Works
Tomkins wrote madrigals, keyboard music, consort music, anthems, and liturgical music. Stylistically he was extremely conservative, even anachronistic: he seems to have completely ignored the rising Baroque practice around him, with its Italian-inspired idioms, and he also avoided writing in most of the popular forms of the time, such as the lute song, or ayre. His polyphonic language, even in the fourth decade of the 17th century, was frankly that of the Renaissance. Some of his madrigals are extremely expressive, with text-painting and chromaticism worthy of Italian madrigalists such as Marenzio or Luzzaschi.
He was also a prolific composer of verse anthems, writing more than any other English composer of the 17th century except for William Child. These pieces were highly regarded at the time, and are well represented in contemporary manuscript collections. Fortunately for the survival of his music, his son Nathaniel edited most of it and published a huge collection of it (titled Musica Deo sacra et ecclesiae Anglicanae; or Music dedicated to the Honor and Service of God, and to the Use of Cathedral and other Churches of England) in 1668, after his death; much of it otherwise would have been lost during the Civil War.
Read more about this topic: Thomas Tomkins
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“Through the din and desultoriness of noon, even in the most Oriental city, is seen the fresh and primitive and savage nature, in which Scythians and Ethiopians and Indians dwell. What is echo, what are light and shade, day and night, ocean and stars, earthquake and eclipse, there? The works of man are everywhere swallowed up in the immensity of nature. The AEgean Sea is but Lake Huron still to the Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It’s an old trick now, God knows, but it works every time. At the very moment women start to expand their place in the world, scientific studies deliver compelling reasons for them to stay home.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)