Tag Archive: 0Renaissance

One thinks of filing as a necessary evil of modern life, but the need to maintain order among one’s papers is, of course, much older.  The term itself (from the Latin filum, ‘thread’) derives from the practice of keeping documents literally ‘on file’, i.e. together on a string or wire, much like a treasury tag […]

Thomas Tallis’s forty-part motet, Spem in alium, is one of the greatest achievements in Renaissance music.  It is a monumental work, and the earliest surviving manuscript (with an English text, ‘Sing and glorifie heavens high Maiesty’, for when the piece was sung probably at the investiture of Henry as Prince of Wales in 1610) is […]