Early music of the British Isles

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

English Miniature from a manuscript of the Roman de la Rose

Early music of Britain and Ireland, from the earliest recorded times until the beginnings of the

English language opera
at the height of the Baroque in the 18th century.

Medieval music to 1450

Surviving sources indicate that there was a rich and varied musical soundscape in medieval Britain.[1] Historians usually distinguish between ecclesiastical music, designed for use in church, or in religious ceremonies, and secular music for use from royal and baronial courts, celebrations of some religious events, to public and private entertainments of the people.[1] Our understanding of this music is limited by a lack of written sources for much of what was an oral culture.[1]

Church music

St Andrews Cathedral, associated with the important 13th century 'Wolfenbüttel 677' manuscript

In the early Middle Ages, ecclesiastical music was dominated by

St David's Day.[6]

Ars nova

In the 14th century, the English

J. de Alto Bosco, who has been identified with the composer and theorist John Hanboys, author of Summa super musicam continuam et discretam, a work that discusses the origins of musical notation and mensuration from the 13th century and proposed several new methods for recording music.[9]

Contenance Angloise

John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford
, a major patron of music

From the mid-15th century we begin to have relatively large numbers of works that have survived from English composers in documents such as the early 15th century

Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536-1540), but some of his works have been reconstructed from copies found in continental Europe, particularly in Italy. The existence of these copies is testament to his widespread fame within Europe. He may have been the first composer to provide liturgical music with an instrumental accompaniment.[11] Royal interest in music is suggested by the works attributed to Roy Henry in the Old Hall Manuscript, suspected to be Henry IV or Henry V.[12] This tradition was continued by figures such as Walter Frye (c. 1420–1475), whose masses were recorded and highly influential in France and the Netherlands.[13] Similarly, John Hothby (c. 1410–1487), an English Carmelite friar, who travelled widely and, although leaving little composed music, wrote several theoretical treatises, including La Calliopea legale, and is credited with introducing innovations to the medieval pitch system.[14] The Scottish king James I was in captivity in England from 1406 to 1423, where he earned a reputation as a poet and composer and may have been responsible for taking English and continental styles and musicians back to the Scottish court on his release.[5]

Secular music

minstrels, sometimes attached to a wealthy household, noble, or royal court, but probably more often moving from place to place and occasion to occasion in pursuit of payment.[1] Many appear to have composed their own works, and can be seen as the first secular composers, and some crossed international boundaries, transferring songs and styles of music.[1] Because literacy, and musical notation in particular, were preserves of the clergy in this period the survival of secular music is much more limited than for church music. Nevertheless, some were noted, occasionally by clergymen who had an interest in secular music. England in particular produced three distinctive secular musical forms in this period: the rota, the polyphonic votive antiphon, and the carol.[10]

Rotas

A rota is a form of round, known to have been used from the 13th century in England.

Sumer Is Icumen In' ('Summer is a-coming in') from the mid-13th century, possibly written by W. de Wycombe, precentor of the priory of Leominster in Herefordshire, and set for six parts.[17] Although few are recorded, the use of rotas seems to have been widespread in England and it has been suggested that the English talent for polyphony may have its origins in this form of music.[10]

Votive Antiphons

Polyphonic votive antiphons emerged in England in the 14th century as a setting of a text honouring the

Carols

Carols developed in the 14th century as simple songs with a verse and refrain structure. Carols were usually connected with a religious festival, particularly Christmas. They were derived from a form of

mystery plays.[20] Because the tradition of carols continued into the modern era, we know more of their structure and variety than most other secular forms of medieval music.[1]

Renaissance c. 1450–c. 1660

The east end of Worcester Cathedral, where Henry Abyngdon was Master of Music from 1465–83

