The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations 9780754655428, 2006033060

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THE EARLY TUDOR COURT AND INTERNATIONAL MUSICAL RELATIONS

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

THEODOR DUMITRESCU Utrecht University, The Netherlands

ROUTLEDGE

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2007 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Theodor Dumitrescu 2007

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Theodor Dumitrescu has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Dumitrescu, Theodor, 1977The early Tudor court and international musical relations 1. Music – Great Britain – 16th century – History and criticism 2. Music – Great Britain – European influences 3. Great Britain – Civilization – 16th century 4. Great Britain – Civilization – European influences I. Title 780.9’42’09031 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dumitrescu, Theodor, 1977The early Tudor court and international musical relations / Theodor Dumitrescu. p. cm. Revised thesis (doctoral)–University of Oxford, 2004. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-13: 978-0-7546-5542-8 (alk. paper) 1. Music–England–15th century–History and criticism. 2. Music–England–16th century–History and criticism. 4. Politics and culture– England–15th century–History and criticism. 5. Politics and culture– England–16th century– History and criticism. I. Title



ML286.2 .D86 2007 780.942’09031–dc22

ISBN 9780754655428 (hbk)

2006033060

Contents List of Illustrations List of Tables List of Music Examples Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction

vii ix xi xiii xv 1

1

Foreign Cultural Models at the English Royal Court

13

2

International Events and Musical Exchanges

31

3

Building a Foreign Musical Establishment at the Early Tudor Court

63

4

Anglo-Continental Relations in Music Manuscripts

117

5

English Music Theory and the International Traditions

173

Conclusion

219

Appendix A

227

Appendix B

235

Appendix C

285

References Index

297 317

List of Illustrations 2.1

Singing sailors welcome Mary Tudor to Paris in a 1514 pageant. London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B.ii, fol. 4v. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

4.1

Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon with patron saints and English royal arms. Jena, Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Chorbuch 4, fol. 30r. Reproduced by permission of the Thüringer Universitätsund Landesbibliothek. Gatherings of London, British Library, MS Royal 11 E.XI, with current foliation and contents London, British Library, MS Royal 11 E.XI, fol. 2r. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. London, British Library, MS Royal 11 E.XI, fol. 3r. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. London, British Library, MS Royal 11 E.XI, fol. 1r (detail). Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Left: London, British Library, MS Royal 11 E.XI, fol. 10v: Opiciis, Sub tuum presidium; Right: Lofzangen, fol. Cv: page following Opiciis, Sub tuum presidium. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. London, British Library, MS Royal 11 E.XI, fol. 11r (detail). Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Chicago, Newberry Library, Case MS.-VM 1578.M91, Tenor partbook, fol. 63v (detail). Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago. London, Royal College of Music, MS 1070, fol. 1v (detail). Reproduced by permission of the Royal College of Music, London. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 133, fol. 145v. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Robert Fayrfax, Missa O bone ihesu, with English royal arms. Jena, Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Chorbuch 9, fol. 1v. Reproduced by permission of the Thüringer Universitätsund Landesbibliothek.

4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6

4.7 4.8

4.9 4.10

4.11

5.1

Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.3.38, fol. 14r. Reproduced by permission of Trinity College Library.

39

127

131 132 133 141 144

145 149

153 153

157

204

viii

5.2

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

Gaffurius, Practica musice, with sixteenth-century manuscript annotations. London, British Library, M.K.1.g.5, sig. e.[6]v. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

217

List of Tables 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5

Sackbut and shawm ensembles at the courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII Drum and fife ensembles at the court of Henry VIII Primary references to Benedictus de Opiciis and his family Payments to the unnamed French tabret group at the court of Henry VII Treasurer of the Chamber payments for short-term visits/ performances by continental musicians Payments for performances by foreign musicians from the Privy Purse of Henry VIII (1529-32) Payments from Lady Margaret Beaufort to continental musicians outside of royal employment Miscellaneous references to continental musicians outside of royal employment Manuscripts linked to English-Continental relations, c. 1485-1530 Physical structure and contents of LonBLR 11 E.XI Definite continental compositions in LonBL 31922 Chanson sections in LonBLR A58.2 and LonBLR A56 Major theoretical writings in English sources, c. 1400-1500 English manuscripts dedicated primarily to music theory, c. 1400-1500 Minor theoretical notes in fifteenth-century English sources Fifteenth-century English sources containing minor theoretical notes Counterpoint instructions in fifteenth-century English manuscripts

74 77 89 99 106 108 109 110

118 130 164 168 175 179 180 181 189

List of Music Examples 4.1 4.2

4.3 4.4 4.5

4.6

5.1 5.2

Sampson, Psallite felices, mm. 20-30 a. Salve radix, mm. 16-22 (dashed lines and arcs connect notes which should maintain a perfect relationship, either contrapuntal or melodic) b. Salve radix, mm. 16-22 (modern notation) Opiciis, Sub tuum presidium, mm. 68-9 (Superius and Tenor) End of “Resurrexio xpristi” section in Anima cristi (JenaU 9, fols 15r-16r) a. Quene note, mm. 15-20 (OxfBDI 167 fol. 31v) b. Votre trey dowce, mm. 19-23 (LonBL 5665, fols 144v-145; after Stevens [ed.], Early Tudor Songs and Carols) William Cornysh, Adieu mes amours (extracts; after Stevens [ed.], Music at the Court of Henry VIII) a. mm. 1-9 b. mm. 34-40

137 139

Frye, Missa Nobilis et pulcra, Sanctus (Osanna I), mm. 95-100 (BrusBR 5557, fols 45v-46r) Gaffurius proportion example as transmitted by Dygon (mm. 1-4)

195

139 143 158 163 163

166 166

205

Preface The present volume is a revised version of my doctoral thesis “Anglo-Continental Musical Relations, c. 1485-1530” (University of Oxford, 2004), prepared under the supervision of Dr Margaret Bent (All Souls College), to whom I owe my greatest scholarly debts. Other special thanks for aid in acquisition of materials, comments, criticisms, et cetera: Bonnie Blackburn (Wolfson College, Oxford), John Caldwell (Jesus College, Oxford), James Carley (York University, Toronto), Julia CraigMcFeely (Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music, Oxford), Henri Guy (Archives Départementales du Nord, Lille), Patrick Gilbert (Programme Ricercar, Tours), Dana Marsh (Queen’s College, Oxford), John Milsom, Jos van den Nieuwenhuizen (Kathedraalarchief, Antwerp), Owen Rees (Queen’s College, Oxford), Katelijne Schiltz (Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven), David Skinner (Magdalen College, Oxford), Reinhard Strohm (University of Oxford), Philippe Vendrix (Centre d’Etudes Supérieures de la Renaissance), John Wagstaff (Faculty of Music Library, University of Oxford), Joshua Yaphe. Library staff: Archivio di Stato, Alessandria; Bodleian Library, University of Oxford; British Library, London; Centre d’Etudes Supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours; Codrington Library, All Souls College, Oxford; Faculty of Music Library, University of Oxford; Firestone Library, Princeton University; Guildhall Library, London; Mendel Music Library, Princeton University; National Public Record Office, London; Newberry Library, Chicago; Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; Royal College of Music Library, London; Stadsarchief, Antwerp; Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Jena; Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge. Financial support during the writing of the thesis and its revision into the present volume: Le STUDIUM (agence régionale de recherche et d’accueil international de chercheurs associés, région Centre, France); Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the Universities of the United Kingdom (Overseas Research Student Award); Faculty of Music and Jesus College, Oxford (University of Oxford Graduate Scholarship in Music at Jesus College); additional research and travel grants provided by Jesus College and the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford.

List of Abbreviations Library sigla AlesASNM

Alessandria, Archivio di Stato, Archivio notarile del Monferrato

AmiensBM

Amiens, Bibliothèque municipale

AntKAR

Antwerp, Kathedraalarchief, Rekeningen

AntSACC

Antwerp, Stadsarchief, Schepenkamer, Coopers en Comparanten

AntSACert

Antwerp, Stadsarchief, Schepenkamer, Certificatieboek

AntSAV

Antwerp, Stadsarchief, Vierschaar, Vonnisboek

ArunC

Arundel, Castle Archive, M

BolC

Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale

BosMLB

Boston, Boston Medical Library, Ballard Coll. I

BrusBR

Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique

CambriCC

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College

CambriP

Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys Library

CambriT

Cambridge, Trinity College

ChiN M91

Chicago, Newberry Library, Case MS.-VM 1578. M91

DubTC

Dublin, Trinity College

EscSL

Escorial, Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial, Biblioteca y Archivo de Musica

EtonC

Eton College Library

FlorC

Florence, Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Cherubini

GhenU

Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek

JenaU

Jena, Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek

xvi

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

LilADN

Lille, Archives départementales du Nord

LonBL

London, British Library, Reference Division, Department of Manuscripts, MS Additional

LonBLA

London, British Library, Reference Division, Department of Manuscripts, MS Arundel

LonBLC

London, British Library, Reference Division, Department of Manuscripts, MS Cotton

LonBLH

London, British Library, Reference Division, Department of Manuscripts, MS Harley

LonBLLA

London, British Library, Reference Division, Department of Manuscripts, MS Lansdowne

LonBLR

London, British Library, Reference Division, Department of Manuscripts, MS Royal

LonBLR A

London, British Library, Reference Division, Department of Manuscripts, MS Royal Appendix

LonBLRM

London, British Library, Reference Division, Department of Manuscripts, MS Royal Music Library

LonBLS

London, British Library, Reference Division, Department of Manuscripts, MS Sloane

LonG

London, Guildhall Library

LonLP

London, Lambeth Palace

LonP

London, Public Record Office

LonRC

London, Royal College of Music

MilD 1

Milan, Archivio della Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo, Sezione Musicale, Librone 1 (olim 2269)

MunBS

Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Handschriftenund Inkunabelsammlung, Musica MS

NYorkCP

New York, Columbia University, Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Plimpton MS

NYorkPM

New York, Pierpont Morgan Library

OxfA

Oxford, All Souls College

OxfB

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct.

List of Abbreviations

xvii

OxfBA

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole

OxfBB

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley

OxfBC

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Canonici miscellaneous

OxfBD

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby

OxfBLL

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Latin liturgies

OxfBLM

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Latin miscellaneous

OxfBM

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Music

OxfBMS

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Music School

OxfBTa

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Tanner

OxfBTC

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Trinity College MS

ParisBNL

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, fonds latin

PrinG

Princeton, University Library, MS Garrett

SuttonO 4

Sutton Coldfield, Oscott College, Old Library, MS Case B No. 4

TrentC

Trent, Castello del Buon Consiglio

VatRE

Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Reginenses latini

VatSP

Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Arch. San Pietro

VercBA

Vercelli, Biblioteca Agnesiana

VienNB

Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung

YorkB

York, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, MS Music

Periodicals EM

Early Music

EMH

Early Music History

JAMS

Journal of the American Musicological Society

xviii

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

JRMA

Journal of the Royal Musical Association

JMT

Journal of Music Theory

MD

Musica Disciplina

ML

Music and Letters

MQ

Musical Quarterly

MT

Musical Times

MTO

Music Theory Online (http://www. societymusictheory.org/mto/)

PRMA

Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association

RM

Revue Belge de Musicologie

RMARC

Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle

TVNM

Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis

Books BDECM

Ashbee and Lasocki, A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians, 1485-1714

CCM

Census Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music, 1400-1550

CMM

Corpus mensurabilis musicae

CS

Coussemaker (ed.), Scriptorum de Musica Medii Aevi Nova Series a Gerbertina Altera

CSM

Corpus scriptorum de musica

CSP Ven

Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Relating to English Affairs Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice, and in Other Libraries of Northern Italy

DNB

Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900

EECM

Early English Church Music

List of Abbreviations

xix

ExpMGA

Expositiones in Micrologum Guidonis Aretini; Liber argumentorum, Liber specierum, Metrologus, Commentarius in Micrologum Guidonis Aretini

GSM

Gerbert (ed.), Scriptores Ecclesiastici de Musica Sacra Potissimum

L&P

Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII

MB

Musica Britannica

MGG1

Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart

MSD

Musicological Studies and Documents

NG2

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn.

RECM

Records of English Court Music

RISM

Répertoire International des Sources Musicales

Introduction Coming into the presence of Pope Leo X during an Italian voyage around the year 1518, a young Englishman named Thomas Cromwell was in need of an audience with the Holy Father. The future chief minister of Henry VIII, once secretary of the English Merchant Adventurers’ Company in Antwerp, had arrived in Rome with two companions from the Guild of Our Lady at St Botolph’s Church in Boston with the express purpose of requesting “papal favors” on behalf of the guild. Understanding how best to win the attentions of a pleasure-seeking Italian magnate, the trio formulated a scheme to treat the pope to a repast of English jelly and English song: At length,hauing knowledge how that the Popes holy tooth greatly delited in new fangled straunge delicates, and dayntie dishes, it came in his minde to prepare certeine fine dishes of gelly, after the best fashion, made after our countrey maner heere in Englande, which to them of Rome was not knowne nor seene before. This done, Cromwell obseruing his time accordyngly, as the Pope was newly come from hunting into his pauillion, he with his companions approched with his english presents brought in with a threemans song(as we call it)in the English tongue, and all after þe English fashion. The Pope sodenly marueiling at the straungenes of the song,and vnderstanding that they were Englishmen,and that they came not emptie handed,willed them to be called in. Cromwell there shewing his obedience, & offering his iolye iunkets, suche as Kings and Princes only (sayd he) in the realme of Englaand vse to feede vpon, desired þe same to be accepted in beneuolent part, which he and his companions as poore suters vnto his holines,had there brought and presented,as nouelties meete for his recreation, &c.1

The image of Cromwell, ruthless overseer of the Dissolution of the English monasteries, carrying dishes of jelly to the pope in hope of the reward of indulgences is astonishing enough in and of itself. But with the addition of the musical element, we are witness to one of the most peculiar scenes of the period. Were Cromwell and his companions the ones demonstrating their native style of singing to Leo X? What did the introduction of a threemans’ song have to do with the pope’s sudden “understanding” that these were men who had traveled all the way from England for an audience? The ideas engendered by this scene as an isolated event can only vaguely and indirectly bear on the issue of musical style in the early sixteenth century: there is a definite indication of musical exoticism in the pope’s wonderment at “the 1 John Foxe, Actes and Monuments... (revised edn, 2 vols, London, 1583), vol. 2, p. 1178. Foxe identifies the pope as Julius II, but the surviving papal bull granting the indulgences indicates that the incident occurred in1517–18, during the papacy of Leo X. Howard Leithead, ‘Cromwell, Thomas, earl of Essex (b. in or before 1485, d. 1540)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6769, accessed 20 March 2007].

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

2

straungenes of the song” (which we should read today as “the foreignness of the song”), and the mention of the genre links the singing to a number of possible styles encountered in surviving song sources—but we are at a loss for specific information which would tell us what characteristics denoted the singing as English, whether the musical syntax would have been comprehensible to a Roman musician of the time, even whether the foreignness was due more to compositional or performative style. The study of isolated cases in historical documents, however, has never had great value without the acknowledgement and awareness of a good deal of contextual background and comparative materials. The situation with Cromwell’s threeman song is far from the only documented instance of a European entourage encountering English music during the early sixteenth century (even if most of the other documentation lacks Foxe’s relish for an ironic tale), and conversely there is much more such material to demonstrate the exposure of English monarchs and nobility to foreign music and musicians. The cumulative impact of these materials invites the construction of a new scaffolding, a historical and conceptual framework within which to understand individual interactions as part of a larger musical traffic, a current running throughout the sixteenth century and developing from a trickle to a stream of ideas. Without a ready awareness of this framework of international relations of a cultural, historical, and intellectual nature, our ideas of musical style— particularly “English” musical style—are in danger of developing in a vacuum, an isolationist space which posits analyses and causes of technical developments as products of a closed system. It is with these concepts and caveats in mind that I have set out in this volume to offer a largely historical and contextual investigation as a first step in exploring a question which is, at its heart, analytical: why did English polyphony, several decades into the sixteenth century, begin to show an affinity with continental compositional styles to an extent not encountered since the middle of the fifteenth century? Such a question is far too broad to yield any single direct answers, and it is one which demands exploration from a multiplicity of perspectives. The part of the story which, as I see it, remains critically undervalued lies in the decades surrounding 1500 and particularly at the artistic establishments of the English royal court. It is a basic contention of this study that traditional musicological narratives have overemphasized the isolation of England in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth century. An impression of musical conservatism, inescapably covering a land whose particular political climate in the later fifteenth century cut off contact with the outside world, arises frequently in textbook expositions even when the accounts are sympathetic to English music: “Not only did the English cease to influence foreign composers, they also appear to have had only very limited knowledge of developments on the Continent in the second half of the fifteenth century. Although the Wars of the Roses, most acute in the 1450s and 1460s, would probably not have borne directly on musical life to any great extent, they do mark a ‘turning inwards’ to which the new musical insularity seems subtly related;”2 “the English after the midcentury tended increasingly toward an insular conservatism, remaining less touched than continental musicians by the forces that were preparing for the appearance of 2

Hugh Benham, Latin Church Music in England, c. 1460-1575 (London, 1977), p. 3.

Introduction

3

a composer of the stature of Josquin.”3 The spectre of the chronological divisions which have always characterized musical historiography, by encouraging a unified view of English trends and practices from the mid-fifteenth century to the later sixteenth century, has extended the perception of this “turning inwards” into the sixteenth century, making it one of the hallmarks of offhand comments concerning English practice: “continental influences appear not to have made many inroads at home, even though foreign musicians such as the Flemish lutenist Philip van Wilder and the Italian musicians Ambrose Lupo, viol player, and Dionisio Memo, organist, served at the English court from the time of Henry VIII on;”4 “New fashions on the Continent had a leisurely journey over the channel and were, more often than not, unable to penetrate the hinterland.”5 All of these statements, typical of the basic teaching which has informed generations of students, represent views encouraged by particular approaches to the musical sources, and to a lesser extent the historical documentation. The fact that a concept such as the “insular conservatism” supposedly occasioned by and following the Wars of the Roses appears to be a purely musicological invention, at odds with the approaches encountered in modern historical scholarship, should give us pause. Is the idea merely a naive attempt to explain through extra-musical criteria a self-evident characterization of the musical sources? Or is there perhaps a more concrete explanation at hand in the modern age, namely the desire of the early twentieth-century English musicologists to resurrect a glorious and specifically English musical past? The nationally motivated creation of an “English School” of composers stretching throughout the entire sixteenth century left its imprints on the most well-loved studies and editions: Now, it is an equally true fact, although known and recognized by a very small fraction of English-speaking people, that the high excellence of Tudor Literature has its parallel in the music of the same period; for the music of the Tudor composers, whether in the department of ecclesiastical, of instrumental, or of secular vocal writing, ranks as Art of the first class. It may even be asserted that this English School of Music surpasses that of its contemporaries on the continent of Europe, although such an assertion does not involve any depreciation of the greatness of the Flemish and Italian schools of the sixteenth century, including, as they do, such names as Willaert, Arcadelt, Verdelot, Lassus, Palestrina, Marenzio, Festa, and many more.6

Fellowes’s typically sweeping pronouncement (taking in continental composers from Verdelot to Marenzio in the same breath) belies an urgent need to set the rediscovered music of Tudor England on an elevated footing, to bestow upon it the status of a national treasure equal in public stature to the literary remains of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. The project of the “English School” of early musicology did 3 p. 763. 4 p. 243. 5 6

Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance (revised edn, New York and London, 1959), Howard Mayer Brown, Music in the Renaissance (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1976), David Wulstan, Tudor Music (London and Melbourne, 1985), p. 9. Edmund Horace Fellowes, The English Madrigal Composers (Oxford, 1921), p. 20.

4

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

much to bring the music of sixteenth-century England out of obscurity and indeed to demarcate it as a separate repertory; consider the titles of monumental series such as The English Madrigal School, Tudor Church Music, and Early English Church Music. If this situation is familiar from similar nationally motivated efforts in many countries, it has led to a particularly marked sense of national identity for the English music of the period, the creation of a musical island with its own performers, its own scholars, often its own listeners and readers. There are, of course, good reasons to approach the English musical heritage of the sixteenth century with different expectations and methodologies than is typical for much of the contemporaneous “central” musical repertory. Some types of clear stylistic distinctions would seem to invite the isolationist histories seeking an England thriving musically without the need for foreign contact. It is not my intention to assert that such a stance is inappropriate or fruitless; but a stylistic argument cannot be made in a vacuum, simply brushing aside the historical context when it poses seeming contradictions. The present study offers a shift of focus, away from elements of English isolationism and onto the historical evidence of cross-channel interactions—fragments of which have been recognized to lesser or greater degrees by each of the writers quoted above.7 A wealth of documentary evidence in both primary and secondary sources, when collected together, points to the multifarious nature of the musical interactions between continental Europe and England under the first Tudors: musicians traveling and working abroad, foreign music manuscripts and theory books entering England, English composers creating imitations of foreign compositional styles, to mention but a few aspects of the issue. For an understanding of the developments in English musical practice at the middle of the sixteenth century, the first appearance of foreign influences in the earlier period is of considerable importance, and has too often gone unnoticed. It is an explicit purpose of the present examination, then, to fill a pressing gap in the scholarship on Tudor music. This is by no means the first study to treat the subject of Anglo-Continental musical relations during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but the bulk of previous work has considered earlier and later periods, where the musical connections are more explicit in the repertories themselves. Within the purposely limited chronological scope of this volume, roughly 1485 to 1530 (the accession of Henry VII to the eve of the English reformations, chosen more to address current needs than to suggest any concrete periodization), the existing literature offers only scattered studies of very specific aspects of the wider complex treated here. The closest works on a broad scale have provided useful starting materials and points of comparison: John Milsom’s doctoral thesis features an excellent third chapter on 7 A welcome exception to the older views represented above appears in Leeman L. Perkins, Music in the Age of the Renaissance (New York and London, 1999), p. 220, indicative of a changing approach in recent years: “Although English music never again commanded the leading role it assumed in the early decades of the fifteenth century in the development of the polyphony of the European Renaissance, it continued to develop within the context of a strong indigenous tradition. It remained nonetheless open to the stimulating influence of musical practice on the Continent, and access to the works of composers who were active across the channel was undoubtedly facilitated by the repeated contacts occasioned by the political circumstances summarized here.”

Introduction

5

“Foreign music and musicians in mid-Tudor England,” which investigates a slightly later period and is of necessity more restricted in scope.8 Likewise, Jane Bernstein’s dissertation on The Chanson in England, 1530-1640 takes as a chronological starting point the very end of period covered here. Other wide-ranging studies by scholars such as Charles van den Borren and James Braithwaite have been useful in the formulation of the present work, but leave ample room for a study of a more general nature.9 I have chosen to arrange the investigation according to subject matter, an organization which seemed to provide a more effective means of covering a large amount of material than a chronological survey could afford. Each chapter takes in a range of documentary and historical evidence to illuminate a broad facet (for example, the growth of a foreign musical body at the Tudor court, the relation of English and foreign music theory and its transmission) with the idea of exploring the reasons and the means by which English musicians came into increasing contact with foreign ideas and practices. This topical structure itself mirrors the specific model for musical-cultural transmission elaborated in the body of the book: as the focal points of individual chapters broaden, from the thoroughly court-oriented overview of artistic importations in Chapter 1 to the general survey of theory and literary sources throughout England in Chapter 5, it is similarly proposed here that the initially artificial and propagandistic importations of foreign artifacts, ideas, and artisans at the Tudor court provided a significant impetus for later musical developments on a broader scale (in the noble households, the churches and universities, eventually the domestic life of the new middle class). Of the individual areas examined in detail, as noted above, one of the major self-evident topics is absent: the study of compositional style. There is no doubt that for numerous readers, the issue of musical style and analysis represents a crucial destination point for a study such as this one—and I find myself in full agreement that a thorough stylistic investigation is not only desirable but necessary. It is largely on account of the importance of the subject (and partly out of a sense that investigation into related areas must first lay out a suitable groundwork) that a compositional/stylistic examination has not been attempted here. 8 John Milsom, English Polyphonic Style in Transition: A Study of the Sacred Music of Thomas Tallis (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1983), pp. 54-90. 9 Charles van den Borren, Les musiciens belges en Angleterre à l’époque de la Renaissance (Brussels, 1913); James Roland Braithwaite, The Introduction of FrancoNetherlandish Manuscripts to Early Tudor England: the Motet Repertory (Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, 1967). Several examples of briefer and more specific studies include Ignace Bossuyt, ‘The Art of Give and Take: Musical Relations between England and Flanders from the 15th to the 17th Centuries’, in The Low Countries: Arts and Society in Flanders and the Netherlands (Rekkem, 1993-94), pp. 39-50; Iain Fenlon, ‘La diffusion de la chanson continentale dans les manuscrits anglais entre 1509-1570’, in Jean-Michel Vaccaro (ed.), La chanson à la Renaissance: Actes du XXe Colloque d’Etudes Humanistes du Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance de l’Université de Tours (Tours, 1981), pp. 172-89; John Izon, ‘Italian Musicians at the Tudor Court’, MQ 44 (1958): 329-37; and Peter Wright, ‘Binchois and England: Some Questions of Style, Influence, and Attribution in his Sacred Works’, in Andrew Kirkman and Dennis Slavin (eds), Binchois Studies (Oxford and New York, 2000), pp. 87-118.

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The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

A treatment which does justice to the subject will involve a more detailed approach than could be accommodated in the present work; it may be that the greatest value of this volume is as a prolegomenon to such a stylistic study.10 A Basic Overview In just about every field of artistic and scholarly production, foreign styles were appearing with ever greater regularity in early sixteenth-century England. The major channel for the importation of the artistic ideas and works of the Continent was the royal court, with the monarch as both the wealthiest patron of the country and a trend-setter for the nobility in domestic and artistic matters. If the Tudors went to greater lengths than their predecessors to create an international environment at court, their actions were nonetheless not without precedent, as recent historical scholarship has emphasized.11 Edward IV in particular looked to the model of Burgundy for the management of his household, and similarly for patronage of the arts, through his collection of such status objects as Flemish illuminated manuscripts and tapestries. Recent as well older studies of humanism in early Tudor England have traced its insular developments back to earlier periods: humanist scholars from abroad made England their home at various occasions throughout the fifteenth century, and English students regularly traveled to the foreign universities to learn from the most renowned professors of the Continent.12 It was only at the end of that century and the first decades of the next, however, that the effects of these educational exchanges began to take deeper root in England, with the establishment of more classical lectures and curricula at the universities, new boys’ schools, and the reception of major scholars such as Desiderius Erasmus and Juan Luis Vives by king and university. On the literary front, as suggested by Gordon Kipling, the fashion for Franco-Burgundian models was well-rooted by the later fifteenth century: the high respect shown to a figure such as Bernard André at Henry VII’s court was matched by the ready influence of foreign works on writers such as John Skelton and Henry Medwall.13 Decorated manuscripts, paintings, sculptures, and other items demonstrate clearly the visual impact of the current styles of Burgundy, France, and Renaissance

10 See pp. 223-6 below. 11 Mark H.A. Ballard, Anglo-Burgundian Relations, 1464-1472 (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1993); C.A.J. Armstrong, England, France and Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1983). See also the essays collected in Caroline M. Barron and Nigel Saul (eds), England and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages (Stroud, 1995). 12 Maria Dowling, Humanism in the Age of Henry VIII (London, Sydney, and Dover, NH, 1986); David R. Carlson, English Humanist Books: Writers and Patrons, Manuscripts and Print, 1475-1525 (Toronto and London, 1993); Francis Aidan Gasquet, The Eve of the Reformation (London, 1900), pp. 23-50. 13 Gordon Kipling, The Triumph of Honour: Burgundian Origins of the Elizabethan Renaissance (The Hague, 1977).

Introduction

7

Italy on the early Tudor court.14 The hiring by the English kings of the most skilled foreign artists—names such as Hans Holbein, Pietro Torrigiano, and the Horenbout family—leaves no doubt that members of the ruling circles were not only open to the new artistic developments of the Continent, but were willing to spend significant sums to bring these to England, to match themselves to the leading European courts and step onto the scene of international magnates. In the entertainments which marked the main festivals of the year (for example, Twelfth Night, May Day), along with every major diplomatic event and celebration, the English court of the early sixteenth century took a new turn towards foreign models. These themes have been developed notably by Anglo and Kipling; if the documentary interpretations of these leading scholars diverge at a number of points, both nevertheless take into account the continental inspiration for many of these events.15 Beginning at the latest with the 1501 wedding of Prince Arthur and Katherine of Aragon, a classically Burgundian style of entertainments and tournaments with chivalric-romantic themes became a regular feature of court life. The basse dance and other international courtly dances found a welcome reception in England, among the nobility as well as in other social circles.16 Many of these evidences of foreign cultural influences are to be read as aspects of the general Tudor program for dynastic establishment on an international scale; for art and music, as for literature, the call needs to be sounded for “examinations that would no longer consider the literary patronage of rulers like Henry VIII, Federigo da Montefeltro or Mathias Corvinus as separate from or subordinate to their political action, but as an integral part of their policy.”17 As noted above, the diplomatic events which brought together the rulers and ambassadors of the countries of the west provided one of the main contexts for elaborate courtly entertainments in an international style. For the early Tudor period, these occasions arose with relative frequency: celebrated festive gatherings such as the Anglo-French meeting known as the Field of Cloth of Gold (1520) and the wedding of 1501 come to mind immediately, but numerous other less elaborate events could be added, such as the meetings between English and Habsburg sovereigns at Calais (1500, 1520), Lille (1513), and London (1506), or the diplomatic celebrations in England and France of 1518 and 1527.18 In all of these cases, English and continental rulers and nobles were exposed to some of the most lavish elements of each other’s artistic and musical establishments, in costly displays of royal magnificence. It is 14 A wide range of artistic contacts at court is identified in David Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII: A European Court in England (London, 1991). 15 Sydney Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy (2nd edn, Oxford and New York, 1997); Kipling, The Triumph of Honour. 16 See John Ward, ‘The Maner of Dauncying’, EM 4 (1976): 127-42. 17 Susanne Saygin, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (1390–1447) and the Italian Humanists (Leiden, Boston, and Cologne, 2002), pp. 266-7. 18 The best overview of these diplomatic occasions is still Anglo, Spectacle. Certain individual occasions have received detailed treatment: Jocelyne G. Russell, The Field of Cloth of Gold: Men and Manners in 1520 (London, 1969); The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, ed. Gordon Kipling, Early English Text Society, 296 (Oxford, 1990); C.R. Baskervill, ‘William Lily’s Verse for the Entry of Charles V into London’, Huntington Library Bulletin, 9 (1936): 1-20.

8

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

with such aspects of competition, emulation, and simple decorum in mind, along with the accompanying exchanges of gifts, that we can begin to explain the initial impetus for an increasing presence of foreign instrumentalists at the English court. The secular musical establishment of Henry VII was by all accounts an expanding institution, and it is of no small import that the majority of the additions made during the reign were of foreign players. Close studies of the musical establishment at the royal court and the publication of significant amounts of primary documentation, particularly through the work of Ashbee, Lasocki, Pearsall, and Kisby, have considerably improved our knowledge of the workings of the court and have brought to light more evidence of the foreign presence at court.19 It is now feasible to reevaluate the entire character and structure of the continental importations at the early Tudor court and to situate these in the wider cultural context elaborated in the present study. Attributing the expansion of musical forces to the same motivations which have been used to explain Henry VII’s taste for French and Burgundian art objects—namely, the desire to demonstrate royal prestige and to win acceptance as a ruler on an international level—ties the appearance of these new musicians precisely to the foreign relations which the monarch sustained. This view may well be too utilitarian, reflecting a historiographical tradition which emphasizes the patronage activities of Henry VIII at the expense of his father. Nevertheless, the traces of personal involvement in the musical activities and other pastimes of the court come to the fore much more clearly in the cases of Henry VII’s children. Here one may detect the influence of highly-placed foreigners, such as the lutenist Gilles Duwes, tutor in French and music to the royal children and librarian at Richmond after the accession of Henry VIII. The importance of Duwes for Henry VIII’s musical upbringing, emphasized recently by Dietrich Helms in a re-examination of the monarch’s compositional activities, may provide the most valuable link to the international character of Henry’s private and public musical interests.20 Various virtuoso players are known to have had close personal contact with the king and to have served in political capacities; the Italian organist Dionysio Memo and the lutenist Zuan Piero in the 1510s are significant examples, as is the organ-builder and diplomat Miguel Marcator at a later period. Musicians from the Low Countries such as Peter Alamire, Hans Nagel, and Benedictus de Opiciis were connected to the king’s music in the creation and acquisition of music manuscripts and instruments, in introducing 19 Eileen Sharpe Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, 1485-1547: Their Number, Status, and Function (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1986); Andrew Ashbee, ‘Groomed for Service: Musicians in the Privy Chamber at the English court, c.1495-1558’, EM 25 (1997): 185-97; Fiona Kisby, ‘Royal Minstrels in the City and Suburbs of Early-Tudor London’, EM 25 (1997): 199-219; Andrew Ashbee and David Lasocki, assisted by Peter Holman and Fiona Kisby, A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians, 1485-1714 (2 vols, Aldershot, 1998), hereafter BDECM. Primary materials are published in Records of English Court Music, ed. Andrew Ashbee (9 vols, Aldershot, 1986-96), hereafter RECM. 20 Helms, Dietrich, Heinrich VIII. und die Musik, Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft aus Münster, 11 (Eisenach, 1998), pp. 242-7. See also David Fallows, ‘Henry VIII as a Composer’, in Chris Banks, Arthur Searle, and Malcolm Turner (eds), Sundry Sorts of Music Books: Essays on the British Library Collections, Presented to O. W. Neighbour on his 70th Birthday (London, 1993), pp. 27-39.

Introduction

9

new players to the court, sustaining a thread of Anglo-Burgundian musical relations reaching back to the mid-fifteenth century. In the wider ranks of the players who attended the monarch in public and in private, the changing face of ensembles such as the king’s wind bands (first a Flemish group, later joined by acquisitions from the north of Italy) marks the constant renewal of the royal musical forces. By the time of Henry VIII’s death, a long process of expansion had created a significant body of foreign minstrels in England, including families which would continue to make important contributions to the country’s musical life for generations.21 The hiring of musicians from the Continent by no means represents the sole tangible musical effect of the diplomatic exchanges in the early Tudor period. Decorated manuscripts formed one of many categories of luxury items which served as gifts among Europe’s rulers, and books of polyphony were in no way excluded from this purpose. Numerous types of finely executed continental music books found their way to the possession of the English kings, volumes surveyed on numerous occasions and still controversial in terms of possible English reception and usage.22 Among these we find a range of items, from the Flemish choirbooks associated with Peter Alamire and the Habsburg-Burgundian court to the Florentine “Newberry-Oscott partbooks” in a newer style; such luxury items, among the most important survivals for certain continental compositions and repertories, have given rise to a wide array of individual studies, carried out by Slim, Kellman, Litterick, Tirro, Chaillon, and Kahmann, among others.23 Similarly, less lavish productions such as the French choirbook associated with Anne Boleyn (LonRC 1070) and the “Chansonnier of Hieronymus Lauweryn van Watervliet” (LonBL 35087) bear the marks of their presence in England soon after their creation—their shadowy histories offer hints of the nature of non-institutional use and transmission of musical repertories.24 It may be an astonishing realization for many that of the surviving 21 The impact of these families has been traced mainly for periods later than that of the present study: see, for example, David Lasocki with Roger Prior, The Bassanos: Venetian Musicians and Instrument Makers in England, 1531-1665 (Aldershot, 1995); Peter Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court, 1540-1690 (Oxford and New York, 1993); David Lasocki, ‘The Levashers and the Le Vachers’, Galpin Society Journal, 45 (1992): 111-14. 22 Fenlon, ‘La Diffusion’; Braithwaite, The Introduction. 23 H. Colin Slim, A Gift of Madrigals and Motets (2 vols, Chicago, 1972); id., ‘A Royal Treasure at Sutton Coldfield’, EM 6 (1978): 57-74; London, British Library, Royal 8 G. VII, facsimile edn by Herbert Kellman, Renaissance Music in Facsimile, 9 (New York and London, 1987); Louise Litterick, The Manuscript Royal 20.A.XVI of the British Library (Ph. D. dissertation, New York University, 1976); Frank Tirro, ‘Royal 8.G.vii: Strawberry Leaves, Single Arch, and Wrong-Way Lions’, MQ 67 (1981): 1-28; Paule Chaillon, ‘Le Chansonnier de Françoise’, RM 35 (1953): 1-31; B. Kahmann, ‘Über Inhalt und Herkunft der Handschrift Cambridge Pepys 1760’, in Walter Gerstenberg, Heinrich Husmann, and Harald Heckmann (eds), Bericht über den internationalen musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress Hamburg 1956 (Kassel, 1956), pp. 126-8. 24 These two books are investigated (with conflicting conclusions regarding LonRC 1070) in: Edward E. Lowinsky, ‘A Music Book for Anne Boleyn’, in J.G. Rowe and W.H. Stockdale (eds), Florilegium Historiale: Essays Presented to Wallace K. Ferguson (Toronto, 1970), pp. 161-235, reprinted in Edward E. Lowinsky, Music in the Culture of the Renaissance

10

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complete sources in England which were created during the period under review, foreign books account for as great a portion of the total as do English manuscripts. The pattern of penetration of continental compositions into early-Tudor England perhaps does not demonstrate the level of integration with native works achieved in the English sources from the later sixteenth century. Nevertheless, the first definite hints of the native interest in the transmission of foreign works are visible already in a number of early sixteenth-century English books. The occasional appearance of foreign dance tenors in manuscripts with liturgical connections (LonBL 5665, OxfBDI 167, LonBLH 1512) probably pre-dates the larger collections of foreign polyphonic compositions in mainly secular English manuscripts (LonBL 31922, LonBLR A56, and LonBLR A58). These “secular” sources have been brought into connection with the musical life of the royal court (at least as a reflection of it) largely due to the influential work of John Stevens; new observations and re-evaluations by Helms will be of considerable importance in future considerations of these same books.25 With LonBL 31922 (the “Henry VIII manuscript”) in particular, we have a window onto the courtly interest in foreign style; alongside the famous continental works contained in the manuscript, Henry VIII’s own compositions display remarkably close connections with foreign song. Personal interests and connections can probably be held to account as well for the converse situation, the rare instances of English works appearing in foreign manuscripts associated with Alamire. In the copying of new continental compositions into English manuscripts, there is a clear native desire for these pieces, and likewise, to judge by the sources, an intention to perform them. What is not so obvious is whether or not the English practitioners who encountered such works would have construed them in ways significantly different from their original performers. Investigation into the conceptual bases which underpinned an early sixteenth-century English musician’s understanding of compositional and notational technicalities has been surprisingly infrequent (a notable exception such as Ronald Woodley’s work on the notebook of John Tucke demonstrates the importance of the manuscript sources and the considerable gaps in our present state of knowledge of the English theoretical situation).26 As a result, the comparison of theoretical systems must be accompanied in the first place by a fresh review of the English writings, undertaken here in the broad survey of Chapter 5. If we can discover with certainty that the most basic elements of the late-medieval musica practica—the Gamut, hexachordal description of intervallic relations, contextual mensural rhythm—were valid and taught in England with largely the same pedagogical approaches as elsewhere throughout Europe, there remain other & Other Essays, ed. Bonnie J. Blackburn (2 vols, Chicago and London, 1989), pp. 483-528; Lisa A. Urkevich, Anne Boleyn, a Music Book, and the Northern Renaissance Courts: Music Manuscript 1070 of the Royal College of Music, London (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 1997); William M. McMurtry, The British Museum Manuscript Additional 35087: A Transcription of the French, Italian, and Latin Compositions with Concordance and Commentary (Ph.D. dissertation, North Texas State University, 1967). 25 John Stevens, Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court (London, 1961); Helms, Heinrich VIII. 26 Ronald Woodley, John Tucke: A Case Study in Early Tudor Music Theory (Oxford and New York, 1993).

