John Taverner

John Taverner
A possible likeness of John Taverner in an ornamental capital E from the Forrest-Heyther partbooks, c. 1520, shown with speech scroll inscribed in Latin: Joh(ann)es Tavern(er)
Born	c. 1490
Died	1545
Era	Renaissance

John Taverner (c. 1490 – 18 October 1545) was an English composer and organist, regarded as one of the most important English composers of his era.

Nothing is known of Taverner's activities before 1524. He appears to have come from south, possibly being born in Tattershall, Lincolnshire, but there is no indication of his parentage. According to one of his own letters, he was related to the Yerburghs, a well-to-do Lincolnshire family. The earliest information is that in 1524 Taverner travelled from Tattershall to the Church of St Botolph in nearby Boston as a guest singer. Two years later, in 1526, Taverner became the first Organist and Master of the Choristers at Christ Church, Oxford, appointed by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. The college had been founded in 1525 by Cardinal Wolsey, and was then known as Cardinal College. Immediately before this, Taverner had been a clerk fellow at the Collegiate Church of Tattershall. In 1528 he was reprimanded for his (probably minor) involvement with Lutherans, but escaped punishment for being "but a musitian". Wolsey fell from favour in 1529, and in 1530 Taverner left the college. He married a widow, one Rose Parrowe, probably in 1536, and she outlived him until 1553. During the last five months of the composer's life, he was an alderman in the city council of Boston. For about three years, previously, he was the treasurer of the Corpus Christi Gild, there in Boston.

As far as can be told, Taverner had no further musical appointments, nor can any of his known works be dated to after that time, so he may have ceased composition. It is often said that after leaving Oxford, Taverner worked as an agent of Thomas Cromwell assisting in the Dissolution of the Monasteries, although the veracity of this is now thought to be highly questionable. He is known to have settled eventually in Boston, Lincolnshire, where he was a small landowner and reasonably well-off. He is buried with his wife under the belltower at Boston Parish Church. (In the few existing copies of his signature, the composer actually spelled his last name "Tavernor.") The 20th-century composer, Sir John Tavener claimed (even in his early teens), to be his direct descendant.