The impact of Renaissance humanism on music can be seen in England the late 15th century under Edward IV (r. 1461–1483) and Henry VII (r. 1485–1509). Although the influence of English music on the continent declined from the mid-15th century as the Burgundian School became the dominant force in the West, English music continued to flourish with the first composers being awarded doctorates at Oxford and Cambridge, including Thomas Santriste, who was provost of King's College, Cambridge, and Henry Abyngdon, who was Master of Music at Worcester Cathedral and from 1465–83 Master of the King's Music.[21] Edward IV chartered and patronised the first guild of musicians in London in 1472, a pattern copied in other major towns cities as musicians formed guilds or waites, creating local monopolies with greater organisation, but arguably ending the role of the itinerant minstrel.[22] There were increasing numbers of foreign musicians, particularly those from France and the Netherlands, at the court, becoming a majority of those known to have been employed by the death of Henry VII.[14] His mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, was the major sponsor of music during his reign, commissioning several settings for new liturgical feasts and ordinary of the mass.[23] The result was a very elaborate style which balanced the many parts of the setting and prefigured Renaissance developments elsewhere.[24] Similar developments can be seen in Scotland. In the late 15th century a series of Scottish musicians trained in the Netherlands before returning home, including John Broune, Thomas Inglis and John Fety, the last of whom became master of the song school in Aberdeen and then Edinburgh, introducing the new five-fingered organ playing technique.[25] In 1501 James IV refounded the Chapel Royal within Stirling Castle, with a new and enlarged choir, it became the focus of Scottish liturgical music. Burgundian and English influences came north with Henry VII's daughter Margaret Tudor, who married James IV in 1503.[26] In Wales, as elsewhere, the local nobility were increasingly Anglicised and the bardic tradition started to decline, resulting in the first Eisteddfods being held from 1527, in an attempt to preserve the tradition.[6] In this period it seems that most Welsh composers tended to cross the border and seek employment in the English royal and noble households, including John Lloyd (c. 1475–1523) who was employed in the household of the Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham and became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal from 1509 and Robert Jones (fl.c.1520–35) who also became a gentleman of the Chapel Royal.[27]

Henry VIII and James V

chansons and consorts of viols to his court and was patron to composers such as David Peebles (c. 1510–1579?).[30]

Reformation

The Reformation naturally had a profound impact on the religious music of Britain. The loss of many abbeys, collegiate churches and religious orders intensified a process by which humanism had made careers writing church music decline in importance compared with employment in the royal and noble households.

Scottish psalter of 1564 was commissioned by the Assembly of the Church. It drew on the work of French musician Clément Marot, Calvin's contributions to the Strasbourg psalter of 1539 and English writers, particularly the 1561 edition of the psalter produced by William Whittingham for the English congregation in Geneva. The intention was to produce individual tunes for each psalm, but of 150 psalms, 105 had proper tunes and in the seventeenth century, common tunes, which could be used for psalms with the same metre, became more common. The need for simplicity for whole congregations that would now all sing these psalms, unlike the trained choirs who had sung the many parts of polyphonic hymns,[32] necessitated simplicity and most church compositions were confined to homophonic settings.[33] There is some evidence that polyphony survived and it was incorporated into editions of the psalter from 1625, but usually with the congregation singing the melody and trained singers the contra-tenor, treble and bass parts.[32]

Music publication

William Byrd, one of the key English composers of the reign of Elizabeth I

During this period, music printing (technically more complex than the printing of written text) was adopted from continental practice.

Elizabeth I granted the monopoly of music publishing to Tallis and his pupil William Byrd which ensured that their works were widely distributed and have survived in various editions, but arguably limited the potential for music publishing in Britain.[35]

Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I

James V's daughter,

Stuart Britain.[40][41] The outstanding Scottish composer of the era was Robert Carver (c.1485–c.1570) whose works included the nineteen-part motet 'O Bone Jesu'.[26]

English Madrigal School

Title page of Morley's Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597)

The English Madrigal School was the brief but intense flowering of the musical

Elizabeth I after the highly popular Musica transalpina by Nicholas Yonge in 1588.[42] English madrigals were a cappella, predominantly light in style, and generally began as either copies or direct translations of Italian models, mostly set for three to six verses.[35] The most influential composers of madrigals in England whose work has survived were Thomas Morley, Thomas Weelkes and John Wilbye.[35] One of the more notable compilations of English madrigals was The Triumphs of Oriana, a collection of madrigals compiled by Thomas Morley and devoted to Elizabeth I.[43] Madrigals continued to be composed in England through the 1620s, but stopped in the early 1630s as they began to seem obsolete as new forms of music began to emerge from the continent.[44]

Lute ayres

Also emerging from the Elizabethan court were

masques.[44]

Consort music

Consorts of instruments developed in the Tudor period in England as either 'whole' consorts, that is, all instruments of the same family (for example, a set of

Giovanni Coperario, Orlando Gibbons, John Jenkins and Henry Purcell
.