Introduction

11

layers of the system which cause greater difficulties. On the level of syntax and the articulation of the grammatical sense of polyphony in counterpoint, discussions of fifteenth-century polyphony have long been troubled by conflicting rationalizations of stylistic “Englishness” in the treatment of consonance and dissonance. Was there ever really an “English discant” style, featuring a pan-consonant and rhythmically undifferentiated approach to multi-voice composition, and is such a style detectable in the mid-century works of composers like Walter Frye? These questions are of considerable importance for the analysis of the later English polyphony which developed from this tradition. The traces of early examinations by Bukofzer, Georgiades, and Kenney—conflicting and in some cases irreconcilable as they are—continue to inform current ideas about the relationship between English theory and contrapuntal style; the approach of counterpoint studies which cover a wider geographic area (such as those of Sachs and Apfel), on the other hand, can supply crucial comparative context by placing the English treatises in their wider European tradition.27 After a dearth of major British theory sources during the greater part of the sixteenth century, the new compendia which were created near the end of the century (for example, the treatises of Morley and the author of the Pathway to musicke) demonstrate a comfortable familiarity with foreign treatises. As with the musical sources, a less developed and visible stage of these relations can be found at an earlier period. The case of the only major English theorist known during the later fifteenth century is particular: if John Hothby spent the majority of his career in Italy, he is known nevertheless to have traveled throughout Europe and continued to hold a certain amount of influence in England, even after his death in the North. The carmelite’s international connections and the significance of his writings for his direct and indirect students offers a model of one means of transmission of theoretical ideas between geographically distant locales. With the spread of printed treatises, the distribution of such work touches upon more commercial interests; examples of new foreign writings on music which came to England in the early sixteenth century include Gaffurius’s Practica musice, Wollick’s Opus aureum musicae, and Ornithoparcus’s Musice active micrologus. The treatise of Gaffurius holds the unique distinction of having had one of its four books recopied in an anglicized version by the prior of St. Augustine’s monastery in Canterbury, John Dygon; this unique synthesis of English and continental theoretical writing has much to tell us about the compatibility of different musical practices in the sixteenth century. The formulation of the broad study attempted in this volume has involved the collation of a considerably variegated array of primary and secondary information, a significant portion of which has appeared in the passing remarks and footnotes 27 Manfred F. Bukofzer, Geschichte des englischen Diskants und des Fauxbourdons nach den theoretischen Quellen (Strasbourg, 1936); Thrasybulos Georgos Georgiades, Englische Diskanttraktate aus der ersten Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1937); Sylvia W. Kenney, Walter Frye and the Contenance Angloise (New Haven and London, 1965); Klaus-Jürgen Sachs, Der Contrapunctus im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert: Untersuchungen zum Terminus, zur Lehre und zu den Quellen (Wiesbaden, 1974); Ernst Apfel, Diskant und Kontrapunkt in der Musiktheorie des 12. bis 15. Jahrhunderts (Wilhelmshaven, 1982).

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of earlier publications—individual items noted briefly but never assembled for the present purpose and evaluated as factors in a broader cultural complex. The value of this evidence lies not so much in the single elements, but in the cumulative and reciprocal effect of their relations to each other, the communal capability to confirm or deny the implications of individual aspects of the whole. I am convinced that, over time, the ongoing examination of documents and the appearance of new materials will add to the raw data bearing directly upon the subject of this book. Whether this shifting knowledge of the documentary legacy of early sixteenth-century England will continue to accommodate the ideas elaborated here, on the other hand, is a question for a different time. Editorial Conventions and Policies The present study includes a number of transcriptions of musical and textual documents. Textual abbreviations have been expanded silently, but otherwise original orthography and punctuation are retained. In the presentation of music, examples have usually been translated into modern notation, with 2:1 note value reduction and standardized modern cleffing; angle brackets indicate coloration. Examples which need to demonstrate aspects of the original notation are typeset with diamond noteheads and consist of scored versions of the separate parts in mensural notation. Manuscript line endings are shown by a vertical dashed line, which therefore also signals the presence of custodes and clefs at new line beginnings; page turns are indicated by vertical dashed lines through and between all staves. In all examples, ligatures are translated into separate notes and marked by brackets. Missing text which has been supplied in the music editions appears in italic type. Dates which include two years separated by a slash (e.g., 1516/17) represent cases where a discrepancy exists between a New Style dating (in which the year changes on 1 January) and the Old Style dating employed in the original documents (in which the year changes at Easter). A date of “18 Jan 1515/16” therefore would currently be considered 1516, but English documents of the period would record the year as 1515. In representing ranges of years separated by a dash (e.g., 1510-1521), a dash before the first year signifies “in or before” and a dash after the second year signifies “or later,” so the range “-1525-1542” indicates “in or before 1525 to 1542,” and “1516-1521-” indicates “1516 to 1521 or later.”

Chapter 1

Foreign Cultural Models at the English Royal Court Englond, be glad! Pluk up thy lusty hart! Help now thi kyng, thi kyng, and take his part! Ageynst the Frenchmen in the feld to fyght In the quarell of the church and in the ryght, With spers and sheldys on goodly horsys lyght, Bowys and arows to put them all to flyght: Help now thi king [and take his part!]1

The matter of foreign relations was at all points during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a touchy subject for the English. When the recently crowned King Henry VIII took to the field in 1513 and led what was to be his grandest expedition against the French on their own territory, he was fighting in the real (if unrealistic) hope of “reconquering” a kingdom which he saw as his own birthright. With the model of the warrior-king Henry V inspiring the young Tudor to dreams of victory and honor, a tremendous contingent of English courtiers, soldiers, household staff, and musicians was brought literally face-to-face to with its old foreign enemy. Nothing in the rhetoric surrounding the king’s short French “war” suggested that just a year later, the rulers of England and France would be calling each other allies, sealing their pact with the marriage of Henry VIII’s sister Mary to Louis XII of France. Holy War and Universal Peace: the two poles of Anglo-French relations under the first Tudor kings, the stormy love-hate relationship enacted as an extension of the rivalry, amity, emulation, and enmity of individual princes. With such a conception of the basic state of affairs, deriving a sense of the extent to which foreign elements affected English court life would appear to be a paradoxical synthesizing task, which asks us to generalize from situations and evidences of wildly divergent characteristics and contexts. But the broad stories of treaties, alliances, and wars are not what tell us about the real and personal environments of household, city, and country, nor do they shed specific light on the gradual shifts of styles in art, music, literature, and every field of creative production. As suggested by the case of the English monarchs’ cherished idea of France as a rebellious vassal, even a war could reflect a sovereign’s genuine interest in maintaining or revitalizing an underlying traditional connection. More importantly, the sorts of political shifts which can seem wildly erratic to the modern observer point to the significance of the personal ideals and environments which informed the actions of individual 1 LonBL 31922, fols 100v-102r; text as edited in Stevens, Music and Poetry, pp. 417-18.

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The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

rulers. One of the major shifts in modern historical scholarship, indeed, has been the recognition of the crucial role played by the personal aspects of princehood at this period, the realization that the political and diplomatic dealings of the time cannot be properly understood when divorced from the values which informed and reflected personal sovereignty: Traditional diplomatic history of Anglo-French relations in this period has quite rightly focused on the evidence of wars, of treaties between the kingdoms and on questions of trade and strategic advantage. Histories of the period have highlighted the complex double-dealing between European princes in the early sixteenth century, in which the kings of England and France took an active part. However, such discussions have usually owed more to nineteenth-century conceptions of statecraft than sixteenth, and often strike a variety of bemused, critical, uncomprehending and even cynical notes at the conduct of relations between the two kingdoms. Until relatively recently the personal interactions between Henry VIII and Francis I tended to be dismissed as empty rhetorical gesturing or deceptive theatrics designed to mask the two princes’ ‘real’ aims which were to safeguard their own strategic advantages and undermine those of the other. That Henry and Francis were intent upon outdoing each other strategically is beyond question, but there is a wealth of evidence, much of it material rather than documentary in nature, which shows how remarkably competitive and politically significant their personal dealings were. These interactions were centred firmly on the values of personal honour enshrined in the chivalric code of the nobility which was a vital element of Renaissance kingship.2

It is this “material” evidence and its surrounding courtly context which offers our point of entry into the shifting ideals and values of the early Tudor royal household, the background against which we can make sense of the cultural contradictions of the court. The elements which form the focus of the following discussion have been gathered for the purpose of establishing the very fundamental importance of the international cultural aspects of Tudor court life. Far from representing an incidental and ultimately insignificant feature of England’s domestic and foreign relations, the many art objects, mechanical devices, artisans, scholars, armorers, creators and creations of every sort which found new homes at the royal court formed an integral part of Tudor representation at home and abroad. For understanding the nature and broader role of the musical shifts at the court during this period, a basic awareness of the character and extent of these other artistic and intellectual importations will be indispensable. International Models Before the Tudors The accession of Henry VII in 1485 has provided a convenient starting point for countless historical studies, bringing an end to the sudden reversals of power and contests for supremacy among the English nobility of the previous decades, and marking the establishment of a royal dynasty which remained in power for the entirety 2 Glenn Richardson, ‘Eternal Peace, Occasional War: Anglo-French Relations Under Henry VIII’, in Susan Doran and Glenn Richardson (eds), Tudor England and its Neighbours (Houndmills, Basingstoke and New York, 2005), pp. 44-5.

Foreign Cultural Models at the English Royal Court

15

of the sixteenth century. It is generally accepted today, however, that for the English of the late fifteenth century, the situation was far less certain than would appear from the perspective of modern observers, or of early historians with a stake in lending unconditional support to the Tudors. Henry VII’s hold on the throne was confirmed only several years after he had first taken it, with the suppression of the last major uprising and the battle of Stoke; pretenders and numerous political enemies would continue to threaten the family’s position well into the reign of Henry VIII. The opening of the Tudor period, therefore, was little more stable in political terms than the years under preceding monarchs, and is usefully regarded as a continuation and gradual close of the Wars of the Roses. The situation in cultural terms is much the same: if the importance of international influences upon the court of Henry VIII is indisputable, these same influences can be traced back through the reign of Henry VII and in many cases to his predecessors. As the research of the past few decades into numerous fields of artistic endeavor has demonstrated, the reign of the second Tudor king is simply far too late a period to posit a reopening of cultural traffic beween England and continental Europe, particularly the Burgundian Low Countries. The view which associates the reign of Henry VII with a new international outlook at the English court has itself undergone numerous revisions and challenges, as scholars have demonstrated the existence of similar exchanges back through the reign of Edward IV.3 The specifically pro-Burgundian and anti-French policies of the earlier years of Edward’s rule, expressed most succinctly in the 1468 marriage of his sister Margaret of York to duke Charles the Bold (solidifying an important political alliance), found its reflection in the king’s artistic patronage and tastes in collecting. The best-known element of Edward’s inclination towards foreign production—“the more lavish and spectacular manifestations of Burgundian ceremonial and craftsmanship”4—is his penchant for acquiring illuminated manuscripts of Burgundian (and later French) origin.5 A move usually attributed to the influence of the Burgundian counsellor and chamberlain Louis of Gruthuyse, who hosted Edward IV during his forced exile of 1470-71, Edward’s foreign book-collecting may actually have begun before the king ever met Gruthuyse or lived on the Continent. Moreover, given the amount of Anglo-Burgundian diplomatic activity in the 1460s, there is no need to rely on an actual continental sojourn to explain the king’s exposure to foreign items, even if the period of exile surely affected his tastes—a note of caution which applies equally

3 Ballard, Anglo-Burgundian Relations, pp. 305-18; Armstrong, ‘L’Échange culturel entre les cours d’Angleterre et de Bourgogne à l’époque de Charles le Téméraire’, in England, France and Burgundy, pp. 403-17. For the principal exposition of the view that Henry VII began in earnest the process of cultural internationalization at the royal court, see Kipling, The Triumph of Honour. 4 Ballard, Anglo-Burgundian Relations, p. 303. 5 On this aspect of Edward’s cultural programme, see Anne F. Sutton and Livia VisserFuchs, ‘Choosing a Book in Late Fifteenth-century England and Burgundy’, in Barron and Saul (eds), England and the Low Countries, pp. 61-98; Malcolm Vale, ‘An Anglo-Burgundian Nobleman and Art Patron: Louis de Bruges, Lord of la Gruthuyse and Earl of Winchester’, in Barron and Saul (eds), England and the Low Countries, pp. 115-31.

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well to the collecting activities of the Tudor monarchs.6 Similar bibliophilic policies were picked up soon after not only by the later English kings, but likewise by the members of the wealthier and more powerful classes.7 In the fields of building and sculpture, Flemish styles had in some cases penetrated English projects for some time, as in the brickwork of Tattershall and other castles from the mid-fifteenth century; during Edward’s time, Flemish sculptors may have been used for St George’s Chapel, Windsor. The collecting of Flemish tapestry was another area in which the activities of Edward IV and various English nobles can be shown to have preceded the buying policies of Henry VII.8 These are all examples serving to sketch in the picture of that royal domestic policy which blurs the line between personal and public interests, the mode of cultural statecraft whose significance can hardly be overemphasized in reaction to traditional views of the Early Modern political landscape. Indeed, the process went as far as the wholesale adoption of external household models in the attempt to shape the cultural outlines of the court: it is and was well known that Edward IV’s household ordinances were influenced directly and heavily by the regulations of the Burgundian master of ceremonies, Olivier de la Marche, introducing European courtly patterns at the most detailed domestic level.9 With this nexus of foreign artistic production entering England under the influence of Edward IV’s personal policies, there is little historical support for the tradition that political factors led to musical isolation at this time, as stated for example by Ignace Bossuyt: “As a result of unfavourable political circumstances during the War of the Roses (1459-5), English composers worked in an isolation which was not broken until the Tudors came to the throne.”10 Rather than closing England off from the rest of Europe, the frequent turns of Fortune’s wheel at this period forced numerous members of the most powerful class to seek refuge on the Continent: in the mid1470s Ballard estimates around 120 Lancastrian exiles (including servants) were supported by Charles the Bold in his territories,11 to say nothing of the significant case of Edward IV himself. There are more identifiable cases of English composers and other musicians working at continental centers during the Wars of the Roses than in later periods. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can posit any sharp division at 1485 or 1487; for many years of the reigns of both Henry VII and 6 On the problems with assuming that Edward IV’s manuscript collecting was a direct result of his contact with Gruthuyse, see Ballard, Anglo-Burgundian Relations, pp. 307-8. Ballard questions as well whether Gruthuyse ever came to England before 1472 (casting some doubt on his supposedly central role in achieving the Anglo-Burgundian alliance); ibid., pp. 43-46. 7 For example, Sir Thomas Thwaytes, Treasurer of Calais, who presented Henry VII with a six-volume set of French chronicles: see Kipling, The Triumph of Honour, p. 32; Ballard, Anglo-Burgundian Relations, p. 304; and Janet Backhouse, ‘Illuminated Manuscripts Associated with Henry VII and Members of his Immediate Family’, in Benjamin Thompson (ed.), The Reign of Henry VII, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 5 (Stamford, 1995), p. 176. 8 Ballard, Anglo-Burgundian Relations, pp. 309-14; Kipling, The Triumph of Honour, p. 32. 9 Anglo, Spectacle, p. 104; Ballard, Anglo-Burgundian Relations, p. 303. 10 Bossuyt, ‘The Art of Give and Take’, p. 42. 11 Ballard, Anglo-Burgundian Relations, p. 242.

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Henry VIII, while the older struggles remained very much a reality, the continuing conflicts served in no way to sever England’s ties with the rest of Europe. The situation which stands as the backdrop to the arrival of the Tudor dynasty, then, establishes a level of political and cultural traffic that cannot support an “isolationist” characterization. At the time when Henry VII established himself as a ruler with a firm grasp on his kingdom, the English already enjoyed a variety of wellestablished connections with continental centers, in commercial and personal, as well as political, spheres of activity. The royal policies of Edward IV had included the conscious adoption of artistic and ceremonial elements from the Burgundian court, and the Tudors would prove wise in expanding upon this characteristic; indeed, in the personalized model of Early Modern rulership, the artistic tastes represented by the king’s household were significative of the broadening international context in which Tudor diplomacy was enacted. The scattered, if substantial, cases of foreign artistry and its imitations at the later fifteenth-century English court would gradually grow more regular and frequent under Henry VII. More importantly, the burgeoning international environment of the early Tudor court would go a long way in shaping the tastes and expectations of the future Henry VIII, who would prove extraordinarily enthusiastic in the importation of foreign arts and ideas. Scholarly and Literary Influences Education and scholarship seem to have been areas where an international outlook resulted in a long and regular personal traffic related only indirectly (or only in certain instances) to national interests. Numerous cases of English scholars, monastic and otherwise, who passed years in the main foreign university centers of learning and humanism will be mentioned below in Chapter 2.12 The teachings, debates, and writings of these men established continuing links between insular and foreign intellectual circles. Equally important for the introduction of international currents of thought into England was the immigration of foreign scholars and writers, who found both temporary and permanent support at the insular universities and courts, and for the most famous cases there is a discernable thread of royal support (and desire). Italian teachers of the new learning were entering England from the first half of the fifteenth century; poets and other writers arrived from across Europe, obtaining employment at the royal court and elsewhere. Pietro Carmeliano is a significant example who managed to obtain the favor of Henry VII even after paying compliments to Richard III in his earlier writing, attaining a post as the king’s Latin secretary; during Henry VIII’s reign, the humanist Andrea Ammonio of Lucca held this same position, continuing the Italian tradition. Like Carmeliano, the papal collector Giovanni Gigli celebrated the birth of Prince Arthur in poems; Gigli eventually returned to Rome as Henry VII’s ambassador to the Holy See and was made bishop of Worcester.13 The case of the “Giovanni” Opicius, who paid 12 See pp. 55-8 below. 13 Armstrong, ‘An Italian Astrologer at the Court of Henry VII’, in England, France and Burgundy, pp. 157-78, at 171; Backhouse, ‘Illuminated Manuscripts’, p. 178; Slim, A Gift, vol. 1, p. 114; Gilbert and Godelieve Tournoy-Thoen, ‘Giovanni Gigli and the Renaissance of

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tribute to Henry VII in classicizing style, offers further examples of the literary side of Italianate humanism and will be discussed in Chapter 4.14 Gulielmus Parronus of Piacenza, the Italian astrologer who had written a libellus for Ludovico Sforza, tried his luck for a while at the Tudor court, producing manuscript and printed works around 1500 both in Latin and English (under Henry VIII, on the other hand, the science of astronomy at court reached a high level with the engagement of the German Nicolaus Kratzer).15 The strength of the southern educational traditions offered a pool of intellectual talent which was by no means undervalued by the Tudors, able and indeed eager to act as modern Maecenates. A major foreign strain in the literary production of the court spreads the range of influence well beyond Italy, back to more immediate northern cultural contacts, while of course some of the major intellectual lights of the court were non-Italian humanists. The poetry created at and for Henry VII’s court, to go by current literary investigation, was largely under the influence of the king’s blind poet laureate Bernard André (probably a more widespread fashion: in the early sixteenth century even a figure such as the abbot of the convent of Glastonbury kept a French poet).16 The first real history of England was written, significantly, by a foreigner from the Tudor court, Polydore Vergil, and other major international scholars who came to England for royal patronage in the early sixteenth century included Desiderius Erasmus and Juan Luis Vives, figures at the very forefront of European intellectual development.17 If the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries represented, therefore, “the apogee of xenophobia in London,”18 this sentiment underlies a complex situation in reality, reflecting to some degree popular knowledge of the preferment shown to numerous foreigners by the king and upper classes. A Venetian observer noted of the English around 1500, “They have an antipathy to foreigners, and imagine that they never come into their island, but to make themselves masters of it, and to usurp their goods.”19 The tale of the Spanish resident at the same period is a similar one: “The king has the greatest desire to employ foreigners, but can not do so for the envy of

the Classical Epithalamium in England’, in Dirk Sacré and Gilbert Tournoy (eds.), Myricae: Essays on Neo-Latin Literature in Memory of Jozef Ijsewijn, Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia, 16 (Leuven, 2000), pp. 133-93. 14 See pp. 141-3 below. 15 Armstrong, ‘An Italian Astrologer’, in England, France and Burgundy; W. Hackmann, ‘Nicolaus Kratzer: the King’s Astronomer and Renaissance Instrument-Maker’, in Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII, pp. 70-73. 16 Kipling, The Triumph of Honour, p. 20; Lena Wahlgren-Smith, ‘Heraldry in Arcadia: The Court Eclogue of Johannes Opicius’, Renaissance Studies, 14 (2000): 210-34; Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, ed. J.S. Brewer (2nd edn revised and enlarged by R.H. Brodie, London: H.M. Stationery Off., 1920), vol. III/1, no. 1285, 1 May; hereafter L&P. 17 Dowling, Humanism, pp. 11-12, 19-20, 223-6. 18 Armstrong, ‘An Italian Astrologer’, in England, France and Burgundy, p. 178. 19 A Relation, or Rather a True Account, of the Island of England; with Sundry Particulars of the Customs of These People, and of the Royal Revenues under King Henry the Seventh, about the Year 1500, trans. C.A. Sneyd (London, 1847), pp. 23-4.

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the English is diabolical.”20 The Venetian and Spanish reports offer only tantalizing glimpses of what must have been a difficult political reality, involving not only the artistic and literary tastes reflected at the court but also the elevated status of those foreign merchants and ministers who enjoyed royal favor. The English poets of the courtly circles were only too aware themselves of the powerful foreign influence on the Tudor monarchs’ tastes, alternately commenting cynically on the situation and assimilating the fashionable elements into their own verses. As Kipling characterizes the state of affairs at Henry VII’s court, “with [Bernard] André leading the Tudor literary establishment, any English-language poet who hoped to compete was forced to lash his career as firmly as possible to Burgundian tastes.”21 Alexander Barclay’s simple remark on the manner of court musicians in the 1510s (“Minstrels and singers be in the court likewise. / And that of the best and of the French gise.”22) has none of the fierce sarcasm of Skelton’s Agaynste a Comely Coystrowne, written to lampoon an unnamed Flemish musician who was enjoying great success at Henry VII’s court:23 But for in his gamut carp that he can, Lo, Jak wold be a jentyl man! With, ‘Hey, troly-loly-lo, whip here, Jak’, Alumbek sodyldym syllorym ben! Curyowsly he can both counter and knak Of Martyn Swart and all hys mery men. Lord, how Perkyn is proud of hys Pohen! To ask wher he fyndyth among hys monacordys An holy water clarke a ruler of lordys. He can not fynd it in rule nor in space: He solfyth to haute, hys trybyll is to hy; He braggyth of hys byrth, that borne was full bace; Hys musik withoute mesure, to sharp is hys my; He trymmyth in hys tenor to counter pyrdewy; Hys dyscant is besy, it is withoute a mene; To fat is hys fantsy, hys wyt is to lene. He lumbryth on a lewde lewte, ‘Roty bully joyse’, ‘Rumbyll downe, tumbyll downe, hey, go, now, now!’ He fumblyth in hys fyngeryng an ugly good noyse; It semyth the sobbyng of an old sow! 20 Armstrong, ‘An Italian Astrologer’, in England, France and Burgundy, p. 178. 21 Kipling, The Triumph of Honour, p. 20. 22 Stevens, Music and Poetry, p. 268; also quoted in Walter H. Kemp, ‘“Votre trey Dowce”: A Duo for Dancing’, ML, 60 (1979): 38. 23 Daniel Heartz, ‘A 15th-Century Ballo: Rôti Bouilli Joyeux’, in Jan LaRue (ed.), Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: A Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese (New York, 1966), pp. 360-61; Nan Cooke Carpenter, ‘Skelton and Music: Roty bully joys’, Review of English Studies, New Series, 6 (1955): 279. The poem is edited in John Skelton, The Complete English Poems, ed. John Scattergood (New Haven, 1983) pp. 36-41.

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The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations He wold be made moch of and he wyst how; Wele sped in spyndels and turnyng of tavellys, A bungler, a brawler, a pyker of quarellys! Comely he clappyth a payre of clavycordys; He whystelyth so swetely he makyth me to swete; His descant is dasshed full of dyscordes; A red angry man, but easy to intrete. An ussher of the hall fayn wold I get To poynte this proude page a place and a rome, For Jak wold be a jentylman, that late was a grome.24

On a more general scale, Skelton’s poems make passing references to FrancoFlemish songs and dances which must have been common currency at the court, along with English and sacred Latin-text pieces: Roty bulle Joyse in Agaynste a Comely Coystrowne (played badly on a lute by the object of Skelton’s derision) and Magnyfycence, Votre trey dowce (the Binchois song) and Ioly rutterkin in Magnyfycence, Princes of Youth and Shall I Sail in The Bowge of Courte, Custodi nos and Sospitati dedit in Agaynste a Comely Coystrowne.25 The English poet had himself, in the early years of his career, used his talents and training to render French and Latin works in English, and was made a laureate at a now unknown foreign university, probably that of Leuven.26 Certain works of his reveal a direct dependence upon Burgundian models: for example, Jean Lemaire de Belges’s poems featuring L’amant vert, Margaret of Austria’s parrot, are reflected in Skelton’s Philip Sparrow (written at most several years after the Premiere épistre de l’Amant Vert) and later in Speke Parrot (c. 1519-21, after numerous printed publications had secured the popularity of Lemaire’s hero on the Continent). The Burgundian style of allegorical romance made appearances in English, without significant modification, in Stephen Hawes’s The Example of Virtue (1504) and The Pastime of Pleasure (1509), and Kipling argues for a view of Henry Medwall’s play Fulgens and Lucrece as an exposition of particularly Burgundian ideas of nobility.27 This last work, it seems, may have been created specifically for performance before Spanish and Flemish ambassadors to England in 1497 in the household of Cardinal John Morton (Medwall was Morton’s chaplain).28 Notably, the single line of Flemish in the play is an instruction for a musician to start: “Spele up tamboryne, ik bide owe frelike;” 24 ll. 13-42 (The Complete English Poems, p. 37). 25 Agaynste a Comely Coystrowne, ll. 29, 57, 59 (The Complete English Poems, pp. 37-38); Magnyfycence, ll. 747, 750-51 (The Complete English Poems, p. 161); The Bowge of Courte, ll. 253-54 (The Complete English Poems, p. 53). See also Carpenter, ‘Skelton and Music’, pp. 281-2. Another (presumably unrelated) insular reference to Rôti Bouilli Joyeux occurs in the Scottish poem The Tale of the Colkelbie Sow; Heartz, ‘A 15th-Century Ballo’, p. 360. English sources for the tenor of Binchois’s Votre tres douce are discussed on pp. 161-2 below. 26 Kipling, The Triumph of Honour, pp. 23-4; Carpenter, ‘Skelton and Music’, p. 283. 27 Kipling, The Triumph of Honour, pp. 21-8. 28 Henry Medwall, The Plays of Henry Medwall: A Critical Edition, ed. M.E. Moeslein (New York, 1981), pp. 59-72.

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at this point, mummers are to enter and perform “a bace daunce after the gyse of Spayne.”29 It is telling to hold up the literary works of men such as Skelton, Hawes, and Medwall in the light of the strong Italian and humanist strains of court production noted above. The contrast between classic Burgundian romantic ideals and classical (largely Italianate) newer styles is one which is encountered time and again in every aspect of early Tudor court culture, from the importation of illuminated manuscripts to the hiring of instrumental musicians. Such a discrepancy is only problematic if we wish to understand the cultural mileu of the court in monolithic terms, as a structure with a particular model and goal at any given point. From a perspective that allows for a multiplicity of concurrent strands of influences and fashions (as at any court of the period), a richer, but not less coherent, image emerges: in particular, it suggests a pattern whereby Burgundian-influenced English artisans and thinkers came into contact with a host of other foreign ideas well before adopting them in their own manners. Dancing and Entertainments A rich field for the introduction of traditionally foreign artistic practices was provided by the omnipresence of dancing in entertainments and meetings between European powers, where a strong national element seems to have remained as individual dances spread between countries. The reference to the foreign dance in Medwall’s play is one of many hints of the popularity which the classic basse dance enjoyed among the English nobility during the early Tudor period, along with more exotic styles on certain occasions. Robert Copland’s translation of a French basse dance treatise, appended to Alexander Barclay’s Introductory to write and to pronounce Frenche (1521),30 appeared at a point when the English court had already known the basse dance for many decades; with the help of such printed primers, certain basics of Franco-Burgundian culture gained a wider dissemination among the wellto-do of England. A set of basse dance choreographies added to a printed Latin dictionary (now in the Chapter Library at Salisbury Cathedral) near the beginning of the sixteenth century, mostly with French titles, confirms the spread of the dance beyond court circles at an early period.31 Dancing, of course, was a frequent element in court banquets and entertainments, and with Henry VIII on the throne, the distinction between spectator and participant was often blurred. When Henry made appearances in the entertainments of the 1510s and 1520s, it was either as a character in the allegorical settings of his neo29 Ibid., p. 163 (ll. II, 387 and II, 378-79). Note the various references to unnamed foreign tabarers and minstrels visiting the court at the end of the fifteenth century: see pp. 98-100 and 106-7 below. A brief episode in the prima pars of Fulgens and Lucrece features a contest of musical performance; see pp. 210-11 below. 30 See Daniel Heartz, ‘The Basse Dance: Its Evolution circa 1450 to 1550’, Annales Musicologiques, 6 (1958-63): 305. 31 The Salisbury leaf is reproduced, transcribed and discussed in Heartz, ‘The Basse Dance’, pp. 309-11, 337-40.

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Burgundian jousts, or as a dancer. In all cases, these were roles where the king was joined by a number of his courtiers, and here the contrast with the pure spectatorship of his father is a real one.32 The dancing at the English court under Henry VIII must by all accounts have represented an interesting mixture of new foreign trends and sometimes archaic practices, with the continuing presence of harp and rebec into the 1540s on the one hand, and the introduction of new forms like the pavane by 1520 and the gradual replacement of the basse dance at the same time, on the other.33 Reports of dancing at court events on certain occasions name the specific national styles employed, as in Medwall’s verses above: “a la spagnola” at the meeting of Henry VIII and Charles V at Greenwich in 1520; “alla francese,” “a la italiana,” and “a la ferarese” at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520.34 The disguising for Twelfth Night in 1512 was “after the manner of Italie, called a maske, a thyng not seen afore in Englande.”35 Similarly, the list of dances used in England mentioned by Sir Thomas Elyot in The Boke named the gouernour (1531) consists of “base daunsis, bargenettes, pavions, turgions, and roundes;” only a few of these might be native forms.36 The primers, choreographies, and references to particular performances cover altogether a wide swathe of the educated segments of the English population (those most likely, of course, to have left documentary remains); these references are joined, moreover, by musical evidence. In terms of written composition, foreign dance tunes survive in a number of early Tudor sources, which will be discussed further in Chapter 4; in particular, basse dance settings and tenors survive in the “Henry VIII Manuscript” (LonBL 31922) and OxfBDI 167, pavanes and other forms in LonBLR A58. A close relation can be surmised between the penetration of continental dance forms into later fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England and the frequent elaborate entertainments staged at the royal court. These dramatic spectacles, held (at the king’s expense) in many cases for diplomatic purposes, have already been the subject of extensive investigations by Anglo and Kipling, among others.37 Although the two scholars’ interpretations of the documentary evidence differ in various points, both acknowledge the vital importance of continental models as an influence on the styles of entertainments cultivated under Henry VII and Henry VIII. From the time of Edward IV onward, in the first instance, echoes of the great Burgundian celebrations of Philip the Good and Charles the Bold appeared to lesser or greater degrees in English pageantry. As with other cultural fashions mentioned above (for example, the collecting of illuminated books), the Tudor monarchs expanded upon these 32 S. Thurley, ‘Greenwich Palace’, in Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII, p. 23. 33 Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, pp. 65-7. The 1520 reference to the pavane is the performance of a “Pavana Ferrarese” by some of Henry VIII’s musicians at the Field of Cloth of Gold; David J. Shaw, ‘A Five-piece Wind Band in 1518’, Galpin Society Journal, 43 (1990): 64. 34 Ward, ‘The Maner’, p. 138. 35 Anglo, Spectacle, p. 117. 36 Ward, ‘The Maner’, p. 139. 37 Anglo, Spectacle; The Great Tournament Roll of Westminster: A Collotype Reproduction of the Manuscript, facsimile edn by Sydney Anglo (2 vols, Oxford, 1968), vol. 2; Kipling, The Triumph of Honour.

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earlier activities. England was, of course, not alone in this dependence; the court of Burgundy “set the fashion for western Europe in matters of courtly magnificence, elaborate ceremonial, and public spectacle.”38 After the tentative and scattered foreign elements in English pageantry of the Yorkist period and the first years of Henry VII’s rule, it appears that the 1501 marriage of Katherine of Aragon to Prince Arthur provided an incentive for a determined emulation of the Burgundian style, particularly as characterized by two famous wedding celebrations within living memory: those of Charles the Bold and Margaret of York in 1468, and Philip the Handsome and Juana of Castile in 1496.39 The celebration consisted of several discrete elements, each prepared at great cost and intended to dazzle the international audience. Katherine’s entry into London was the occasion for a set of rich pageants lining her procession route, put on by the city; the week following the marriage saw numerous banquets at the court featuring dancing and disguisings with pageants; and a magnificent tournament held at the same time involved a significant amount of artistic preparation. In each case, a major aspect of the entertainments is their dependence on classic Burgundian examples of entertainment forms and chivalric literature, to an extent not attempted before in England. The consistent use of moving pageant cars in the disguisings, the appearance of a Burgundian “Tree of Chivalry” and romantic storyline in the tournament, and the modeling of Katherine’s entry on Molinet’s poem Le Trosne d’honneur are all examples of the new foreign elements separating this event from those which the English kings and cities had staged earlier. That this was a deliberate and conscious change is in no doubt: Henry VII ensured court control over the civic pageants, for example, by appointing his own councillors to the city’s committee, and forced certain changes at his own expense.40 The 1501 wedding celebrations mark the beginning of a new phase in English court entertainments, with the appointment of the composer William Cornysh as chief devisor.41 Ironically, Cornysh’s replacement of the surely foreign “Jacques Hault” in the position accompanied a shift to a more consistent employment of continental pageant styles. Fewer details of entertainments from later in Henry VII’s reign have survived, but these seem to have taken on the general style of the 1501 festivities.42 With the accession of Henry VIII, however, the English court experienced a decade characterized by magnificent entertainments: “every significant event, every notable ambassadorial reception, every diplomatic victory, was marked by such shows; while interpolated amongst these were the customary court festivals, at Christmas, New Year, Easter, May Day, and Midsummer, all celebrated with unprecedented 38 Anglo, Spectacle, p. 98. Both Anglo and Kipling place the period of real Burgundian imitation in England in the Tudor reign, but find some evidence of influence during the preceding years as well. 39 Kipling, The Triumph of Honour, pp. 8-9. For specific information on the 1501 entertainments, see Anglo, Spectacle, pp. 56-103; Kipling, The Triumph of Honour, pp. 72115; The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne. 40 Kipling, The Triumph of Honour, pp. 73-4. 41 Ibid., p. 100. 42 Anglo, Spectacle, p. 107. Anglo also mentions several more Burgundian-inspired tournaments held by English nobles during the later years of Henry VII’s reign (ibid., pp. 109-10).

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splendour.”43 The information which survives concerning the tournaments and banquets accompanying major occasions in the first years of Henry VIII’s reign shows the continuance of the Burgundian model: displays like the 1510/11 jousts for the newborn English prince, with an allegorical challenge and French nomenclature, or the king’s mock assault on the “Fortresse Dangerus” held by six ladies at New Year’s Day in 1512, are typical examples.44 At some point in the 1510s, the jousting tournaments seem to have lost the disguising and pageant elements once more, concentrating more purely on martial display, but it is unrealistic to posit a specific turning point. Henry VII’s later tournaments had lacked these features as well, and they would reappear on occasion and in varied forms through the 1520s: the tournament at the Field of Cloth of Gold, for example, included the Tree of Chivalry, but no allegorical program to accompany it.45 The rapid succession of major Tudor court entertainments began to slow in the 1520s, as the tremendous funds collected by Henry VII and the enthusiasm of the young Henry VIII dwindled. Courtly and political conditions, nevertheless, guaranteed enormous efforts and expenditures in particular circumstances: the important diplomatic occasions after the Field of Cloth of Gold continued to receive the grand treatment necessary for their recognition, and the festivals at the customary seasons were in no way abandoned. The entry of Charles V into London in 1522 was marked by a pageant series, with classicizing Latin verses commissioned from William Lily, the learned first master of St Paul’s School.46 At this point, the classical element assumes a greater importance, and the next major diplomatic reception, for the French ambassadors at the signing of the Treaty of Westminster in 1527, marks another departure in English entertainments. The Burgundian model had long ceased to be the order of the day, and many aspects of the 1527 celebrations were directly inspired by the 1518 reception of English ambassadors at the Bastille for the Treaty of London, at the conclusion of a similarly momentous Anglo-French peace. The newer classicizing approach to entertainments which had been in fashion for many years at major continental courts made its presence felt in England, as the chivalric and scholastic themes of the late-medieval pageants diminished. The development, nevertheless, was one which at every point depended upon international trends. Foreign Artistic Production As noted above, one of the most active fields for foreign cultural influence among England’s nobility in the later fifteenth century was the collection of manuscripts and 43 Ibid., p. 108. 44 Ibid., pp. 111-19. The 1510/11 jousts were the occasion for the creation of the illustrated roll (with French captions) kept at the College of Arms, reproduced in The Great Tournament Roll. 45 The Great Tournament Roll, vol. 2, pp. 62-73. 46 Charles V’s 1522 entry has been the subject of several detailed studies, including Anglo, Spectacle, pp. 170-206; Jean Robertson, ‘L’entrée de Charles Quint à Londres en 1522’, in Jean Jacquot (ed.), Fêtes et Cérémonies au Temps de Charles Quint (Paris, 1960), pp. 169-81; and Baskervill, ‘William Lily’s Verse’.

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printed books. It may have been Henry VII who began in earnest to support foreign humanists at his court who were producing new works,47 but significant examples of English book collections with an international outlook precede the Tudor reign. The real beginnings of the royal library under Edward IV, as mentioned above, were influenced strongly by Burgundian examples. It appears that William Caxton (having learned the printer’s art in Bruges) acted largely in the manner of a Burgundian atelier manager; his success probably had as much to do with his fashionable foreign selection of titles as with the innovation of printing. As Jean Jacquot pointed out, it is significant that the majority of the works which Caxton chose to translate into English existed in the libraries of Louis of Gruthuyse and the Burgundian dukes as well.48 At the same time that Edward IV was importing examples of the Flemish illuminators’ art and ordering copies of works he had seen in foreign collections, his subjects of the nobility were developing similar tastes. Examples include the Howard family—in a 1481 inventory including titles of books taken by John, Lord Howard into Scotland, every one of the works is in French49—as well as the Paston family, John Donne, Lord Rivers, and Lord Hastings (the latter of whom owned at least two books of hours illuminated in Ghent).50 The case of ecclesiastical humanists who studied and traveled on the Continent will be discussed below in Chapter 2;51 men such as William Selling and James Goldwell, bishop of Norwich, provided a channel for the appearance of a different type of foreign collection in England, namely serious classical and neo-classical volumes acquired in Italy. The libraries at Oxford and Cambridge derived great benefit as well from the bequests of classical editions from lay collectors such as Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester.52 Upon the accession of Henry VII, royal support for the importation of foreign books gained more of an official character with the creation of the office of Stationer to the King, who among other advantages could import and resell books from the Continent without paying customs.53 Henry chose the foreigner Peter Actoris for the position, but Caxton’s business continued to prosper. It was shortly after the death of Caxton that the king hired Quentin Poulet, who would serve as librarian for the rest of the reign; Actoris remained in royal service and acted as an importer, but Poulet appears to have had the main influence in choosing the king’s books and in creating new volumes for him. The Flemish-style manuscripts in the royal library were joined during Poulet’s tenure by deluxe printed items, such as the volumes issued by the Parisian printer Anthoine Vérard.54 Poulet’s successor, the French lutenist Gilles 47 Carlson, English Humanist Books, p. 15. 48 Kipling, The Triumph of Honour, pp. 33-5; Jean Jacquot, ‘Les lettres françaises en Angleterre à la fin du XVe siècle: Le rôle de Caxton et l’influence de la Cour de Bourgogne’, in François Lesure (ed.), La Renaissance dans les Provinces du Nord (Paris, 1956), p. 75. 49 Ballard, Anglo-Burgundian Relations, p. 267. 50 Ibid., p. 268; Kipling, The Triumph of Honour, p. 34 n. 9. 51 See pp. 55-8 below. 52 Dowling, Humanism, pp. 7-8. More recently, Saygin has explored Gloucester’s relationship with Italian middlemen and humanists, along with the political context for his acquisitions and donations (Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester). 53 Kipling, The Triumph of Honour, pp. 35-6. 54 Backhouse, ‘Illuminated Manuscripts’, pp. 176-9.

