ABSTRACT
John Taverner composed more polyphony for the Office than his predecessors, unless it is simply that more of his music has survived. Taverner's most extended works, to be discussed first, are the three Magnificats, the St Nicholas prose Sospitati dedit aegros and the Te Deum. The method is the same as in Taverner's Magnificats, but the effect is different because the alternation is more frequent, with no fewer than sixteen polyphonic passages, some of them very brief. Taverner wrote in four parts for trebles and means, perhaps expecting a fifth boy to double the cantus firmus part, as may have happened in Audivi vocem. In Audivi vocem de caelo, Gloria in excelsis and In pace in idipsum Taverner set only the words that the liturgical sources allotted to soloists. Gloria in excelsis has a few rapid scalic passages, but the music is generally calmer, more remote: it has the air of having been composed rather earlier.
