Christopher Tambling (1964–2015).
Christopher Tambling died October 3 at the age of 51 in Wells, England, following a short illness. The composer and organist was former director of music at the Benedictine Downside Abbey and at Downside School near Bath in southwest England.
Born in 1964, he studied organ with Malcolm McKelvey at Christ’s Hospital in Horsham, Sussex, and went on to gain organ scholarships to Canterbury Cathedral and St. Peter’s College, Oxford, where he studied with Geoffrey Webber and David Sanger, and was organist of Pusey House. He served as organist at Sedbergh School in Cumbria 1986–89; then director of music at Glenalmond College, near Perth in Scotland, also serving as Perth City Organist and conductor of the Perth Symphony Orchestra. From 1997 to 2015, Tambling was director of music at Downside School and also served as organist and master of the Schola Cantorum of Downside Abbey. He was a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists.
From an early age, Tambling earned a reputation as a composer, arranger and editor, particularly of choral and organ music. His main publisher in Britain was Kevin Mayhew. His cooperation with Dr. J. Butz in Bonn, which began in 2008, produced over 60 publications, which rapidly earned him a name throughout the German-speaking world and ensured his great popularity. Butz-Verlag has published works for four-part and three-part mixed-voice choirs and upper-voice choir, as well as compositions for solo organ and organ with solo instrument. Tambling also edited other composers’ works, for example masses by the English composers Charles Villiers Stanford and Richard Runciman Terry. Tambling’s own music is deeply rooted in the English Romantic tradition.
He received numerous commissions for pieces from Germany. Often these led to large-scale first performances. The most spectacular of these were probably the first performance of his Missa brevis in B-flat, sung by 1,400 singers on Diocesan Children’s Choirs Day in the diocese of Speyer in September 2014 (Marienkirche, Landau), and, also that month, of the Schönstatt-Jubiläumsmesse, which was heard by over 10,000 churchgoers in Vallendar. Inspired by these successes, Tambling resigned his teaching post in the summer of 2015 in order to work as a freelance composer. Christopher Tambling is survived by his wife Sara and his sons Edward and Benjamin.
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