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Duwes, would enjoy prosperity with Henry VIII as king, acting as French tutor to Princess Mary and building a household of his own; as Prince Henry’s music tutor in addition, Duwes must have had a tremendous influence on both the literary and musical tastes of the future king.55 The Flemish style of illumination remained in vogue at the English court throughout Henry VII’s lifetime and for much of Henry VIII’s, but it was not until the 1520s that any professional illuminators were taken on at the court.56 When Henry VIII managed to secure the services of a set of Flemish miniaturists, he chose from the finest available: Gerard Horenbout, recently in the employ of Margaret of Austria, arrived in England along with his children Susanna and Lucas, the latter of whom has been associated with the appearance of the portrait miniature in England.57 Of the many books bestowed upon the king as gifts from courtiers or foreign magnates, instances of other modern styles become increasingly common over the years. Florentine decoration of the most modern and fashionable sort appears in the Newberry-Oscott partbooks (see Chapter 4) and LonBLR 12 C.VIII (Collenuccio, Apologues and Lucian, Dialogues, created between 1509 and 1517 as a commission from Geoffrey Chamber during his stay in Italy), for example.58 It is far too simplistic to characterize changes in the manuscript acquisitions of the English kings merely by proposing shifts from one style to another; we can find cases of humanistic Italianate books given to Henry VII in the fifteenth century (for example, LonBLC Vespasian B. iv) as well as traditional Flemish-style books for Henry VIII in the 1510s (as for other major European princes).59 In the other visual arts, a lively interest in styles from the Low Countries, France, and Italy is evident during the reigns of the first Tudor kings. For Henry VIII, the greatest and most famous acquisition occurred, like that of the Horenbouts, in the 1520s. Hans Holbein the Younger left Basel in 1526 for the English court, where he would enjoy decades of the highest success and leave behind a well-known legacy of portraits and other paintings, many of which inspired numerous copies, along with many other artistic objects and designs.60 Holbein’s work at the English court extended into the preparation of entertainments: his first major appointment was to provide painted decoration for the banqueting house erected for the May 1527 celebrations at Greenwich, and he had a hand in designing the pageants for Anne Boleyn’s triumphal entry into London (1533).61 In the work on the 1527 palace, 55 See p. 82 below. 56 See Janet Backhouse’s refutal of Kipling’s claims (The Triumph of Honour, pp. 41-8) that Poulet established a Flemish atelier at Richmond: ‘Illuminated Manuscripts’, p. 175. 57 J. Backhouse, ‘Illuminated Manuscripts and the Development of the Portrait Miniature’, in Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII, pp. 88-90; L. Campbell and S. Foister, ‘Gerard, Lucas and Susanna Horenbout’, Burlington Magazine, 128 (1986): 719-27. 58 J. Backhouse, ‘Pandolfo Collenuccio, Apologues; Lucian, Dialogues’, in Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII, p. 35. On the context for Chamber’s visit to Rome (unidentified in Backhouse’s description), see pp. 1-2 above. 59 See pp. 118-19 below. 60 On Holbein’s service in England, see S. Foister, ‘Holbein as Court Painter’, in Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII, pp. 58-63. 61 Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, pp. 70-71.

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Holbein’s productions were set against works by resident Italian artists at the court, such as Giovanni da Maiano, Vincent Volpe, and Ellys Carmyan.62 The experience of these foreign artists must have provided much of the impetus for the modernization of the English entertainment styles (through a turn towards classicizing visual and thematic schemes). As with decorated manuscripts, however, major artistic works in the Italian Renaissance style were known in England long before the 1520s. Raphael’s painting of St George and the Dragon came into the possession of Henry VII in 1506, when Castiglione journeyed to England to accept the Garter for Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino.63 It may have been that occasion as well which first brought Pietro Torrigiano to England. The Florentine sculptor was resident in England for much of the 1510s and the early 1520s, producing tombs for royal and noble figures (Henry VII’s is “the finest Renaissance tomb north of the Alps”) as well as busts and other works (such as an altar for the chapel at Westminster).64 Henry VIII is known to have attempted to bring others of the most famous Italian artists to his court, among them Raphael, Titian, and Primaticcio.65 As with Edward IV’s book-collecting, moreover, the royal tendencies were shared by other powerful English figures: Cardinal Wolsey, for example, is known to have had more than a passing interest in Italian sculpture.66 Other examples of Italian artistic production, such as fine glassware, entered England throughout the sixteenth century.67 The employment of English craftsmen in Italy, as well, can only have fostered the artistic intercourse between the two countries; we have the example of a goldsmith, “Giorgio inghilese,” in Florence, who sought Cardinal Bainbridge’s legal protection in 1510.68 Numerous other endeavors—artistic, political, and martial—led the craftsmen of foreign lands to the service of the kings and nobles of England. In the production of stained glass windows for houses and chapels, artists from the northern parts of the Continent were employed regularly. Dutch glaziers were responsible for the only surviving non-heraldic glass from one of Henry VIII’s houses, now in St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, and from 1517 the Fleming Galyon Hone held the title of “king’s glazer.”69 For a large window in the chapel at Hengrave Hall, Suffolk, Sir Thomas Kytson had twenty-one scenes depicting the history of the world painted in France in the later 1520s. It was similarly foreign artists who created windows 62 Erna Auerbach, Tudor Artists: A Study of Painters in the Royal Service and of Portraiture on Illuminated Documents from the Accession of Henry VIII to the Death of Elizabeth I (London, 1954), pp. 12-13. 63 Sylvie Béguin, ‘Henri VIII et François Ier, une rivalté artistique et diplomatique’, in Charles Giry-Deloison (ed.), François Ier et Henry VIII: Deux princes de la Renaissance (1515-1547) (Lille and London, c. 1995), p. 65. 64 Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII, pp. 26-7, 32-4. 65 Slim, A Gift, vol. 1, p. 114. 66 Erna Auerbach, ‘Notes on Flemish Miniaturists in England’, Burlington Magazine, 96 (1954): 52. 67 See the examples in Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII, pp. 35, 125, 171. 68 David S. Chambers, Cardinal Bainbridge in the Court of Rome, 1509 to 1514 (London, 1965), p. 77. 69 Auerbach, Tudor Artists, pp. 170-71.

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showing Henry VIII, Katherine of Aragon, and Margaret of Scotland, probably for the Chapel of the Holy Ghost at Basingstoke around 1522 (six years after the royal summer progress which passed through Basingstoke when Margaret was at the court).70 In the creation of the first royal armories early in his reign, it is not incidental that Henry VIII relied exclusively on foreigners.71 According to Watts, the Armourers’ Company in London does not seem to have been used much for the personal needs of the wealthier Englishmen, and in the late Middle Ages those patrons who could afford it ordered their armor from centers such as Milan, Augsburg, Nuremberg, and cities in Flanders. Maximilian I’s gifts of fine armor to Henry VIII from the start of the latter’s reign probably encouraged Henry in setting up his own workshops. The first craftsmen employed for the task by the English king arrived in 1511 from Brussels and Milan, and acted to an extent as independent contractors rather than liveried servants. In 1515, however, the “Almain Armoury” was established at Greenwich under the mastership of Martin van Royne, a workshop consisting of German and Dutch craftsmen which outlived Henry VIII and even retained its name when staffed by English armorers much later. It may well be that Henry’s first-hand contact with the German devices of battle in the 1513 war was a direct cause of the decision to hire the new armorers, as was definitely the case for the German drumslades retained after 1513.72 Conclusions The preceding discussion has passed through the indications of an immense variety of international cultural influences at the Tudor court before the years of reformation, and we might naturally question the connection between evidence from such seemingly unrelated areas as (for example) armoring and manuscript illumination. The possibility of direct contacts and influences between such arts is slim, and the evidence indicates that different national practices dominated each at the English court. What coherent picture of cultural influence can emerge? As suggested above, however, the attempt to apply a simplistic model of a prevailing court aesthetic is doomed from the start by failing to recognize the presence of multiple concurrent developmental trajectories, each pushing a different aspect of the Tudor artistic establishment down a different path. The cultivation of these divergent influences played perfectly into the political projects of the monarchs. The emerging revised view of Henry VII as a ruler who cared quite actively about his foreign relations on a number of fronts73 matches a growing recognition of the significance of that monarch’s attention to image-making: “Despite his reputation 70 H. Wayment, ‘Stained Glass in Henry VIII’s Palaces,’ in Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII, pp. 28-31. 71 K. Watts, ‘Henry VIII and the Founding of the Greenwich Armouries’, in Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII, pp. 42-6. See also The Great Tournament Roll, vol 2., pp. 14-15. 72 See pp. 75-8 below. 73 John M. Currin, ‘England’s International Relations 1485-1509: Continuities amidst Change’, in Doran and Richardson (eds), Tudor England and its Neighbours, pp. 14-43.

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for miserliness, Henry VII patronized ecclesiastical structures and foundations on a grand scale as an act of devotion that was ever colored with an awareness of the usefulness of such benefactions for dynastic self-advertisement.”74 It is telling that in terms of material remains, so many of the surviving art objects which are held up as great works from the courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII are foreign items—the image of the Tudor line was to be one that could take its place not just in the succession of English kings, but equally among the great European dynasties. In this sense, the unprecedented extent of the foreign arrivals at court during the early Tudor period is indicative of a concerted policy which certainly extended into the musical domain. The histories of foreign musicians, performances, scores, and treatises which run through the body of this volume need to be placed quite firmly in this broader story, the contextual framework which sees a courtly cultural program preceding what eventually became a general English interaction with European production.

74 John N. King, Tudor Royal Iconography: Literature and Art in an Age of Religious Crisis (Princeton, 1989), p. 40.

Chapter 2

International Events and Musical Exchanges Characterizing the transmission of artistic and musical styles between England and the Continent during the early Tudor period in general is an act that must rely on a broad reading of scattered material and documentary evidence. The resulting conception describes what is to be considered a gradual and continuous phenomenon, at least on the level at which native craftsmen were affected by foreign developments. The evidence pertaining to the large number of continental musicians employed at the early Tudor court (discussed below in Chapter 3) provides ample testimony to the uninterrupted and growing presence of foreign performance styles at court; it is from the permanent employment of players and composers such as these that we can be sure that English patrons and musicians were exposed regularly to non-native music. Another crucial element, however, in the exchange of musical and artistic ideas must have been the many occasions on which diplomatic and other purposes brought the royal and noble households of Europe and their retinues into each other’s territories. Meetings such as the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520, more a vehicle for the display of wealth and grandeur than anything else, as well as unplanned affairs such as the shipwreck of Philip the Handsome in England in 1506, have left documentary traces of specific instances where larger or smaller audiences were exposed to music from abroad. What follows is a narrative of international encounters at the Tudor court from the particular perspective of musical activity coupled with other elements of “entertainment”—often a most serious business in the service of royal spectacle and image-making. Consideration of the numerous major events at which English and foreign retinues came into contact with each other is a matter in which most evidence is colored strongly by specific programs in the descriptive sources. Where these sources are printed pamphlets recounting the events at a royal celebration of some sort, they typically arose as state-funded endeavors, and can be viewed as a form of propaganda, often written by those close to the festivities and even directly involved in their creation.1 Similar forces are at work in narrative chronicles such as Edward Hall’s The Vnion of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre & Yorke (London, 1548), a major source of information on Tudor court events, but still a product of Grafton’s state printing enterprise and designed to praise monarchs 1 Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, ‘Early Modern European Festivals – Politics and Performance, Event and Record’, in J.R. Mulryne and Elizabeth Goldring (eds), Court Festivals of the European Renaissance: Art, Politics and Performance (Aldershot, 2002), pp. 20-23.

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and buttress Tudor legitimacy. Slightly more removed from the court publicity mechanisms are the reports of Italian observers at northern courts, which form a core source of information on European festivals in the first half of the sixteenth century;2 in England, the letters of members of Italian ambassadorial parties such as Sebastian Giustinian and his secretary Nicolo Sagudino furnish some of our most colorful and personal images of court life. In all of these cases, the recognition of inevitable and purposeful biases in surviving accounts in no way lessens their value for our own understanding of courtly and civic events. An awareness of their particular limitations, moreover, allows us to distinguish usefully between a writer’s specific interests and the interests of others involved in and attending these occasions. As occurs in most descriptive writing at the time, the observers at court mostly had little use for (or vocabulary to deal with) specifics of the music at festivities—beyond the frequent mention of its presence, assuring us that virtually every formal encounter of English and foreign entourages was accompanied at some point by appropriately impressive musical performance. In the historical survey which follows, we rarely enjoy the luxury of information as specific even as the genre of music being described. Knowledge of the performers at a particular occasion is usually dependent upon the survival of separate court payment records for the given period. It is nevertheless possible at many of these places to catch glimpses of the music-making within the circles of monarchs and courtiers, and occasionally the direct involvement of royal figures with performances and performers. The international affairs of Henry VII and Henry VIII were bound up inextricably with the artistic cultures of their courts; no artificial separation of politics and music can do justice to the vital roles of spectacle and image-making at the Tudor court. The early years of the period under review show the first Tudor king concerning himself with foreign affairs from near the start of his reign. Henry VII traveled across the channel twice after his accession. The first occasion was in October 1492, when the English king was accompanied by an army and laid siege to the town of Boulogne. It says much about Henry’s relative security by that point that he could afford to lead an invasion of France, only five years after the last major challenge to his power at Stoke. The result, however, was fruitful enough for England: in order to call off the attack (and the trouble which the English could raise in the north from the Bretons), Charles VIII paid a considerable sum and set up an annual payment with the Treaty of Estaples, a pension which would continue to feature in Anglo-French negotiations through the reign of Henry VIII.3 A minor invasion of this sort was not a context for the type of bombastic display which characterized Henry VIII’s first French war, but the king was nevertheless attended by entertainers from his household on the Continent. A reward of 2 October 1492 “to the mynystrels that pleyed in the Swan” shows that the king was making use of his players on the 2 Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals 1450-1650 (Woodbridge, 1984), p. 175. 3 Chronicle of Calais, in the Reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. to the Year 1540, ed. J.G. Nichols (London, 1846), pp. 2-3; Bryan Bevan, Henry VII: The First Tudor King (London, 2000), pp. 53-4; Charles Giry-Deloison, ‘Henri VIII pensionnaire de François Ier’, in Giry-Deloison (ed.), François Ier et Henry VIII, pp. 121-43.

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ship sailing to Calais. A later payment covers “hiring the chapel stuff at Calais.”4 During Henry VII’s next continental voyage in 1500, domestic extravagance was a considerably more important matter. Negotiations for the marriage of Prince Arthur to the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Katherine of Aragon, had begun as early as 1488, but it was only in the later 1490s that the treaties were concluded and plans for the reception of the princess were initiated in earnest.5 As noted in Chapter 1, the festive wedding of Ferdinand and Isabella’s other daughter Juana to Philip the Handsome in 1496 offered up a challenge to the English king: in order to be accepted as one of Europe’s important monarchs, by both the foreign powers and his own people, Henry was planning an extraordinary celebration in the Burgundian style. The upcoming wedding, therefore, was a serious topic for discussion during Henry’s 1500 visit to Calais, at which the English king, queen, and numerous nobles met with Philip the Handsome and Anthoine the Grand Bastard of Burgundy. The English royal couple landed at Calais on 8 May, with various lords arriving throughout May and early June; a short list of some English personages and retainers present includes “The qwenes iij mynstrelles.”6 On 9 June, the English company met with Philip the Handsome and his court outside Calais at St Peter’s church, and enjoyed a banquet at which the Burgundian ruler danced with the ladies of England. The church had been decorated with Flemish tapestries, including a Siege of Troy copied from a set owned by Charles the Bold; the belfry and a nearby building acted as cellar, pantry and confectionary, providing “so moche that the peple cowde not spende hit that day.”7 The opportunity for the English knights to discuss the next year’s proposed tournament and festival with Philip’s courtiers and family must have contributed in considerable measure to the studied Burgundian character of the 1501 entertainments; according to the Spanish ambassador, Henry VII was even circulating a program of events at the Calais banquet.8 The wedding of Arthur and Katherine was the highlight of English court festivities during Henry VII’s lifetime, and the celebrations have already received detailed study.9 Given the international nature of the entertainments prepared for the festivities, it should not be surprising to find that the event had an effect on the composition of the king’s body of foreign minstrels. A large Spanish retinue naturally accompanied Katherine of Aragon, and remained in England for at least several weeks; the Treasury of the Chamber accounts include various rewards to Spanish minstrels in the months following the wedding. Among the Spanish players from Katherine’s retinue, the trumpeter John de Cecil (who had also served Philip the Handsome in the past) found permanent employment in England at this point.10

4 RECM, vol. 7, p. 152; Chronicle of Calais, p. 49. 5 Anglo, Spectacle, pp. 52, 57. 6 Chronicle of Calais, pp. 3, 49-51. On the identity of the queen’s minstrels at this point, see p. 103 below. 7 Chronicle of Calais, p. 50; Kipling, The Triumph, p. 41 n. 2. 8 Kipling, The Triumph, pp. 118-19. 9 Ibid., pp. 72-115; Anglo, Spectacle, pp. 56-97. The latter characterizes Katherine’s entry into London as “perhaps, the supreme masterpiece of English civic pageantry” (p. 97). 10 See pp. 67-8 and 107 below.

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We will encounter further cases below where major international visits seem to have led directly to the hiring of new foreign minstrels at the English royal court. The reign of Henry VII saw two visits from Habsburg leaders to England, both under accidental circumstances occasioned by the notoriously treacherous waters of the English channel. In 1496/7 and again in 1505/6, children of Maximilian I set out by sea from the Low Countries for Spain in the dead of winter; each attempt started badly and forced an extended stay on English soil. Margaret of Austria had barely begun her journey to meet her husband, Juan of Aragon, when a tempestuous sea necessitated an emergency landing at Southampton. Although several attempts were made in the following weeks to continue the voyage, the unfortunate princess and her company ended up staying on the English coast from 22 January to 21 February 1496/7.11 Margaret’s experience was repeated by her brother Philip in a more celebrated 1506 encounter. The shipwreck of the Burgundian archduke and his consort Juana was an opportunity for a round of unexpected Anglo-Burgundian negotiations, as well as a significant set of accompanying entertainments including “banquets, jousts, tourneys, and barriers, hunting, hawking, and tennis-playing.”12 The king’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, entertained the foreign company and rewarded Philip’s minstrels on multiple occasions. At least one, and probably more, of Henry VII’s personal rewards were also intended for the foreign minstrels during this visit. At this point, Philip’s retinue included such celebrated composers as Pierre de la Rue, Mabrianus de Orto, Alexander Agricola, Anthoine Divitis, and the organist Harry Bredemers. The Burgundian court sackbut player Hans Nagel had already been in the service of the English king from at least 1501-04; had he already returned to the Low Countries before the journey to Spain, or was it here in England that he was offered the opportunity to join the Archduke’s entourage? Other instrumentalists later to enter English service after passing through on the 1506 journey include Bartram Brouard and Matthew van Wilder, probably the father of Philip van Wilder. Conversely, it may well have been at this point that the Netherlandish court establishment picked up the musician intriguingly called “Messire Guillame Lengles,” perhaps one of the various singers designated as Englishmen in continental employment.13 If the surviving details of the unintentional 1506 encounter are few, then, there is every evidence that longer-term musical effects resulted at the level of personnel. Anglo-Burgundian relations would appear to reach a close state during the next few years, with the Treaty of Calais in 1507 (for which Josquin composed a setting of

11 Max Pierre Marie Bruchet, Marguerite d’Autriche, duchesse de Savoie (Lille, 1927), p. 23. 12 Anglo, Spectacle, p. 107. 13 See pp. 59-60 below. See the July 1506 chapel list in Georges van Doorslaer, ‘La chapelle musicale de Philippe le Beau’, Revue belge d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art, 4 (1934): 53-4. For Nagel’s further contacts with the English court, see pp. 40-41 and 69-71 below. On Brouard and Matthew van Wilder, see pp. 104 and 83-4 below. On the entertainments at Croydon, see Fiona Kisby, ‘A Mirror of Monarchy: Music and Musicians in the Household Chapel of the Lady Margaret Beaufort, Mother of Henry VII’, EMH, 16 (1997): 223-4; the English rewards to foreign musicians at this time are recorded on pp. 107-9 below.

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Lemaire’s celebratory poem Plus nulz regretz14) and the betrothal of Mary Tudor to Prince Charles of Castile. The reception of a Burgundian embassy for the finalization of the marriage provided the occasion for the last great festivities of Henry VII’s reign, described in a pamphlet printed by Pynson—perhaps an embarrassment after the marriage never came to pass.15 English hospitality greeted the ambassadors at every stage of the journey from Calais to London. “Many and dyuerse great Lordes bothe spirituell and temporall” were assigned to meet the group along the way, which included a stay in Canterbury (where the prior of Christchurch lodged the ambassadors, and the abbot of St Augustine’s monastery met the group along with the civic leaders). At the conclusion of the negotiations concerning the marriage, the court was given over to celebration. The ambassadors attended high mass with the king, Te deum was sung “with great reioysyng,” and days of banquets, bonfires, and jousting followed. We are assured by the anonymous observer that “there lacked no disguysyngis moriskis nor entreludis made and appareilled in the beste & richest maner,” but further detail is lacking. The performance of the Te deum on such occasions, of course, was a venerable royal tradition throughout Europe, and is noted time and again in the English documentation. Instrumental participation is mentioned on various occasions (organs, trumpets, or sackbuts), and the intended solemnity of such performances is bolstered by a connection to simple traditional extemporization techniques.16 In such instances, Henry VII’s retention of loud instrumentalists, particularly those with a good knowledge of foreign traditions, played a key role in demonstrating the “European” aspect of English royal magnificence. With the death of Henry VII in 1509 and the accession of his son, in the flower of his youth, the English court entered into a new stage of public spectacle. In feasting as in war, Henry VIII was determined to dazzle the world with his princely magnificence, and his appetite for “pastyme” and entertainment in his first years as king was insatiable. Likewise in the quest for honor: “no sooner had Henry inherited the throne than it became obvious that war against France was at the top of his agenda.”17 In recent years, historians have come to place greater emphasis than 14 Martin Picker, ‘The Chanson Albums of Marguerite of Austria’, Annales Musicologiques, 6 (1958-63): 163. 15 The Solempnities. & Triumphes Doon & Made at the Spousellis and Mariage of the Kyngis Doughter the Ladye Marye to the Prynce of Castile Archeduke of Austrige (London, 1508; facsimile edn by H. Ellis, London, 1818). 16 For instances of instrumental participation at English royal Te deum performances, see Frank Ll. Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain (London, 1958), pp. 216-17; and Nan Cooke Carpenter, Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Universities (Norman, OK, 1958), pp. 175 and 193. On the employment of fauxbourdon in written Te deum settings, see Richard Wexler, ‘In Search of the Missing Movements of Ockeghem’s Requiem’, in Barbara Haggh (ed.), Essays on Music and Culture in Honor of Herbert Kellman (Paris and Tours, 2001), p. 83 n. 49; the macaronic English-Latin Te deum in the Ritson Manuscript (LonBL 5665) similarly demonstrates a largely homophonic approach in its five-voice writing (edited in The Ritson Manuscript, ed. Nick Sandon and Eleanor Lane, with Christine Bayliss, Antico Edition: Renaissance Church Music, 23 [Moretonhampstead, 2001]). 17 Susan Doran, England and Europe in the Sixteenth Century (Basingstoke and New York, 1999), p. 15.

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before on the role of Henry VIII’s personal sense of chivalry and knightly honor in determining English foreign policy. The figure of Henry V in particular served as a role model for the second Tudor king, who apparently envisioned the invasion of France in the 1510s as a reopening of the Hundred Years’ War.18 In this context, it becomes easier to understand the seemingly inordinate emphasis on theatrical display in Henry VIII’s first French campaign. An initial attempt to send an army into France in 1512 from Spain failed spectacularly, with widespread disorganization and dissension among the English ranks in the unusual clime, and a lack of the support which had been promised by England’s partners in the 1511 Holy League formed against France, particularly Ferdinand of Aragon.19 A new Holy League was formed in April 1513, joining England, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Papacy. Henry finally managed to mount his tremendous expedition in the summer of 1513, personally leading his troops while Thomas Wolsey played an important role in the organization of the operation.20 The presence of the king meant the inclusion of a significant number of retainers in the journey; along with close to 600 household servants and a chapel of 115 persons, over ten minstrels and eight trumpeters attended on Henry during the war.21 As will be discussed further in Chapter 3, it was specifically for this campaign that an additional number of German drummers and fifers were hired, some of whom stayed on afterward for years at the English court. When the English retinue began to arrive on the Continent, it was based naturally in the pale of Calais. Having been an English territory for over a century and a half, Calais and the surrounding land was home by that point to “a mixture of English, Picard, and Fleming,” and was the single territorial foothold of England in continental Europe.22 Within Calais itself, the church of St Nicholas was used as a spiritual center where Henry heard mass regularly. Aside from its role as the king’s first destination upon disembarking at the end of June (when mass and a Te deum were sung), the church served to receive the ambassadors of Maximilian I and Margaret of Austria the day after Henry’s arrival, in a service including participation of the trumpeters.23 The year after the invasion, a “paynter of Gaunt” was hired to execute portraits of Henry VIII for a window of the church.24 Two cities were taken by the English in 1513: Thérouanne and Tournai, the latter of which remained (with great difficulty) under English control until 1519. The capture of Thérouanne may have represented the smaller victory in the minor campaign of 1513, but the English monarch spared no opportunity for a public ceremonial display: “his Grace rode unto the Chathedrall Churche, wher he was 18 Ibid., p. 60; Steven J. Gunn, ‘Henry VIII’s Foreign Policy and the Tudor Cult of Chivalry’, in Giry-Deloison (ed.), François Ier et Henry VIII, pp. 25-35, esp. 30-32. 19 Doran, England and Europe, p. 16. 20 Charles Greig Cruickshank, Henry VIII and the Invasion of France (Stroud, 1990; repr. New York, 1991), p. 45. 21 Ibid., pp. 30-31; RECM, vol. 7, p. 41. 22 Cruickshank, Henry VIII, p. 19. 23 Ibid., pp. 17, 28-9; Edward Hall, The Vnion of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre & Yorke (London, 1548), sig. EEe.i.r. Henry also heard mass in camp when the army was away from Calais. 24 Campbell and Foister, ‘Gerard, Lucas and Susanna Horenbout’, p. 720.

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receyved wt the canons, queresters, and other in the moost goodly wise that they coude, and soo the King entred into the said Chathedrall Churche wt Themperő, and their did their oblacõns, and had wt the Kings Chapell an Antem of or Lady and a nother of Sainct George in the said Churche.”25 Throughout the entire campaign, the support of the emperor Maximilian I was more a matter of encouragement than of money or troops; Henry VIII’s martial vanity led him to do the emperor’s work at his own expense. At the instigation of Maximilian, Thérouanne was razed, and the English army moved on towards the greater objective of taking Tournai. The fall of Tournai must have been the high point of the war for Henry. The Battle of the Spurs certainly received more commemoration in future years than the more significant conflict back home: the Battle of Flodden Field, in which English forces, sent to the northern border by Queen Katherine to drive back a Scottish invasion, won a resounding victory with the death of Henry’s brother-in-law James IV. As usual, celebration of the English king’s might followed the capitulation of Tournai. Henry entered the town ceremoniously “to the sound of drums and minstrelsy,” followed by mass. A celebration in Tournai, involving a tournament, banquet, and masque for Margaret of Austria and Charles of Castile, preceded several days of merry-making at Margaret’s court in Lille.26 Pageants, feasting, music, and dancing were the main elements of this English visit to the court. According to one of the Italian observers at the festivities, Henry VIII showed off his musical skill by singing and playing the lute, harp, lyre, flute, and horn, and by dancing.27 Among the rewards given by the English king on 17 October, £13 6s 8d went to Margaret of Austria’s minstrels; the musical staffs of both the English and Burgundian chapels were present.28 Both the English and Habsburg-Burgundian rulers seem to have been satisfied with their meeting: Henry (again according to an Italian account) “had in the space of a few days become so attached to Margaret’s Court that he simply did not know how to leave.” Margaret, for her part, confessed to a confidant that “I have always been and still am a good Englishwoman.”29 Henry’s lust for battle and personal conquest were sated quickly enough in the short term, and after the English force returned over the channel at the end of the 1513 campaigning season, plans to come back and finish the job were dropped with a 1514 truce. Indeed, the cessation of hostilities played well into the monarch’s desire 25 W.C. Trevelyan (ed.), ‘Account of Henry VIII’s Expedition into France, A.D. 1513’, Archaeologia, 26 (1836): 477. The event took place on 22 August. 26 Cruickshank, Henry VIII, pp. 135-6. 27 Helms, Heinrich VIII., p. 249; The Great Tournament Roll, vol. 2, pp. 60-61. Helms points out that the enigmatic instruments “flauto de cythara” and “lira de’ flauti” in earlier discussions of this scene are merely the products of misreadings in Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Relating to English Affairs Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice, and in Other Libraries of Northern Italy, ed. Rawdon Brown (38 vols, London, 18641947), vol. 2, no. 328; hereafter CSP Ven. 28 RECM, vol. 7, p. 41; Walter Rubsamen, ‘La Rue, Pierre de’, in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Friedrich Blume (17 vols, Kassel, 1949-86), vol. 8, 225-39, at 228-9; hereafter MGG1. 29 Cruickshank, Henry VIII, p. 127; Steven J. Gunn, ‘The French Wars of Henry VIII’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), The Origins of War in Early Modern Europe (Edinburgh, 1987), p. 33.

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for involvement in international affairs: “Guided by Cardinal Wolsey, the king of England accepted that he could not always make war in France magnificently, but that making sudden and ostentatious peace with France might enable him to play a role on the international stage out of all proportion to the size of his realm and its military resources.”30 To cement the new alliance, Mary Tudor, sister of the king, was betrothed to the recently widowed French king, Louis XII, breaking off her long-standing engagement to Charles of Castile. The marriage was concluded with surprising quickness, and ended more rapidly than it came. In the autumn of 1514, Mary left England with a retinue, to be received in Paris with the splendor befitting her new role as Queen of France.31 As was standard practice for any royal entry, Mary was greeted in Paris by allegorical pageants and entertainments, familiar from the style of the English examples she had witnessed in her lifetime. In this case, the allegorical theme (devised by the poet Pierre Gringore at the French court) was the union of the rose and the lily, and an illustrated French manuscript outlining the entire spectacle still survives in the British Library (Illustration 2.1).32 Of course, the new queen had been educated in music and took great pleasure in courtly festivals. An anonymous witness writing to the Bishop of Asti (French ambassador to Venice) described the reception in some detail, noting that “according to her country people, the Queen delights but in hearing singing, instrumental music, and in dancing.” In a later section of the same letter, we are offered a rare glimpse into the nature of some of the irregular rewards for musicians recorded in account books of the period: To each of the eight trumpeters who came with the Queen from England, the King caused 150 crowns to be given. Monseigneur d’Angoulême gave them each 50; and “Madame” as many more; all the other French princes gave them something. To avoid putting the English aforesaid to expense, the King prohibited his trumpeters, fifers, musicians, singers, and all others, at the peril of their lives, from going to play or sing in their dwellings as mendicants.33

When Louis XII died at the start of 1515, Mary finally put an end to her role as a pawn in English diplomatic relations, by secretly marrying her brother’s close friend Charles Brandon while in Paris.34 Hall’s chronicle notes that the couple was entertained at Calais on their return journey to England (where their action had earned them the temporary displeasure of the king), and after this point English documents continue to refer to Mary as “the French Queen.”35 Back in England in May of that year, the annual court celebrations prompted one of the more well30 Richardson, ‘Eternal Peace’, p. 46. 31 Mary’s reception in France is detailed in Maria Perry, Sisters to the King: The Tumultuous Lives of Henry VIII’s Sisters, Margaret of Scotland and Mary of France (London, 1998; repr. USA, 2000), pp. 94-107. 32 LonBLC Vespasian B. ii. See J. Backhouse, ‘Pageants for Princess Mary’s Ceremonial Entry into Paris, 1514’, in Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII, p. 49. 33 CSP Ven, vol. 2, no. 511. A payment to the royal luter at the English court, Gilles Duwes, demonstrates that Mary played the lute; see p. 82 below. Indeed, Henry VII purchased lutes for each of his children: Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 66. 34 Perry, Sisters to the King, pp. 112-13. 35 Hall, The Vnion, sig. kkk.ij.v.

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Illustration 2.1 Singing sailors welcome Mary Tudor to Paris in a 1514 pageant. London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B.ii, fol. 4v

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known indications of Anglo-Italian musical contact: Nicolo Sagudino, the secretary of the Venetian ambassador Giustinian, wrote to Alvise Foscari on 3 May with a clearly impressed description of the festivities. Sagudino’s desire for compositions by a certain Zuan Maria, whom he was praising at court, has generally been kept in the shadow of an additional request in the letter for “qualche frotola nova,” and the promise of reciprocation with English music: ... et vi prego mi mandate qualche compositione di Zuan Maria, perchè di lui predico ad ogni uno quello che con effecto è. Et mi chiedono mi fazi mandar di le sue compositione, et anche loro mi prometono de farmi haver de queste lor musiche; voria etiam aver qualche frotola nova.36 [And I pray you, send me some compositions of Zuan Maria, because I speak highly of him to everyone. They ask me to have some of his compositions sent, and they also promise to give me some of their music; I would like to have some new frottole as well.]

The return of Mary to the English court was soon to develop into a family reunion: political turmoil ruled in Scotland after the death of James IV at Flodden engendered a struggle for supremacy, and his widow Margaret Tudor was finally forced to flee to England. In May 1516, Henry VIII and his sisters were together for the first time since 1503 (when Margaret had left for Scotland).37 The May celebrations, including Margaret’s triumphal entry into London on 3 May and a grand tournament on 19 and 20 May, were already in preparation several months earlier: Henry’s brother-in-law Charles Brandon knew in February that the king was planning “some pastime” for May at which he would be expected.38 The entertainments must have featured the sounds of several new foreign acquisitions in Henry’s musical staff. The organist Benedictus de Opiciis had arrived from Antwerp at the beginning of March, and at precisely the same time a new ensemble of four Flemish wind players made their first appearance, hired through negotiations with Hans Nagel.39 Opiciis and his family were almost certainly involved that year in the preparation of the handsome choirbook LonBLR 11 E.XI as a memorial of the royal reunion, and of the celebrations in May and later at the New Year (to be discussed in Chapter 4). Hans Nagel, a sackbut player who had been in the employ of Henry VII, Philip the Handsome, and Margaret of Austria, was involved at this time with Henry VIII for more than musical reasons. Nagel and Petrus Alamire, the celebrated music scribe employed at the Habsburg-Burgundian court, acted as informants on the activities of Richard de la Pole, pretender to the English throne and one of the last (if minor) threats to Tudor control in England.40 This role involved Nagel and Alamire in frequent travel and communication between England and the Low Countries, and the musical 36 Marin Sanuto, I diarii, ed. Rinaldo Fulin, Federico Stefani, Nicolò Barozzi, Guglielmo Berchet, and Marco Allegri (58 vols, Venice, 1879-1903), vol. 20, pp. 268; calendared in CSP Ven, vol. 2, no. 624. On the possible identity of this Zuan Maria, see p. 97 below. 37 Perry, Sisters to the King, pp. 136-42. 38 L&P, vol. II/1, no. 1605. 39 See pp. 87-95 and 70-71 below. 40 The spying activities of Alamire and Nagel are detailed in Eugeen Schreurs, ‘Petrus Alamire: Music Calligrapher, Musician, Composer, Spy’, in Herbert Kellman (ed.), The

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activities which served as their cover were real enough: witness the manuscripts and instruments which Alamire is known to have brought to Henry, and the presence of the new wind band at the English court in 1516.41 Nagel and Alamire ended their espionage activities in ignominy after they were suspected by the English (perhaps rightly) to be double agents. They were not, however, the only musicians used by Henry VIII in international affairs around this time, as the cases of Giovanni Pietro de Bustis, Dionysio Memo, and later Miguel Marcator, indicate.42 The summer of 1517 saw another major tournament and banquet at Henry’s court, in this instance for the entertainment of various foreign ambassadors, in particular an arriving Burgundian embassy. It was on occasions such as these that Henry spared no effort to demonstrate his magnificence and made clear his expectation that England should be treated as a major European power. A letter from the Apostolic Nuncio Chieregato to Isabella d’Este suggests that the king largely succeeded: the writer declared that “the wealth and civilization of the world was in England and that those who called the English barbarians seemed to render themselves such.”43 Events such as the rich 1517 banquet were also opportunities for the foreign ambassadors to encounter the singing style of English boys, who in this case accompanied themselves with flute, rebec, and harpsichord.44 Similar events, of course, acquainted English diplomats conversely with the entertainers of other European courts, and the major celebrations the next year were both French and English spectacles. A son was born to Francis I and Queen Claude in February 1517/18, and by the middle of July the Treaty of London had been drawn up, securing the marriage of the dauphin to Henry VIII’s daughter Mary (born in 1515/16), as well as the return of Tournai to France. France and England exchanged embassies in the autumn to declare a “Universal and Perpetual Peace” in Christendom, and each enjoyed a lavish reception. The French embassy entered London on 27 September, “supported by a host of gentlemen, archers, wrestlers, musicians, and tennis-players;”45 the appearance after this point of several new French musicians on the English court pay lists suggests the importance of these diplomatic occasions for musical transmission.46 The mass celebrated by Cardinal Wolsey at St Paul’s at the end of the week for the ambassadors was an extravagant display, and was the occasion for the delivery of Richard Pace’s famous sermon on peace. The new peace was also the theme for the pageants after the marriage celebration, probably devised by William Cornysh, which again involved boys singing together, as well as the familiar spectacle of musicians hidden in an artificial rock or mount.47 Among the other numerous banquets, one given by Wolsey at his Westminster residence invited comparisons to suppers of Cleopatra and Caligula; the Frenchmen seemed “rapt into a heavenly paradise” by the music at Treasury of Petrus Alamire: Music and Art in Flemish Court Manuscripts 1500-1535 (Ghent, 1999), pp. 18-20. 41 On the Alamire manuscripts, see pp. 124-8 below. 42 See pp. 83, 95-6 and 98 below. 43 As summarized in CSP Ven, vol. 2, no. 918. 44 The Great Tournament Roll, vol. 2, p. 66. 45 Anglo, Spectacle, p. 128. 46 See pp. 79 and 100 below. 47 Anglo, Spectacle, pp. 130-35.

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this feast.48 The return English embassy to France in November and December was entertained in a temporary banqueting house which obviously impressed its visitors: the English banquet house constructed for the French embassy of 1527 was to a large extent a copy of this structure.49 The English ambassadors saw their share of high French ceremonial when they went “in pompous array” through Paris to mass at Notre Dame.50 Undoubtedly, the most lavish international political spectacle during the reign of Henry VIII was the 1520 meeting with Francis I on the border of French and English territory near Guisnes, known now as the Field of Cloth of Gold.51 As a political event, the meeting was the culmination of the various Anglo-French treaties and negotiations of the 1510s, beginning with the declaration of peace in 1514, and more importantly, with the Treaty of London in 1518. The international peace and betrothal of Mary Tudor to the infant French dauphin were to set the stage for a first face-to-face meeting between the English and French monarchs, originally set for 1519 but delayed and still uncertain until the winter of 1519/20.52 With regard to the ostensible purpose of the conference, to seal an everlasting friendship and peace between England and France, the Field of Cloth of Gold is regarded typically as a remarkable failure: the two kings were mainly interested in showing each other up in the tournaments and entertainments devised for the occasion, and already in May 1522 the countries were officially at war again.53 Political suspicions ran high as usual during the period surrounding the actual meeting, particularly on account of the appearance of the emperor Charles V in the north.54 Henry and Charles met on English ground both shortly before and after the Field of Cloth of Gold, the first time in Canterbury and then in Calais; it was these Anglo-Imperial negotiations, in fact, which led to the quick break with France. Political negotiations, however, were not the real purpose of the 1520 Anglo-French conference. The kings busied themselves with the tournaments and entertainments, leaving official discussions mainly to their counsellors—negotiations which might as well have been conducted in Paris, London, or Calais. The aspect of the meeting which separated it from standard diplomatic encounters was the presence of both monarchs, and hence the extraordinary amount of effort and resources spent by both sides on public displays. It was primarily on Henry’s account that the level of 48 Ibid., p. 130; Perry, Sisters to the King, p. 149. 49 D. Starkey, ‘The Legacy of Henry VIII’, in Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII, p. 12. 50 Cruickshank, Henry VIII, p. 157. 51 Russell, The Field of Cloth of Gold, is still the standard investigation of the event. Other studies include Anglo, Spectacle, pp. 137-69; R.J. Knecht, ‘The Field of Cloth of Gold’, in Giry-Deloison (ed.), François Ier et Henry VIII, pp. 37-51; Paul Kast, ‘Remarques sur la Musique et les Musiciens de la Chapelle de François 1er au Camp du Drap d’Or’, in Jacquot (ed.), Fêtes et Cérémonies, pp. 135-46; and Hugh Baillie, ‘Les Musiciens de la Chapelle Royale d’Henri VIII au Camp du Drap d’Or’, in Jacquot (ed.), Fêtes et Cérémonies, pp. 147-59. 52 Russell, The Field of Cloth of Gold, pp. 14-20. 53 Anglo, Spectacle, p. 169; Knecht, ‘The Field of Cloth of Gold’, p. 51. 54 Knecht, however, warns against acceptance of the common supposition that the Field of Cloth of Gold was in itself a cause of deteriorating relations between Henry VIII and Francis I (on account of the rivalry in public displays); ibid., p. 51.

