In Nomine

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This article is about the 16th-17th century musical compositions. For the role-playing game, see In Nomine (role-playing game).

In Nomine was a title given to a number of short pieces of polyphonic instrumental music in England during the 16th and 17th centuries based on the plainsong melody Gloria Tibi Trinitas.

In Nomines were originally consort music for four or five instruments, especially consorts of viols. One instrument plays the theme through as a canto fermo with each note lasting one or even two measures; usually this is the alto part. The other parts - treble, tenor and bass - play more complex lines in imitative counterpoint. Usually they take up several new motifs in turn, using each one as a point of imitation. However, the In Nomine was soon adapted for solo performance on keyboard instruments or the lute.

This genre originated in the early 16th century from a mass composed around 1520 by John Taverner on the plainchant Gloria Tibi Trinitas. In the Benedictus section of this mass, the words "in nomine Domini" were set in four-part counterpoint with the plainchant melody in the alto. At a time when there was little published music for viol consorts, this attractive passage became popular as a short instrumental piece and was the model for a new type of composition.

Examples include compositions by Christopher Tye, Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, Richard Allwood and Henry Purcell among many others. They are often rather slow, meditative pieces but vary in mood from melancholy to serene, exultant, or even playful (as in Tye's In Nomine "Crye" where the viols echo the call of a street hawker).

In this keyboard example by John Bull the In Nomine theme is the highest part above two other parts that alternate between polyphonic and homophonic textures: Bull In Nomine (MIDI file, 8kb).

This five-part In Nomine by Orlando Gibbons was probably written for viols but is here played on an organ: Gibbons In Nomine (MIDI file, 10kb)

In nomines for viols have also been written by a number of 20th and 21st-century composers.