Masques

Costume for a Knight, by Inigo Jones

Campion was also a composer of court

Commonwealth.[44]

Music in the theatre

Performances of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays frequently included the use of music, with performances on organs, lutes, viols and pipes for up to an hour before the actual performance, and texts indicates that they were used during the plays.[43] Plays, perhaps particularly the heavier histories and tragedies, were frequently broken up with a short musical play, perhaps derived from the Italian intermezzo, with music, jokes and dancing, known as a 'jigg' and from which the jig dance derives its name.[43] After the closure of the London theatres in 1642 these tendencies developed into sung plays that are recognisable as English Opera's, the first usually being thought of as William Davenant's (1606–68) The Siege of Rhodes (1656), originally given in a private performance.[44] The development of native English opera had to wait for the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the patronage of Charles II.[44]

James VI and I and Charles I 1567–1642

James VI
to the English throne

James VI, king of Scotland from 1567, was a major patron of the arts in general. He made statutory provision to reform and promote the teaching of music.[50] He rebuilt the Chapel Royal at Stirling in 1594 and the choir was used for state occasions like the baptism of his son Henry.[51] He followed the tradition of employing lutenists for his private entertainment, as did other members of his family.[52] When he went south to take the throne of England in 1603 as James I, he removed one of the major sources of patronage in Scotland. The Scottish Chapel Royal was now used only for occasional state visits, beginning to fall into disrepair, and from now on the court in Westminster would be the only major source of royal musical patronage.[51] When Charles I returned in 1633 to be crowned he brought many musicians from the English Chapel Royal for the service.[51] Both James and his son Charles I, king from 1625, continued the Elizabethan patronage of church music, where the focus remained on settings of Anglican services and anthems, employing the long lived Bryd and then following in his footsteps composers such as Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625) and Thomas Tomkins (1572–1656).[52] The emphasis on the liturgical content of services under Charles I, associated with Archbishop William Laud, meant a need for fuller musical accompaniment.[53] In 1626 the musical establishment of the royal household was sufficient to necessitate the creation of a new office of 'Master of the King's Music' and probably the most important composer of the reign was William Lawes (1602–45), who produced fantasia suites, consort music for harp, viols and organ and music for individual instruments, including lutes.[35] This establishment was disrupted by the outbreak of English Civil War in 1642, but a smaller musical establishment was kept at the King's alternative capital at Oxford for the duration of the conflict.[54]