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expenditure reached such heights; once again, England had more to gain in terms of acceptance into international affairs, and the strictly egalitarian design of the meeting ensured that the French party would need to match the English at every step. As Anglo reminds us, “such expense was not undertaken in a spirit of idle extravagance but was, literally, an attempt by Henry VIII to buy European prestige.”55 In the many entertainments, banquets, jousts, public encounters, and religious services which formed the substance of the meeting, music of all kinds was a constant accompaniment. A remarkable number of first- and second-hand reports survive detailing various portions of the festivities, accounts which—although notoriously inconsistent on certain particulars—provide a richer picture of the entertainments and physical sports than exists for many such events of the period.56 The dramatic scene when the kings saw each other face-to-face for the first time was marked at the end by a trumpet fanfare, as were near-ceremonial occasions such as the serving of courses at banquets. On Sunday 10 June, each of the kings went to dine at the other’s base, hosted by the queens. We know that at the banquet for Henry in the French king’s tent, entremets featuring French heraldic imagery entertained the English guest, and “with each course there was vocal and instrumental music, the instruments being of various sorts, and the like was never heard before.”57 The temporary English palace at Guisnes was one of the marvels of the Field of Cloth of Gold, a wood and glass structure characterized by the Mantuan ambassador of the French court as resembling one of the palaces from Orlando innamorato or Orlando furioso.58 Of the numerous descriptions marvelling at the construction and decoration of the palace, most mention the richly ornamented upstairs chapel, which included a large silver and gold organ, “and an organist who played admirably.”59 We now also have an account relating the use of this organ—or perhaps other instruments—in one of the services which took place in the English chapel. The most recently discovered source of primary information on the Field of Cloth of Gold is Jacques Dubois’s Francisci Francorum regis et Henrici Anglorum colloquium, a classicizing account published at Paris the year of the event.60 If the earlier pamphlet Campi convivii / atque Ludorum agonisticorum ordo / modus / atque descriptio is “the essential text” on the Field of Cloth of Gold, and a source which Dubois used heavily in compiling his own description,61 there are still elements of Dubois’s description which go unmentioned in all of the other accounts. Most importantly for the present investigation, Dubois includes a report of a private evening service in the chapel of the temporary English palace, held for the French king after his first dinner at the English residence, and completely unrelated to Cardinal Wolsey’s 55 The Great Tournament Roll, vol. 2, p. 17. 56 For a basic overview of the sources, see Russell, The Field of Cloth of Gold, pp. ix-xi; and Jacques Dubois, Francisci Francorum Regis et Henrici Anglorum Colloquium, ed. and trans. Stephen Bamforth and Jean Dupèbe, Renaissance Studies, 5 (1991): 1-3. 57 L&P, vol. III/1, no. 870; CSP Ven, vol. 3, no. 84. 58 CSP Ven, vol. 3, no. 81. 59 CSP Ven, vol. 3, nos 83, 88, 94; L&P, vol. III/1, no. 870. 60 See the introductory discussion by Bamforth and Dupèbe: Dubois, Francisci Francorum Regis, pp. 1-47. 61 Ibid., p. 9.

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famous outdoor mass celebration of 23 June. The verses relevant to the music at the service (presumably provided by the English chapelmen, since Francis I was a visitor at the English hall) leave no doubt that voices and instruments were heard both separately and together: Mellifluo suaves cantorum gutture musae Nunc saliunt et nunc organa grata sonant Mellea nunc cantorum interstrepit organa musa, Misceri ut cantus dixeris angelicos.62 [Now sweet songs spring from the mellifluous throats of the singers, now the organ makes heard its pleasing sounds; now the honey-sweet song of the singers joins with the sound of the organ, so that you might say angelic music intermingles.]

The translation of Bamforth and Dupèbe renders organa without note as “organ,” and in practical terms this would have been the most likely instrument to sound, as the costly organ of the chapel is mentioned in other accounts. Nevertheless, the wording of the passage is in no way specific to organ-playing. The possibility that organa refers here to “instruments” in a more generic sense remains a real one, in the absence of further detail; in either interpretation the passage contradicts musicological suppositions that English performance of the period always observed a strict separation of voices and instruments.63 The best-known musical element of the meeting at the Field of Cloth of Gold is the aforementioned service of Saturday 23 June. The outdoor celebration of high mass De trinitate combined the chapels of the English and French monarchs in one of the period’s most spectacular displays of liturgical theatre.64 Near the jousting field, a stage had been erected to house a temporary chapel, along with enclosures where the royal spectators knelt, and seats for the numerous attendant nobles and ambassadors. Cardinal Wolsey led the mass attended by some ten English bishops, while four French cardinals and around twelve French bishops watched 62 ll. 341-4; ibid., pp. 74-5. Bamforth and Dupèbe’s supposition (p. 25) that Dubois simply invented this entire scene is based merely on the observation that Dubois could not have found such a description in any of the other known pamphlets. They do not take the same stance when discussing the new information on the artificial dragon in Francisci Francorum Regis (pp. 28-9). 63 See, for example, Roger Bowers, ‘The Cultivation and Promotion of Music in the Household and Orbit of Thomas Wolsey’, in Steven J. Gunn and P.G. Lindley (eds), Cardinal Wolsey: Church, State and Art (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 184, 203-4. 64 For descriptions of the mass celebration, see especially L&P, vol. III/1, no. 870 (a summary of the pamphlet L’Ordonnance et ordre du tourney ...); CSP Ven, vol. 3, no. 93; Russell, The Field of Cloth of Gold, pp. 171-6. A later English account (“The meating of the king of England the Emperour at Canterburie and the meating of the said king and the french king at Guysnes Anno domini 1520 Ao xijth of his raigne,” found on fols 100r-103v of the Elizabethan manuscript OxfBA 1116) states that Wolsey sang mass of the Holy Ghost. This source is probably less trustworthy on this point than the others, as it gives slightly incorrect dates, and the mass description is concerned mainly with which nobles assisted Wolsey in his numerous handwashings.

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withoutserving. The musicians of the English and French chapels were called upon to perform for a significant portion of the service, in an alternating plan obviously intended to balance the contributions of each nation.65 According to L’Ordonnance et ordre, the English chapel preceded the mass with the hour of Terce; after the arrival of the noble laypeople and the vesting of the bishops and deacons, the mass began with Introits from each choir. Items of the Ordinary were alternated, the English performing the Gloria and Sanctus, the French in turn the Credo and Agnus; the French organist, Pierre Mouton, played the Kyrie. The service ended with several motets from the French choir. The organists of each chapel took turns on the instrument, accompanying their respective choirs, and the French choir was augmented for the Credo by an ensemble of sackbuts and cornetts.66 Surely both choirs were on top form with their most extrovert music, if they in any way matched the spirit of the rest of the celebration—it was during this same mass that a giant artificial dragon (probably a kite, and in any case a symbol of England) was launched and circled above the field.67 Much like other negotiations attempted at the Field of Cloth of Gold, the plans to build an Anglo-French church on the site dedicated to Friendship came to nothing.68 The event was sandwiched by meetings between Henry VIII and Charles V, both on English and imperial soil, which were purposefully made much less spectacular than the celebration with the French. A certain amount of ceremonial and feasting, however, was a requirement of any encounter between such monarchs, and so it 65 This alternating scheme, if of great musical interest, was nevertheless by no means a novelty of the 1520 conference. See the description of the very similar mass plan for the combination of the chapels of Louis XII and Philip the Handsome at Blois in 1501 quoted in Stephen Bonime, Anne de Bretagne (1477-1514) and Music: An Archival Study (Ph.D. dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 1965), p. 123 n. 26. 66 Anglo follows a seventeenth-century French source in claiming that the English and French swapped organists at the mass, but Kast attributes this reading to a misunderstanding of earlier prints and accepts the version given in the more contemporaneous sources; Anglo, Spectacle, p. 156; Kast, ‘Remarques sur la Musique’, p. 136 n. 3. The identity of the English organist on this occasion is unknown. Baillie’s conjecture (‘Les Musiciens’, p. 159; followed by Giry-Deloison, François Ier et Henry VIII, p. 18) that it might have been Benedictus de Opiciis, in Henry’s service since 1515/16, seems unlikely: Opiciis was appointed only to serve in the Privy Chamber, with little connection to the Chapel Royal (see pp. 87-95 below). It may be significant, however, that 1520 is the year in which Opiciis joined the Fraternity of St Nicholas in London, which counted famous English composers among its members but none of Henry VIII’s other “secular” musicians. Another point of ambiguity comes in a phrase from the description by the Mantuan ambassador at the court of France, Soardino: “E la musica de Perino, tromboni e cornetti” (CSP Ven, vol. 3, no. 93). The translation in CSP Ven (“the music by Perino ... with trombones and cornets”) implies a (highly unusual) specification of the composer, an otherwise unknown figure. The wording of the original lends little support to such an interpretation; I would suggest instead the possibility that Soardino is referring to the organ-playing of Pierre Mouton, and thereby listing all of the instrumental accompaniment for the French choir. 67 Russell, The Field of Cloth of Gold, p. 176; Dubois, Francisci Francorum Regis, pp. 28-9. 68 CSP Ven, vol. 3, no. 69.

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was that Charles V and an imperial retinue made an entry into Canterbury in May, hearing high mass at Christchurch and venerating the shrine of St Thomas.69 It was noted specifically at the banquet afterwards that the emperor’s trumpets, and not the English king’s, blew up. In the period immediately following the Field of Cloth of Gold, the English prepared a slightly more costly display for Charles V and Margaret of Austria. After the imperial party entertained the English at Gravelines, where the visitors were treated with extreme generosity, Calais was the site of the further English hospitality.70 A temporary circular structure with a cosmological theme—like the 1518 banquet house at the Bastille and the tent of Francis I at the Field of Cloth of Gold—had been erected near the Exchequer for the presentation of plays and other spectacles. The theme of friendship was taken up here again, as the Latin verses displayed inside demonstrate;71 singers and instruments, including organs, were to be accommodated on a set of platforms in the center. Ironically, the English house at Calais shared one other important feature with the French king’s tent at Ardres, namely the inability to remain standing in the face of the prevailing winds. In the end, the entertainments for Charles and Margaret had to be held in the Exchequer building. The meetings with Charles V in 1520 had a greater impact than the Anglo-French celebrations, and the foreign policy of England in the first half of the 1520s was aligned largely with Habsburg interests. When Wolsey journeyed to the Continent in 1521 to negotiate with the emperor, he took a large retinue and spent great sums, and received treatment from Charles V as though he were the king of England; indeed, for the purposes of that embassy, Wolsey had more power over England’s affairs than any other. The 1521 negotiations at Calais and Bruges led eventually to the English declaration of war on France on 29 May 1522, at the start of another visit of Charles V to England.72 The entry of the emperor into London was marked by a series of pageants which had been in preparation for months, along with the customary jousts and banquets. The use of a sackbut and shawm ensemble was noted on a tower in Cornhill, along with other more general references to singing and playing along the procession route.73 St Paul’s was the site of another of Wolsey’s exaggerated mass celebrations, in the presence of the two princes and with the participation of over twenty English and foreign bishops; and once more, William Cornysh provided an allegorical play idealizing the current negotiations.74 Cornysh is known as well to have provided lodging for eight members of the emperor’s retinue in 1522.75 It has been speculated that, as with the French visit in 1518, several of the Flemish musicians hired at the English court in the 1520s—some of the first professional viol players in England—came originally in the retinue of Charles V during this 69 A brief description of the meeting appears in OxfBA 1116, fol. 100r-v. 70 See Anglo, Spectacle, pp. 158-69. 71 These are transcribed in OxfBA 1116, fols 103v-105r. 72 Knecht, ‘The Field’, p. 51. 73 Anglo, Spectacle, p. 195. 74 Ibid., pp. 202-3. 75 Fiona Kisby, ‘A Courtier in the Community: New Light on the Biography of William Cornish, Master of the Choristers in the English Chapel Royal 1509-1523’, Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies, 16 (1999): 13.

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meeting. A gap in the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber during the first half of the 1520s, however, leaves no means of determining even the year in which these players were hired; it is equally possible that the importation of the viol players was an attempt to catch up with new fashions observed in the imperial retinue.76 The English anti-French policies turned into war once more, but the invasion in 1522 received (as usual) none of the expected imperial support and came to nought. Even with the gradual softening of official English hostility towards France, Henry VIII was ready in 1525 to jump at a last opportunity to revive the spirit of Henry V. The battle at Pavia on 24 February between French and imperial troops was a disaster for France, resulting in the capture of Francis I and the dispersal of his army. Far from acting to restore a balance of power, upon hearing the news of Pavia, Henry immediately canceled his meeting with a new French embassy and ordered public rejoicings, with bonfires throughout the country and a mass at St Paul’s.77 It is probable that English troops would once again have made an attempt at conquest in France, were it not for the complete lack of support from both the emperor and the English populace, who would not bear another heavy war tax. In the end, England acted nominally as peacekeeper, Henry VIII being named protector of the League of Cognac. The new Holy League, including France, the Papacy, Venice, Florence, and Milan, was formed out of an urgent need to check the power of Charles V after Pavia; the eventual sack of Rome by uncontrolled imperial forces in May 1527, and the resulting captivity of Clement VII, demonstrated only too clearly the dangers of Habsburg dominance in European politics. The formation of the new alliance is likely to have had musical repercussions in the creation of the Florentine “NewburyOscott Partbooks,” given to Henry VIII in the later 1520s (to be discussed further in Chapter 4). The rapprochement between England and France was headed by Wolsey, beginning in the summer of 1525 with the “Treaty of the More” and eventually leading to the treaties of Westminster and Amiens in 1527. In terms of public display and ceremonial, the 1527 alliance was accompanied by as much pomp and celebration as the Treaty of London in 1518 (which had similarly replaced an AngloBurgundian alliance with one with France). The French ambassadors arrived at the end of February, and after the signing of the Treaty of Westminster on 30 April, they were treated to a festive reception at Greenwich, prepared through the artistry of Henry’s native and foreign servants.78 As mentioned above, a banqueting house had been constructed for the event, modeled to some extent after the building in which Francis I received the English embassy of 1518. The new construction included several Renaissance-style triumphal arches, one with a musicians’ gallery,79 and a large depiction by Holbein of the 1513 Siege of Thérouanne. Giovanni da Maiano 76 See pp. 80-81 below. 77 C. Giry-Deloison, ‘A Diplomatic Revolution? Anglo-French Relations and the Treaties of 1527’, in Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII, p. 78. 78 On the 1527 celebrations at Greenwich, see Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII, pp. 54-93; and Anglo, Spectacle, pp. 211-24. 79 Starkey suggests that it is the 1527 musicians’ balcony which is depicted in a drawing (attributed to Holbein) of one of the king’s sackbut and shawm ensembles (Henry VIII, p. 67).

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created numerous classical busts for the decoration of the arches, and other Italians were paid as painters for the dining hall; the great cosmographical ceiling of the theatre was a combination of design work by the German Nicolaus Kratzer (the King’s Astronomer) and execution by Holbein. In all respects, the banqueting house was meant to be a fashionably modern structure, not only by native but by European standards. The feast which Henry first served in the house included the usual “songes and minstrelsie,” and in the theater after dinner the singing of eight choristers in English preceded a night of dramatic entertainment and dancing (including a pageant in which the young Princess Mary participated).80 Cardinal Wolsey traveled to France in July to complete the negotiations, and was received with as much ceremony as the English king would have enjoyed. Sets of pageants awaited the prelate at Boulogne, Montreuil, and Abbeville, as well as the final destination of Amiens, and these symbolic displays depicted Wolsey as the only hope of peace in Europe.81 As in 1521, the cardinal was accompanied by his chapel onto the Continent, including at that point the composer Avery Burnett.82 Wolsey’s traveling household in France included minstrels as well, who impressed Francis I at Amiens in August; the French king was allowed to borrow these players for a night.83 Upon Wolsey’s return to England, the ratification of the Treaty of Amiens led to the festive reception of another French embassy in the autumn at Greenwich, requiring new works from Henry VIII’s Italian artists.84 At an All Saints’ Day mass celebration in St Paul’s Cathedral, the cardinal presided over ceremonies of thanksgiving featuring royal instrumentalists, notable among them the king’s new Italian sackbuts: “The Lord Cardinall began Te Deum the which was solemnlie songen with the King’s trumpetts and shalmes as well Inglish men as Venetians.”85 Among the results of the 1527 negotiations were the betrothal of Princess Mary to Francis I’s second son Henry, Duke of Orléans, and the plan for a second meeting between the English and French kings. This second encounter, as it happens, did not take place until October 1532, at Calais and Boulogne.86 It had been agreed that the meeting would be on a much smaller scale than the Field of Cloth of Gold; the political situation, moreover, was completely different this time around. In 1532, Henry VIII had much more specific goals than the general attempt to buy prestige and European fame which had characterized the 1520 festivities. The Great Matter of the king’s divorce had been proceeding with the greatest difficulty for years now, and with no hope of support from Charles V (who was Katherine of Aragon’s nephew) it was vital that England remain closely allied with France. A significant aspect of 80 Anglo, Spectacle, pp. 220-24. 81 Ibid., pp. 226-30. 82 Bowers, ‘The Cultivation’, p. 182. A list of the Cardinal’s company appears in Chronicle of Calais, pp. 38-40. 83 Bowers, ‘The Cultivation’, p. 194. 84 Anglo, Spectacle, pp. 230-34. 85 Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain, pp. 216-17. On the Venetian sackbut ensemble, see pp. 71-2 below. 86 Ibid., pp. 244-6; Alfred Hamy, Entrevue de François Premier avec Henry VIII à Boulogne-sur-mer en 1532 (Paris, 1898). The latter publication includes an edition of Wynkyn de Worde’s pamphlet The Maner of the Tryumphe at Caleys and Bulleyn, printed in 1532.

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the 1532 meeting is the presence of Anne Boleyn, who was already acting as queen, though her secret marriage to Henry occurred only in January 1533; Katherine of Aragon remained in England. If the entertainments in 1532 were “insignificant and inexpensive,” nevertheless the meeting of the royal and other noble households helped to foster musical exchange. The English king made considerable payments out of his Privy Purse “to the syngers of the frenche kinges pryvay chambre” on 26 October and “to the singers of the Cardynalles de larenan” on 28 October.87 The loss of all of Henry’s Privy Purse accounts (where any irregular rewards were recorded) outside the years 1529-32 has in all likelihood erased the traces of similar activities at other diplomatic occasions, both in England and abroad. It is certainly significant that Henry’s recorded payment to French court musicians in 1532 is for Francis’s secular singers; some years later, the composer Philip van Wilder (who was present in Henry’s retinue in 1532) would lead a similar newly formed group of Privy Chamber singers at the English court.88 According to a French chronicler, the French and English kings heard separate low masses in the church of Notre Dame in Boulogne, while singers were performing motets. In Calais several days later, where Francis was lodged at the Staple Hall (“which is a pryncely hous”), the two kings would again hear mass together in the church of Our Lady. During the dinner following the mass in Boulogne, “les trompettes, haultboys, cornetz et chantres ne cessèrent de jouer et chanter.” De Worde’s newsletter confirms a similar reception for other members of the English entourage: “And every daye, noble men of Fraunce desyred our nobles and gentylmen home to theyr lodgynges, where as they founde theyr houses rychely hanged, great cupbordses of plate, sumptuous fare, with syngyng and playenge of all kyndes of musyke.”89 The circumstances of the 1532 meeting, with Henry testing the limits of his own control over sensitive matters—the French queen and other ladies of rank refused to recognize Anne Boleyn as the legitimate consort of the English king—point to the issues which were taking on an increasing importance in English affairs at home and abroad. If the state of secular court spectacle and entertainment during the 1530s seems not to have been shaken in any manner comparable to the religious life of the kingdom, monarch and court nevertheless passed into a new age ruled by different circumstances, motivations, and consequences. The days when Henry VIII would prove his virility in the lists and dazzle the world with his youthful enthusiasm for music and every type of learning, when honor and chivalry alone seemed a major factor in policy decisions, had ended. The personal but very public turmoil of a king who was fast becoming a tyrant, faced with domestic and external opposition to his policies and private actions, was matched by an acceleration of Fortune’s

87 See pp. 108-9 below. 88 See p. 85 below. 89 Hamy, Entrevue de François Premier, pp. XXXIV-XXXV, XLI-XLIII. Bernstein’s suggestion that chansons were sung at the 1532 meeting (The Chanson in England, 1530-1640: A Study of Sources and Styles [Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1974], p. 42) is treated as fact in Milsom, English Polyphonic Style, vol. 1, p. 58. However likely the performance of chansons on this occasion may be, it must be noted that none of the primary sources are this specific about the music.

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wheel—factions at court rose and fell, queens came and went, even royal musicians ended up in prison or worse.90 For the English king and those around him, while the entertainments and music continued as if to insist that all was still right with the world, the Beautiful Dream was a thing of the past. Connections Outside the Court The discussion in these first chapters has so far focused almost entirely on the English royal court, and one might readily infer from such an emphasis that the artistic and cultural connections with continental Europe were limited to the king and his sphere. The great art objects, manuscripts, prints, and letters which so eloquently remind us of the necessarily international environment of the Tudor court stand at a remove from the daily life of the towns and cities, the parishes and the citizens who saw the king and the spectacular foreign embassies from a distance, if at all. A number of factors, however, should make us wary of any assumption that those who were uninvolved in royal politics and diplomacy were isolated from foreign contact: the importance of international trade to English livelihoods at many levels of society, the undertaking of pilgrimages to foreign shrines, the trend of foreign university education for promising students, and even the important civic role in many royal festivals.91 As related in the Introduction, moreover, the historical and documentary investigations in the present study take the court as a center of interest not only on account of its particular situation and special nature, but also because it offers a much richer documentary picture than any other institution in the country. The hints that we have of cultural links elsewhere suggest that the royal court, unique as it may have been, was not the only cosmopolitan entity. The vital trade in wool and cloth with the Low Countries occupies a central role in the evaluation of England’s economic status in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and it is recognized that trade links were an important influence on patterns of migration.92 Trading contacts and immigration at a local level probably lie behind much of the parallel development in popular devotional habits between England and other areas of northern Europe. Eamon Duffy was not surprised, for example, “to find in East Anglia devotion to a number of saints popular in the Low Countries, just as Cornish and Devonian devotion to the saints of Brittany

90 Roger Prior, ‘Jewish Musicians at the Tudor Court’, MQ, 69 (1983): 253-65; Lasocki with Prior, The Bassanos, p. 16 n. 62. See also p. 97 below. 91 J.R. Mulryne emphasizes “the place of the city in the initiation and maintenance of a common culture,” noting that “festivals are almost always city-based, even when their subject-matter is national or international in scope” (‘Introduction’, in Mulryne and Goldring (eds), Court Festivals, p. 1). 92 Caroline M. Barron, ‘Introduction: England and the Low Countries, 1327-1477’, in Barron and Saul (eds), England and the Low Countries, pp. 11-15; The Alien Communities of London in the Fifteenth Century: The Subsidy Rolls of 1440 & 1483-4, ed. J.L. Bolton (Stamford, 1998), pp. 28-34.

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seems readily accountable.”93 The major point of international trade in England, of course, was London, and the city’s commercial importance was reflected in the strong foreign presence there. A recent calculation estimates a proportion of resident aliens in London and its surroundings in 1483-84 of at least 6 per cent of the total population, and in Westminster and other suburbs the figure was closer to 10 per cent; by 1549, aliens comprised over 20 per cent of adult males in certain areas.94 The vast majority of the foreigners were “theotonici,” a general term covering those from German- and Dutch-speaking areas, but not surprisingly most of these were from the north: Brabant, Holland, Flanders, and Zeeland. The number of immigrants who kept households with servants indicates that they were generally on an equal footing economically with the natives, not simply “impoverished Flemish weavers from Bruges, Ghent and Ypres.”95 Their occupations, as well, covered a wide variety of trades, from basic and profitable areas such as brewing, to supplying the needs of the luxury market with jewelry. Artists must have been resident, such as the Dutch group identified as the Masters of the Dark Eyes (c. 1500),96 or the glaziers whose work ended up in various locales (see p. 27 above); foreigners in the book trade were making London their home already in the later fifteenth century, and their numbers increased dramatically in the middle of the sixteenth century.97 The surviving records of the 1483 alien subsidy demonstrate that professional musicians also figured among the inhabitants of London, including Flemish or German minstrels, a Roman trumpeter, and instrument makers.98 As Fiona Kisby has shown, the foreign minstrels of the royal court during Tudor times mainly kept their homes in London, and “were often individuals of relative wealth and status, men of substance who played a prominent role in local life.”99 The city itself, then, was along with its suburbs a center for cultural contacts, and this condition was due more to a strong international trade, built over centuries, than to a type of artificial importation by the country’s rulers. As Bolton suggests, the aliens in other parts of the country (for example, Essex and East Anglia) may have comprised a much smaller portion of the population, but were in a similar situation and of a comparable social status.100 At another level, moreover, the surviving musical sources (to be discussed in Chapter 4) suggest a pattern of influence and dissemination which would become more important as the sixteenth century continued, namely the imitation of aspects of court life or art by aristocrats and other highly placed individuals, as well as prosperous institutions. It is notable that the music books of definite English origin investigated in this study are not court sources. Books like the “Henry VIII Manuscript” (LonBL 31922), LonBLRA 56, and LonBLRA 58 have been associated 93 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580 (New Haven and London, 1992), p. 166. 94 The Alien Communities, pp. 8-9, 15; Kisby, ‘Royal Minstrels’, p. 209. 95 The Alien Communities, pp. 20-22, 28-34. 96 Backhouse, ‘Illuminated Manuscripts’, p. 177. 97 The Alien Communities, pp. 57, 58, 64, 66; Alien Members of the Book-Trade during the Tudor Period, ed. Ernest James Worman (London, 1906). 98 The Alien Communities, pp. 20, 29, 55, 56-7, 69, 70, 90 n. 181. 99 Kisby, ‘Royal Minstrels’, p. 215. 100 The Alien Communities, p. 24.

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with the court only in the general sense of containing repertoires with connections to Henry VIII and his musicians or entertainments; scholars have been careful to avoid the implication that these manuscripts were actually used at court, pointing instead to evidence of ownership by the well-to-do in private collections.101 References to copies of specific works or sources which no longer survive are rare anywhere (particularly with the general lack of composition titles in documentary sources), but even here we can note cases where foreign origin is likely, such as the Missa Adieu mes amours in a King’s College, Cambridge inventory (1529) and the music print at Wolsey’s Hampton Court in 1523.102 The idea of the royal court as a model in its rituals and entertainments is of course nothing new, with major noble households keeping their own chapels and sets of minstrels (albeit on a smaller scale), as recorded in the surviving household books.103 Without the extensive documentation available for the royal court, it is usually impossible to discover the identities of the minstrels at these households, but it would be by no means incongruous to find some connections to the king’s establishment. As one example, the minstrels Hans and Mathias Rosoner (surely Flemings) were brought to Edward Stafford, the third Duke of Buckingham, by one of the king’s sackbut players in 1508; and who were the sackbuts employed by the “French queen,” Henry VIII’s sister Mary, considering that only one of the king’s sackbut players was even possibly an Englishman?104 The evidence of the musical and theoretical sources takes us even outside the aristocratic circles, suggesting international connections in less affluent or seemingly provincial institutions. The Ritson Manuscript (LonBL 5665), for example, has been associated with Exeter Cathedral, and was perhaps the work of local clerics; nevertheless, the book contains explicit remnants of continental composition as well as less obvious stylistic links. Likewise, other sources of foreign basse dance tenors are additions to manuscripts with clerical associations, rather than “secular” books.105 Although the present study will not go directly into matters of stylistic comparison, it bears mentioning that certain compositions in the fragmentary mass manuscript at York (YorkB 1, assigned variously to London, Lincoln, or York106) display an affinity with continental habits which testifies to a continuing knowledge of foreign style107—to a greater extent than is discernable in the more famous sources of large-scale florid English polyphony (e.g. EtonC 178). The majority of the foreign 101 On these sources, see pp. 160-70 below. 102 See pp. 152 and 169-70 below. 103 Suzanne R. Westfall, Patrons and Performance: Early Tudor Household Revels (Oxford and New York, 1990), pp. 8-16. 104 See pp. 73 and 83 n. 117 below. 105 See pp. 161-3 below. 106 Lisa Colton, ‘Music in Pre-Reformation York: A New Source and Some Thoughts on the York Masses’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 12 (2003): 71-88. 107 See, for example, the rising multi-voice sequence which ends the Et ascendit of the Gloria-Credo Custodi nos (fols 9v-10r; an edition of the York collection by the present writer is forthcoming: Fifteenth-Century Liturgical Music, IX: The York Masses, ed. Theodor Dumitrescu, EECM [London, forthcoming]); or more generally, a less ornamental surface style than appears in better-known sources like EtonC 178 and LonBL 5465, and the association of new text phrases with points of imitation. Reinhard Strohm, The Rise of European Music,

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connections to be explored in Chapter 5 on music theory are exclusive neither to the royal court nor to aristocratic circles, from which no treatises survive (considering Cornysh’s parable and the Lekonfield Proverbs as literary works and not instructional manuals). Rather, the evidence derives from city, university, and cloister once more: John Dorne selling foreign printed treatises at Oxford; the carmelite John Hothby’s theoretical ideas finding a home both in Italy and in England; John Dygon at St Augustine’s, Canterbury modifying Gaffurius’s text for his own treatises. The supposition, therefore, that England’s connections to the music of continental Europe were confined to the royal court, as the product of acquisitions made for diplomatic and ceremonial purposes, must be treated with the greatest caution. The magnificent events examined above represent very particular occasions, which we have the fortune to glimpse through the chronicles and eyewitness reports which have survived. For the court, these meetings and celebrations were of great consequence in forging cultural and artistic ties with the rest of Europe; but this fact in no way implies that institutions and individuals with little or no connection to the court were for their part isolated from the world beyond their borders. The means of transmission for the elements of foreign artistic cultures were surely of a gradual nature and less ostentatious than the examples in the king’s circles; if there was less reason for such transmission to leave concrete documentary evidence, it is nonetheless important to recognize that particular traces remain. Turning to the English presence on the Continent, there is evidence of both long-term and short-term involvement with foreign cultures at a personal and private level, separate from any direct political aims. Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, several locations of commercial and political significance on the Continent acted as bases for English merchants and travellers, offering more or less permanent areas for Anglo-Continental interactions. In the first instance, the town of Calais, under English control from 1347 to 1558, was England’s major gateway to Europe.108 English state visits and “wars” on the Continent as a rule began with a channel crossing from Dover to Calais, and monarchs used the town or nearby centers within English territory (such as Guisnes) as their residence when abroad, to avoid placing themselves unnecessarily on foreign soil. During the English occupation, the populace of the pale of Calais kept its identity as a mix of Frenchand Flemish-speakers, with an artificial injection of English soldiers and merchants. Nevertheless, the area served as a real home for some of the English, and John Paston in the later fifteenth century could without reservation describe Calais as “a merry town.”109 Documents noted by Alison Hanham in the National Public Record Office in London testify to an English interest in the native music of the surrounding regions, including a payment by members of the Staple Company to a minstrel in Boulogne during a journey, as well as a number of French songs intermingled with 1380-1500 (Cambridge and New York, 1993), p. 387, suggests a motivic relation between masses in the Ritson Manuscript and certain chansons rustiques. 108 For primary sources relating to major events at Calais in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Chronicle of Calais. 109 Alison Hanham, ‘The Musical Studies of a Fifteenth-Century Wool-Merchant’, Review of English Studies, 8 (1957): 270.

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English items taught by the harper Thomas Rede to the merchant George Cely in the mid-1470s at Calais.110 The other major northern continental locations for English interests in the fifteenth century were the Flemish cities of Bruges and Antwerp, because of their status as major commercial centers. The wool and cloth trade was, of course, vital to the English economy, and many of the negotiations between the rulers of England and the Low Countries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries involved setting terms of commerce; English experiments in moving their export centers away from Bruges and Antwerp were always abandoned until the official departure of the English merchants from Antwerp in 1582.111 The Merchant Adventurers on the Continent during the fifteenth century were based out of the English hostel in Bruges, where an “English street” had existed since the late thirteenth century; other headquarters for the Merchant Adventurers included Antwerp, Bergen-op-Zoom, and Middelburg.112 The connection of the Merchant Adventurers (also known as the Fraternity of St Thomas beyond the sea) to the Carmelite convent in Bruges, where they had a chapel, is suggestive from a musical standpoint, given the possibility that John Hothby acted in the transmission of music between England, Bruges, and Lucca (where the theorist was based in his later years).113 Outside Bruges, the English merchants kept chapels in Middelburg and Antwerp, and permanent chaplains in the Low Countries; for various annual celebrations, the English hired local musicians and staged entertainments in the streets, with traditional rounds of feasting, dancing, and bonfires.114 Apart from commercial purposes, pilgrimages were a main purpose for visits of English natives to the Continent, and in this case both poorer and richer members of society managed to travel considerable distances. The Chapel Royal singer and composer John Lloyd made the full journey to the Holy Land in the early 1520s, returning shortly before his death; other pilgrims went at least as far as Italy and Spain.115 Within Rome, the English Hospice of St Thomas offered temporary accommodation and aid for English travelers and pilgrims, and became a major

110 Ibid. These items also included basse dances, named explicitly as such. However, not all of the forty items learned (on the lute and harp) by Cely were dance tunes, as implied by Hanham; the titles in the payment lists include chanson-style songs such as O rosa bella and Myne hartys luste. 111 On the sixteenth-century London-Antwerp trade, see Doran, England and Europe, pp. 103-8. The English connections in Bruges are discussed in Ballard, Anglo-Burgundian Relations, pp. 275-7. See also Reinhard Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges (2nd, rev. edn, Oxford and New York, 1990), pp. 63-7; and, more generally, Barron, ‘Introduction’, in Barron and Saul (eds), England and the Low Countries, pp. 1-28. 112 Acts of Court of the Mercers’ Company, 1453-1527, ed. Laetitia Lyell (Cambridge, 1936), p. xiv. 113 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, pp. 122-3. Hothby’s connections to England are discussed further in Chapter 5. 114 Oskar de Smedt, De Engelse Natie te Antwerpen in de 16de eeuw, 1496-1582 (2 vols, Antwerp, 1950-54), vol. 2, pp. 117-20; Acts of Court, pp. xxii-xxiii. 115 BDECM, vol. 2, p. 729.

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point of English activity in Rome by the later Middle Ages.116 Henry VII wrote to the Hospice regarding its governance shortly after his accession, and again in 1498; the list of its resident custodes in the early Tudor period includes such well-known figures as Christopher Bainbridge and Richard Pace. Although lists of pilgrims recorded at the Hospice do not survive regularly until the late sixteenth century, several earlier lists which do exist reveal a considerable traffic: 82 pilgrims in 150405, 212 in 1505-06, and 207 in 1506-07.117 The Hospice and its church, of course, offered a site of permanent employment for a number of English ecclesiastics. Education brought a number of influential figures to the Continent during their early years, and students and teachers at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge were prime candidates to pursue additional scholarly instruction outside the country. Well-known cases include William Grocyn and Thomas Linacre, who returned to England after Italian studies in the 1480s and 1490s; the former lectured at Exeter College, Oxford, counting Thomas More and Erasmus among his pupils in Greek, while the latter became royal physician to Henry VIII.118 Outside the universities, the religious houses at Canterbury seem to have been particularly receptive to the new studies. Christchurch, Canterbury allowed William Hadley and William Selling to study at Padua, Bologna, and Rome for three years in the 1460s; the latter eventually became prior of the house, having returned numerous times to the Continent, where he was also in the company of other English scholars (Reginald Goldstone of Oxford in Rome in 1469; Thomas Linacre in Florence in 1486, studying with Poliziano; Thomas Langton at Padua). Selling brought numerous books with him from Italy, and eventually acted as orator on royal diplomatic missions to the Pope and the king of France.119 St Augustine’s monastery in Canterbury sent especially promising pupils to university,120 and for Nicholas Wotton and the composer John Dygon this meant going to Leuven in the early 1520s to study with Juan Luis Vives (immediately before the celebrated Spanish humanist’s long stay in England).121 The Bishop of Winchester, Thomas Langton (who had come to know William Selling in Padua), established a boys’ school in his house in the late fifteenth century. It was in this institution that Richard Pace received his early education, before Langton sent him to the University of Padua (see below). Other names could easily be added to the list of well-known fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Englishmen who spent significant amounts of formative time on the Continent for educational and diplomatic purposes: Christopher Bainbridge, John Clerk, John Colet, Robert Flemming, William Hatcliffe, Andrew Holes, Robert Langton, William Latimer, Adam Moleyns, John Morton,

116 Francis Aidan Gasquet, History of the Venerable English College, Rome (London, 1920), pp. 43-51. 117 Ibid., p. 44. 118 Gasquet, The Eve, pp. 28-30. The tradition that Linacre was tutor to Prince Arthur appears to be unfounded: see Dowling, Humanism, p. 9. 119 Gasquet, The Eve, pp. 25-33. 120 Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain, p. 39. 121 Gasquet, The Eve, pp. 40-41. On Dygon’s biography and musical activities, see pp. 202-8 below.

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Cuthbert Tunstal, to mention just a few.122 Another possible example—and perhaps a dubious one—of a highly-placed English ecclesiastic with years of continental training is offered by the case of Cardinal John Morton’s nephew Robert Morton (d. 1497), Bishop of Worcester and Master of the Rolls under Edward IV. Fallows notes that no documents place this Robert Morton in England during the years 1457-76, when the English composer Robert Morton was employed in the chapel choir of the Burgundian court; the possible identification of the bishop with the composer, nevertheless, must remain highly speculative.123 It is not often noticed by musicologists that the famed humanist and diplomat Richard Pace (chief secretary to Henry VIII) took a special interest in music, and in fact enjoyed an education at the University of Padua on account of his musical skill. His most famous printed work, De fructu qui ex doctrina percipitur (printed in 1517 and ostensibly written for the edification of boys at St Paul’s School), includes a considerable discussion of music as one of the liberal arts, mixed with anecdotes about the musical activities of Pace and others.124 Particularly noteworthy is the passage where Pace mentions his studies of music theory treatises in the Vatican Library during the years when he was with Cardinal Bainbridge in Rome (1509-14): Huic itaque restituendae [sc. musicae], quum Romae essem, nactus in bibliotheca summi Pontificis magnam librorum copiam, quos in hac scientia multi & summi Philosophi scripserunt, magna & miranda continentes, uacare coepi, instigatus ab honestissimo simul & doctissimo uiro Gulielmo Latymero. Sed repentina Cardinalis Angliae defuncti morte (cuius memoria in perpetuum mihi est colenda) impeditus, & Romam relinquere coactus, institutum prosequi non potui.125 [When I was in Rome, I came across a great number of books in the Vatican Library that many eminent philosophers wrote on music. They had great wonders in them, and, urged

122 Chambers, Cardinal Bainbridge, pp. 14-15; Carlson, English Humanist Books, p. 14; Richard Pace, De Fructu qui ex Doctrina Percipitur (The Benefit of a Liberal Education), ed. and trans. Frank Manley and Richard S. Sylvester (New York, 1967), pp. ix, 34-5; Ballard, Anglo-Burgundian Relations, pp. 53-4, 253-4. Further examples are mentioned in Dowling, Humanism, pp. 8-9. For various cases of English students and scholars at Italian universities who visited the English Hospice in Rome near the beginning of the sixteenth century, see Gasquet, History, pp. 44-5. English scholars who formed part of Cardinal Bainbridge’s household in Rome are discussed in Chambers, Cardinal Bainbridge, pp. 116-20. 123 David Fallows, ‘Morton, Robert’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (2nd edn, 29 vols, New York and London, 2001), vol. 17, pp. 158-59; hereafter NG2. 124 Pace describes how Langton singled him out “quum notasset me longe supra aetatem ... in musicis proficere,” sending him as a result to Padua around 1499 (De fructu, pp. 389); Langton similarly funded the Italian studies of his nephews Christopher Bainbridge and Robert Langton (Chambers, Cardinal Bainbridge, p. 15). On Pace’s intention that the book be read by boys, see the dedication to John Colet (whom Pace would succeed several years later as Dean of St Paul’s), pp. 20-25; Manley and Sylvester, however, doubt the suitability of the book for young readers, on moral grounds (pp. xx-xxi). 125 Pace, De fructu, pp. 46-7.

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on by William Latimer, an honorable as well as learned man, I began to devote my leisure time to the revival of music. But I was hindered by the sudden death of the late English Cardinal (whose memory I shall always cherish) and forced to leave Rome. So I was not able to carry out what I had begun.]

The same subject occurs again briefly, when Pace uses the dispute between medical doctors concerning the “diesis arteriae” to lead into a discussion of a specifically British musical practice: ... sed si Galenus eam re uera deprehendit, illum non imperitiorem musices, quam artis medicae fuisse iudico. Est enim haec res quamsimillima illi subtilitati, quam musici acutissime indagarunt in proportionum suarum inductionibus. Dissident & musici inter se, & quidem subtiliter. Aliqui unius consonantiae suauitatem & perfectionem, aliqui alterius extollentes. Tum uero, quod difficilius est, rationem huius rei indagantes, quam haud dubie musici huius temporis non sunt inuenturi, nisi graece docti, ad bibliothecam summi Pontificis accedant, ubi (ut dictum est) multi sunt in re musica optimi libri. Ceterum hoc ausim dicere, nostros Britannos musicos, maxima ingenij subtilitate (si quis acutius rem introspiciat) illas quas uocant proportionum inductiones, inuenisse, & hac una re omnem antiquitatem superasse. Sed e diuerso illud miror, magnam partem illorum nescire quod sciunt, & scire quod nesciunt.126 [... But if Galen really detected it, I think he knew as much about music as he did about the art of medicine. For this’s [sic] very similar to the subtle distinctions musicians try hard to make in the inductions of their proportions. Musicians also disagree among themselves, and subtly at that. Some extol the sweetness and perfection of one consonance, others of another. Then, with greater difficulty, they search for reasons for their opinion, which they’re never going to find unless they know Greek. They can go to the Vatican Library where, as I’ve mentioned, there’re many excellent books on music. Yet I dare say, if one looks into it closely, our British musicians have found with great subtlety of mind those things they call the inductions of proportions, and in that one thing they’ve surpassed all antiquity. But on the other hand, I’m amazed that most of them do not know what they know and know what they do not know.]

