Links to "Nine Tunes for Archbishop Parker's Psalter" by Thomas Tallis, and a really neat webpage with sheet music in the public domain

Posted here so I don't have to keep doing Google searches for the links while I'm learning the Third Tune or Third Mode Melody, which you may recognize as the theme for Ralph Vaughn William's Fantasia on a Theme by Tallis ...

Video clips of the Renaissance Singers, a professional early music troupe, singing Tallis' "Nine Psalm Tunes for Archbishop Parker's Psalter" at Holy Rosary Church in Seattle, Wash., May 9, 2008, are available on YouTube and the Renaissance Singers' own website.

If you want to follow the score -- and you should try it, because all of these psalms are gorgeous -- an easy-to-read modern version with the melody in the soprano line is available for free on the FreeScores.com website. The third tune is the basis for Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Tallis and the eighth is the original of the Tallis Canon (most familiar as "All praise my God to Thee this night" with Bishop Ken's doxology) in most denominational hymnals. Matthew Parker (1504-1575) was archbishop of Canterbury under Queen Elizabeth I, and his psalm settings are thoroughly Protestant. Several, to my ears at least, anticipate the style of the Scottish Psalters of the next century.

If any Appalachian dulcimer players are reading this, the third tune, also known as the Third Mode Melody, is written in the Phrygian mode, which starts on the third degree of the scale -- if "do" is C, it would be the E scale you get by playing from E to E on the white keys of a piano. There's a very interesting setting for piano arranged by William Wallace of Apex, N.C., which is written with no sharps or flats in the key signature (which looks like C major or A minor to me) but starts and ends on E above middle C. (Disclaimer: Some of this is guesswork, so if you know the modes and you're still reading this, please let me know if I've guessed wrong.) At any rate, it works on my Galax dulcimer with the drone strings capoed up from D to E.

Archbishop Parker's words, a metrical paraphrase of Psalm 2, are available on the CPDL.org website. I can't get the link to the sheet music PDF file to open. The first two verses:

Quare fremuerunt.
1. Why fumeth in sight: the Gentils spite,
In fury raging stout?
Why taketh in hond: the people fond,
Uayne thinges to bring about?

2. The kinges arise: the lordes deuise,
in counsayles mett therto:
Agaynst the Lord: with false accord,
against his Christ they go.

It goes on in this vein for 12 verses. (This version retains "u" for "v" in "vain" and "devise" (modern spellings). The 16th-century typographical convention.

William Wallace also has a webpage called easybyte.org full of simplified piano arrangements and an FAQ page with lots useful information on copyright. Including this, which has nothing to do with Tallis or Calvinist psalmody but is good to know anyway:

A 1935 US copyright is claimed on the song "Happy Birthday" with lyrics.

However, the melody to Happy Birthday was first published in 1893 as "Good Morning to All", within "Song Stories for the Kindergarten". Therefore this tune is within the public domain. This sheet music [on the easybyte.org website] does not contain any lyrics, and song titles cannot be copyrighted.

Which means, to my way of thinking, you can play it as long as you don't sing it. But don't take my word for it, consult an attorney before you try to sing it in a paying venue.