15th March 2017
Thomas Tallis’ musical piece Gaude gloriosa Dei mater with words written by Kateryn Parr will be performed for the first time in over 450 years on Good Friday this year, in St John’s Smith Square, London.
These words have only recently been attributed to Kateryn. The parchment containing them set to music by Tallis was discovered behind plasterwork during renovations of Corpis Christi College in 1978. The author was previously unknown, and it wasn’t until Dr David Skinner – director of music at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge – studied the text and compared and matched it to Kateryn’s first publication, Psalms or Prayers, that the connection was made. Psalms or Prayers was a translation by Kateryn of Fisher’s Psalmi seu precationes, and her work on this is something I mention in my novel The Taming of the Queen.
He gives me the pages. For a moment I simply hold them, as if they were my newborn baby and I wanted to feel his weight. I have never borne a child but I imagine I feel something of a mother’s pride. This is a new joy for me. This is the joy of scholarship. For long moments I don’t unfurl the pages; I know well enough what they are, I have waited for them.
‘The psalms,’ I whisper. ‘Bishop Fisher’s psalms.’
‘Just as you translated them,’ he confirms.