As The Tallis Scholars celebrate 50 years of leading the way in Renaissance choral music performance and recording, Jeremy Pound asks conductor Peter Phillips and two of his singers to explain the group’s magic formula
Peter Phillips (seated, centre) with The Tallis Scholars, including Amy Haworth (second left) and Simon Wall (standing, right)
November 1973. At St John’s College, Oxford, a shaggy-haired, flamboyantly dressed undergraduate is happily dividing his time between studying for a law degree and playing guitar and singing in his rock group, the Ugly Rumours – his main aim for the latter, as a fellow bandmember will later admit, is to meet girls. That student is called Tony Blair. His nascent career as a rockstar might get no further, but he will at least go on to quite big things in politics.
Meanwhile, in the year below Blair, a fellow St John’s student (with shorter hair) has a more serious musical intent. On 3 November at the Church of St Mary Magdalen, across the road from college, a 20-year-old Peter Phillips takes to the stage to conduct a group of fellow enthusiasts in a concert of Renaissance choral music. Empty seats far outnumber the occupied ones, but the seeds of enthusiasm are sown. Phillips decides he can make a go of this on a long-term basis – the story of the Tallis Scholars has begun.
‘I would love to meet someone who was in the audience that night,’ reflects Phillips when we chat some 49 years and seven months later. ‘I think there were about 20-or-so people there, but I’ve never found anyone who is prepared to admit it! Maybe we should put it out on social media?’
‘The trouble is, those who were there are all of an age that probably doesn’t use Twitter…’ comes a reply to my left. This is Amy Haworth, a soprano with the Scholars who, along with tenor Simon Wall, is also with us in Phillips’s garden in Islington. Though they were far from being even a twinkle in their parents’ eyes in 1973, both singers are heading towards the 20th anniversaries of their own debuts with the ensemble – Wall in 2004; Haworth the following year – and have racked up enough concerts to be considered true Tallis Scholars veterans.
Looking back at said debut, Wall believes he has another contender for the least well attended Tallis Scholars concert. ‘It was in June 2004,’ he remembers. ‘It was in the middle of nowhere in Spain and, at the time, I didn’t really know a great deal about the group. When we walked out to perform in this very small, antique theatre, there were abou
