strong>Thomas Tallis (c1505-1585)
Suscipe quaeso
The fact that the unusual seven-voice texture and scoring of the Mass Puer natus
are also found in the motet Suscipe quaeso has prompted the suggestion that they
are in some way linked, although they lack other obvious similarities. As Jeremy Noble and
Paul Doe have suggested, the strongly penitential quality of the text and the sombre vocal
texture could have suited the ceremony in which Cardinal Pole absolved England from schism
in November 1554. Several features of the setting, for example the dramatic rising minor
sixth at ‘quaeso’ in the opening phrase, the emphatic homophony at each
iteration of ‘peccavi’, and the repetition of the rhetorical questions
‘Quis sustineat’ and ‘Qui se dicere audeat’, seem to have led Tallis
into an unusually close engagement with his text.
Nick Sandon