Pace’s first discussion includes mention of the fact that Thomas More learned to play the tibia (perhaps, in this case, the recorder) along with his wife. It is Pace’s recommendation that the study of music should be joined to study of one of the other liberal arts, except for those who have no inclination towards other studies. Nevertheless, as the second quoted passage demonstrates, Pace shows an awareness of certain technicalities which indicates that he knew both English and continental theoretical peculiarities.127 As the cases of Erasmus and More also demonstrate, musical skill was a welcome part of an international humanistic education, and it is possible that the frequent diplomatic missions and other travels of such men played a role in the transmission of musical knowledge and repertories. In a more general

126 Ibid., pp. 64-7. I have modified the translation slightly to render technical terms with their standard English equivalents. 127 The English use of inductiones, mentioned also by Dygon and Morley, is discussed further in Chapter 5, pp. 206-7 below.

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sense, the English humanists opened avenues for the communication of ideas and practices at a more intellectual level than was available to many. Richard Pace’s presence in Rome as a musician of mainly intellectual interests leads naturally to the issue of performances by “practical” English musicians on the Continent. Apart from the well-known and highly publicized events at which the European monarchs displayed their magnificence for each other,128 there must have been countless occasions when English and continental musicians performed for foreign audiences which have left little or no trace. Certainly in the mid-fifteenth century and for several decades thereafter, the memory of English compositional and performative styles from earlier in the century—when insular music exerted its greatest influence on the Continent—was fresh enough to invite comparisons with more recent styles.129 The famous judgment from the prologue of Johannes Tinctoris’s Proportionale musices criticizes English musicians in modern times (the 1470s) for not having moved on to newer styles like the French: “isti, quod miserrimi signum est ingenii, una semper et eadem compositione utuntur.”130 Presumably Tinctoris had access to new English music, or at least what he thought was new, meaning that it continued to circulate and receive performance. Earlier in the same text, Tinctoris uses a descriptive phrase for English style which was to become nearly a standard expression for foreigners reporting on English music: “Anglici ... iubilare ... dicantur.” Already in Gaffurius’s Practica musice (printed in 1496) the reference to “jubilating” is repeated: “Anglici enim concinendo iubilant;” Gaffurius in turn probably served as the source for a similar statement by Aaron.131 It seems that with such pronouncements, the witnesses hoped to give an idea of English characteristics in singing style, but the term “jubilare” has little in the way of specific implications. 128 The reports of such events and the reputations of the royal households were by no means unknown to the musicians of the period, and surely influenced their patterns of employment. Note, for example, Adam von Fulda’s list of secular magnates and powers which show the greatest support for music: “Quid Christianissimus Francorum rex, ac reges Angliae, Arragoniae, Hispaniae, Hungariae, Apuliae, multique principes, praelatique insignes, Civitates liberae, per Italiam, Galliam ac Germaniam pro nostro aevo musicis fecerunt, et faciunt, nemo est qui nesciat. [There is no one who does not know what the Most-Christian king of the French, and the kings of England, Aragon, Spain, Hungary, and Puglia, along with many princes and distinguished prelates, and the free cities throughout Italy, France, and Germany in our time have done, and continue to do, for musicians.]” (Martin Gerbert [ed.], Scriptores Ecclesiastici de Musica Sacra Potissimum [3 vols, St Blaise, 1784; repr. Hildesheim, 1963], vol. 3, p. 338; hereafter GSM). 129 A recent re-evaluation of Martin le Franc’s statements on the contenance angloise by Margaret Bent supports the conclusion that the influence of English music in the first half of the century was as much a matter of performance as of compositional style. Margaret Bent, ‘The Musical Stanzas in Martin le Franc’s Le champion des dames’, in John Haines and Randall Rosenfeld (eds), Music and Medieval Manuscripts: Paleography and Performance (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2004), pp. 91-127. 130 Johannes Tinctoris, Opera theoretica, ed. Albert Seay, CSM 22 (2 vols, Rome, 197578), vol. 2a, p. 10. 131 Franchinus Gaffurius, Practica Musice (Milan, 1496; repr. New York, 1979), sig. kvr. On Aaron’s version, see Bonnie J. Blackburn, ‘Music and Festivities at the Court of Leo X: A Venetian View’, EMH, 11 (1992): 14.

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A statute from King’s College, Cambridge in the fifteenth century links the word with the playing of organs, and one may also be reminded of the melismatic jubilus of Alleluia chants.132 The idea, however, that the term refers to the “florid” style of composition represented in the Eton choirbook is not unproblematic, particularly if we consider the latest English music which was certainly known to Tinctoris in the 1470s: namely, works of Frye, Bedyngham, Morton, and others which bear little resemblance to compositions in the highly decorated style commonly treated as characteristic of later fifteenth-century English music. It must be noted as well that these references are intended to apply to national styles of performance, which does not imply that the underlying theoretical concepts and structures are different; as Johannes Gallicus warns, “Non sunt docti quidem sed insensati qui putant unam esse Gallorum musicam et unam Anglorum vel Theuthonicorum, unamve Graecorum ac Italorum seu quarumvis aliarum nationum” (“Those who think that there is one music of the French, and one music of the English or the Germans, or one music of the Greeks and the Italians, or of any other nations, are not learned, but unintelligent”).133 One vehicle for the continuing knowledge of English performing styles outside royal occasions must have been the various English musicians who chose to work permanently or semi-permanently at continental centers. It is absolutely impossible to have an idea of how many such performers and composers existed in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, given both the scattered survival of lists of musicians’ names and the usual lack of specification of nationality; there is only one instance, for example, of a Burgundian court document naming Robert Morton as an Englishman.134 Burgundian chapel singers under Philip the Good and Charles the Bold included, along with Morton, the Englishman John Stewart, who died in the 1470s and left a family on the Continent.135 The important case of the theorist John Hothby, who worked in Lucca from the late 1460s until 1486, will be discussed in Chapter 5. In Milan, documents noted by Gregory Lubkin show that an English singer named Anna was hired for the wedding of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza in 1468. “La Inglese cantarina” brought a number of others with her, including a tenorista, who were lodged for several months at the home of Donato Cagnola, one of the permanent ducal singers; apparently the troupe was well paid by the duke.136 The English singer, moreover, had been sent by the marquis of Monferrato and returned thereafter to her home country.137 That this sojourn is representative of a more general interest in English singing by Italian magnates illustrated by a 1471 letter of Galeazzo Sforza to Edward IV concerning the recruitment of musicians: 132 Carpenter, Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Universities, p. 91. 133 Charles Edmond Henri de Coussemaker (ed.), Scriptorum de Musica Medii Aevi Nova Series a Gerbertina Altera (4 vols, Paris, 1864-76; repr. Hildesheim, 1963), vol. 4, p. 393. The issue of national differences in music theory will be discussed further in Chapter 5. 134 David Fallows, ‘Morton, Robert’, NG2, vol. 17, p. 158. 135 Ballard, Anglo-Burgundian Relations, p. 316. 136 Gregory Lubkin, Review of Paul A. Merkley and Lora L.M. Merkley, Music and Patronage in the Sforza Court, in JAMS, 55 (2002): 350-51. 137 Paul A. Merkley and Lora L. M. Merkley, Music and Patronage in the Sforza Court (Turnhout, 1999), p. xxvi.

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“Since we have decided to adorn our chapel with some perfect musicians and singers, who will satisfy us with song and music, we have ordered the venerable Raynerius, our musician, and Aloysius our familiar, to go across the Alps and to England in diligent search of the singers and musicians necessary [...] for our chapel [...].”138 During the last third of the fifteenth century, a “misser Gulielmo inglese” was engaged as a chaplain in Antwerp for the Duke of Ferrara, and a Robertus de Anglia who was magister cantus at San Petronio in Bologna in 1467-72 may be the same as Robertus Anglicus, a singer documented at the papal chapel in 1485 and 1492.139 With regard to the Antwerp chaplain, perhaps there is something to be made of the appearance in July 1506 of a “Messire Guillame Lengles” on the list of Philip the Handsome’s chapel, several months after the archduke’s shipwreck in England.140 At a later period, there is the example of a “Joannes Inglese” who entered service in the Roman Cappella Giulia sometime after 1514, listed in 1526.141 It appears that English singing, while assuredly an exotic element in early sixteenth-century Rome, was not completely unknown in the higher ecclesiastical circles. An August 1520 concert put on by Pope Leo X featured musicians of various nationalities, including boys “who sang in the English manner.”142 It is not difficult to imagine that English singing might have reached the ears of numerous cardinals and their retinues on the occasions when Cardinal Bainbridge brought them to services at the English Hospice church of St Thomas (for example, on the feast of St Thomas in 1511 when seven cardinals were in attendance).143 More picturesque is the case of Thomas Cromwell arranging to have a “threeman song” performed for Leo X when in Rome around 1517 with Geoffrey Chamber, as related above—if the singing was not a professional affair, but the personal product of Cromwell and his companions, it was still enough to gain an audience with the head of the western Church.144 Conclusions It may or may not be true that “English music around 1500 was as isolated from the continent as it ever was.”145 What the historical documentation demonstrates, however, is that, in absolute terms, there can be no question of a complete disconnection. For commercial and political reasons, England’s ties with the rest of Europe were of vital importance, and it is only natural that some evidence has survived of the scholarly, artistic, and musical contacts which resulted. The rapidly shifting political circumstances in England of the later fifteenth century did not occasion any closing-off of artistic and cultural contact with the outside world. The merchants continued their business, foreigners settled around the trading centers, teachers and 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145

Ibid., p. 60. Brian Trowell, ‘Faburden and Fauxbourdon’, MD, 13 (1959): 64 and 68-9 n. 62. The chapel list appears in Doorslaer, ‘La chapelle musicale’, pp. 53-4. Blackburn, ‘Music and Festivities’, pp. 12-13. Ibid., p. 5. Chambers, Cardinal Bainbridge, p. 80. See pp. 1-2 above. David Fallows, ‘The Fayrfax Manuscript’, MT, 117 (1976): 127.

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students crossed the channel in both directions spreading and receiving the gospel of humanistic learning. For the aristocratic segments of society, the more consciously cultivated influence of foreign cultural models was linked closely to the imitation of the monarch’s household, and therefore to the political necessities of particular families establishing themselves as dynasties. From the earliest years of Henry VII’s reign, activities were afoot at the English court which were meant to return the island kingdom to its place as a major European power, and to consolidate the position of the Tudors at the head of that power. Art, music, and ceremonial played significant roles in the articulation of the king’s political designs. The traditional depiction of Henry VII as a calculating miser who presided over a desolate household and cared little for pleasures and entertainment is in need of modification, not merely because it undervalues the artistic environment of that king’s court and overemphasizes his son’s role as an innovator in this regard. Equally importantly, this image of Henry VII and his household ignores the very real political necessity of ceremonial and spectacle, something which the first Tudor monarch knew quite well and was willing to pay for—international entertainments on the scale of the 1501 reception and wedding of Katherine of Aragon would not be seen by the English court again until the Field of Cloth of Gold over a decade into Henry VIII’s reign. The more excited pace of entertainments at court during the first decade after the accession of Henry VIII can undoubtedly be matched to reports of the king’s musicality and his boundless enthusiasm for dancing, hunting, fighting, and feasting. But we must remain aware that in many cases, particularly at major diplomatic occasions, it was no fanciful personal whim of the king that occasioned the extraordinary amount of effort put into entertainment and spectacle. Such display was a requisite element of lordship and a representation of the kingdom to the many watching (and reading) eyes, as Henry recognized as well when he regularly sent his own trumpeters to accompany diplomatic parties to the Continent. Moreover, there was an element of personal contact on these occasions, where for example Privy Purse records are to be read as documentation of payments offered directly by the monarch. Further examples of such irregular rewards to foreign musicians, as well as indications of Henry VIII’s personal involvement in the makeup of his musical household, will be discussed in the following chapter, turning to the financial records of the court and its permanent staff. In considering the growth of a body of foreign minstrels employed at the early Tudor court, an awareness of numerous factors explored above will prove to be of consequence: the changing political conditions of the court, the personal tastes of the monarch and those around him, the circumstances of major international meetings and less elaborate celebrations, and the social environment outside the court, where foreign musicians finally made lives for themselves.

Chapter 3

Building a Foreign Musical Establishment at the Early Tudor Court It is by now a well-known fact that Henry VIII imported a significant number of musicians from the Continent over the decades of his reign, to serve at public and private occasions of varying character and levels of formality. What is less often noted, and of crucial importance in understanding the changes which took place in the royal musical establishment during the early Tudor period, is that the process was well under way by the time Henry VIII took the throne, having begun in earnest under Henry VII.1 If several minstrels with foreign or foreign-sounding names can be detected in the records pertaining to Richard III and Edward IV, nevertheless they can still be viewed as exceptions;2 considering the roster of musicians present at the funeral of Henry VII in 1509, on the other hand, foreigners have at least an equal footing with the Englishmen outside the Chapel Royal.3 On a musical level, it is clear that the first Tudor king maintained and augmented his household to match the character and importance of his international obligations and affairs examined in the preceding chapter. The employment of foreign musicians in England, both in preparation for and resulting from those international contacts, was no accidental occurrence in the development of a household meant to stand on an equal footing with any of the great courts of the Continent. Indeed, the points of similarity in the development and maintenance of the English and French royal musical establishments in the early sixteenth century confirm on a musical level what we know from so many historical reports: that the Tudors and their neighbors were keeping a close eye on each other in every element of spectacle and image-making.4 The policy of the young Henry VIII with regard to musical service and entertainment, much as it

1 The point is made as well in Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, p. 59. 2 For example, John de Peler, William Ducheman, Lyefart Willerkyn, Richard Delamare, and Janyn; see Richard Rastall, ‘The Minstrels of the English Royal Households, 25 Edward I - 1 Henry VIII: An Inventory’, RMARC, 4 (1964): 32-5. On the structure of Edward IV’s instrumental musical establishment (considered here only indirectly), see most recently Helen Marsh Jeffries, ‘Job Descriptions, Nepotism, and Part-time Work: The Minstrels and Trumpeters of the Court of Edward IV of England’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 12 (2003): 165-77, and the clarifications and bibliography in Richard Rastall, ‘The Minstrels and Trumpeters of Edward IV: Some Further Thoughts’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 13 (2004): 163-9. 3 RECM, vol. 7, pp. 25-7. 4 On the musical establishments of the French royal court, see Christelle Cazeaux, La musique à la cour de François Ier (Paris, 2002).

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reflects a personal enthusiasm and involvement which was new to the English court of this period, was at the base a continuation of his father’s plans. Between the start and end of the period under examination, not only did numerous important changes occur in the musical establishment of the English monarchs, but likewise in the keeping of records necessary for the administration of such an institution. The accounts for the first years of Henry VII’s reign are considerably sketchier than those from the end, which can be associated with an increase in the size and complexity of the households and their attendant staffs; musically, at least, there was a nearly constant growth in the number of permanent court instrumentalists throughout the reigns of the first two Tudor kings. In terms of changes in the types of documentation, a certain amount of regularization occurred, and this fact has its effects on the interpretation of musicians’ functions and status. Nearly all of the minstrels of Henry VII and Henry VIII were paid through the Treasurer of the Chamber, the exceptions being those who held special status and duties.5 As noted by Pearsall, however, Henry VII’s Chamber accounts contain a significant number of irregular payments which indicate that those documents also include the monarch’s Privy Purse rewards, later kept separate from the wage lists; the good fortune of this survival is underlined by the very small amount of Privy Purse documentation which now exists for other royal figures.6 As a result of the varied state of the court records (due both to losses of documents and to changes of format and informational content in the surviving accounts), a great deal of caution is necessary in determining how the musical activities at court changed over time. Variation of documentation from one period to another can suggest differences in court musical life which turn out to be illusory, and similarly, formulaic elements of the records can obscure real developments which occurred. In many cases, nevertheless, considerable specific information is available to aid in tracing the history of the foreign musicians and ensembles as they came to the court, and it is largely through the combination of official court records with irregular personal reports that a picture of the true extent of a foreign musical presence at court emerges. The discussion which follows offers a number of separate histories of musical developments at the Tudor court, considering court personnel in divisions according to their main functions or ensembles. Reference works such as Ashbee and Lasocki’s Biographical Dictionary and the Records of English Court Music series have already carried out the extremely useful and important tasks of collecting data chronologically and alphabetically, and were an invaluable aid in the execution of the present investigation. Studies which take account of individual biographies in conjunction with court ensemble groupings have been rare but worthwhile, providing the impetus for tracing the histories of separate groups of minstrels here.7 While the knowledge of ensemble composition can help to clarify the patterns in the surviving records of court life, there is also a considerable gray area in the delineation of minstrels’ functions, particularly for certain types of players. As Pearsall has noted, 5 See pp. 83 and 95 below. 6 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, pp. 27-34. See also RECM, vol. 7, pp. 360-82. 7 See, for example, Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, especially pp. 36-8 and 58-77; and Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, pp. 116-81.

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all of the king’s instrumentalists fell under the general rubric of “minstrels,” and it is only in the 1520s that the wage records begin to show a consistent effort to divide the musicians into categories.8 For the entire reign of Henry VII, therefore, and at least the first decade of that of Henry VIII, matching minstrels’ names to particular functions is often an indirect process of formulating cross-references within the records, sometimes without firm results. Among the only exceptions to this rule of ambiguity is the group of trumpeters, who from the beginning display a certain degree of separation from the other musicians; similarly, the sackbut and shawm players are not often found in the records connected with other roles. String and other still minstrels, on the other hand, are often noted with very little in the way of further description, making it difficult to pinpoint those musicians who specialized in particular instruments. While in some ways frustrating, this situation must also be seen as symptomatic of the degree of generalization common among early Tudor minstrels—as indeed among minstrels throughout Europe. Numerous musicians are mentioned in different entries in the records as players of different instruments, sometimes of greatly varied types and even at a fairly late date.9 Moreover, and more to the point for the present purposes, some uncertainty must inevitably cover the matter of exactly which musicians were foreigners. In many cases, the foreign origins of names in the records is confirmed by external documentation, such as letters of denization. On the other hand, the frequent anglicization of names in English court documents may hide more instances of foreign musicians than are detectable. Generally, references to “strangers” have been taken to refer to foreigners, according to early sixteenth-century usage, although there are cases where the term was used in connection with smaller entities than a country of origin: cities or households, for example.10 Similarly, the consistent use of a foreign version of a first name is taken here as evidence that a musician was not English (for example, Guyllam instead of William). Where English musicians have been included in the discussions below in order to provide context and comparison for the foreign cases, they are indicated as such. Bracketed dates below, unless otherwise indicated, refer to an individual’s years of service at the English court. An alphabetical list of the foreign musicians in court service during this period is provided in Appendix A.3.

8 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 97. 9 Consider the example of Pierre de la Planche, mostly known at the English court as a tabarer, but specified in one entry from the later 1530s as a sackbut player; BDECM, vol. 2, p. 898. 10 On “strange” as meaning “foreign,” see Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 160. In a petition of the rebec player Thomas Evans, the word “stranger” seems to refer merely to the musician’s recent arrival in London (BDECM, vol. 1, pp. 391-2); and in the household book of Henry Percy, Fifth Earl of Northumberland, the term is used consistently to denote any visitor to the household (The Regulations and Establishment of the Houshold of Henry Algernon Percy, the Fifth Earl of Northumberland, at his Castles of Wresill and Lekinfield in Yorkshire: Begun Anno Domini M.D.XII., ed. T. Percy [London, 1770]).

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Trumpeters As noted by Pearsall, the trumpets formed the oldest standard ensemble at the Tudor court, musicians having been employed in this service long before the accession of Henry VII.11 They served ceremonial functions with great frequency, being called upon to play at almost all significant court occasions, as well as in a daily role to mark entrances of the sovereign and other actions. Along with the sackbut and shawm ensembles, the trumpeters were regularly present at the major royal mass celebrations which marked diplomatic and domestic occasions, and in this functional aspect the English monarchs were keeping up a tradition still observed equally by the great foreign rulers.12 The matter of what sorts of music the trumpets performed, however, is illuminated by scant evidence. Although the slide trumpet was in existence in the fifteenth century, it seems likely that the large trumpet groups at the European courts used mainly the standard straight and S-shaped instruments which could play only notes of the harmonic series.13 The main surviving source for information on the style of sixteenth-century trumpet fanfares is the writing of Cesare Bendinelli (from 1614), detailing what was by then a traditional way of playing, involving counterpoint over bass drones.14 This evidence, along with the clear separation of function between trumpeters and other musicians,15 would seem to argue against their importance in the transmission of central musical styles. On the other hand, such a firm distinction is not necessarily borne out historically. The integration of at least some of the trumpets into the less purely functional musical life of the court is demonstrated by examples such as the role of Johannes de Peler both in the corps of trumpets and (later exclusively) in the comparatively new sackbut and shawm ensemble at Henry VII’s court; or the mention of Francis Knyf/Franco, serjeant of the trumpets under Henry VIII, in the will of the organist and composer Benedictus de Opiciis as a “trusty and ... faythefull frende” (see below). Although the first document to carry a complete list of the trumpeters comes only from 1502-03, several of the players are mentioned by name in earlier documents. From these scattered references one learns that a continental presence existed already among the royal trumpeters before the accession of Henry VII. Peter de Casa Nova, first found in the livery list for the coronation of Richard III in 1483, 11 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 122. 12 Note, for example, the references to French royal trumpeters performing in similar functions in Cazeaux, La musique à la cour, p. 108. 13 E.H. Tarr, ‘Trumpet’, NG2, vol. 25, p. 830. 14 Ibid. Westfall (Patrons and Performance, pp. 67-8) seems to equate musical illiteracy, improvisation, and learning through apprenticeship with “amateurish” performance by “poorly trained tooters,” arguing that these cannot have been attributes and practices of heraldic minstrels. Modern musicological research, on the other hand, has shown that the prevalence of such practices at the period (even among singers) in no way precluded the greatest sophistication and performative skill. See, for example, Rob C. Wegman, ‘From Maker to Composer: Improvisation and Musical Authorship in the Low Countries, 14501500’, JAMS, 49 (1996): 409-79; and Margaret Bent, ‘Resfacta and Cantare Super Librum’, JAMS, 36 (1983): 371-91. 15 Noted also by Pearsall: Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 97.

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was made marshal of the trumpeters early on in the reign of Henry VII, and stayed in service until at least 1514.16 After his presumed retirement, Casa Nova stayed in London, and it is a 1520s valuation list from St Katherine’s which designates him explicitly as a “stranger.”17 The aforementioned Johannes de Peler was another of the trumpets who pre-dated the Tudor monarchy, resident since at least 1482.18 In the 22nd year of Edward IV’s reign (4 March 1482-83), a William “Ducheman” was one of the trumpets.19 When Henry VII came to the throne, hiring of foreign trumpeters continued as the presence of permanent foreign minstrels of other types at court began to grow, and Henry VIII in no way reversed the trend. Even in cases where it can be difficult to derive secure conclusions about personal origins from the surviving name lists, a number of them are clearly not British minstrels: Gerarde de Floure (-1528-32-), Genyn Lambert (-1513-14-), Jacques de Lanoa (-1500-14), Jenyn Restanes (-1513-). For some, documentation exists revealing their alien status: Benedict Browne, who was hired for the 1513 French campaign, finally succeeded Francis Knyf as serjeant-trumpeter in 1541, receiving denization papers shortly thereafter which name his native city as Pavia.20 From the name alone as it has come down to the present day, of course, there would have been no reason to suspect foreign origin. Francis Knyf himself (1511-c. 1541), when acting as executor of the will of Benedictus de Opiciis, was recorded in the Act Book of the Commissary Court under the name “Franciscus Franco,” which must be the form of his surname which he gave to the English scribe (since the will itself uses the “Knyf” version of his name).21 During the first years of his service, Franco spent a significant amount of time on journeys to the Continent, attending upon noble ambassadors in 1511 and 1512 (and presumably in the king’s company for the 1513 war). In this regard, it is perhaps significant that a “Francisco de Francis” was involved in a monetary dispute in Antwerp, along with his brother Domenico (sons of Bernard) and several others, beginning in July 1512, when Franco was away from England giving attendance “opon my Lord Marquis ov[er] ye se.”22 The dispute carried on into the next year, with Francisco and Domenico appearing before the Antwerp magistrates both alone and together at various points on account of their travels. If this Francisco is the same as Francis Knyf (noting particularly that Opiciis was living in Antwerp during these years), we have here confirmation of the Italian background which the “Franco” form of the trumpeter’s name already suggests. John de Cecil is documented as a Spanish trumpeter in the service of Philip the Handsome in the 1490s.23 After leaving that position and returning home in 1496, he appeared in England at the beginning of the next decade, where he was issued 16 BDECM, vol. 1, p. 234. 17 RECM, vol. 8, p. 5. 18 BDECM, vol. 2, pp. 875-6. 19 Rastall, ‘The Minstrels of the English Royal Households’, p. 32. 20 BDECM, vol. 1, p. 198. 21 On Opiciis, see pp. 87-95 below. The will and related documents are transcribed in Appendix A.2. 22 AntSAV 1234, fols 143r, 147r, 157r, 237v-238r; RECM, vol. 7, pp. 200-01. 23 BDECM, vol. 1, p. 238.

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with a banner in January 1501/2. It is probably no coincidence that Cecil’s date of hiring came the month after the likely departure of most of Katherine of Aragon’s minstrels;24 the likelihood of his connection with the Spanish court is strengthened by the fact that he was one of two trumpets appointed to accompany Lord Darcy to the court of Ferdinand of Aragon in the summer of 1511. Peter Francis (-1528-65) is probably the “Peter Fraunce” designated as a foreign trumpeter in Dartford, Kent, c.1547-52.25 A name such as “Dominic Justinian” (-1503-09-) surely points to Italian origin, and further trumpeters who may or may not have been foreigners include “Adrian” (surname unknown, -1503-09-), Frank Bocard (-1503-09-), John Furness (sometimes called “John de Fournes,” -1511-37),26 Geoffrey Pleasance (-1513-14-) and “Pring” (or “Fring,” known only from the 1502/3 livery list). More than any other ensemble at court, the trumpets (as far as can be determined from the occasional surviving lists of names) displayed a constant combination of English and foreign players. The group was also the earliest to integrate foreigners into its ranks, doing so at a time before the documentable existence of the other homogeneous instrumental ensembles at court. In all likelihood, this characteristic can be connected with the function of the trumpets in diplomatic exchanges and in accompanying royal figures on foreign journeys.27 At no point during the period under review does the balance of the group seem to have swung too far from its normal constitution of mainly Englishmen (or Britons) with several continental players—although it must be borne in mind that the documentation of trumpeters’ names is even patchier than that for most other musical groups at the court.28 The Sackbut and Shawm Ensembles The irregularity of the documentation of musicians at the court of Henry VII and earlier prevents determination of the composition and starting point of the earliest sackbut and shawm ensemble at court; it is striking nonetheless that the first surviving list with names of sackbut and shawm players (from 1502/3) reveals a group composed of foreign players.29 This livery list for the funeral of Elisabeth of York divides the musicians into broad groups, among which is a fully-formed five-piece sackbut and shawm ensemble—a group entirely on par with international trends, even progressive.30 The first surviving record of the sackbuts at court dates 24 See the December 1501 rewards in RECM, vol. 7, p. 173. 25 BDECM, vol. 1, p. 439. 26 This is presumably not the same man as the still minstrel John Furness (-1490-1509-). 27 Stevens, Music and Poetry, p. 236. The reverse case (a trumpeter from a foreign royal household being hired on during a visit to England) probably holds for John de Cecil, mentioned above. 28 For a view of the composition of the trumpet corps at the end of Henry VIII’s reign, see the list from Edward VI’s coronation transcribed in RECM, vol. 7, p. 109. 29 RECM, vol. 7, p. 20. The “Sakbusshes and shalmeys” listed are John de Peler, William Burgh, Hans Naille, Edward Peler, and Adryan Wilmorth. 30 For discussions of wind ensemble size at this period, see Shaw, ‘A Five-piece Wind Band’, pp. 63-4; Howard Mayer Brown and Keith Polk, ‘Instrumental Music, c.1300-c.1520’,

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from 1495, in a payment from Henry VII’s chamber accounts to four players.31 In the very first years of the sixteenth century, however, normally just three sackbuts received payment.32 From at least this point, and during the early decades of the sixteenth century, the English kings used this loud ensemble as one of the regular groups at courtly events, and recruited actively from the north of the Continent to fill it. It should be recalled that in the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber, in which regular payments as well as hiring warrants appear, the wage lists do not divide the named musicians into categories until the 1520s; the compartmentalization, however, is real before this period. The relatively firm division into ensembles at courtly events can be witnessed most clearly in the miscellaneous and infrequent livery lists, which are consistent in their categorization and assign different colors and types of clothing to different groups of minstrels; likewise, the New Year’s Day rewards given annually by the king were always distributed by group.33 The original loud ensemble on the lists, usually named “Sakbusshes and shalmeys,” received the designation “Sakbuddes & Shalmes of the Prve Chambr” at the coronation of Henry VIII, pointing specifically to regular service in the supposedly indoor, semi-private environment of the Privy Chamber. The names which appear in the 1502/3 livery list are not all new to the court records, hinting perhaps at a gradual development of the ensemble in the late fifteenth century. Johannes de Peler had been at the royal court since 1482 (as a trumpeter, also mentioned simply as a minstrel), pre-dating the Tudor period, and his son Edward was in royal employment by December 1502.34 Hans Nagel and a companion, Hans Broen, are described as “joueurs de sacqubutes du roy d’Angleterre” in a 1501 payment record from the court of Philip the Handsome; as Broen does not appear in the 1502/3 list, he had presumably left or died and been replaced by then.35 Since at that point the regular English documentation only records the number of sackbut players without names, the Netherlandish account should serve as a reminder that many trips by musicians to and from the Continent at this period managed to escape surviving records. It was probably in late 1504 that Nagel left English royal service (since the number of loud minstrels in the ensemble went down to four then), but not necessarily the country: he appears in a list of 8 June 1506 attached again to the court of Philip the Handsome, who had just been shipwrecked in England on the way to Spain and entertained by Henry VII.36 Nagel entered into contact once more with Henry VIII in the 1510s, when he served, along with Petrus Alamire, as a spy gathering information on the activities of Richard de la Pole (see pp. 40-41 in Reinhard Strohm and Bonnie J. Blackburn (eds), Music as Concept and Practice in the Late Middle Ages, The New Oxford History of Music, III/1 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 139-44. 31 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 127. This is also the first regular payment in the Chamber accounts for Henry VII’s nine trumpets and three string minstrels (RECM, vol. 7, p. 153). 32 BDECM, vol. 1, p. 196. 33 RECM, vol. 1, pp. 19-20, 21, 25-7, and 27-9; Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 84; for New Year’s Day entries, see RECM, vol. 7, pp. 154-251. 34 BDECM, vol. 2, pp. 875-6. 35 BDECM, vol. 1, pp. 195-6. 36 BDECM, vol. 2, p. 817; see p. 34 above.

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above). The last two members of the 1502/3 ensemble form another pair, Guilliam van de Burgh and his apprentice Adrian Wilmorth (also called Willeme, so perhaps the surname is merely a reference to his master).37 Burgh was at court at least as early as 1495/6, when mention was made in a payment record of his journey “over the See into Flaund[ers];” perhaps also an earlier payment “to Guillim for flotes with a case” indicates his presence by 6 April 1492.38 Adrian cannot be specifically cited in court records before the 1502/3 funeral. The gradual and scattered initial documentation of the wind band members is typical for the first decades of the century. The comings and goings of musicians at court brought about steady changes in the make-up of the loud ensemble, but there remained a group of four to six players for many years; it seems that there was a definite concern to replace players and retain a workable ensemble, even if it was not rigidly fixed in size. After a gap in recorded payments from late 1502 to early 1505, the group was steady at four players (Nagel having left during the gap period) until the hiring of Alexander Manseno (sackbut) and John de Padua (shawm) in 1506.39 John de Padua remained only to the end of 1507, and Adrian Wilmorth left at the same time, reducing the group again to four players (three for several months in 1508, when Manseno appears to have been away).40 On 6 July 1511, a warrant appointed “pyro de Thoulouse, a mynstrell shalmewer;” at the end of that year, the (English?) sackbut Henry Cross began receiving payment several months before the permanent 1512 departure of Johannes de Peler, and so was presumably acting as a replacement.41 The addition of James Manseno (likely a relation of Alexander) in late 1512 also came shortly before Guilliam van de Burgh and Edward de Peler finally ended their service in 1513.42 The coincidence of dating with the king’s French campaign raises the likelihood that the latter two musicians took the journey as an opportunity to move permanently to the Continent, as suggested by Pearsall.43 Upon returning home to England, the four-member ensemble dropped to three with the loss of Piers de Toulouse after April 1514. It was near the end of 1515 that Henry VIII made an effort to acquire a second sackbut ensemble, putting out an invitation for Hans Nagel and his players to come to England. Although Nagel himself ended up staying on the Continent, four of his companions arrived at the start of March and began to receive payment at the English court on 1 April 1516 (two simultaneous initial payments covering both March and April), at a time when the king was making other additions to his musical staff as well; as suggested above (pp. 40-41), the introduction of so many players to the court establishment at once is likely to be related to the king’s preparations for

37 BDECM, vol. 1, pp. 216-17; vol. 2, p. 1157. 38 Listed in RECM, vol. 7, p. 151. This could equally well be Prince Arthur’s lutenist, discussed below. 39 Payments for this period appear in RECM, vol. 7, pp. 176-81. 40 RECM, vol. 7, pp. 186-8. 41 RECM, vol. 7, pp. 197, 200. 42 RECM, vol. 7, p. 204. 43 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 48.

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an especially magnificent set of entertainments and family reunion in May 1516.44 The new sackbut players were given a higher salary than the members of the older ensemble (at £33 6s 8d per annum, considerably higher than the “full-pay” wage of £2445), and served Henry VIII for a number of years. Henry van Arten left between 1521 and later 1525, while his presumed relation John van Arten stayed until at least late 1537. Claise (Nicholas) Forceville remained in service until his death in August 1540, very probably leaving behind a widow in London; around 1530, Forceville also travelled at least once to Nuremberg on business for the king (including the purchase of “a bumbard for ye kingis grace”).46 The last member of the new Flemish ensemble was Jan van Wincle/Winkel, a player who had served along with Hans Nagel in the retinue of Philip the Handsome from at least 1506, and afterwards at the court of Margaret of Austria (where Nagel and Van Winkel are reported to have sung and played polyphony daily in the Office and Mass). Van Winkel was in Antwerp in 1520-21, when Albrecht Dürer gave him a gift of a Passion drawing; he remained in Henry VIII’s service until sometime in the 1530s.47 By the latter half of 1517, the only member of the older sackbut ensemble left at court was Alexander Manseno, whose salary was raised to match the other sackbuts in 1520-21, and who appears to have been on close terms with the new Flemish musicians (that is, he was transferred to the newer ensemble): his undated will (proved in 1542) mentions John van Arten, Claise Forceville, and Lewes van Winkel (a relation of Jan van Winkel and sackbut player who came to the English court in the 1520s).48 After the Treasurer of the Chamber accounts break off in 1521 and resume briefly in 1525, the sackbuts are incorporated into the lists with the rest of the musicians.49 If Nagel’s Flemish ensemble gradually replaced the older sackbuts in the later 1510s, the same process seems to have repeated itself in the next decades. Sometime during the gap in the accounts between 1521 and 1525, Henry VIII acquired the services of a set of Italian sackbut players, after which the northern ensemble became “the kinges olde sagbuttes.”50 The surviving monthly wage list from Michaelmas 1525 not only shows that Lewes van Winkel has replaced Henry van Arten, but also includes the six new players in the sackbut list: John de Antonia, Alvisy de 44 BDECM, vol. 1, pp. 28-30, 436-37; vol. 2, pp. 1160-61. For the other hirings at this time, see pp. 87-93 and 95 below. On the retroactive nature of the first April payment, see RECM, vol. 7, p. 222 (“incipiente primo die marcij”). It may be in connection with these men that a payment was issued on 15 March for gowns for “straungers that cam from themprour,” since the sackbuts were still at that point in their “trial period” (LonBL 21481, fol. 216v). 45 On the wages, see Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, pp. 99-115. 46 BDECM, vol. 1, p. 437. “Bombard” was also the name of a type of cannon, but the price of £3 6s 8d would be altogether absurd for a weapon which shot balls weighing 260 lb and required 24 strong horses to transport; by way of comparison, Henry VIII’s “twelve apostles” (which were smaller than bombards) cost £2 per 100 lb, and weighed over 5000 lb each on average; Cruickshank, Henry VIII, pp. 66-7. 47 Schreurs, ‘Petrus Alamire’, p. 27 n. 63; BDECM, vol. 2, pp. 1160-61. 48 BDECM, vol. 2, pp. 759-60. 49 RECM, vol. 7, pp. 253-4. 50 As specified in New Year’s Day reward lists; see, for example, RECM, vol. 7, p. 255. The Italian group is the “newe sagbutes.”

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Blasia, Mark Antonio Petala, Peregrine Simon, Ippolito de Salvador, and Frances de Salvador.51 This fresh ensemble enjoyed a long service at court, and underwent precisely the same manner of shifts in membership as the first group. Meanwhile, the composition of the Olde Sagbuttes seems to have remained relatively static, and the ensemble disappeared over the course of the 1530s (with gaps in the surviving records preventing more precise conclusions); the last New Year’s Day reward list in the surviving records to include the Olde Sagbuttes is in 1540-41.52 Since this was a few months after the death of the last member, Claise Forcevall, it could be that the “New Sagbuttes” of the 1520s had received this designation at some point—but the fact that the value of the rewards (50s for the old sackbuts and £4 for the new sackbuts) never changed might suggest otherwise.53 It may well be that John and Nicholas Bolenger, sackbuts who came in late 1529 and stayed until sometime in the 1530s, were hired to increase the size of the old sackbut ensemble.54 The New Sagbuttes were fixed at five to six members until at least 1531, when the Chamber accounts again cut out. Alvisy de Blasia and Frances de Salvador, members in the original list, are missing in the next surviving wage record, from 1528; nevertheless the addition of Gasparo de Bernardo left the group at five.55 On New Year’s Day, January 1529/30, the reward list mentions “the six new sagbuttes,” through the addition in 1529 of Peter Maria.56 A “Barba John” is mentioned together with Peter Maria in a 1531 Privy Purse expense paying the two upon returning to their own countries; Lasocki suggests that this name may simply be a garbled version of that of Gasparo de Bernardo (known normally as “Jasper Bernard” in the English documents).57 At this point, it becomes considerably more difficult to distinguish which musicians belonged to which ensembles, a condition of the combination of standardized wages with sketchy accounts (and of the fact that many played multiple instruments). In December 1530, a warrant survives for liveries for six minstrels, “sagbottes,” as well as one for six French minstrels.58 Further specification comes in 1533, when new livery warrants indicate “Marke Anthony and 5 other ‘Shackbottes’” (14 December) as well as “John Sevenak and 5 other minstrels” (2 November), the latter entry making it unlikely that the French minstrels of the December 1530 warrant are one of the sackbut groups.59 The final addition to the roster of traditional wind bands at the court of Henry VIII came at the very end of the period under review, the end of the first great segment of the monarch’s reign. It appears that in 1531, four members of the Bassano family came to England as sackbut performers; these are the men who later gained 51 RECM, vol. 7, pp. 253-4. 52 RECM, vol. 7, p. 283. 53 See the ensemble namings suggested in BDECM, vol. 2, pp. 1201-2. 54 Hiring warrants in RECM, vol. 7, p. 261; see also BDECM, vol. 1, p. 169. 55 RECM, vol. 7, p. 255. The New Year’s Day reward list for 1528-29 calls them “the kinges 5 newe sagbutes.” 56 RECM, vol. 7, p. 260. See also the livery warrant of 14 December 1529: RECM, vol. 7, p. 64. 57 RECM, vol. 7, p. 369; BDECM, vol. 1, p. 627. 58 RECM, vol. 7, p. 66. 59 RECM, vol. 7, p. 70.