Civil War and Commonwealth 1642–1660

Matthew Locke a major composer for consort of viols

The period between the ascendancy of Parliament in London in 1642, to the

ground", in Britain and continental Europe and is still used as a reference by early music revivalists.[13]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h R. McKitterick, C. T. Allmand, T. Reuter, D. Abulafia, P. Fouracre, J. Simon, C. Riley-Smith, M. Jones, eds, The New Cambridge Medieval History: C. 1415- C. 1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 319–25.
  2. ^ a b D. O. Croinin, ed., Prehistoric and Early Ireland: Prehistoric and Early Ireland, vol I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 798.
  3. ^ D. Hiley, Western Plainchant: a Handbook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 483.
  4. ^ E. Foley, M. Paul Bangert, Worship Music: a Concise Dictionary (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), p. 273.
  5. ^ a b c K. Elliott and F. Rimmer, A History of Scottish Music (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1973), pp. 8–12.
  6. ^ a b c J. T. Koch, Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2006), p. 1765.
  7. ^ W. Lovelock, A Concise History of Music (New York NY: Frederick Ungar, 1953), p. 57.
  8. ^ M. Bent, Two Fourteenth-Century Motets in Praise of Music (Lustleigh: Antico, 1986).
  9. ^ P. M. Lefferts, ed., Regule, by Johannes Hanboys (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), pp. 30–1.
  10. ^ a b c d e f R. H. Fritze and W. B. Robison, Historical Dictionary of Late Medieval England, 1272–1485 (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2002), p. 363.
  11. ^ S. Sadie and A. Latham, The Cambridge Music Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 101–2.
  12. ^ N. Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530 (London: Taylor and Francis, 1984), p. 169.
  13. ^ a b J. Caldwell, The Oxford History of English Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 151–2.
  14. ^ a b T. Dumitrescu, The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 63 and 197–9.
  15. ^ M. J. Green, The Celtic World (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 428.
  16. ^ W. McLeod, Divided Gaels: Gaelic Cultural Identities in Scotland and Ireland, C.1200-c.1650 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 102.
  17. ^ H. Morley and W. H. Griffin, English Writers: An Attempt Towards a History of English Literature vol. 10 (1887, BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2008), p. 227.
  18. ^ a b H. Benham, John Taverner: His Life and Music (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 48–9.
  19. ^ J. J. Walsh, Were They Wise Men Or Kings?: The Book of Christmas Questions (Westminster: John Knox Press, 2001), p. 60.
  20. ^ W. J. Phillips, Carols; Their Origin, Music, and Connection with Mystery-Plays (Routledge, 1921, Read Books, 2008), p. 24.
  21. ^ H. W. Hadow, English Music (Longmans, 1931, Read Books, 2006), pp. 27–8.
  22. ^ A. L. Beier, Masterless men: the vagrancy problem in England 1560–1640 (London: Routledge, 1985), p. 98.
  23. ^ M. Williamson, 'Royal image-making and textual interplay in Gilbert Banaster's O Maria et Elizabeth, in I. Fenlon, ed., Early Music History: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 269.
  24. ^ a b c d e R. Bray, 'England i, 1485–1600' in J. Haar, European Music, 1520–1640 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), pp. 490–502.
  25. ^ J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), pp. 58 and 118.
  26. ^ a b M. Gosman, A. A. MacDonald, A. J. Vanderjagt and A. Vanderjagt, Princes and princely culture, 1450–1650 (Brill, 2003), p. 163.
  27. ^ S. Harper, Music in Welsh culture before 1650: a study of the principal sources (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 282–3.
  28. ^ G. Braden, Sixteenth-century poetry: an annotated anthology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2005), p. 40.
  29. ^ W. Elders, Symbolic Scores: Studies in the Music of the Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 1994), p. 109.
  30. ^ J. Patrick, Renaissance and Reformation (London: Marshall Cavendish, 2007), p. 1264.
  31. ^ R. M. Wilson, Anglican Chant and Chanting in England, Scotland, and America, 1660 to 1820 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 146–7 and 196–7.
  32. ^ , pp. 187-90.
  33. , p. 198.
  34. ^ J. A. Bernstein, Music Printing in Renaissance Venice: The Scotto Press, 1539–1572 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 27.
  35. ^ a b c d J. P. Wainright, 'England ii, 1603–1642' in J. Haar, ed., European Music, 1520–1640 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), pp. 509–21.
  36. ^ a b A. Frazer, Mary Queen of Scots (London: Book Club Associates, 1969), pp. 206–7.
  37. ^ M. Spring, The Lute in Britain: A History of the Instrument and Its Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 452.
  38. .
  39. ^ D. M. Robin, A. R. Larsen and C. Levin, Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2007), p. 277.
  40. ^ P. Brett, J. Kerman and D. Moroney, William Byrd and His Contemporaries: Essays and a Monograph (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006).
  41. ^ McCarthy, Kerry (2013). Byrd. OUP.
  42. ^ J. L. Smith, Thomas East and Music Publishing in Renaissance England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 90–1.
  43. ^ a b c S. Lord and D. Brinkman, Music from the Age of Shakespeare: a Cultural History (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2003), pp. 41–2 and 522.
  44. ^ a b c d e f g h i G. J. Buelow, History of Baroque Music: Music in the Seventeenth and First Half of the Eighteenth Centuries (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. 26, 306, 309 and 327–8.
  45. ^ C. MacClintock, Readings in the history of music in performance (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982), p. 194.
  46. ^ P. Holman. Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court, 1540–1690 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 275.
  47. ^ J. H. Baron, Chamber Music: A Research and Information Guide (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 133.
  48. ^ S. Orgel, ed., William Shakespeare, The Tempest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 44.
  49. ^ K. Sharpe, ed., Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 179–264.
  50. ^ R. D. S. Jack, (2000), "Scottish Literature: 1603 and all that Archived 2012-02-11 at the Wayback Machine", Association of Scottish Literary Studies, retrieved 18 October 2011.
  51. ^ a b c P. Le Huray, Music and the Reformation in England, 1549–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 83–5.
  52. ^ a b T. Carter and J. Butt, The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 280, 300, 433 and 541.
  53. ^ G. Parry, The Arts of the Anglican Counter-Reformation: Glory, Laud and Honour (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), p. 157.
  54. ^ A. Ashbee and P. Holman, John Jenkins and His Time: Studies in English Consort Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 197.
  55. ^ a b D. C. Price, Patrons and Musicians of the English Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 154.
  56. ^ L. Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were (Grand Rapids MI: Zondervan, 1990), p. 4.
  57. ^ N. Smith, ed., The Poems of Andrew Marvell (London: Pearson Education, 2007), p. 316.
  58. ^ D. D. Boyden, The History of Violin Playing from Its Origins to 1761: and its Relationship to the Violin and Violin Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 233.