Like as the doleful dove (Thomas Tallis)

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• (Posted 2021-09-12)  CPDL #65751: 

Editor: Christopher Shaw (submitted 2021-09-12).   Score information: A4, 4 pages, 156 kB   Copyright: CC BY SA

Edition notes: Includes a keyboard reduction of the a cappella choral score. Please click on the link for preview/playback/PDF download. The version published by Sir John Hawkins in his History of Music. His source is unidentified, but was almost certainly the Mulliner Book, from which he also included several other extracts.

• (Posted 2019-02-21)  CPDL #53354:       

Editor: Jason Smart (submitted 2019-02-21).   Score information: A4, 5 pages, 275 kB   Copyright: CC BY NC ND

Edition notes: Vocal parts reconstructed from the only surviving early source, the keyboard arrangement in London, British Library, Add. MS 30513 (the 'Mulliner Book'). Original pitch and note values retained. A critical commentary is appended to the score.

• (Posted 2009-04-18)  CPDL #19302:     

Editor: Michael Gibson (submitted 2009-04-18).   Score information: A4, 3 pages, 115 kB   Copyright: CPDL

Edition notes: Transposed up by 2 semitones. Includes a keyboard reduction of the a cappella choral score.

General Information

Title: Like as the doleful dove
Composer: Thomas Tallis

Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published:
Description: This partsong now survives only in a keyboard arrangement in London, British Library Add. MS 30513 (the 'Mulliner Book'). Fortunately Mulliner's arrangement preserves all four voices complete, although one short passage appears to be corrupt. The text, identified by title only, is easily restorable from the 1578 edition of Richard Edwards (ed.),'The Paradyse of daynty devises'.

Original text and translations

English text Like as the doleful dove delights alone to be, and doth refuse the bloomed branch, choosing the leafless tree, where on wailing his chance, his bitter tears besprent, doth with his bill his tender breast oft pierce and all to rent; whose grievous groanings though, whose grips of pining pain, whose ghastly looks, whose bloody streams outflowing from each vein, whose falling from the tree, whose panting on the ground, examples be of mine estate, though there appear no wound.

French translation Tout comme la triste tourterelle trouve plaisir en la solitude, et refuse la branche fleurie, préférant l’arbre dénudé, où gémissant sur son sort, ses larmes amères s’éparpillant, de son bec perce souvent sa tendre gorge en lambeaux ; de qui les affreuses lamentations, de qui l’emprise d’une douleur lancinante, de qui les horribles regards, de qui des filets ensanglantés coulant de chaque veine de qui la chute de l’arbre, de qui les halètements sur le sol, sont des exemples de mon état, même si aucune plaie ne se peut voir.