Ayscoughfee Hall, Spalding, June 24th 2006
Background to the programme
From around 1609–1619, Francis Tregian was incarcerated in the Fleet Prison on suspicion of involvement in a Roman Catholic plot. Whilst there, he organised the copying of the most important collection of keyboard music of its time, if not ever. An examination of this collection, the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, reveals composers and titles with a distinctly Papist flavour. Denied the outlet of writing for the established church, they turned to secular music, both instrumental and later, theatrical, but Tregian did not let the opportunity pass to rally the Catholic forces in a seemingly innocent music publication.
Edward Paston (1550–1630) to whom many of our audiences last season were introduced, also copied vast collections of music, much of which again has Roman connections.
Ten years after his death England was once more plunged into religious confusion and music as composers knew it in church was outlawed. The musical rejuvenation after the return of both the monarchy and the Church of England with the Restoration had its culmination in the work of Henry Purcell; but he, like Cromwell’s vision of the Protectorate, died young.
This programme examines music by and associated with composers working “underground” against the normal flow of events. Musical marginalisation continues even today – our application to promote the concert on the London underground was ignored!
The style of Helas Madame, from the Henry VIII partbooks, somehow typifies how we imagine the “merry monarch”: living life to the full and writing his music. But Henry’s break from Rome, despite its non-religious origin, had far-reaching consequences for musicians throughout the rest of the century. Some of these were disastrous at a practical level, such as loss of earnings and the curtailing of liberties, but some were the catalyst for a surge in musical composition for the Catholic rites, despite the “underground” nature of having to be performed in private. The Henrician ditty Up I arose was typical of the songs and stories about how corrupt the clergy were, and therefore ripe for reform.
The Taverner and Tallis pieces sum up the old faith; the In nomine taken from Taverner’s own Gloria Tibi Trinitas mass and copied out by Edward Paston years later, and the Tallis piece written for the first Vespers of the 3 rd Sunday in Lent. Tallis never lost his faith despite being displaced by the dissolution of the monasteries. When Elizabeth came to the throne there were three main factions: the exiled extreme Protestants returning to England, those holding the old Roman Catholic faith and those who held to the Henrician English Catholicism. The queen was in the wrong whichever way she turned yet she managed to keep musicians of both faiths working for her.
The next section of the programme might be called the Scottish Connection. John Black worked initially in Aberdeen as a singer, assistant organist and eventually Master of the Song School. During the reformation, Black at first refused to give up the old faith for the new, but by 1575 he had abandoned Catholicism and his holy orders and taken a wife. The Pavan and Galliard dedicated to William Keith are the only thematically related paired dances to have survived in Scottish manuscripts. The noble famous queen, referring to Mary Queen of Scots, put to death for her suspected treason by Elizabeth, is more usually known as When Phoebus used to Dwell. The current words and pitch are found only in the Paston lute books. The continued adherence to the old faith of both Byrd and the Paston family is well documented.
The story of Francis Tregian is on the back page. What is also significant is the role of the innocent little popular folk song As I went to Walsingham, which originally had no more significance than Are you going to Scarborough Fair, having nothing to do with Walsingham or Scarborough, but used as a vehicle on which to hang numerous narrative verses. This tune appears as the first piece in the Fitzwilliam, not just as a tune on which to write variations, but as a focus for all that the shrine of Walsingham had represented to the followers of the old faith. The words of the second, later version of the song, Weep, weep O Walsingham, testify to this. Francis Cutting was employed by the Earls of Arundel, notably Roman in their allegiances. It is not clear whether Tregian composed the “Ground”, or whether it was Hugh Aston, whose name is sometimes attached to it, but it represents the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book in our programme.
John Dowland, having failed to gain a post as one of the Queen’s lutenists, went travelling to Florence and became involved with a group of exiled Catholics plotting the assassination of the queen. Sensibly, he left them to it and it is believed that he repeated all he knew to the English court presumably in hopes of advancing his career (which never really happened), despite his avowed Catholic sympathies. He does however, make it clear where he stands in the last section of Time’s eldest son.
Richard Edwards’ plaintive song, When Griping Griefs, with its powerful words and diminished octave leap in the melody, sums up what seems to have been the philosophy of all composers forced to go “underground” during these troubled times:
Of troubled minds in every sore,
It is therefore with “sweet music” that we end the first half and begin the second half of the programme. Deprived of church positions and unable openly to write Latin masses, many composers put their efforts into music for the theatre and the dance, such as the courtly masquing ayres. Tunes travel remarkably well and remarkably far, so it is with two different versions of the same tune that the next sequence begins. Mon desir appeared in Susato’s 1551 Flemish publication, and the same tune in Playford’s English Dancing Master a hundred years later. The Chirping of the Lark is Playford’s version of a Fitzwilliam favourite, Muscadin.
John Blow was born at Newark, but spent most of his life at the Chapel Royal, first as singer and later one of the three organists (Purcell was one of the others). The Ode was published in 1696 and after Blow’s own death in 1708 he was buried near Purcell in Westminster Abbey.
Kathleen Berg
Programme
Helas madame Henry VIII (1491-1547)
Up I arose anon
In nomine a 4 John Taverner (1490-1545)
Ecce tempus idoneum Thomas Tallis (1505-1585)
My delyt John Black (fl 1546-1587)
Sir William Keith’s Pavane and Galliard John Black
The noble famous Queen William Byrd (1543-1623)
As I went to Walsingham trad
Walsingham Francis Cutting (fl 1583-c1603)
Weep, weep O Walsingham anon
Tregian’s Ground William Byrd
Time’s eldest son John Dowland (?1563-1626)
When griping griefs Richard Edwards (1524-1566)
Courtly masquing ayre No 9 John Adson (d 1640)
Interval (wine will be served)
Courtly masquing ayre No 2 John Adson
Mon desir Tylman Susato (?1500-?1564)
Mundesse John Playford (1623-1686)
Lull me beyond thee John Playford
The chirping of the lark John Playford
Muscadin anon
Daphne, Argiers, All in a garden green John Playford
Ode on the Death of Mr Henry Purcell John Blow (1649-1708)
Richard Lindsay
(countertenor, recorders)
Margaret Westlake (viols, recorder)
Stewart McCoy (lute, viol, theorbo)
Kathleen Berg (keyboards, recorders)
with guest artists
Stephen Hearn (countertenor)
Ellen Foster (recorders)
Ian Gammie (viol)
