Revealed: the hidden talent of Henry VIII’s last queen

1978, it was identified as being from the six-part which is among Tallis’s greatest works.

The fragments were thought to be from a small, stand-alone partbook for use by a single performer on procession. They were thought to date from Mary I’s reign and were eventually filed away with the mystery of who wrote the English words still unsolved.

“The bizarre thing is that the paper Katherine Parr (right) as portayed by William Scrots (1546); her musical manuscipt (above); and Hans Holbein’s famous portait of Henry VIII (below) survived,” Dr Skinner said. “You’d expect it to completely disintegrate, but it must have been very high quality paper and certainly good ink.”

The Cambridge Fellow has since come to study it, scouring devotional works of the day before matching it with Katherine Parr’s wartime publication, specifically her Ninth Psalm “agaynst ennemies”.

It reads in part: “Cast them down hedlonge … for they are treatours & raybels agaynst me….”

He has published findings that it was performed in 1544, during an extraordinary procession and service at St Paul’s Cathedral to rally the nation to pray for Henry’s success in France. Writing in OUP’s

Dr Skinner said: “The 1544 publications of Cranmer, Parr and the five-part Litany presumed to be by Tallis were clearly produced for the war effort and carefully planned to coincide with an event (or events) leading to the king’s French campaign later that summer.”

The work is to be performed on Good Friday (April 14) by the Alamire choir at the Tenebrae Holy Week Festival at St John’s Smith Square, London.