had not
sheltered him. The Nonconformist conscience was developing its passion
for interfering in other people's private concerns. Byrde, to worship as
he thought fit, and to avoid the consequences of doing it, had often to
lie in hiding. But he got safely through, and composed a large quantity
of splendid Church music, besides some quite unimportant secular music.
His masses have a character of their own, and in his motets one finds
not only a high degree of technical skill, power and sheer beauty, but
also a positive white heat of passion curiously kept from breaking out.
There were many others of smaller or greater importance, and the school
of English religious composers, properly so called--the men who wrote
true devotional mus