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much greater fame as recorder players and instrument makers. It is impossible to say whether they were made part of the sackbut consort led by Mark Antonio Petala or whether they formed yet another separate group; nor is it known how long they stayed in this position, leaving the country to return eventually in the late 1530s. The sometimes turbulent story of the Bassanos’ activities at the court is the province of later years of Henry’s reign, and played out in a court environment changed significantly by the monarch’s religious troubles.60 With the development of several sackbut ensembles having been viewed here largely through the lens of official court documentation, it should be noted that sources from outside the court offer evidence that the royal sackbut and shawm ensemble also made its presence felt in other households in the first decades of the sixteenth century. The section of Henry Percy’s household book recording rewards “Customable usede yerely To be Yeven by my Lorde to STRANGERS as PLAYERS MYNSTRAILLS or any other Strangers whatsomever they be” includes the following entry: “ITEM My Lorde useth and accustometh Yerly when his Lordship is at home to gyf to iij of the Kyngs Shames when they com to my Lorde Yerely——x s.”61 Percy, whose household accounts are a unique and valuable source of information on early sixteenth-century English musical practice outside the royal court (and often in imitation of the royal court), was not the only noble or official to receive visits from the sackbut and shawm troupe—consider the later references to visits from the king’s loud ensemble to Thomas Cromwell and “Mr. Page.”62 Similarly, a hitherto unnoted reference to Guilliam van de Burgh in the accounts of the Duke of Buckingham shows that the player was active in recruiting other Flemish musicians for English service. Burgh received 5s for “bringing two minstrels, Hance and Mathias Rosoner” to the Duke on 21 July 1508, one of the few definite references to the active recruitment of foreign minstrels outside of royal service at this period.63 The investigation above is intended in some ways as a refinement of earlier summaries of the composition of the sackbut ensembles at court.64 In place of Pearsall’s emphasis on the total number of sackbut and shawm players in employment at any given time, it seems more useful to distinguish how many were in each ensemble at any given point, and how the introduction of new groups affected the composition of existing ensembles. During the period under investigation, there were either three or four different loud ensembles which came and went with the decades. While the first of these may have formulated gradually during Henry VII’s reign, each fresh ensemble thereafter was imported as a whole unit from the 60 Lasocki with Prior, The Bassanos, p. 7. The only document to specify the Bassanos as sackbut players in England is in the accounts from Thomas Cromwell’s estate covering Michaelmas 1529 to Michaelmas 1531, in which a list of bills to be signed by the king includes one for “Lewes de Jaronyny and others the King’s sagabottes” (RECM, vol. 7, p. 415). Lasocki assumes that the four Bassanos formed part of a single court sackbut group, while Pearsall considers them as a separate four-member ensemble (Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 127). 61 The Regulations, p. 341. 62 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, pp. 131-2. 63 L&P, vol. III/1, no. 1285. 64 For example, Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, pp. 127-32.

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Table 3.1

Sackbut and shawm ensembles at the courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII Name

Dates

First ensemble (late fifteenth century to 1510s) Johannes de Peler

1482-1512

Guilliam van der Burgh

-1495-1513

Hans Nagel

-1501-1504

Hans Broen

-1501-

Edward de Peler

-1502-1513

Adrian Wilmorth

-1503-1507

Alexander Manseno

1506-1521-

John de Padua

1506-1507

Piers de Toulouse

1511-1514

Henry Cross

1511-1516

James Manseno

1512-1517 The Olde Sagbuttes (Flemish, 1516 to 1530s)

Henry van Arten

1516-1521-

Jan van Arten

1516-1537-

Claise Forceville

1516-1540

Jan van Wincle

1516-1531-

Lewes van Wincle

-1525-1531-

The Newe Sagbuttes (Italian, early/mid-1520s to 1540s) John de Antonia

-1525-1542

Alvisy de Blasia

-1525-

Mark Antonio Petala

-1525-1552

Peregrine Simon

-1525-1541[2]

Ippolito de Salvador

-1525-1531-

Frances de Salvador

-1525-

Gasparo de Bernardo

-1528-1531

Peter Maria

1529-1531

Barba John [Gasparo de Bernardo?]

-1531

The Bassanos (Venetian, 1530s) Alvise Bassano

1531-

Anthony Bassano

1531-

Jasper Bassano

1531

John Bassano

1531-

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Dates Others

John Bolenger

1529-1531-

Nicholas Bolenger

1529-1531-

Note: Dates for the Bassanos do not include the period when they returned in the late 1530s as recorder players and settled permanently in England.

Continent. With the introduction of each new ensemble (with the possible exception of the Bassano group in the 1530s), the previous ensemble was allowed to diminish, effecting a number of gradual transitions (Table 3.1 summarizes the membership of the various loud ensembles). With the continuous maintenance of these groups, the court structure could avail itself of Europe’s leading instrumental ensemble type of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. The wind bands, trained to perform the modern polyphony of the period and drawn to the English court from continental musical centers, must have shone as jewels in the crown of the king’s music at the very public occasions where they were of greatest value. Drumslades and Fifers from the 1513 French Campaign Henry VIII’s “war” of 1513 involved the hiring of a considerable amount of military personnel from Flanders and Germany, who augmented the invading troops in the absence of a permanent English army;65 in this endeavor, the English king was following a pattern established already several decades earlier at the French court during the Italian campaigns of Charles VIII.66 Among the continental recruits one finds a number of “drumslades,” marching musicians for military exercises who played large side drums, and probably fifes as well.67 During the period of preparations before the king’s departure for Calais, a number of payments were issued on 17 April for new musicians. After James Manseno, the new sackbut (see above), the first group is composed of six drumslades: “hans van Rydelyng, Melgyer van harop, Gery van ambroke, Leonard van Osbroke, Windell van Febrewyke and Stephen van frebroke.”68 These received payment for a period beginning only the day before, whereas other new drummers had been present at court already for several weeks. Richard Rutter and Bartholomew “Sowne” had been appointed on Good Friday, and George Fribourg at the very end of March; another entry pays “Jacobe pyp, van hitellery, and hans van Retherling” from the 27th of March. This last entry, containing what is apparently a second Hans van Retheling, raises questions regarding the identity of closely matched foreign names in the accounts, 65 Cruickshank, Henry VIII, p. 33. For a summary of the situation surrounding the invasion, see pp. 35-8 above. 66 On the “Tabourins Suisses” at the French royal court, see Bonime, Anne de Bretagne, pp. 59-60. The first such players on the surviving Écurie payrolls appear in October 1494, during the “First Italian War.” 67 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, pp. 125-7. 68 RECM, vol. 7, p. 204.

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which can prove to be a source of considerable uncertainty in identifying personnel. Ashbee and Lasocki’s biographical dictionary silently assumes the existence of only a single “Hans van Rydeling” who acted as a drumslade during the 1513 campaign;69 the appearance of this name twice in the 17 April payments, however, is continued in the later payments up to June, which exhibit groupings by band.70 Since the surnames of the drummers seem for the most part to be toponymical, it is not inconceivable that two musicians named Hans received the same designation in the English accounts. This reliance on toponymics for identifying musicians is, moreover, by no means confined to the records of the English court: the documentation of instrumentalists at the court of Francis I, for example, exhibits the same ambiguities concerning family and place names.71 By the interpretation suggested here of the English accounts, several further corrections to the current biographical pictures of the drumslades suggest themselves. In the original payment for the six-member group, the drummer called “Gery van Harop” is referred to as “Gery van ambroke,” which suggests that he could be the “George van ambruge” (Georg von Hamburg) who appears as a drummer in the accounts from April 1519. His first 1519 payment is shared with “Jamys piper,” who is probably the “Jacobe pyp” from 1513, although the biographical dictionary relates that 1519 is his first appearance at court.72 Another name which has been a cause of confusion is that of Bartholomew, belonging to two of the drumslades hired in the 1510s. The first is the Bartholomew Sowne who was hired on Good Friday 1513. Usually called Bartill in the accounts, he seems to have been rehired after the French campaign, appearing in a payment of 20 February 1513/14 as one of two Bartholomews, one marked merely as a drumslade and the other called “Bartylmew Fyfer.”73 The first Bartill was consistently paid together with Hans Nezumbreke (Hans of Nuremberg?), while the second received payment along with “Jacob drumslade” (the same as James Piper?) and Richard Rutter. On 12 August 1515, one of the Bartholomews was discharged at the same time as two other drumslades, and from the pattern of groupings in the accounts it seems to have been the one referred to as Piper. However, after several months, beginning with a December payment, the remaining Bartholomew started receiving the Piper designation.74 This is presumably the man who remained in royal service until the 1540s, and whose surname of Rokenbaugh appears only in documents from that decade. From inspection of the tangled identity situation, a crucial point which becomes clear is

69 BDECM, vol. 2, pp. 979, 1203-4. 70 RECM, vol. 7, pp. 204-5. 71 Cazeaux, La musique à la cour, p. 120. 72 RECM, vol. 7, p. 241; BDECM, vol. 2, p. 896. In documents from the 1520s and 1530s, James Piper is also named Jacques. 73 BDECM, vol. 1, p. 84; vol. 2, p. 971; RECM, vol. 7, pp. 207-8. Information for Sowne in the biographical dictionary appears uncharacteristically under the “———, Bartholomew” entry. 74 RECM, vol. 7, p. 220.

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Drum and fife ensembles at the court of Henry VIII

Name

Dates 1513 Ensemble 1

Hans van Retheling

1513

Melchior van Harop

1513

Gery van Ambroke

1513, 1519-21-

Leonard van Osbroke

1513

Windell van Febrewyke

1513

Stephen van Frebroke

1513 1513 Ensemble 2

Bartholomew Sowne

1513[-?]

James Piper

1513 [1519-21-?]

Hans van Retheling

1513

Richard Rutter

1513-1525-

George Fribroke

1513-1515 1510s Drumslades

George Fribroke

1513-1515

Hans van Nezumbryke

1513/14-1543

Bartholomew [Rokenbaugh]

[1513?] 1513/14-1544

Peter van Brussels

1513/14-1514/15

Michel Duche

1513/14-1515

Jacob

1513/14-1525-

Bartholomew Piper

1513/14-1515

Richard Rutter

1513-1525-

Bastian

1514/15-1516

Henry Cross

1518

Gery van Ambroke

1513, 1519-21-

James Piper

[1513?] 1519-21-

that the designation of Fifer or Piper in the accounts was an indication of function within the ensemble, not (as suggested in RECM75) a surname. Table 3.2 attempts to reconstruct the ensembles listed in the English accounts in the light of the biographical adjustments suggested here. As evidenced by the dates of service presented here, many of the drumslades were in English employment only for a short term, in particular during the French war. As noted in Chapter 2, when Henry returned to England at the end of the campaigning season in the autumn of 1513, he had every intention to continue his grand conquest the next year; these

75 RECM, vol. 7, p. xv.

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plans were only eventually abandoned with the peace and betrothal of Mary to Louis XII. It is from this point, however, that a number of drumslades and fifers were retained permanently at the court, both in readiness for future military actions and to perform in William Cornysh’s elaborate pageants, a reflection of the constantly interconnected developments in the royal household.76 Bowed String Players Before c. 1530 If the early history of the viol in general can be difficult to trace due to uncertainty about new terms with changing or unspecific meanings,77 the situation with bowed string instruments at the early Tudor court is no clearer.78 While the rebec and similar instruments had been used in Europe in varying forms for centuries, and German gigatores (fiddle players) had been known at the English court in the fourteenth century, no Tudor court minstrels were hired specifically as rebec players (and recorded as such) until Henry VIII’s reign.79 Various earlier references to instruments in entertainments and other court performances make it clear that court minstrels used bowed instruments regularly, but certainly not exclusively, and conclusions must necessarily be tentative—here we are dealing with a situation where the scattered documentary specification of individuals’ instrumental functions may well be merely nominal, as the majority of evidence from the period suggests that players were by no means specialized in single string instruments. As is the case with the trumpets and sackbuts, the May 1495 payment list from the Treasurer of the Chamber is the first grouped payment at the English court to “stringmynstrels.”80 For the latter half of the 1490s, this group continued to receive monthly payments, usually for three players, sometimes briefly two and at one point five.81 The generalized term “string minstrel” disappears from the wage records after January 1500/1, and the musicians from the 1490s accounts are difficult to connect to any names in the records. None of the players resident at this period are specified as using bowed instruments, and only one string player is recorded by name: a certain Guillaume (no surname known), named as Prince Arthur’s luter in 1498/9.82 The various separate rewards for the prince’s luter in the accounts make it unlikely that Guillaume was one of the string group. Rather, the regularity of number perhaps points to some sort of standard ensemble composition for the string 76 The revels accounts from 1514 and 1515 include a number of entries for the clothing of drumslades in disguisings, mummeries, and jousts (RECM, vol. 7, pp. 401-3). See also Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, pp. 126-7. 77 I. Woodfield, ‘Viol’, NG2, vol. 26, p. 667. 78 Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, pp. 58, 73-4. 79 On early terminology relating to the rebec and fiddle, see M. Remnant, ‘Rebec’, NG2, vol. 20, pp. 898-902. The gigatores at the court of Edward I are listed in Rastall, ‘The Minstrels of the English Royal Households’, p. 8. 80 RECM, vol. 7, p. 153. 81 RECM, vol. 7, pp. 153-70. The reference to “5 stringmynstrelx” from November 1498 may be an error, since it is accompanied by no change in payment (RECM, vol. 7, p. 164). 82 RECM, vol. 7, p. 165.

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minstrels, although the most common later-fifteenth-century professional string groupings seem to have been pairs rather than trios83—is this a case of an advanced polyphonic ensemble, or a general pool from which to draw players as occasion demanded? It would be fair in any case to guess that the “string minstrel” term encompassed both plucked and bowed instruments, but used mainly for ensemble rather than solo playing. The three sole rebec players known by name and function at the early Tudor court were hired between 1514 and 1525. The first, Thomas Evans, was an Englishman (by 1514 decidedly a minority amongst the court minstrels).84 Evans was moved in 1518 to the queen’s household, after the hiring of the new rebec “Petit” John Severnac and the tabret Glande Bourgions; these latter were presumably hired from the retinue of the French embassy celebrating the betrothal of Princess Mary to the French Dauphin, to judge by the date of their entry into service.85 Severnac was to enjoy a well-respected position among the court minstrels, appearing near the top of the wage lists from early on, and possibly acting as the leader of the French minstrels;86 he was a witness to the will of Philip van Wilder in 1552/3, and was named often in payment records pertaining to other minstrels.87 By the early 1540s, Severnac and several other musicians (including Guillaume Duvait, known to have played the rebec88) had formed a separate group at court which was recorded as playing flutes.89 The only other rebec player in the court documents is John Pyrot, who was hired before the 1525 wage list and whose name appears only through March 1528/9. Nothing further is known of Pyrot, and after his disappearance the number of rebecs in the wage lists remained at two.90 No evidence exists for rebecs forming a homogeneous ensemble at court, but presumably they participated in the older style of mixed consort; for example, the minstrel ensemble listed with complete regularity in Henry Percy’s book of accounts from the 1510s consists of lute, rebec, and tabret.91 It was only in the later years of Henry VIII’s reign that the viol consort became a group of importance equal to (and then greater than) that of the sackbut/shawm bands and the mixed still ensembles at court,92 but the instrument’s use in England 83 See Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, pp. 9-10. 84 See p. 65 n. 10 above on the use of “stranger” to refer to Evans as someone who had recently moved to London. 85 BDECM, vol. 2, pp. 965, 994-6. Ashbee and Lasocki, in these and several other places in the biographical dictionary, conflate the events of 1518 and 1520 by stating that the betrothal of Princess Mary occurred at the Field of Cloth of Gold; Pearsall (cited as the source for this information) merely states that the alliance begun in 1518 would culminate in the meeting at the Field of Cloth of Gold (Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 137). 86 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 138. 87 BDECM, vol. 2, pp. 995-6. See p. 72 above for a case of Severnac being named to represent a group of six minstrels. 88 See p. 105 below. 89 RECM, vol. 7, p. 89. 90 RECM, vol. 7, pp. 254-62; BDECM, vol. 2, p. 897. 91 The Regulations, pp. 42, 45, 48, 85, 93, 255, 257, 343-4. 92 As Stevens also concludes from the court documentation; Music and Poetry, p. 277.

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can be traced back at least to the 1510s. Holman’s contention that the members of the Van Wilder family were responsible for the viol’s introduction, based on a dating of the first mention of the instrument in court documents to 1514/15, loses force with the mention of three “mynstrelles with the vyalles” in an entertainment account from 1510/11.93 Certainly the English court had been exposed to the instrument in dealings with other courts (for example, in Philip the Handsome’s entourage during the 1505/6 shipwreck, if not among Spanish retinues even earlier).94 Whatever the case may be, the revels accounts of the 1510s give no reason to suspect that the viols used in entertainments at that point were played in a consort manner, and it would be much more likely that at this point they functioned similarly to the rebecs, that is, in mixed consort groupings. Only in the 1520s do the court documents begin to show evidence of a regular and permanent viol consort. The first minstrel at court to be named explicitly as a viol player is Matthew van Wilder, who is described in a hiring warrant of 1516/17 as a player “upon lewte and veoldes,”95 and otherwise listed solely as a lutenist. Holman considers Peter van Wilder’s 1544 testimony that he had served the English king for 29 years to be fairly solid evidence that he had been at court since 1515, but the existing documentation shows no sign of him in England before his 1518/19 hiring; nor is the point particularly crucial if one is not attempting to link the appearance of the viol in England (as well as the Henry VIII manuscript, LonBL 31922) with the Van Wilder family.96 While nearly nothing certain can be said of the family’s origin (see below, “Lutenists”), the Van Wilders were certainly active in the Low Countries in the years before their migration to England. It may be possible to identify Peter as a “Peter de Wilde” whose name is found in the Antwerp city archive concerning a land dispute with a Jan Schalnyven in 1511 and 1512 (in any case, shortly before the musician’s employment in England).97 Matthew van Wilder, who had served Philip the Handsome in the first decade of the sixteenth century, already left the English court or died in 1517.98 Therefore, even if Peter van Wilder were in Henry’s service in the mid-1510s, there would be only a short span of time during which several minstrels designated as viol players (and only as a function secondary to lute-playing) were present. At some point during the early-to-mid-1520s, two professional foreign viol players were hired. It has been suggested that Hans Highorne and Hans Hossenet were hired by Henry VIII either to prepare for the 1522 London visit of Charles V (who had kept a viol consort for at least a decade by then), or from the emperor’s retinue during the visit.99 Without any documentation of these two players before the English Chamber accounts resume in 1525, however, any speculation as to 93 Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, pp. 71-4; Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, pp. 91, 159. 94 Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, pp. 70-71. 95 RECM, vol. 7, p. 410. 96 Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, pp. 71-4. On LonBL 31922, see pp. 164-7 below. 97 AntSAV 1234, fols 112r-v, 136v. 98 BDECM, vol. 2, p. 1150. 99 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, pp. 162-3; BDECM, vol. 1, pp. 573, 594.

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their earlier employment must remain extremely tentative. Beginning in the early 1530s, certain records group Peter van Wilder with the two Flemish players (and some merely mention that there are three viol players), relating presumably to their function as a three-part viol consort, the first of its kind in English royal service, and the only one there before 1530.100 That this group at some point was solidified as a definite ensemble can be observed in a process analogous to the replacement of wind bands described above: with the hiring of a newer, larger viol group around 1540, the earlier ensemble became known in the records as the “Old Viols.” During the course of the 1540s, this group was allowed to disappear, while the modern group, described by Holman as “only the second or third of its type in northern Europe,” was the seed from which generations of royal string bands grew.101 Lutenists The histories of the lute players at the early sixteenth-century Tudor court present a varied and colorful image filled in by anecdotal details and relating to a different type of documentary survival than exists for most other court musicians. The high esteem in which most of the lutenists seem to have been held by the monarchs put them in a different class, often quite rigidly so, with payments from special sources and special functions to fulfill. While at least a small number of lutenists must have appeared in consort with other minstrels at court performances (perhaps falling silently under general rubrics such as “string minstrels;” see above), the majority of the players whose names we know either acted as tutors to royal figures, or else held other lucrative posts—and they all seem to have been foreigners. The earliest Tudor luter in the accounts is first called simply “my Lord Prince luter” for several years, beginning in 1494.102 It is only through comparison with other luters assigned to royal figures that one can presume that a single figure held this post throughout the years of its existence. In 1498/9, a reward reveals the musician’s name as “Guyllam,” and that French name is the entire extent of our knowledge of the player’s background.103 He presumably stayed with Prince Arthur until the latter’s death in April 1502, and continued to receive wages from the court through the end of March 1503.104 The “Andolf” who received payment as a luter at court in 1501 and 1501/2 may have filled in after Guillaume left for Ludlow with Arthur; however, he was hired just before the November 1501 wedding of Arthur and Katherine, and so could well have been a temporary court addition for those grand festivities.105 100 Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, p. 75; Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 162. 101 Peter Holman, ‘The English Royal Violin Consort in the Sixteenth Century’, PRMA, 109 (1982-83): 40. 102 RECM, vol. 7, pp. 153-65. 103 RECM, vol. 7, p. 165; BDECM, vol. 1, p. 527. 104 RECM, vol. 8, pp. 341-2. 105 BDECM, vol. 1, pp. 527, 23; Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 141. Andolf does not appear in the RECM extracts at all, as far as I have been able to find.

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Shortly before the wedding of Arthur and Katherine is also the time when Gilles Duwes first appears in the court records, in a clothing warrant of 2 November which calls him “Luter unto oure dearest Sone the Duke of Yorke” (that is, Henry).106 Duwes, a Frenchman by birth (and still called “alien” in 1514), had a long and particularly prosperous court career in a number of areas.107 Best known are his roles as French teacher to the Tudors (on account of which he published An Introductorie for to Lerne to Rede, to Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly around 1530 for Princess Mary), and as keeper of the king’s library at Richmond. In the latter position, as mentioned in Chapter 1, Duwes took over a job which had for many years already been held by the Fleming Quentin Poulet. In terms of musical influence, it seems reasonable to hold Duwes initially responsible for a good part of Henry VIII’s musical tastes as reflected in his own compositions (see pp. 164-5 below)—Duwes is the sole figure identifiable as a music tutor of the future king, and possibly of Henry’s sister Mary, for whom he provided lute strings.108 It is by no means surprising that the Frenchman was recorded in the wage lists near the head of the royal musicians for the entirety of his long court service. Duwes’s will, proved in 1535, shows him to have built up a considerable household by the time of his death, including a collection of books and instruments of his own chapel: ... Item I bequeith to Johane my wyff all my housholde interly saaf the bookis and instrumentis of my chapell. ... my best gowne and dublet vnto henry and the nexte gowne vnto arthure and my lewte also / and the nexte gowne vnto Gwylliam / and all the other Instrumentis concernyng musycke to be devided amongys them / my bookis of musycke and frensshe shall arthure haue and the Instrumentis as clavicordis virginallis recordis regallis shalbe devided betwen arthure and Gwilliam ...109

Of Duwes’s five children, his son Arthur (who inherited Gilles’s music books, French books, and some of his instruments) received his own appointment among the minstrels of the court by 1510 at the latest.110 As noted by Ashbee, the rewards to Arthur Duwes in Henry VIII’s Privy Purse accounts in the early 1530s, once for supplying a lute to Henry VIII’s bastard son the Duke of Richmond, may indicate that Arthur was the duke’s tutor. It may well be, then, that a distinct lack of anecdotal evidence surrounding the Duwes family (of the type to be discussed for the lutenists below) is responsible for a considerable underestimation of its impact on the direction of English courtly music in the early sixteenth century. The next luter to be hired after Arthur Duwes was Giovanni Pietro de Bustis, the “Zuan Piero” who is often called “Peter de Brescia” in English court records.111 From the start of his English court career in 1512, Zuan Piero was in a special and 106 RECM, vol. 7, p. 16. 107 BDECM, vol. 1, pp. 369-71; Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, pp. 146-8. 108 Helms, Heinrich VIII., pp. 242-7. 109 LonG 9171/10, fols 244v-245r. Henry, Guillaume, and Arthur were the sons of Gilles. 110 BDECM, vol. 1, pp. 368-9. 111 Ivy L. Mumford, ‘The Identity of Zuan Piero’, Renaissance News, 11 (1958): 179-83; BDECM, vol. 1, pp. 186-7; Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, pp. 148-56.

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highly favored position. As Pearsall notes, the oft-repeated statement that Philip van Wilder received a higher salary than any other court musician is not completely true; Zuan Piero was receiving the same salary (the generous sum of £40 per year) over a decade before Van Wilder’s hiring, and later several of the Bassano brothers enjoyed yet higher wages.112 Unlike most of the other minstrels, Zuan Piero was paid at the Exchequer, a situation which has been linked with the peculiarity of his post and, equally significant, his diplomatic duties.113 Surviving letters show that Zuan Piero was active at least in 1517 as a trusted messenger for Henry VIII to the rulers of Mantua and Ferrara, keeping personal contact with Isabella and Alfonso d’Este (even bringing Henry a lute as a gift from Alfonso). Pearsall suggests that Zuan Piero was employed at the Mantuan court before coming to England; at the least, he was intimately familiar with the court and knew Federigo Gonzaga personally.114 The high esteem which the lutenist learned to expect of Henry VIII is demonstrated amply through a report of his jealousy when Dionysio Memo brought another unnamed lutenist to Henry, sparking a fit which resulted in the diplomatic journey just mentioned.115 By the early 1530s, both Zuan Piero and his wife still enjoyed high rank, now in the household of Princess Mary. The English court’s links to Mantua were presumably also behind the appearance in 1528/9 of the celebrated lutenist Alberto da Ripa, several months before his permanent employment at the royal court of France.116 A single payment in the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber (which seems to have been overlooked in RECM) testifies to Da Ripa’s presence, but the sum of £33 6s 8d—higher than the annual salary of most of Henry’s minstrels— indicates either a longer sojourn or extraordinary circumstances (rewards for gifts of instruments, for example).117 The members of the Van Wilder family who served Henry VIII, although of importance in their role in early viol performances at court (see above), were hired first and foremost as players of the lute. Matthew van Wilder was probably the father of Peter and Philip, as can be deduced from his employment at the court of Philip the Handsome over a decade before the earliest documentable activity of the others, and the early end to his English employment.118 Although at the Burgundian court, Matthew was listed as a musette player, he seems only to have been hired as a string 112 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 158. 113 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 83. The only other minstrel to receive regular payments at the Exchequer was the marshal of the (completely English?) Still Minstrel group (RECM, vol. 7, p. 324). 114 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, pp. 152-3. 115 Mumford, ‘The Identity of Zuan Piero’, p. 179. 116 On Ripa’s career at the court of Francis I, see Cazeaux, La musique à la cour, pp. 137-9. 117 L&P, vol. 5, p. 309; noted in Bonnie J. Blackburn, Edward E. Lowinsky, and Clement A. Miller (eds), A Correspondence of Renaissance Musicians (Oxford and New York, 1991), pp. 554-61. Note that the payment recorded there to “the French queen’s sackbuts” on 26 August 1532 is probably not an example of a reward to players from a foreign court, but rather to the minstrels of Henry VIII’s sister Mary; Henry did not meet with Francis I that year until October (see pp. 40 and 48-9 above). 118 Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, pp. 71-3.

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performer during his short tenure at the English court (1516-17). Peter van Wilder, like Matthew, is documented both as lute player and viol player at the English court, although at least in the first two decades of his service (starting in 1518/19), he appears most often as a lutenist in payment records.119 It is Peter’s testimony of 1544 which gives the clue to the most likely origin for the Van Wilder family: John Ward has suggested that “Millom in the dominion of the Emperor” (Peter’s birthplace) is the village of Millam, near Wylder and part of the Burgundian Netherlands (although French-speaking) in the early sixteenth century.120 The member of the Van Wilder family who attained the most privileged position, of course, was Philip, whose biography has been well explored and whose influence on English musicians starting near the middle of the sixteenth century is generally acknowledged.121 Philip was in England by 1522 with a substantial amount of goods and income, indicating that he was already at this point in royal employ (the first court wage list to survive after that date, from 1525, does include his name122). Although identifications based solely on matches of names in documents can be dangerous, it is worth noting the presence of a Philips de Wilde in Antwerp commercial transaction records of 1520 and 1525;123 missing English court records (apart from the single 1525 list) make it impossible to determine whether the second date rules out an identification with the musician. The original salary received by Van Wilder matches that of the organ players and instrument makers; since, at the same time, the records cease to designate the instrument maker William Lewes as Keeper of the King’s Instruments, Pearsall’s conclusion that Van Wilder could have received that post from the beginning of his employment is well grounded.124 Certainly by 1530 Van Wilder was purchasing instruments for the king, and probably held a position of considerable authority over the music in the Privy Chamber; even by 1528 he was second only to Gilles Duwes among the musicians on the wage lists.125 In the 1530s and 1540s (if not earlier), Van Wilder took up the role of lute tutor, to Princess Mary and Prince Edward; he also became official keeper of the royal instrument collection and a full Gentleman of the Privy Chamber.126 119 RECM, vol. 7, pp. 241-78. References to Peter as a viol player appear elsewhere, and are listed in Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, p. 75. 120 See Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, p. 73. 121 For biographical information, see John M. Ward and Jane A. Bernstein, ‘Van Wilder, Philip’, NG2, vol. 26, pp. 266-8; BDECM, vol. 2, pp. 1151-3; Bernstein, The Chanson in England, pp. 236ff.; and David Humphreys, ‘Philip van Wilder: A Study of his Work and its Sources’, Soundings, 9 (1979-80): 13-36. Van Wilder’s compositions have been edited by Jane Bernstein: Philip van Wilder, Collected Works, ed. Jane A. Bernstein (2 vols, New York, 1991). 122 RECM, vol. 7, p. 254. 123 Indexed in AntSACC 5, pp. 344, 351. 124 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, pp. 156-7. 125 RECM, vol. 7, p. 254. 126 Ward and Bernstein, ‘Van Wilder’, NG2, vol. 26, p. 267. It should be noted here that Ward and Bernstein’s statement to the effect that Philip van Wilder was present at the Field of Cloth of Gold is caused by a conflation of that event with the 1532 meeting of Henry VIII and Francis I at Boulogne; Philip does not seem to have been in English employment by 1520.

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Aside from Van Wilder’s elevated status as one of the royal tutors, it is the musician’s unique activities in the context of English courtly music-making of the period that have singled him out for modern recognition. At some point in the 1530s or 1540s, a group of singers (men and boys) was formed to perform in the Privy Chamber, under Van Wilder’s direction—a move which, much like the creation of the Privy Chamber posts themselves, can be seen as a direct response to developments at the French court. It was in 1532 at the very latest that the English king himself would have been exposed to the secular choir which had been put together for the chamber of Francis I during the 1520s, and there is little doubt that the princely action of artistic competition went hand-in-hand with the rising esteem of the royal lutenist.127 The placement of English singers under the direction of a foreign musician (and one who does not appear to have “anglicized” himself musically very much) is a striking situation, one which represents a major channel through which foreign musical tastes and ideas must have reached the more traditional segments of the musical establishment. As Ward and Bernstein note, “for at least 20 years a foreign musician was in a position to influence the taste of the king, his court and those in the kingdom for whom king and court set the tone.”128 It is equally notable that, after Philip’s death in 1552/3, it was his brother Peter who was granted his place in the Privy Chamber as well as payment to find singing children for the Chamber, implying that he largely took over Philip’s role.129 With regard to Philip van Wilder’s compositions, surviving manuscripts and prints originating both in England and on the Continent testify to his music’s popularity, although at a period largely beyond the limits of the present study; investigation of his compositional legacy must be considered a crucial element in understanding the mid-sixteenth-century adoption of foreign techniques in English works.130 The historical view, however, qualifies at least slightly the uniqueness which has been attributed to Philip’s musical position. Ward and Bernstein’s assertion that Van Wilder “was the only early Tudor composer whose music appeared on the Continent during the 16th century” does not take into account the printed works of Benedictus de Opiciis (see below), nor the several early sixteenth-century English compositions in continental sources to be discussed in Chapter 4. There is no need 127 On the 1532 meeting, see pp. 48-50 above. The development of Francis I’s chamber choir is detailed in Cazeaux, La musique à la cour, pp. 140-48. 128 ‘Van Wilder’, NG2, vol. 26, p. 267. Any doubt that the “Singinge men and children undre Philips” (RECM, vol. 7, p. 110) were headed by Philip van Wilder (as opposed to Robert Philips of the Chapel Royal) can be dispelled by the commission “to Phillip vanwylder” allowing him to impress choristers into royal service, a privilege shared with the Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal (RECM, vol. 7, p. 117); it is moreover by far the most common case that English documents identify Van Wilder by his first name only. 129 BDECM, vol. 2, p. 1150; RECM, vol. 7, p. 318. 130 On Van Wilder’s influence on both English and continental composers, see Ward and Bernstein, ‘Van Wilder’, NG2, vol. 26, pp. 267-8; and Jane A. Bernstein, ‘Philip Van Wilder and the Netherlandish Chanson in England’, MD, 33 (1979): 55-75. The remarkable publication in 1572 (posthumous by nineteen years) of thirteen of his chansons in the second edition of Le Roy and Ballard’s Mellange de chansons is discussed in Humphreys, ‘Philip van Wilder’, p. 18.

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to diminish the sense of Van Wilder’s involvement with and impact upon English musical developments, nor to conjecture that other musicians played an equal part in displaying the music of Henry VIII’s court to the rest of Europe—the qualifying action, rather, is to situate Van Wilder in the broader court context that offers historical precedents and comparative cases for understanding the trajectory of his musical career. The most basic conclusions are applicable to numerous figures: it is clear that the foreign lutenists at the court as a whole were prized and highly influential in the musical life of the court, to say nothing of the upbringing of the royal children. Two of the highest-paid musicians were both lutenists, and the three players noted by Pearsall as having received many more import and export licences than any others were likewise all high-ranking lutenists: Gilles Duwes, Zuan Piero, and Philip van Wilder.131 As men with an unusual level of constant and close access to the royal family, involved in affairs private and public, it is probably difficult from what survives of official documentation to overestimate their hand in the new musical directions of the English court. Keyboard Players and Makers It is notable that, given the number of mentions of keyboard instruments in the court documents relative to the number of references to other types of instruments (as well as Henry VIII’s known fondness for playing on the keyboard132), only a few musicians served officially as keyboard players at court. Like the lutenists, the keyboard players in general seem to have enjoyed privileged positions in comparison with the ensemble instrumentalists, waiting on the king in his private quarters and often engaging in other activities at court (although those activities probably did not include the lutenists’ privilege of acting as tutors to the royal children). They also seem to represent a mixture of foreign and native musicians, men who we must assume were picked on the basis of individual merit—whether musical or, as can be inferred in some cases, political. The present discussion makes no attempt to include consideration of the Chapel Royal organists, players who were English and were administered with the chapel staff, separately from the rest of the court musicians. The possibility that Chapel Royal organists did perform on occasion with other instrumentalists, or for the king’s entertainment outside of the liturgy is certainly a real one, given the very prominent role of certain Chapel Royal musicians in organizing entertainments for Henry VII and Henry VIII, as well as the use of children from the Chapel in these settings; but beyond that level of specificity, we pass into the realm of pure conjecture.133 “Arnold Jeffrey, organ pleyer” in 1498 was, to judge by the name, an Englishman, unless he can be identified with the “frencheman player of thorgans” mentioned in

131 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 147. 132 Nicolo Sagudino’s 1515 comment that the king “practises on these instruments day and night” is well known; RECM, vol. 7, p. 46. 133 See pp. 23-4 above and 111-13 below. The passage by Sagudino quoted above also mentions musicians of the king playing (badly) on the organ for the Italian ambassadors.

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1496,134 and was probably also the man simply denoted as Prince Arthur’s organ player later in the accounts.135 After that point, the minstrel wage lists include no keyboard players until 1516; the generalization of other minstrels must account for the fact that the instruments were used in entertainments before then, and an organ maker was hired in 1514.136 As mentioned above, 1516 seems to have been an important year for the king’s musical entertainment, with the hiring not only of the new Flemish sackbut ensemble but also of two organists for the Privy Chamber, first Benedictus de Opiciis and then Dionysius Memo. It has been conjectured that these virtuosi were brought to court on account of the poor skills of Henry’s keyboard players up to that point, as noted by Sagudino the year before;137 on the other hand, the simultaneous hiring of Opiciis and the wind band has other explanations to be discussed below in the consideration of the choirbook LonBLR 11 E.XI.138 The case of Benedictus de Opiciis is one where a confused and patchy documentary situation has led to any number of conflicting biographical conclusions in the literature, many of which can be resolved with the new evidence and interpretations to be presented here. What can be summarized firmly about the composer’s professional career is relatively simple: Opiciis was in permanent employment at the court of Henry VIII from 1516 until his death in 1524, having served earlier as organist at the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwe-Lofkapel (the chapel of the Confraternity of Our Lady) in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal in Antwerp. Compositions which can be attributed securely to Opiciis survive in two sources, the first a 1515 book printed on the occasion of Archduke Charles’s joyous entry into Antwerp,139 and the second the illuminated manuscript LonBLR 11 E.XI, created in honor of Henry VIII.140 Biographical studies of the composer were formerly plagued by a doppelmeister problem, often conflating Opiciis with the composer Benedictus Ducis, who first appears in German-speaking territories in the 1530s and 1540s.141 The issue was resolved with the discovery of a copy of Opiciis’s will in London, proved in 1524, but the ramifications of definitively separating the two men have not yet been taken 134 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 169; see also p. 107 below. 135 RECM, vol. 7, p. 163; BDECM, vol. 2, p. 623. 136 RECM, vol. 7, p. 46; Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 168. 137 Pearsall and others make this speculation; Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 173. Nevertheless, Sagudino’s statement is the only assertion of its kind, and does not specify the nationality of the king’s keyboard players; Giry-Deloison’s extrapolation is certainly exaggerated: “il était notoire que le jeu des organistes anglais était inférieur à celui de l’étranger et, pour y remédier, Henri stipendiait depuis 1516 le célèbre organiste et compositeur allemand Benedict de Opitiis” (François Ier et Henry VIII, p. 18). 138 See pp. 143-8 below. 139 Lofzangen tere ere van Keizer Maximiliaan en zijn kleinzoon Karel den Vijfden, facsimile edn by W. Nijhoff (’s-Gravenhage, 1925). 140 The manuscript is described and discussed in detail in Chapter 4, pp. 129-48 below. 141 See, for example, Friedrich Spitta, ‘Benedictus Ducis’, Monatsschrift für Gottesdienst und kirchliche Kunst, 17 (1912): 6, 11, 33 n. 9, 41-5; Charles van den Borren, ‘Benedictus de Opitiis: Deux de ses oeuvres récemment publiées’, Musica Sacra, 34 (1927); Guido Persoons, De Orgels en de Organisten van de Onze Lieve Vrouwkerk te Antwerpen van 1500 tot 1650 (Brussels, 1981), pp. 63-4.

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into account, particularly for the matter of family origins and nationality. This situation, moreover, is merely symptomatic of the re-ordering and reconsideration necessary for clarifying Opiciis’s story; biographical information on the composer and his family is still scattered, and certain primary references have gone unnoticed in all discussions of the musician. A first attempt at bringing together all known references to Benedictus and his immediate family are collected chronologically in Table 3.3, which will act as the referential point for the following biographical exploration.142 If this list turns out to contain a substantial number of entries, it is largely thanks to the status of Benedictus’s father Peter, a businessman with connections to some of the day’s most powerful rulers. With the help of documented transactions in the former marquisate of Monferrato, the family can now be traced back to a particular north-Italian town, and the early sixteenth-century accounts in Antwerp and England

142 The regular wage payments to Opiciis at the English court starting in 1516 are not listed in Table 3.3. Individual items compiled here are referred to in the following publications: BDECM; L&P; The Alien Communities; Ashbee, ‘Groomed for service’; Janet Backhouse, ‘A Salute to the Tudor Rose’, in Anny Raman and Eugène Manning (eds), Miscellanea Martin Wittek: Album de Codicologie et de Paléographie offert à Martin Wittek (Louvain and Paris, 1993), pp. 1-10; Hugh Baillie, ‘A London Gild of Musicians, 1460-1530’, PRMA, 83 (195657): 15-28; Dénes Bartha, Benedictus Ducis und Appenzeller (Berlin, 1930); Smedt, De Engelse Natie; Albrecht Dürer, Tagebuch der Reise in die Niederlande, ed. F. Bergemann (Leipzig, [1933]); Kisby, ‘Royal Minstrels’; André Joseph G. le Glay, Analectes historiques, ou Documents inédits pour l’histoire des faits, des mœurs et de la littérature (Paris, 1838); Lofzangen; Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians; De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ed. Ph. Rombouts and Th. van Lerius (2 vols, Antwerp and ’s-Gravenhage, [1864-76]); W. Barclay Squire, ‘Who was “Benedictus”?’ Sammelbände der Internationalen Musik-Gesellschaft, 13 (1911-12): 264-71; Prosper Verheyden, ‘De drukker en de componist van het Maximiliaanboek’, Antwerpsch Archievenblad, 3 (1928): 268-82; Annelies Wouters and Eugeen Schreurs, ‘Het Bezoek van keizer Maximiliaan en de blijde intrede van Aartshertog Karel (Antwerpen, 1508-1515)’, Musica Antiqua, 12 (1995): 100-10. The references of Jun 1483, 20-21 Dec 1494, 9 Nov 1497, 14 Mar 1508, 12 Mar 1511/12, and Aug 1520 have not been included in the secondary literature on the family. Verheyden prints two supposed references not included here, which would appear to refer to the Benedictus at Mass rather than to the organist (and they date from after Benedictus’s departure from Antwerp): “betaelt Jan.N. die blazer die benendictus blies ... L 1 s- d-”; “gegeven een blaezer die benendictus geblaessen hadde ... L - s. 3 d-” (‘De drukker’, p. 278). Three references first mentioned by Bartha (Benedictus Ducis, p. 9) cannot refer to the Opicius family (and were already questioned by Albrecht in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Friedrich Blume [17 vols, Kassel, 1949-86], hereafter MGG1, vol. 1, 1633): 1491, “Maister Peter” with sons Hans and Peter, all pipers, are mentioned in records of Maximilian I’s court at Innsbruck; c. 1491, “Pitt pfeiffer” paid (for three people) at the Innsbruck court; 1492, a father with three sons (the youngest of which, less than sixteen years old, plays organ), musicians of Maximilian, play in Strasbourg. The age of the son in these documents cannot be reconciled with the dating evidence for Benedictus discussed below (to say nothing of the names!); nor is it possible in any way to identify Peter de Opiciis as a professional “piper,” when every reference to his career over a span of more than thirty years calls him a broker or a merchant, and a fairly successful one at that.

