Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910, rev. 1913 and 1919) is the masterpiece that established the English orchestral renaissance of the 20th century. Scored for double string orchestra and a string quartet — a disposition that creates extraordinary spatial antiphony and an illusion of depth — it transforms a single Phrygian melody from Tallis's 1567 Psalter into an ocean of sound that moves between meditative calm and overwhelming radiance. The work is simultaneously archaic and modern: its modality and open harmonies reach back to Tudor polyphony while its long-breathed melodic paragraphs are entirely of the new century. Few orchestral works of any era produce such a complete sense of transcendence from purely string sonority.