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89

Primary references to Benedictus de Opiciis and his family

Date

Description

Source

Jun 1483

Peter de Opiciis (a “broker”) and Benedictus de Opiciis, Italians, listed as living in Candlewick Street Ward, London (Alien Subsidy Roll)

LonP E179/242/25, membrane 10v

20 Dec 1494

Sons of noble Johannes de Opiciis of Cremolino (Guillelmus, Petrus, Benentinus, Georginus) appear in Casale Monferrato, agreeing to split their inheritance evenly

AlesASNM 2721

21 Dec 1494

Petrus de Opiciis consigns English cloth to Bastianus Buranchus of Vignuli to repay a loan from “magnificus dominus” Defendus Suardo

AlesASNM 2721

9 Nov 1497

Defendus Suardo declares Georginus, Petrus, and Benentinus de Opiciis (represented by only Georginus) free of all debts to him

AlesASNM 2721

1497

Volume of classicizing verse in honor of Henry VII, by Johannes Opicius

LonBLC Vespasian B. iv

1 Oct 1505

Peter de Opiciis (“peeter opicis”) listed among 13 creditors of Mattheeus Ketel in Antwerp

AntSAV 1233, fol. 85v

4 Aug 1507

Loan from Henry VII: “Item delyuerd vnto petre de Opicijs merchaunt of monferra by way of lone to be Repaied vpon’ an oblig’” £100

LonP E36/214, fol.87v

14 Mar 1508

Peter de Opiciis listed as broker of English Merchant Adventurers in Antwerp

AntSACert 3, fol. 55r

1508

Sons of Petrus de Opiciis perform at convocation at Cambrai

Lofzangen

1510

Peter de Opiciis listed among Henry VIII’s debtors, in association with John Treguram, for £100

LonBL 21481, fol. 290r

12 Oct 1511

Letter of Henry VIII to Margaret of Austria, recommending Peter de Opiciis and his children; specifies bearer as Benedictus

LilADN B 18854, no 30256

12 Mar 1511/12

Peter de Opiciis in legal dispute with Petro Paulo de Negro in Antwerp

AntSAV 1234, fol. 122v

Feb 1513

Peter de Opiciis and Treguram repay £50

LonBL 21481, fol. 290r

Oct 1514

Peter de Opiciis and Treguram repay £50

LonBL 21481, fol. 290r

1515

Benedictus de Opiciis (“meester Benedictus”) made prince of the St Lucas guild in Antwerp

De Liggeren, vol. 1, p. 83

21 Jul 1515

Payment to Benedictus de Opiciis at OnzeLieve-Vrouwe-Lofkapel, Antwerp

AntKAR 1, fol. 168v

provide a basic outline of events leading to Benedictus’s hiring by Henry VIII. The previously unnoticed reference in the Alien Subsidy Roll provides the earliest known mention of Benedictus or his father by over a decade, demonstrating that the two were resident in London as early as 1483. Moreover, it offers the first plausible opportunity to estimate a date of birth for the composer: only those who were at least twelve years of age were assessed for the subsidy, and so Benedictus was born

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Date

Description

Source

Aug 1515

Print in honour of Maximilian I and Archduke Charles, with two motets by Benedictus de Opiciis and mention of Petrus de Opiciis and sons in introductory text

Lofzangen

2 Feb 1516 (retr. from 1514 and 1515)

Payment to Benedictus de Opiciis at OLV-Lofkapel, Antwerp

AntKAR 1, fol. 169v

16 Feb 1516

Payment to Benedictus de Opiciis at OLV-Lofkapel, Antwerp, mentioning that he has left for England

AntKAR 1, fol. 171v

1 Jul 1516 (retr. from 1 Mar 1516)

Warrant appointing Benedictus de Opiciis to wait on Henry VIII in his chamber

LonBL 21481, fol. 229r

1516

Presentation MS with motets by Benedictus de Opiciis, M. Sampson and anonymi

LonBLR 11 E.XI

24 Dec 1516

Licence for Benedictus de Opiciis to export 1000 quarters of wheat

BDECM, vol. 2, p. 846

12 Nov 1517

Licence for Benedictus de Opiciis to export 1000 quarters of wheat

BDECM, vol. 2, p. 846

3 Jan 1517/18

Payment to “one Sygemond Skeyf an almayn for an instrument called a Regall bought of him by the king and payd to thands of B. deopiciis”

LonBL 21481, fol. 280r

26 May 1518

Licence for Benedictus de Opiciis to import 350 tuns of Toulouse woad or Gascon wine

BDECM, vol. 2, p. 846

6 May 1519

Licence for Benedictus de Opiciis to import 200 tuns of Gascon wine or Toulouse woad

BDECM, vol. 2, p. 846

1 Jan 1519/20

New Year’s Day reward to Benedictus de Opiciis: 40s

RECM, vol. 7, p. 245

1520

Benedictus de Opiciis joins Fraternity of St Nicholas, London

LonG 4889/PC

4 Apr 1520

Licence for Benedictus de Opiciis to export 300 tuns of beer

BDECM, vol. 2, p. 846

Aug 1520

Albrecht Dürer takes portrait of “den Walchen mit der krummen Nasen ... mit Namen Opitius” in Antwerp

Dürer, Tagebuch, pp. 19-20

1 Jan 1520/1

New Year’s Day reward to Benedictus de Opiciis: 40s

RECM, vol. 7, p. 251

4 Apr 1521

Licence for Benedictus de Opiciis to export 300 tuns of beer within two years

BDECM, vol. 2, p. 846

14 Oct 1522

Licence for Benedictus de Opiciis to export 200 tuns of beer

BDECM, vol. 2, p. 84

19 Aug 1524 (proved 16 Sep)

Will of Benedictus de Opiciis (“Benedict Odiciys”) and related documents (executor: Franciscus Franco)

LonG 9171/10, fol.52v; LonG 9168/7, fols 109r-110r

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before June 1471—but probably not too many years before, as he appears still to have been a dependent of his father (based on the amount paid). The records from Monferrato in the 1490s seem to reflect a brief visit of Peter (or Pietro) de Opiciis to his home region. An astonishing quantity of fifteenth-century notarial minutes from Casale, the capital city of Monferrato, survives today in the Archivio di Stato in Alessandria. Among these are the nearly complete records (c. 1481-1524) of the public notary Francesco Opici, who latinized his family name variously as Opicius, de Opicio, and (by far the most frequently) de Opiciis.143 It is not surprising that members of the noble de Opiciis family appear frequently in these documents, both carrying out their own transactions and standing as witnesses for those of others; but it is astonishing to note the number of such men active in the business of the region, leaving no doubt that the Opici had by this point expanded into a widespread clan throughout Monferrato.144 Of those living in Casale in the late fifteenth century were several brothers, sons of Johannes de Opiciis, who were originally from the small hilltop town of Cremolino, approximately 10 kilometers southeast of Acqui Terme.145 One of the sons of Johannes who was not a citizen of Casale, our Petrus de Opiciis, appeared there in December 1494, perhaps not coincidentally at a point soon after the French royal court had been welcomed in Monferrato during Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy.146 All four sons took the opportunity to meet in Casale, swearing before Francesco Opici in his house that they would divide their inheritance evenly and without legal dispute. The next day Peter returned to Francesco’s home to take care of a debt he had incurred in borrowing money from a local lord, Defendus Suardo. If this action of borrowing from a magnate (presumably for business ventures) returns in the documentation of Peter’s later activities, his means of repayment is likewise perfectly suited to his Anglo-Continental business. In detailing the amounts and types of cloths to be consigned to another local trader (to be given to Suardo in Peter’s absence), Peter had the notary strike out “of France and Flanders” to specify that these were all English cloths.147 For whatever reason, it was nearly three years before Suardo declared Peter 143 AlesASNM 2720-2721bis (unbound and unfoliated paper sheets gathered into roughly chronological order). I am grateful to Joshua Yaphe for bringing the existence of these documents to my attention. 144 My searches in the first two decades of Francesco Opici’s minutes, for example, turned up a Bastianus, Vaxinus, Bernardinus filius Petri, Bernardinus filius Vaxini, Jacobus, and Johannesmaria de Opiciis, aside from the five Opici from Cremolino discussed here. One wonders whether this is a branch of the Paduan “degli Obizzi” family whose name was latinized similarly; see M. Giuseppe Betussi, Ragionamento di M. Giuseppe Betussi Sopra il Cathaio; Luogo dello Ill. S. Pio Enea Obizzi (Padua, 1573), a biography of the family up the early fifteenth century (forms of the family name appearing in this volume alone include, for example: De Oppicis, De Oppizis, De Obizis, Obicius, and Obizus). 145 For the activities of these brothers, see AlesASNM 2721, dates: 20-21 Dec 1494, 18 Mar 1495, 8 Aug 1497, 7 Sep 1497, 13 Sep 1497, 9 Nov 1497, 17 Nov 1497, 17 Jul 1498, 23 Oct 1498. 146 David Crawford, Sixteenth-Century Choirbooks in the Archivio capitolare at Casale Monferrato (n.p., 1975), pp. 42-3. 147 AlesASNM 2721, 21 Dec 1494: “quantitates pannorum francie ac flandrie anglie ...”

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and two of his brothers free of their debts (although only Georginus was personally present), but in this act of November 1497, we are informed of several borrowings on unspecified dates and for unspecified purposes. The next time we hear of Benedictus’s father is in the early sixteenth century, and for similar reasons: legal documents show that Peter Opicius was conducting business in Antwerp at least from 1505 to 1512. His early contact with the English court, where he borrowed money in 1507 (repaid in 1513 and 1514), can probably be explained with a 1508 reference to the merchant as an official broker of the English Nation in Antwerp; that is, as a middleman in Anglo-Flemish trade, at a point when Antwerp was one of the main centers of English commercial dealings on the Continent.148 It is worth noting that this is the profession which Opicius was practicing in London in 1483, as well, and is in all likelihood the intended meaning of the Latin term “negotiorum gestor” employed in the 1515 book to describe Peter (as opposed to simply “merchant”). A previously unpublished letter from Henry VIII to Margaret of Austria, dated 12 October 1511, was the result of Peter de Opiciis’s commercial dealings, but is of significance for the history of the merchant’s son as well (see the transcription in Appendix A.1).149 By naming Benedictus as the bearer, the letter points to the organist’s presence at court in 1511, over four years before his permanent hiring. Although presumably only there temporarily, Benedictus, through his father’s connections, was already at this stage known in some capacity to the English king; in this connection, moreover, it is worth noting a payment in the Chamber accounts from only two weeks before the letter was written, 28 September 1511: “Item to my lorde Chambrelain, for a straunger that cam¯ from by yonde the see to se the kinges grace & gave to hym a goodly Instrument, in Rewarde’: £13. 6s. 8d.”150 The letter itself recommends Peter de Opiciis to Margaret of Austria along with his children, and it seems to have done some good for Benedictus. The timing coincides neatly with the musician’s supposed date of entry into a position as organist for the Confraternity of Our Lady (Broederschap van O.L.V. Lof) in the cathedral at Antwerp. Jacob Van Doirne, who had been organist (for both the Chapter and the Confraternity) since 1501, sent back his salary in 1512 as an indication of his displeasure (although the guild entrusted the sum to his wife and continued to compensate him throughout the time that Opiciis served as organist).151 The sequence of events here is remarkable: a foreigner is rewarded for bringing Henry VIII an instrument in 1511; two weeks later, Benedictus de Opiciis is given a letter of recommendation (on account of his father) to take to Margaret of Austria; and soon after he is playing for the main polyphonic endowments of the cathedral of Antwerp, when there was no vacancy for the position. It is difficult not to see the hand of political pressures at work in this history. If the Antwerp Confraternity judged that the services of Opiciis were worth 148 Smedt, De Engelse Natie, vol. 2, pp. 457-62. 149 The calendar reference to the letter in L&P, vol. I/1, no. 898, points to Le Glay, Analectes historiques, p. 183, which merely mentions the existence of the document. Opiciis is not described in the letter as English, contrary to Le Glay’s summary. 150 RECM, vol. 7, p. 198. 151 Verheyden, ‘De drukker’, pp. 279-81; Persoons, De Orgels, p. 62.

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offending the musician who had played in its chapel for a decade, it may well be that the will of the regent of the Netherlands was a deciding factor. Contact with the court in Mechelen continued moreover while Opiciis served at the Confraternity’s chapel. In 1514, while Opiciis was organist, the chapel’s new organ (begun in 1509) was completed, and the Confraternity twice called in the famous organist Harry Bredemers from the Netherlands court to test the instrument.152 During Opiciis’s tenure, the Confraternity purchased two choirbooks as well from the court scribe Petrus Alamire, which unfortunately no longer exist.153 The final documented example of Opiciis’s interaction with Mechelen comes from 1515, when members of the St Luke guild traveled there for a contest and elected the organist as Prince of the guild, an achievement surely related to the elaborate book printed in 1515 by Jan de Gheet and containing two motets by Opiciis (the first polyphony printed in the Low Countries).154 Benedictus was paid retroactively by the Confraternity, and the first recorded payment is in July 1515, followed by two further payments in February 1516; all are noted as rewarding long past service, and the final payment mentions that the organist has left for England. When Benedictus arrived in England to begin serving Henry in March 1516, he was appointed to wait on the king in the Privy Chamber for a salary of £20 per year, the most common salary for Henry’s minstrels.155 It is argued below that around this time members of the Opiciis family played a large part in putting together the music manuscript LonBLR 11 E.XI, although it seems likely that the book was compiled after Benedictus had already come to the court.156 The organist’s contact with foreigners from outside the court is evidenced by his role of middleman in acquiring a new regal from a German in 1518. This “Sygemond Skeyf” may have been resident in England for some time, if he can be identified with the organ maker “Segemond” who from 1519-1521 worked on new organs for the parish church of St Laurence, Reading.157 To supplement his normal income, Opiciis regularly obtained licences to export and import wine, woad, and beer, as did many other of the higher-ranking musicians and courtiers throughout the century. The bede roll of the Fraternity of St Nicholas in London, the great musicians’ guild which could count among its members composers such as Walter Frye, Edmund Turges, Robert Fayrfax, and Nicholas Ludford (to name just a few), records that Opiciis joined the Fraternity in 1520.158 Opiciis died quite shortly after making his will in 1524 (an 152 Verheyden, ‘De drukker’, pp. 278-9. Bredemers had also served as organist for the Confraternity from 1493 to 1501, and visited the English court in 1506 and 1520 (with the chapels of Philip the Handsome and Charles V). 153 Kristine K. Forney, ‘Music, Ritual and Patronage at the Church of Our Lady, Antwerp’, EMH, 7 (1987): 33. 154 See Verheyden, ‘De drukker’, pp. 281-2. On the 1515 print, see pp. 142-4 below. 155 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 102. 156 See pp. 143-8 below. 157 J. Charles Cox, Churchwardens’ Accounts from the Fourteenth Century to the Close of the Seventeenth Century (London, 1913), pp. 197-8. Apparently this church was difficult to please: legal proceedings were taken against Segemond in 1522/3, which had occurred as well with the builder of the previous organ in 1514/15. 158 LonG 4889/PC (unfoliated); Baillie, ‘A London Gild’, pp. 20-21.

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indication of sudden illness?), with the royal trumpeter Francesco Franco acting as executor; the will and related documents are transcribed in Appendix A.2. For all that Benedictus’s English court career was clearly successful enough in financial terms, with hints of regular involvement in “extra-courtly” activities, certain major aspects of his biography and stature remain unresolved. In some cases, the new documentation offered above offers definite solutions to issues which have divided scholarly opinion: the speculation that Maximilian I’s “Peter piper” of the early 1490s was Opiciis’s father, for example, can be definitively discarded.159 Likewise, the family’s nationality and even city of origin can be affirmed conclusively. Jan de Gheet’s 1515 print which describes Peter de Opiciis as “montiferatensis maiestatis Cesarie familiaris domesticus & negotiorum gestor” turns out to be quite correct at its face-value reading.160 The fact that musicologists have been reluctant to accept the expected interpretation of montiferatensis as referring to the marquisate of Monferrato is largely a remnant of the early desire to identify Benedictus de Opiciis with Benedictus Ducis—now known to be an impossible identification. It has been supposed that the term is employed in the Antwerp print as a literal translation of “Eisenberg,” a name belonging to several regions in German-speaking territories.161 The documents in Table 3.3, however, tell a different story: with the references from Casale Monferrato and the specification of nationality in the London subsidy roll,162 there can be no more doubt that this was an Italian family involved in the affairs of the north, like so many others. The textual connections between the volume of classicizing poems written for Henry VII by a Johannes Opicius (LonBLC B. iv) and the verses in LonBLR 11 E.XI will be discussed in Chapter 4; these links suggest that “Giovanni Opicius” (as Carlson names the author) is another son of Peter de Opiciis.163 I have suggested above that the man whom Benedictus chose to be executor of his will, the royal marshal of the trumpeters known in court documents mainly as Frances Knyf, was an Italian. Finally, an entry in the famous journal/account-book which Albrecht Dürer kept during his journey to the Low Countries and which has gone unnoticed in studies of the Opiciis family, records that the German master took a portrait of “the crooked-nosed Italian named Opitius” at Antwerp in August 1520.164 Although it is impossible to be sure that this is a surname, the appearance of the name (rather uncommon in the documents of the English and Flemish institutions examined here) at this period in the city where the family was most active suggests strongly that this was a relation of Benedictus. Perhaps it was even the composer who had his portrait taken: he was certainly on the Continent not long before for the Field of Cloth of 159 See p. 88 n. 142 above. 160 Lofzangen, fol. Dr. 161 Wouters and Schreurs, ‘Het Bezoek’, p. 102. 162 The Alien Communities, p. 71. The term employed for the nationality of Peter and Benedictus is “lumbardus,” but this word was employed in the subsidy roll (and elsewhere in English of the period) as a general word for “Italian” rather than specifically “Lombard” in the modern sense (ibid., pp. 28-9). 163 See pp. 141-2 below. 164 “Auch hab ich den Walchen mit der krummen Nasen konterfet, mit Namen Opitius.” Dürer, Tagebuch, pp. 19-20; translation from Albrecht Dürer, Dürer’s Record of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries, trans. Roger Fry (New York, 1995), p. 41.

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Gold (June 1520), and it has been shown that minstrels’ regular wage payments in the Chamber accounts were unaffected by periods of approved absence.165 A more coherent biographical picture begins to emerge, then, from the references scattered across several decades and cities: we see an Italian broker of noble lineage who perhaps borrowed money to expand and move his commercial ventures to the north, bringing his sons with him—one a writer with a humanist education, another a composer and professional organist. It is probably through the father’s business dealings that the sons were brought into contact with the leading rulers of the day: Maximilian I, Margaret of Austria, Henry VII, and Henry VIII. What is most illuminating about examining the Opici in early Tudor England is the unusually clear light the documents shed on the extra-musical side of a composer/performer’s career, the many ways in which family connections and commercial activities could translate into career successes. The artistic legacy of the family’s members can in no way be separated from the very particular circumstances of their travels and places of employment, reminding us that politics, business, and art often found themselves in the closest connections. After the hiring of Benedictus de Opiciis early in 1516, the similarly skilled organist and composer Dionysius Memo arrived at court in September. With Memo, we are in the particular position that all of the definite references to his English employment occur in the diaries and letters of the Italians present for ambassadorial purposes.166 That the Italian friar never appears in the wage lists from the Treasurer of the Chamber could indicate that he was paid directly from Henry VIII’s Privy Purse, for which no accounts survive from the 1510s—perhaps the only reasonable explanation for the payment of a well-appreciated virtuoso who sojourned at the English court for at least several years. When Memo first arrived, it was on leave from the Doge of Venice, where he had been organist at San Marco since 1507; Henry VIII apparently used his influence to have him removed from his holy orders and kept at the English court. The king promised to make him his chaplain and chief of his instrumental musicians, presumably the position which was held later by Philip van Wilder and which eventually became known as Master of the King’s Musick. Like Zuan Piero, Memo fulfilled political functions, perhaps acting as a spy; it is known that he had very close access to the English king, being one of only three gentlemen kept with Henry and Katherine when they fled the plague in 1517.167 The only evidence for Memo’s compositional activity is of a curious sort, on account of its suspiciously familiar nature: Sagudino relates that when Zuan Piero was in despair in 1517 because of the new lutenist, Memo wrote a vocal quartet to play for the king, entitled Memor esto verbi tui/Servo tuo perpetuo,/In quo mihi spem dedisti. This is practically the same tale as that related in Heinrich Glarean’s Dodecachordon 165 See pp. 42-6 above and 115 below. 166 See the references and biographical information in BDECM, vol. 2, pp. 797-9; and John M. Ward, ‘Memo, Dionisio’, NG2, vol. 16, p. 379. 167 On Memo’s possible political double-dealing, we have Sanuto’s testimony that he had to escape England “for fear of his life” (Ward, ‘Memo’, NG2, vol. 16, p. 379). The spying activities of the musicians Alamire and Nagel for Henry VIII are mentioned on pp. 40-41 above.

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(printed in 1547) about Josquin des Prez writing his Memor esto setting to shame Louis XII into giving him a promised benefice.168 Did Memo copy Josquin’s example? Or is this rather a case of a well-known story eventually acquiring a more famous protagonist, part of the posthumous construction of the Josquin myth?169 After leaving England probably in the early 1520s, Memo eventually reached Santiago de Compostela and was mentioned as organist at the cathedral in 1539. As John Ward notes, “even the little we know about his career well illustrates the important role played by peripatetic virtuosos in the diffusion of musical styles in the 16th century,” a lesson encountered time and again in investigating the foreign minstrels of the Tudor court.170 The only other foreign keyboard players at the English court during the period under review both met tragic ends. Relying on the testimony of Sanuto, we know of the organist and harpsichordist Zuan da Leze, who “was so disappointed with his reception that he hanged himself” when Henry VIII did not hire him after a performance.171 This man, better known as Giovanni da Legge, was a correspondent of the theorist Giovanni del Lago, although it is suspected that the surviving letters between them (dated 1520-23) are mainly fictitious, drawn up years later by Del Lago for publication (a publication which did not occur until modern times).172 The circumstances of Da Leze’s death were recorded by Sanuto on 24 December 1525, who described him as a “perfetto musico, maxime di clavicembano;” an exaggerated version of the story appeared in a sixteenth-century novella by Marco Mantova, to demonstrate “the avarice of modern princes.”173 It was surely through channels such as these that the hiring policies of the English court really did impact the European conception of the Tudor monarchs, placing them for better or for worse on the scale of the Italian princes who competed in displays of magnificence. One of the two letters supposedly written by Da Leze makes mention of two Italians with names we have encountered before.174 The first of these, “Zampiero,” since he was dead in 1520, could not be the Zuan Piero employed at the English court until sometime in the 1530s.175 The other, Zuan Maria di Pre Hector, who was to forward Del Lago’s reply to Da Leze, could be the Zuan Maria whose compositions were requested by Sagudino in 1515.176 Moreover, at least two further musicians named Zuan Maria were active in precisely the northern Italian circles which would situate them in the midst of such exchanges of music and letters: “Ser Zuan Maria 168 Patrick Macey, ‘Josquin’, NG2, vol. 13, p. 224. 169 On the role of such tales in creating the sixteenth-century image of Josquin, see Rob C. Wegman, ‘“And Josquin Laughed ...”: Josquin and the Composer’s Anecdote in the Sixteenth Century’, The Journal of Musicology, 17 (1999): 319-57. 170 Ward, ‘Memo’, NG2, vol. 16, p. 379. 171 Stevens, Music and Poetry, p. 266. 172 See Blackburn, Lowinsky, and Miller (eds), A Correspondence, pp. 135-6. The letters are transcribed and discussed on pp. 749-96 of the same publication. 173 Sanuto, I diarii, vol. 36, pp. 532-4; Blackburn, Lowinsky, and Miller (eds), A Correspondence, pp. 988-90. 174 Blackburn, Lowinsky, and Miller (eds), A Correspondence, pp. 771-2, 1019-20. 175 See p. 83 above. 176 See p. 40 above.

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de Bernardo piffero” among the Venetian Doge’s trombe e piffari, who became a member of the Scuola di Santa Maria dei Mercanti between 1506 and 1512, as well as “Zoanne Maria Burseto” who was paid for copying music at Ferrara in 1504-05.177 The second ill-fated keyboard player of the English court was the Groom of the Privy Chamber Mark Smeton, now famous primarily for admitting to adultery with Queen Anne Boleyn in the 1530s (even if this was a forced and probably false confession); he was put to death on 19 May 1536. The majority of the surviving payment records relating to Smeton come from Henry VIII’s Privy Purse accounts for the few years where these survive, where he is grouped consistently with “the two guilliams” (Duvait and Troches; see below, “‘Still’ and Other Unspecified Minstrels”), all of whom were children of the Privy Chamber.178 These Privy Purse payments include no mention of musical duties for the children; nor do they help in discovering Smeton’s date of entry into royal service, since he is already present at the beginning of the surviving accounts (from 1529). Smeton is known as a virginalist thanks to a now-mutilated letter from Sir William Kingston to Thomas Cromwell, relating the testimony of one of Queen Anne’s ladies-in-waiting regarding Smeton; by that account, the only time Smeton was in the Queen’s chamber was when she sent for him to play the virginals in 1535.179 A passage in the 1565 Commentarii of Lodovico Guicciardini, noted by Bonnie Blackburn, calls Smeton Anne’s “sonatore” and adds the information that he was Flemish (“Marco Fiammingo”)180—this time an unusual origin in the context of the set of Italian keyboard virtuosi at the court. The keyboard makers used by Henry VIII, like the players, included both Englishmen and foreigners. After William Lewes, hired in 1514, the next organ maker to appear in the court records is John de John, a French priest who came in the 1520s and received letters of denization in 1539/40.181 De John was paid through the Treasurer of the Chamber, but rewards to him exist in the Privy Purse accounts, and presumably he dealt with instruments in the Privy Chamber. Gregory Estampion is a name which only appears in one court document, as an organ maker in the monthly wage list from Michaelmas 1525; however, since this list is the only surviving payment record between April 1521 and October 1528, there is no reason to doubt that Estampion was at the court for a longer period.182 Finally, Miguel Marcator, another organ maker, belongs to that category of servant at the English court which mixed musicianship with diplomatic duties. Present since at least 1527, Marcator dealt with building and testing instruments for royal patrons from the start of his employment, but was definitely active additionally in other royal affairs by the later 1530s.183 Surviving letters by Marcator concern state business, and he was praised by the Count of Buren for his skilful diplomatic service in Germany; Stevens suggests 177 Lasocki with Prior, The Bassanos, p. 4; Lewis Lockwood, ‘Bruhier, Lupi, and Music Copying at Ferrara: New Documents’, in Haggh (ed.), Essays on Music and Culture, p. 157. 178 BDECM, vol. 2, pp. 1018-19; RECM, vol. 7, pp. 65, 362-73, 412-15. 179 See the transcription in RECM, vol. 7, p. 414. 180 See Lowinsky’s postscript to ‘A Music Book’, pp. 510-11. The matter of Smeton’s possible connection to the manuscript LonRC 1070 will be discussed in Chapter 3. 181 BDECM, vol. 2, pp. 627-8. 182 RECM, vol. 7, p. 254. 183 BDECM, vol. 2, pp. 762-3.

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that, like Alamire, Marcator acted as a spy for the English.184 A final name which must be noted is that of William Treasorer, organ maker under Edward VI, who may have come to England as early as the 1520s, although not in royal employment.185 The keyboard players and makers as a whole seem to belong in a class of players at the Tudor court who, acting as individuals and soloists, gained greater renown (and often greater salaries) than their colleagues in ensembles or in the general pool of minstrels. These were the men who were more likely to be mentioned in the letters of ambassadors and secretaries, more likely in fact to gain the personal attention and favor of the king. It was also these players whose performances—if it is possible to compare the anecdotal evidence of the ambassadorial letters with the official program books for court festivities—were reserved for the more private components of court occasions, while the ensembles such as the wind band and trumpeters acted as the “public” face of the court musical establishment. Tabret Players The earliest references to regularly employed “taberers” at the Tudor court appear at the very end of the fifteenth century, although the pipe and tabor combination to which the term probably refers was by no means new in the fifteenth century.186 The musicians who received this designation presumably played dance music, and have little connection to the “drumslades” hired for loud martial purposes in the 1510s. The members of the first group of tabrets at the English court have remained anonymous, but the Chamber accounts reveal their nationality by referring to them most often as “the French minstrels.” This group, numbering three or four, appeared at court first in 1497, remaining until late 1499, as can be observed in the payment records collected in Table 3.4.

184 Stevens, Music and Poetry, pp. 314-15. 185 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 178; BDECM, vol. 2, pp. 1090-92. 186 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 125; A.C. Baines and H. La Rue, ‘Pipe and Tabor’, NG2, vol. 19, p. 770.

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Payments to the unnamed French tabret group at the court of Henry VII

Year

Date

Entry

Payment

1497

1-4 May

For the Frenshe mynystrelx

13s 4d

6 Jun

Itm to the Frenshe mynystrelx in rewarde

66s 8d

14 Jul

Itm to the tabarers for there qrt wages

66s 8d*

21 Jul

Item to the Frenshe mynystrelx in rewarde

26s 8d

3-5 Dec

Itm to the Frenshe mynystrelx for a quarter wagies endid at [blank]

66s 8d

1 Jan

Itm to the Frenshe mynystrelx in Re[ward]

40s

17 Feb

Itm to Frenshe ministrelles for their quarter wages

66s 8d

4-9 Mar

‘Itm to one of the Frenshe mynystr. wages’

20s

13 April

Item for the Frenche mynstrelles wages

66s 8d

29 Apr-4 May

Itm to the Frenche mynstrelles in rewarde

12s

8 Jun

Itm to the Frenshe mynystr. in rewarde

£6 13s 4d

16 Aug

Itm to the Frenshe mynystrelx in rewarde

10s

20 Aug

Itm to 3 Frenshe mynystrelx in rewarde

66s 8d

1497-8

1498

1499

* RECM, vol. 7, p. 159 has “16s 8d.” for this entry. In Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 2, p. 17, the transcription runs “lxvjs viijd”; the pattern of Chamber Accounts at this point leads Pearsall to conclude that this entry must refer to the French minstrels (vol. 1, pp. 134-5).

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The first small payment came presumably before the official hire of the minstrels, as a livery warrant was issued on 5 July 1497 for “4 Cotes of White and grene chamelet wt slevis and sufficient lynyng to the same cotes” for the four French minstrels attending upon the king.187 After the end of the service of the mysterious French minstrels, further references to tabrets are similarly occasional, not being used as a regular designation of any minstrel’s function until the reign of Henry VIII, when more precise specifications for minstrels became more frequent. A payment of 31 January 1504/5 rewards “3 tabarettes of the galeye.”188 These musicians could be identical with the minstrels formerly in the queen’s household (Loriden, Marcasyn, and Denows; see below), since those names appear in a 1509 list under the heading “Tabretts with others;” that the other French tabrets discussed above are not the same as the “queen’s minstrels” is shown by the appearance of both groups on the New Year’s Day reward list for 1497/8.189 In November 1509, Balthazar Robert was hired at court as a tabret player,190 and appears consistently as such in the accounts for a short while; later he is listed by name only. Robert was joined in 1515 by Jacques Rochardes, who soon enjoyed a significantly higher salary. It has been assumed that in 1518 both of them (together with the rebec-player Thomas Evans) joined the queen’s minstrels, presumably on account of the hiring of John Severnac and Glande Bourgions.191 However, a fragmentary set of wardrobe accounts for Katherine of Aragon’s household from 1511 to 1516, not considered in the compilation of RECM, reveals that Balthazar Robert (along with Richard Denouws) was specifically attached to the queen already in the sixth year of Henry VIII’s reign.192 What these documents, together with the older tabret lists mentioned above, indicate is a rather close connection between these instruments and the households of the queens; a case could be made thus even on purely documentary grounds for a feminine association with such traditional musique basse. The tabret Bourgions may well have come (like Severnac) from the large French embassy which visited England to celebrate the betrothal of Princess Mary to the French Dauphin in 1518.193 Simply called a minstrel in the payment record noting his hiring, Bourgions’s function is made clear by the explicit 1525 wage list, which groups him with the tabrets and describes him as “taberet wt the princes” (note again the assignment to a lady’s entourage).194 The same list reveals Nowell de la Salle as a tabret, who had been hired in 1519 with the general “minstrel” designation.195 By the time the 1525 list was made, Jacques Rochardes had disappeared (during the fouryear gap in the accounts). In the next extant wage list, for October 1528, Bourgions 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195

RECM, vol. 7, p. 11; Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, pp. 134-5. RECM, vol. 8, p. 346. RECM, vol. 7, p. 161. BDECM, vol. 2, p. 965. BDECM, vol. 2, pp. 968-9. LonP E101/418/6, fols 32r and 34v. Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 137. RECM, vol. 7, p. 253. BDECM, vol. 2, p. 981.

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has been replaced by Gregory Vacher, who only stayed until January 1529/30, returning at that time to his own country “by reason of such infirmatyes disseases as he had.” It seems probable that this Vacher had some relation to the Le Vacher musician families active in Paris from the mid-sixteenth century and in Bristol in the seventeenth century.196 Given the number of Le Vachers active as musicians at the French royal court, moreover, it is no surprise to observe the presence of a “Grégoire Le Vacher” throughout the 1540s as an instrument player at the court of Francis I197—whether the musician at the English court of the late 1520s was this same man, it would not be at all extraordinary for such a player to have made his entry into England with a great embassy like that for the 1527 treaties.198 Another specifically French connection for the English court tabrets arises at nearly the same time: in November 1529, Peter de la Planche was hired by warrant and specified as a tabret-player, coming directly on the heels of service at the French royal court.199 His appearance in French records in the group of “viollons, haulxboys et sacquebuteurs” provides ample explanation for his inclusion in the English court sackbut ensemble in 1537/8, shortly before his death. Balthazar Robert disappears from the records later in 1538, and Nowell de la Salle left near the end of 1539 after being advanced a year’s wages.200 After this point, no more minstrels designated as tabrets are present in the court documentation. Again, it must be emphasized that most musicians listed as minstrels played multiple instruments, and so the disappearance of players specified as taborers did not necessarily spell out the immediate end of the instrument’s use at court. If the pipe and tabor combination seems to have been generally outmoded long before 1540,201 one may note that the English court was not alone in retaining these players: the number of direct French court connections for musicians recorded in England simply as “tabarers” is unusually high, and there seems to be a majority of French players among the remaining cases as well. The simultaneous support of venerable courtly tradition and newer fashions (such as violin consorts) was a characteristic of both the Tudor household and its major northern models.

196 BDECM, vol. 2, pp. 1110-11. On the Le Vacher families, see Lasocki, ‘The Levashers’. 197 Cazeaux, La musique à la cour, pp. 123, 148-9. 198 See pp. 47-8 above. Bonnie Blackburn has drawn my attention to a possible identification of Gregory Vacher (or a relative?) with a “Vassoris,” composer of a doublecanon chanson Tout dung accord in Antico’s Motetti noui & chanzoni franciose a quatro sopra doi (RISM, 15203). There are, of course, numerous other possible Le Vachers/Vasseurs; but this would not be the only example of a French court instrumentalist having a composition published (see Cazeaux, La musique à la cour, p. 149). 199 BDECM, vol. 2, p. 898; Cazeaux, La musique à la cour, pp. 113-14, 326. 200 RECM, vol. 7, p. 276. 201 On changing fashions in courtly instrumental ensembles at this time, see Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, pp. 65-7.

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“Still” and Other Unspecified Minstrels In 1495/6, New Year’s Day reward lists begin to appear in the records, and from the start these include separate entries for the king’s “still minstrels.”202 The meaning of the term “still” in this context has caused occasional confusion, as in Pearsall’s proposal that “part of the explanation would seem to be that they functioned primarily as administrators rather than as performers.”203 There is really no good reason to believe that servants described as minstrels were not musicians, and the word “still” is readily explained as the English term to refer to the standard bas music: soft, indoor instruments, separate in type and function from “loud”/haut instruments.204 The opposition of these English terms is clearly observable, for example, in a 1503 musicians’ livery list which groups the “Stil mynstrelles” just before the “lowde mynstrelles” (the sackbuts and shawms).205 As a consequence of the generality of the term, of course, specializations of individual “still minstrels” are difficult to define. The adjective continues to be used in the occasional livery lists through Henry VIII’s 1509 coronation, and in the New Year’s Day reward lists for the entirety of Henry VIII’s reign. The only clue to some of the musical duties of the second group derives from the 1509 coronation livery list, where the musicians normally designated as still minstrels are named “The Styll Shalmes.”206 This admittedly mysterious phrase (the shawm traditionally being one of the loud instruments) does little to further our understanding of the situation, beyond hinting that these men played soft wind instruments, an instrumental category otherwise unknown in the documentation of minstrel functions at this point.207 In actuality, it is difficult to imagine that they only played one type of instrument; more likely, these men are consistently described merely as “minstrels” because it was necessary for them to perform professionally on a wide variety of instruments. One of the still minstrels from the earliest group at the Tudor court, Henry Swan, had been listed with the trumpeters and tabrets at the coronation of Richard III;208 and the capability to switch instruments remained a requirement for many professional musicians across Europe during the sixteenth century.209 What this non-specification of function does provide, significantly, is a speculative avenue for performance upon instruments for which no specialists are known to have existed at the court: note, for example, that no recorder consort officially existed until the 1540s, even if

202 The musical entries from the first New Year’s Day reward list are transcribed in RECM, vol. 7, p. 154. 203 Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 79-80. 204 See Edmund A. Bowles, ‘Haut and Bas: The Grouping of Musical Instruments in the Middle Ages’, MD, 8 (1954): 115-40. 205 RECM, vol. 7, p. 21. 206 RECM, vol. 7, pp. 28-9. 207 N. Buckland (‘“Styll Shalmes”’, FoMRHI Quarterly, 19 [1980]: 42-57) sees this term as a reference to the enigmatic douçaine, which he hypothesizes to be an actual quiet type of shawm. 208 BDECM, vol. 2, p. 1069. 209 See Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, p. 29.

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this instrument has been treated in modern times as ultimately typical of Henry VIII’s court. A further notable aspect of the still minstrels whose names appear on the early lists is that they seem to be all Englishmen. The usual number of them was eight, present before the Tudor reign and re-appointed by Henry VII shortly after his accession.210 Like the members of the Chapel Royal and other court servants, these musicians stayed in service through the changes of regime, and it is in all likelihood on account of their earlier existence as a fixed body that Henry VII’s records maintain a separation between this corps and the newer (mainly foreign) additions. A partly foreign collection of unspecified minstrels, on the other hand, who can be identified both by name and as a group in the early reward lists from Henry VII’s reign is the set of three players who served the queen, Elisabeth of York. Marcus Loriden, Jacques de la Roche, and William Older, called the king’s minstrels in a payment mandate of August 1486, are afterwards described as “mynstrelles with oure dearest wif the quene” in December 1486.211 When the New Year’s Day reward lists begin to appear in the Chamber records, a separate entry is always devoted to the queen’s minstrels (as with the sackbuts, the string minstrels, etc.). The number of men in this function appears to have stayed at three, and the brief surviving section of Elisabeth of York’s Privy Purse accounts, from 1502-02/3, indeed includes wage payments to three named minstrels: Marcus Loriden, Jenin Marcasyn, and Richard Denows.212 Loriden had appeared in this group as early as 1490, by which point he and John Furness had replaced de la Roche and Older, and Denows had been in the king’s employ since at least 1501.213 The 1502/3 minstrels, as mentioned above, are the exact group which appears under the heading “Tabretts with others” in the livery list for Henry VII’s funeral in 1509;214 their nationality is given in a payment from the king’s Chamber of 31 May 1503: “Itm to 3 of the quenes frnc mynystrelles for their wages due at Est last.”215 Apart from the 1509 reference, no indication of particular functions for these minstrels is known. From the number of references and wage payments to men known to have been the queen’s minstrels which appear in the king’s accounts, it appears that there was a fairly fluid relationship between the royal households; after the queen’s death, her players continued their service uninterrupted for the king. A similar situation probably held for the three minstrels of the household of Prince Henry, named in the livery list for the queen’s funeral in 1502/3: the “Pety John” of this list is probably the Petit John Cockeren known otherwise from the king’s accounts (-1503-13-), although the other two, Steven Delalaund and Hakenet Deliners, do not appear elsewhere.216

210 RECM, vol. 7, p. 2. 211 RECM, vol. 7, pp. 3-4. 212 RECM, vol. 7, p. 361. 213 RECM, vol. 7, p. 7; BDECM, vol. 1, p. 343. Furness later appears in the lists of the king’s still minstrels. 214 RECM, vol. 7, p. 27. 215 RECM, vol. 8, p. 343. 216 RECM, vol. 7, p. 20; BDECM, vol. 1, p. 267.

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Other musicians who received only the generic designation of “minstrel” (or in some lists, no designation at all217) may have been all or mostly foreigners, listed separately from the mainly English body of “still minstrels” (see above). The June 1503 livery list includes in this group the three players who had been in the queen’s household at her death, as well as John de Haspere, John Potweye, and Possant Bonitamps.218 Only the last of these is known from other records, with a court career lasting from 1498 to 1515;219 throughout the entirety of that period, Bonitamps was listed separately from the other musicians in the Chamber accounts, although by the end of his service numerous other minstrels were listed in the same manner.220 Bonitamps is known to have been a cornett player, and he was paid additionally in 1504 “for mending of organs.”221 It might not be possible to identify the Tudor court musician with a “Louis Ormeau, dit Bontemps” who served Louis of Orléans (the later Louis XII) in the 1490s and notated a music book for his chapel; but in reference to the activity of organ-mending it is suggestive that a Nicolas Bontemps (a relation?) was a keyboard maker and organist at Lyons during the first decades of the sixteenth century.222 Any of these men could have been responsible for the composition appearing with the name “Bontemps” in the choirbook CambriP 1760, but the fact that this manuscript was destined for a Tudor might offer hints as to the otherwise unknown composer.223 In the early 1510s, various rewards related to New Year’s celebrations group Bonitamps together with Petit John Cockeren (formerly in Henry’s princely household) and the tabret Balthazar Robert, implying perhaps the existence of a regular mixed consort. The minstrel Bartram Brouard, who stayed at the English court from 1508 until the autumn of 1510, had visited the country once before, as part of Philip the Handsome’s entourage during the shipwreck of 1506.224 He received the same salary as Possant Bonitamps; in one of the 1509 livery lists, he is listed with Bonitamps and Gilles Duwes as a Minstrel of the Chamber.225 More foreign minstrels were hired during the 1510s in capacities which can no longer be specified through the surviving documentation. Rowland de Frenes joined the court in late 1514 and stayed until 1516/17, and “xpofer [Christopher] Cravila” (who may or may not have been English) was hired in 1518, leaving at the end of 1519.226 A “Nicolas Dobenall” was granted, for reasons altogether mysterious, the

217 See, for example, RECM, vol. 7, p. 21. 218 Ibid. 219 BDECM, vol. 1, pp. 169-70. I have been unable to locate in RECM the first rewards to Bonitamps mentioned in this entry, of 23 May and 13/14 June 1498. 220 RECM, vol. 7, pp. 164-219. 221 RECM, vol. 8, p. 345. 222 On Louis Ormeau, see Bonime, Anne de Bretagne, p. 33; for Nicolas Bontemps, see Frank Dobbins, Music in Renaissance Lyons (Oxford, 1992), pp. 297, 304-5. 223 CambriP 1760 is discussed below, pp. 121-2. 224 RECM, vol. 7, pp. 187-94; Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 144; Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, p. 71. Although Brouard is listed in the variant spellings list of BDECM, I have been unable to find any entry for him. 225 RECM, vol. 7, p. 25. 226 BDECM, vol. 1, pp. 443, 317; RECM, vol. 7, p. 238.

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extremely high salary of £54 a year in 1519.227 The form of his name soon changed in the records to “Nicolas de Bovall,” and he left after the 1521 break in the Chamber accounts; it is highly unlikely that he is the same man as Nicholas Puvall, who came to the English court only in 1539 at a lower salary.228 The next men to be hired as “minstrels” appear at the end of the 1520s. John Droyt (1529-31) is known to have been a foreigner on account of a 1529/30 Privy Purse payment to him and two others (the sackbut Ippolito de Salvador and probably the tabret Pierre de la Planche) “in rewarde going into ther countrey.”229 De Salvador was one of the Italian sackbuts, and Pierre de la Planche served at the French court before coming to England (see above), so this reference probably does not refer to a specific place; from the name one can assume that Droyt was a northerner. Also at the end of the 1520s, Henry VIII’s only surviving Privy Purse accounts offer the first court documentation of the “two guilliams,” the Frenchmen Guillaume Duvait and Guillaume Troches (“Grande Guilliam” and “Petit Guilliam,” respectively).230 Originally grouped in the records along with Mark Smeton as children of the Privy Chamber, Duvait and Troches received livery in the early 1540s as flute-players along with four others.231 Lasocki speculates that the flute consort existed already several years earlier, but the evidence is circumstantial and comes at a point when significant changes in the court consorts were occurring.232 Holman, on the other hand, assumes that a court rebec consort was transformed into a flute consort in the 1540s; Duvait did receive a new rebec at court in 1530/1,233 and John Severnac of the flute consort was earlier designated as a rebec player, but further support for the theory (and the general concept of a homogeneous rebec consort) is lacking. Guillaume Duvait, incidentally, had been in England for almost a decade before appearing in the surviving court records, as testified both in later subsidy records and in London and Westminster parish records from the early 1520s.234 Since the only court payments to Duvait before the later 1530s appear in Henry VIII’s Privy Purse expenses, which only survive for 1529-32, it is certainly possible that he had been serving in the Privy Chamber throughout much of the 1520s. 227 RECM, vol. 7, pp. 246-53. 228 The name indices in RECM indicate that these two musicians are to be identified with each other; the biographical dictionary entry, meanwhile, covers only the later Puvall (BDECM, vol. 2, p. 933). 229 BDECM, vol. 1, p. 364. Contrary to Ashbee’s entry on Droyt, his hiring warrant seems to have been issued before the Privy Purse payment, since the former is dated 10 January, 21 Henry VIII (1529/30) and the latter 9 March, 21 Henry VIII (still 1529/30); RECM, vol. 7, pp. 261, 363. 230 BDECM, vol. 1, pp. 365-67; vol. 2, pp. 1093-5. 231 RECM, vol. 7, p. 89. 232 BDECM, vol. 1, p. 366. 233 The Privy Purse entry recording this purchase, along with the immediately preceding entry (a payment “to litle guilliam for his dyet and his servantis being sike at pety Joh¯ns. iij li. xij s.”), is absent from the selections in RECM, vol. 7. The rebec purchase is noted by Holman (Four and Twenty Fiddlers, pp. 61-2); both entries are transcribed in Privy Purse Expenses of King Henry the Eighth, ed. N.H. Nicolas (London, 1827), p. 114. 234 BDECM, vol. 1, p. 365.

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It has been necessary to designate numerous musicians above as generic minstrels not because their situation was particularly different than that of the other instrumentalists at court, as far as the accounts show. Rather, the chance survival of certain records and the inconsistency of description in the extant accounts allows the identification of only certain musicians’ instruments/specialties and only at particular points in time. The loss of a single list in some cases would have increased the number of names under this heading, and it seems likely that documents now lost would have aided in assigning more definite roles to the players investigated here. At the same time, as noted above, this is not necessarily a goal without its own dangers, and there is reason to appreciate some amount of ambiguity: the definition of precise roles for all court musicians would in itself be a distortion of a performance culture where almost any professional player needed to be proficient on multiple instruments. The difficulty here lies precisely in being forced to categorize “leftover” minstrels as a group, when each of these musicians probably coincided in status and function with others listed within specific groups—whether those groupings were the result of instrumental type (for example, wind players, drummers), court tradition (the pre-Tudor English still minstrels, the Queen’s players), or individual circumstances (soloist virtuosos). Irregular Payments to Unnamed Foreign Musicians At the same time that the presence of numerous resident foreign musicians at the English royal court can first be traced in the late fifteenth century, numerous payments are found in the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber which concern passing visitors, or musicians who only stayed for short periods. The Chamber accounts are those which contain most of the routine payments to court musicians in regular employ, and are preserved with relatively few gaps starting in 1491/2. For the period of Henry VII, however, the Chamber accounts include Privy Purse expenses as well as regular wage payments, and it is for this reason that the early Tudor Chamber accounts form an extremely important source of information on personal expenditures—other Privy Purse accounts (including those of Henry VIII and Elisabeth of York) survive only for very short timespans.235 Table 3.5

Year

Treasurer of the Chamber payments for short-term visits/ performances by continental musicians Date

Entry

Payment

1491/2

5 Jan

Item to ij Sweches grete tabarers

40s

1494/5

20 Feb

Item to the Queen of France ministrels

£30

1495

20 Oct

Itm to 3 straunge mynystrelles

£6 13s 4d

11 Dec

Itm to 3 straung mynystrels

20s

21 Dec

Itm to 2 straunge trumpettes in Re[warde]

40s

235 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 51.

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Year

Date

Entry

1495/6

14-19 Feb

Itm to 4 mynystrels of Royne

40s

1496

10 May

Itm to an harper of Fraunce

£6 13s 4d

25 Jun

Itm to a Frensheman, pleyer of thorganes

6s 8d

4-7 Oct

Item to Fraunces for straunge mynystrelx

40s

25 Apr

Itm to Hugh Denes for othe straunge mynystre.

40s

21 Jul

Item to tharchduc mynystrelx in rewarde

66s 8d

1497

Payment

21 Nov

Itm to a straunge mynystrell

10s

4 May

Itm to a straunge tabarer in rewarde

66s 8d

26-31 Aug

Itm to the waites of Lynne in rewarde

8s 4d

6 Nov

Itm deliuered to 2 mynystr. of Flaunders

£10

1499

6 Jun

Itm to my Lord Straunge mynystrelx

6s 8d

8 Jun

Itm to other Frenshe mynystrelx

10s

1500

15 Aug

Itm to the Frenche dawncers in rewarde

£4

Itm to a straunge harper in rewarde

12d

1501

25 Jun

Itm to a Spanyard that pleyed on the corde

£10

28 Sep

Itm to tharcheduc mynstrelles in rewarde

100s

15 Oct

Itm to Frauncois for the Princes mynystrelles

40s

4 Dec

Itm to the Princesse stylmynstrels at Westm.

40s

Itm to the Princesse trumpettes in rewarde

£13 6s 8d

Itm to 9 trumpettes of Spayn

£4

Itm to therle of Spayn trumpettes

40s 100s

1498

1501/2

7 Jan

Itm to 2 Spaynyshe minstrelles in rewarde

1502

20 May

Itm to 3 of my Lady Princes mynystrelles

60s

25 Jun

Itm to Whiting for straunge mynystrelles

20s

1504

18 Oct

‘Itm to 5 trumpettes of brutaign in Re[ward]’

20s

1505/6

20 Feb

Item to the King of Castelles mynstrelles in rewarde

20s

Item to the straunge mynstrelles that played afor the king in rewarde

£6 13s 4d

1506

5 Jun

‘Item to 5 straunge mynstrelles that pleyed affore the King in rewarde’

40s

1507

4 Oct

‘Item to 6 mynstrelles of Fraunce that played afore the Kinges grace at Habyngton’

40s

1508

8 May

‘Item to the straunge mynstrelles that played vpon the water affore the Kinges grace in rewarde’

40s

1510

20 May

‘Item to 4 mynstrelles of Normandy that playde afore the king in Rewarde’:

66s 8d

1511

27 Apr

‘Item to 2 Women that cam[e] oute of Flanndres that dyd pype, daunce & play afore the king in Re[ward]’:

£8 6s 8d

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Year

Date

Entry

Payment

1520

29 Jul

‘Item to Themperon¯s mynstrelles in Rewarde’

£20

‘Item to Themperon¯s trumpettes in Rewarde’

£10

Note: Selected from RECM, vol. 7, pp. 149-323. Shaded entries may or may not be references to continental musicians.

Table 3.5 extracts those entries from the records which most likely refer to shortterm visits by continental musicians. As Pearsall notes, Henry VII’s Privy Purse expenses include an approximately equal number of payments to foreigners and to native musicians; it is also significant that the foreigners received greater rewards for their performances than did English musicians.236 As the accounts progress chronologically, an increasing number of regular payments (to resident foreign musicians) appear, and after the accession of Henry VIII, very few irregular payments to any musicians occur at all. Presumably, the sorts of individual rewards listed in Table 3.5 were recorded in the now largely lost Privy Purse accounts. The little which survives for Henry VIII, from March 1528/9 to December 1532, indicates that the king continued to reward foreign musicians not in his regular employ (see Table 3.6).237 Table 3.6

Payments for performances by foreign musicians from the Privy Purse of Henry VIII (1529-32)

Year

Date

Entry

Payment

1529

[20] Dec

Itm the [20] daye paied by the kinges co¯manndeme¯t to d’vrs strannge mynstrelles by way of rewarde 1 corons at 4s 8d le pece:

£11 13s 4d

Dec

Itm to maister Bryan for so moche money by him 40s 0d gyven in rewarde to a strannge mynstrell at yorke place

16 Sep

Itm the [16] daye paied to Jongevello one of the frenche mynstrelles by the kinges co¯manndement in rewarde:

10s 0d

26 Oct

Itm the 26 daye paied to the syngers of the frenche kinges pryvay chambre in Rewarde:

£4 13s 4d

28 Oct

Itm the [28] daye paied in Rewarde to the singers of the Cardynalles de larenan 20 corons:

£4 13s 4d

1532

As with payments from various other sources, several of the king’s Privy Purse rewards can be connected with a specific event, in this case the 1532 meeting with Francis I where the relatively new French court chamber choir was exhibited to the 236 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 52. This calculation, however, is based on the assumption that payments which mention no place of origin for the performers (and do not call them “strangers”) refer only to English musicians—are further foreign performances unnoticed due to underspecification in the court records? 237 Henry VIII’s Privy Purse Accounts are transcribed in RECM, vol. 7, pp. 362-73.

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English entourage, as well as singers of Jean, Cardinal of Lorraine.238 If the balance between those two particular payments is indicative of a certain level of diplomatic protocol which Henry was following, this fact does not weaken the conclusion that the English king had a personal stake in the creation of his own chamber choir soon after. Similarly to the occasional payments springing from the 1532 conference at Calais and Boulogne, an earlier international occasion is marked by rewards to musicians in a circumscribed set of records. The mother of Henry VII, Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, maintained a household of her own until her death in 1509, from which some accounts have survived. Among a considerable number of rewards given to royal musicians, several payments are recorded in 1505/6 and 1506 to minstrels from the court of Philip the Handsome (see Table 3.7). These originate from the days when Lady Margaret entertained the Archduke along with her son, after Philip had been shipwrecked on the English coast. As with the rewards from Henry VII on this occasion (see Table 3.5 above), there is little here to give a sense of the familiarity or formality of the situations which led to the performances of the foreign musicians for their English hosts. What is notable in both of these payments, as well as in the sizeable 1513 reward given at Lille to the minstrels of Margaret of Austria (see Table 3.8), is that it is the “secular” musicians of the HabsburgBurgundian entourages who are paid. Extreme caution is necessary in drawing conclusions, however: the pattern of such irregular payments says something about the nature of the occasions on which they occurred. Absent are rewards not only to foreign chapel musicians, but also to the loud instrumentalists known to have played at public celebratory services throughout the period; is this a matter of protocol, with service music regularly covered by separate financial conventions than the personalized rewards characteristic of balls and semi-private chamber evenings? Table 3.7

Year

Payments from Lady Margaret Beaufort to continental musicians outside of royal employment Date

Entry

Payment th

r

1505/6

8 Mar

‘Itm delyv’ed the viij day of m che unto mr vichamber[lain] & layd for a reward yeven unto the kyng of Castell mynstrels beyng wt my lades grce at Croydon

16s 6d

1506

5 May

‘Itm in reward to two lutes of the kynge of Castelles yt played af fore my lades grce

20s

Itm for the Costes of the same mynstrels

5s

238 See pp. 48-9 above.

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Table 3.8

Miscellaneous references to continental musicians outside of royal employment

Year

Date

Entry

Payment

1511/12

1/6 Jan

[Account of New Year’s Night and Twelfth Night entertainments:] 2½ yards [green satin] given by the King to a strange minstrel*

-

1513

17 Oct

[Money given by Henry VIII to officers of Margaret of Austria at Lille:] Itm to the mynstrels**

£13 6s 8d

Notes: * RECM, vol. 7, p. 401. ** RECM, vol. 7, p. 41.

A final type of evidence which is to be found only at the most irregular intervals is the documentation in letters or other non-payment records concerning foreign musicians. We have encountered cases above where some of the most famous players at the court left almost no traces in the surviving financial accounts, but are mentioned regularly by ambassadors and visitors to the court. Other such musicians have remained anonymous. A case in point arises in a letter of Richard Pace to Cardinal Wolsey from October 1520, mentioning an otherwise unknown German keyboardist: “The kynge haith nowe goodde passe tyme bi the newe player uppon the clavicordis that mr rochpotte haith broght wyth hym (whoo players excellently) & lyke wyse bi the ge¯tilma¯ off almayne whoo was wyth hys grace at woodstoke, & haith nowe broght hydre a new goodde & goodly Istrum¯t, & players ryght well upon the same.”239 Further hints at otherwise unknown foreign musicians at the Tudor court exist with little solid information: for example, the four Italian musicians retained by James IV of Scotland supposedly from the entourage of Margaret Tudor;240 or the eight musicians whom Francois Philip, groom of Queen Katherine’s chamber, was supposed to bring from Charles of Castile’s Barcelona court in 1519.241 If little detailed explanation can be gathered regarding a large number of the irregular payments listed above, this fact in itself offers significant interpretative clues. For all that the major occasions of international diplomacy brought with them increases in the number of rewards doled out by the English royalty (such as in 1501 and 1506), the number of payments unrelated to such events reminds us that “strangers” were no strangers at the early Tudor court. Any number of channels for the arrival of such players has been suggested by the consideration of international relations outside the royal court in Chapter 2: activities as diverse as the wool trade, pilgrimage, and university study offered reasons for regular travel back and forth 239 RECM, vol. 8, p. 5. In connection with the emphasis on the German’s instrument, however, note the references to the organ-maker Sygmond Skeyf in England around this time (p. 93 above). 240 Perry, Sisters to the king, p. 44. 241 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 183.

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111

across the channel, and each had musical repercussions discussed elsewhere in this study. Of course, there is also something to be surmised of the role of “regular” (or at least uncelebrated) embassies in occasioning the international travels of musicians, as suggested by Pearsall and observed in the case of the Tudor royal trumpeters.242 There can be no doubt that the Tudor royal establishment was regularly witness to the performance styles of diverse foreign locations, even discounting its growing corps of resident players from the Continent; even a supposedly miserly and ascetic monarch like Henry VII was given to paying for such performances in the absence of specific diplomatic occasions demanding them. The Secular Musical Establishment and the Chapel Royal Of the ensembles of musicians considered above, it is notable that one major group is absent: the Chapel Royal, the ecclesiastical organization consisting of priests and musicians appointed to serve the sovereign personally. Given that the names of many of the most famous English composers of the sixteenth century are to be found on the lists of Gentlemen of the Chapel, pressing questions present themselves. Why does the Chapel seem to have maintained a purely English membership,243 and what relation did the Chapel and its members enjoy with the rest of the court establishment? The extent of the Chapel’s involvement in the day-to-day life of the court, for all that its organizational structures and individuals’ activities have been explored,244 remains an unresolved question. The extreme view expressed recently by Helms would limit the musical contact of the Chapel with the court and the person of the king to only a few high feast days of each year, with the physical separation of the king in his closet during Mass indicating a disconnection from his chapel staff.245 It is surely going too far to claim that Henry VIII was in any way uninterested in or unaffected by the music at his services (particularly if we believe Hall’s claim that his own compositions were sung in the chapel246); the prominent display of the choir at events such as the Field of Cloth of Gold, and the case of the king having his choir tested against Wolsey’s in 1517/18 (along with Henry’s praise of a boy impressed into royal service as a result),247 testify to a personal interest matching that which can be demonstrated for the instrumental music of the court. Moreover, the definite involvement of the boys and men of the Chapel in the king’s secular music and entertainments argues forcefully against the idea that the ecclesiastical establishment was cut off from the court’s other musical activity. 242 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 53. See also pp. 66-8 above. 243 Perhaps excepting the appearance of “Arthur Lovekyn” among the children of the Chapel in 1509-10, who Charles van den Borren suggests may have been Flemish (Les musiciens belges, p. 62 n. 4); see also Helms, Heinrich VIII., p. 236 n. 13. 244 Most recently in Fiona Kisby, The Royal Household Chapel in Early-Tudor London, 1485-1547 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1996). 245 Helms, Heinrich VIII., pp. 277-8. 246 Fallows, ‘Henry VIII’, p. 27. 247 BDECM, vol. 1, p. 307.

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As Westfall has emphasized, a long tradition existed in England of theatrical performance by the musicians of household and civic chapels.248 Indeed, “many extant Tudor play texts either bear evidence of Chapel involvement or can be positively identified as Chapel plays. Analysis of these texts reveals that the Chapel’s influence upon the structure and aesthetics of early Renaissance drama has been significantly underestimated.”249 For the early Tudor court, these remarks immediately bring to mind the figure of William Cornysh, who was central to dramatic performances of every form for a significant period during the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII.250 As mentioned above (p. 23), Cornysh was chief devisor for court entertainments from 1501 onward; his theatrical appearances with a special troupe of “Players of the Chapel” lasted at least eight years beginning in 1505.251 That Cornysh was made Master of the Children of the Chapel after the accession of Henry VIII in 1509 is certainly related to his established role in dramatic productions; the children, under Cornysh’s direction, continued to serve in dramatic and musical events outside the bounds of chapel service on numerous occasions. It is specifically these situations which brought together separate court musical ensembles, with the accounts and descriptions of entertainments at the Tudor court frequently specifying the musical participation of Chapel children alongside the court’s minstrels on pageant devices.252 Members of the Chapel staff, then, were brought into collaboration on repeated occasions with the secular musical establishment, and with good reason: until the later years of Henry VIII’s reign (when the influence of the French royal court again bore fruit), there existed no dedicated secular chamber choir at the Tudor court, that is, there was no vehicle for the professional performance of vocal music excepting the Chapel Royal.253 But there can be no doubt that vocal execution of secular music was a regular feature of court music. The two primary songbooks which can be associated with the repertory of the court, LonBL 31922 (of c. 1520) and LonBL 5465 (c. 1500), both feature a considerable proportion of secular compositions by Chapel Royal composers such as Fayrfax, Farthing, Lloyd, and of course Cornysh.254 These works represent a considerable variety of forms, including English partsongs of greater or lesser complexity, textless “consorts” and even (in the case of Cornysh) compositions in direct imitation of foreign styles. Who was performing these pieces? Why would we have French-texted works by Cornysh and Henry VIII without suitable and available performing forces? Who was it that performed the instrumental works by court composers, if not the court instrumentalists?

248 Westfall, Patrons and Performance, especially pp. 13-62. 249 Ibid., p. 14. 250 Sydney Anglo, ‘William Cornish in a Play, Pageants, Prison, and Politics’, Review of English Studies, 10 (1959): 347-360; Kisby, ‘A Courtier in the Community’. 251 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, pp. 120-22. 252 See, for example, the Accounts of Revels in L&P, vol. II/2, pp. 1490-1518. 253 In this respect, the royal court was actually behind the household of the Duke of Buckingham, who kept six “famuli cantatores” in the first decade of the sixteenth century; BDECM, vol. 2, p. 729. 254 On LonBL 31922, see pp. 164-7 below.

Building a Foreign Musical Establishment

113

The homogeneous national composition of the Chapel Royal may not, therefore, imply such a disjunction with the foreign musical forces at court as is easily assumed; for professional purposes, at least, some level of cooperation was required. A significant example of foreign acceptance in these circles is perhaps provided by the case of Benedictus de Opiciis’s entry into the Fraternity of St Nicholas (see p. 94 above). In searching for reasons underlying the lack of foreigners in the choral forces of the court, it may be productive to bear in mind that the many continental additions to the King’s Music during the early Tudor period often brought new types of players to the country: as Pearsall notes, a desire for new and foreign sounds seems to have been active in the planning of court revels.255 For singing, however, England could boast one of the strongest traditions in Europe; there was no need to import where the bounty at home was plentiful. As confirmed, however, by the changing character of works by the composers who grew out of that choral tradition during the sixteenth century, English singers did not require the presence of foreign musicians in their ranks in order to learn important lessons from continental precedents. That is a subject for an entirely new investigation. Conclusions By the early years of the reign of Henry VIII, foreigners had become the dominant element in the instrumental music of the English court. Of the categories of musician investigated above, only the trumpets and “still minstrels” retained a mostly English identity, and it is probably no coincidence that these were the two groups—along with the Chapel Royal—to pre-date the Tudor period. The few harpers mentioned by name in the accounts seem to have been English as well; otherwise the English instrumentalists were members of mainly continental ensembles. The king’s music was undergoing constant changes and renewal throughout this period, and the major thrust of these shifts was the introduction of an expansive “European” element. A question which needs to be raised with regard to these developments is the extent to which the monarch himself participated in the selection and employment of musicians. It has been suggested above that the personal education of Henry VIII must have played a role in the imitation of foreign cultures at court, but of course we are dealing with a very large household, and the king certainly did not supervise many details of hiring. The financial documents of the court make no reference to the reasons musicians were taken on; but the king was always the final arbiter, by verbal command before the accession of Henry VIII, and by signed warrant afterwards, often after a trial period of several months.256 In Italy, we have famous testimonies to the personal involvement of magnates in the acquisition of musicians (often in a form of spectacular competition), as well as the frequent visits and trades of musicians between courts.257 These references, however, derive from occasional documents such as letters (and not payment records); and if we consider 255 Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, p. 161. 256 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 95-9. 257 See, for example, Lewis Lockwood, ‘Music at Ferrara in the Period of Ercole I d’Este’, Studi Musicali, 1 (1972): 101-31.

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114

the examples of similar documents related to the English court, it becomes clear that Henry VIII was trying to play the same game. The oft-cited passage from a 1516 letter regarding the introduction of Dionysius Memo to the court demonstrates the king’s personal interest in taking the organist from the Basilica in Venice: Friar Dionisius Memo, the organist of St. Mark’s, arrived in London a few days ago. He brought a most excellent instrument with him at great expense. Presented him to the Cardinal first, who desired to hear him play in the presence of many Lords and virtuosi. They were much pleased with him. He afterwards visited the King, who sent for him immediately after dinner, and made him play before his Lords and all his virtuosi. He played to the incredible admiration of everybody, especially of the King, who is well skilled in music, and of the two Queens. His (Giustinian’s) secretary was present, who explained to the King how much favour Memo enjoyed at Venice. The King had made him chief of his instrumental musicians, and said he would write to Rome to have him unfrocked out of his monastic weeds, so that he might only retain holy orders, and that he would make him his chaplain. A royal chaplaincy was an honourable appointment and very profitable.258

The correspondence of Henry VIII’s agents (for example, Thomas Spinelli, Cuthbert Tunstal, Thomas Wolsey) with each other and with the monarch shows that Henry was personally involved in bringing Hans Nagel’s Flemish wind band to England in 1516, a process which was already well underway in October 1515. The motivations for this interest may have been mainly political in the case of Nagel, but there is no hint that his companions were also spies, and they were hired even without Nagel.259 The case of Zuan Piero brings the English court into a direct relation with the musical traffic of the northern Italian courts, as mentioned above; Henry and the d’Este communicated and exchanged gifts through the services of the lutenist, who must have enjoyed considerable personal freedom in these diplomatic relations. In similar fashion, Henry’s October 1511 letter to Margaret of Austria demonstrates a personal acquaintance with Benedictus de Opiciis (through his father) several years before his hiring, and the interpretation of the letter suggested above (pp. 92-3) relates it to the organist’s acquisition of a post on the Continent. The king’s negotiations to reacquire the Bassano brothers in the later 1530s bring up the issue of competition directly, with Henry agreeing that it would be “no small honour to His Majesty to have music comparable with any other prince or perchance better and more variable.”260 For numerous musicians who made their living at the royal court, therefore, the personal activity of the monarch was indeed directly responsible for their hiring. If this situation cannot realistically have held in many cases, we must nevertheless remain extremely cautious about dismissing the idea that the Tudor kings indeed held “the greatest desire to employ foreigners.”261 What follows equally from this involvement of the monarchs is the realization that royal employment carried high status for instrumentalists, a corrective view

258 259 260 261

CSP Ven, vol. 2, no. 780. L&P, vol. II/1, nos 981, 1299, 1383, 1388, 1478, 1541. Westfall, Patrons and Performance, p. 87. See p. 18 above.

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expressed recently not only with regard to English court players but also those of the French court.262 Far from a band of illiterate wandering entertainers, these musicians were skilled and sought-after professionals who often settled permanently in their new countries, building up households and founding families who served king, queen, and court for generations. It can be assumed safely, moreover, that many of the foreign players at the court enjoyed opportunities to return to the Continent for various periods, opening channels of regular international musical communication. To certain individual cases mentioned above (Zuan Piero, Claise Forceville, John de Cecil) could be added regular occasions when trumpeters were released to accompany ambassadors overseas.263 It has been noted, moreover, that the regular wage payments in the Chamber accounts continued even throughout known periods of absence for individual musicians, and so these payments cannot be taken as proof of residence.264 In fact the pattern of advance payments for certain journeys to the Continent suggests a regulated system whereby minstrels were granted periods of paid leave which would not conflict with each other: “The fact that these wage advances were methodically rotated between several performers who played different instruments seems to suggest that the court had a surplus of ‘chamber’ minstrels and that they were consequently allowed to take turns serving the king. We may even speculate that the king was sending his various minstrels away to recruit new players or perhaps to attend some type of minstrel school in order to refresh their repertory by learning the newest music and styles of performance.”265 In terms of nationality, a gradual and major shift can be observed in the court instrumental music during the first decades of the sixteenth century. The majority of Henry VII’s foreign minstrels were hired from the northern part of the Continent, and certainly brought up in the traditions of those regions; the situation remained unchanged for a good part of Henry VIII’s reign as well. For all that the Italian imports of 1520s onward (especially the Bassanos) have traditionally been a center of attention for considerations of English court music, it was northerners who first played the viol and sackbut at court. The Italian soloists of the 1510s, Zuan Piero and Dionysio Memo, certainly enjoyed great success and influence with the king, but they must be seen as exceptional cases in a courtly atmosphere which was still largely under the spell of Burgundian and French fashions. The gradual change in the composition of the body of minstrels serving the king to include a significant number of Italians was a slow development, occurring largely in the last two decades of Henry VIII’s rule, and was accompanied by changes in the style and focus of court entertainments.266 It is no longer feasible, then, to attribute the rise of a foreign musical body at the English court to the youthful enthusiasm of a Henry VIII out to prove himself to the European world, however much that ambition contributed to the later enlargement of the court’s secular musical forces. Without the choice, made by Henry VII, to 262 263 264 265 266

Kisby, ‘Royal Minstrels’; Cazeaux, La musique à la cour, pp. 112, 119-20. RECM, vol. 7, pp. 44, 197, 200-201. Pearsall, Tudor Court Musicians, vol. 1, pp. 111-15. Ibid., p. 115. See pp. 21-4 above.

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employ foreigners as tutors for his children, simultaneous with his importation of more musicians, scholars, and courtiers from the Continent than at any point in the past, it is far from certain that Henry VIII could have developed the tastes and abilities which so affected the character of his reign. If England’s royal court under Henry VII could really be characterized as “almost depressingly unspectacular” (and this is a bold judgment, even if made on the basis of primary sources),267 nevertheless it was a place which increasingly kept European standards in its entertainment, art, and scholarship. The foreigners who lived at the court, and those who visited for short periods, played a vital role in creating the international environment once considered the product of Henry VIII’s character.

267 The Great Tournament Roll, vol. 2, p. 2.

Chapter 4

Anglo-Continental Relations in Music Manuscripts Limited largely to questions of historical and institutional import, the preceding chapters of this investigation have been framed in a way that emphasizes the importance of the role of personal contacts and general cultural trends as the means by which interactions were established between English and continental musical practices. The documentation of Burgundian, French, and later Italianate “Renaissance” court ideals in English royal circles, together with the ever-growing presence of foreign musicians alongside the other imported scholars and artists of the Tudor court, serves to illustrate the receptive environment within which continental musical styles were received at the royal court and noble households during this period. For a more concrete demonstration of the musical traffic which must have occurred, we may at this point turn to the musical sources themselves, among which books of considerably different origins and purposes—luxury presentation chansonniers, undecorated cathedral choirbooks, musical “commonplace books,” to name several categories—testify to the varied ways foreign music gradually became native in Early Modern England. Of the music books which were produced in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as is commonly recognized, the majority must by now have been destroyed, and preReformation England is cited often as a case where great amounts of material have been lost. It is interesting to note, then, that out of what does still survive from the period covered by the present study, there are roughly as many complete sources of continental music in England as complete native books. The matter is surely colored by the different values and purposes attached to the different types of books, many of the continental sources in England having been treated with special care as valuable presentation manuscripts in the royal libraries. The same argument, it may be said, should apply to the surviving “typical” English sources such as the Eton Choirbook or the Lambeth Choirbook: the new information on lost sources arising from the collation and digitization of English polyphonic fragments indicates that manuscripts of “humble” appearance and repertoire were surely the standard, as far as such a thing could exist.1 In terms of what can be used today for understanding specific institutions in the early sixteenth century, for example in judging the musical taste of the royal court, we remain largely in the specialized realm of complete sources with identifiable owners or types of owners. A considerable portion of that material is foreign. 1 See especially the many fragmentary sources digitized by the Digital Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM), http://www.diamm.ac.uk.

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To summarize the manuscript situation, Table 4.1 lists the surviving sources which show direct musical contact between England and the Continent: continental manuscripts which came to England in the early sixteenth century; English books with continental compositions; foreign books with English heraldic identifiers; several cases of continental sources which contain sixteenth-century English music.2 Table 4.1 Manuscripts linked to English-Continental relations, c. 1485-1530 Manuscript

Date

Origin

Composers

CambriP 1760

c. 1509

Copied in France, perhaps compiled for English royal recipient

Bontemps / Bortel / Brumel / Brunet / A. Févin / Forster / La Rue / Craen / Festa / Josquin / Morales / R. Févin / Ninot le Petit / Therache / Gascongne / Mouton / Obrecht / Prioris / Richafort / Hyllayre [Bernonneau]

ChiN M91/ SuttonO 4

c. 1525-9

Copied in Florence, presented to Henry VIII

Arcadelt / Verdelot / Conseil / A. Ferrabosco I / Jaquet of Mantua / Lafage / Sermisy / Jhan of Ferrara / Josquin / Lhéritier / Richafort / Silva/ Willaert / anon.

JenaU 4

1508-25

Brussels/Mechelen (Alamire), perhaps intended at one point as a gift from Maximilian I to Henry VIII

Divitis / A. Févin / M. Forestier / La Rue / Mouton/ Pipelare

JenaU 9

1515-16

Brussels/Mechelen (Alamire)

Fayrfax/anon. [Fayrfax?]

LonBL 5665

c. 14601510

Possibly Exeter Cathedral

J. Cornyshe / Hawte / Henry VIII / Mower / Norman / Packe / Petyr / Smert / Trouluffe / T.B./ Turges / W.P. / anon. (incl. 1 Binchois tenor)

LonBL 31922

c. 1510-23

Probably London

A. Agricola / Compère / Barbireau / Isaac / Obrecht / Busnois / R. Cooper / W. Cornyshe / Daggere / Dunstable / Fardyng / Fayrfax / A. Févin / Hayne van Ghizeghem / Henry VIII / Le Heurteur / Moulu / Sermisy / Kempe / Lloyd / Prioris / Pygott / Rysby / anon.

LonBL 35087

1505-06

Perhaps Bruges; came to England in the sixteenth century

Agricola / Appenzeller / Brumel / Josquin / Busnois / Compère / Obrecht / Pietrequin / Févin / Ghiselin / Hayne van Ghizeghem / Isaac / Japart / Janequin / Ninot le Petit / Willaert / Mouton / Prioris / Vorda? / Vyzeto / anon.

LonBLH 5242

1509-14

France, for Françoise de Foix

A. Agricola / Brumel / A. Févin / Janequin / La Rue / anon.

2 The majority of items listed are undoubtedly relevant to the present investigation, but several sources have been included for completeness where it is impossible to know whether they were in England by 1530 (LonBLH 5242 and LonBLR 20 A.XVI). See the discussions below.

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Manuscript

Date

Origin

Composers

LonBLR 8 G.VII

1513-25

Brussels/Mechelen (Alamire), gift to Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon

A. Agricola? / Craen / C. Festa / A. Févin / Josquin / Morales / Mouton / Therache / Ghiselin / Isaac / Verdelot / La Rue / Strus / anon.

LonBLR 11 E.XI

1516

Perhaps Antwerp, or England (Netherlandish style), for Henry VIII

Opiciis / Sampson / anon.

LonBLR 20 A.XVI

c. 1483-88 + 1490s

France, perhaps came to England in sixteenth century

Agricola / Compère / Hayne van Ghizeghem/ Bouvel / Crespieres / Fresneau / Ockeghem/ Josquin / anon.

LonBLR A56

c. 1530

Probably copied in London/Kent

Sermisy / Roquelay / anon. (English and French)

LonBLR A58

c. 1515-40

Probably copied in London/Kent

Ambrose / Aston / Cole / R. Cooper / W. Cornyshe / Daggere / Drake / Dulot / Sermisy / Hesdin / Roquellay / Jacotin / Lupi / Parker / Monk of Stratford / anon.

LonRC 1070

c. 1510-15

France, probably once in possession of Anne Boleyn

Brumel / Compère / Craen / C. Festa / A. Févin / Josquin / Morales / Therache / Gascogne / Mouton/ La Rue / Sermisy / Moulu / Obrecht / anon.

MunBS F

1508-34

Brussels/Mechelen (Alamire), perhaps intended for Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon

Gascogne / Josquin / Moulu / Richafort / anon.

VienNB Mus. 18746

1523

Brussels/Mechelen (Alamire), sent to Raimund Fugger the Elder, of Augsburg

Appenzeller / Verdelot / Bauldeweyn / Grefinger/ Brumel / Josquin / La Rue / Lebrun / Mouton / Prioris / Richafort / Werrecore / Stokhem / anon. (incl. “cantus de anglia”)

Note: Information is from Census Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music, 1400-1550, ed. Charles Hamm and Herbert Kellman (5 vols, Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1979-88), hereafter CCM, with some modifications; see the individual manuscript discussions below. Composers listed include all possibilities where multiple attributions exist. Cases of continental books or fragments whose presence in sixteenthcentury England (or intention of transmission there) is highly doubtful have not been included.

In the following discussion, the pool of sources is divided into several groups according to origins or characteristics: northern songbooks which came (or may have come) to England in the sixteenth century, primarily French chansonniers; books related to the Habsburg-Burgundian court scribe Petrus Alamire, which show indications of having been prepared for Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon; other presentation books or humbler continental sources in England; Alamire sources with English music; and books of definite English origin which contain continental music. Each of these manuscript types sheds light on the transfer of music across the channel in particular and complementary ways.

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Northern Songbooks in Sixteenth-Century England Of the music manuscripts which originated on the Continent and probably or certainly came to England in the sixteenth century, roughly half are devoted primarily to secular pieces.3 As expected with mainstream song collections of the period, French texts are predominant in almost all of the books. The exception is LonBL 35087, the only book in this group which is not a formal, illuminated production; it contains a large number of Flemish songs in addition to French, as well as several compositions in other languages.4 An inscription on folio 1r, reading “Hieronymus Laurinus est meus herus,” allowed William McMurtry to identify the original owner as Jérôme Lauweryn, Burgundian counselor and treasurer general from 1497 until his death in 1509.5 A number of Lauweryn’s sixteenth-century descendants were renowned scholars and patrons, and McMurtry suggests that Jérôme’s son Mark (1488-1540) could have been responsible for the songbook’s transferral to England, through his close connections with scholars such as Erasmus of Rotterdam, Thomas More, and Richard Pace. Regardless of the means of transmission, the book’s presence in sixteenth-century England is confirmed by at least one of the two internal inscriptions: on folio 75v, an English hand which cannot date from much later than the middle years of the sixteenth century has written: “There ys litle such parchement now to be had any where for money.” The inscription on folio 37v (“Com all Tru Harted Louers / and Har”) is in a later hand, probably from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century. Although a neatly executed manuscript,6 LonBL 35087 is certainly not of the class of contemporaneous illuminated chansonniers. The initials in the book which are filled in at all are done with simple calligraphy; it seems unlikely that such a manuscript would travel between owners for the sake of its appearance. At the least, then, we can surmise that some interest in the manuscript’s content was responsible for its transfer to England on leaving the hands of the Lauweryn family. OxfBA 831 contains one of two fragments now preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, from the complex of music manuscripts produced at the BurgundianHabsburg court. As with folios 2r-3v of OxfBLL a.8, which contain sacred music associated with the French royal court, all that remains of this music book is a single

3 Several of the books considered here are discussed, along with some sacred music manuscripts, in Fenlon, ‘La diffusion’. 4 McMurtry, The British Museum Manuscript Additional 35087; see also Braithwaite, The Introduction, pp. 55-6. The manuscript has been published in facsimile: Chansonnier of Hieronymus Lauweryn van Watervliet: London, British Library MS. Add. 35087, facsimile edn by William McMurtry (Peer, 1989). 5 Biographical information on Lauweryn and his family appears in the introduction to Chansonnier of Hieronymus Lauweryn, pp. 5-6; and McMurtry, The British Museum Manuscript Additional 35087, pp. 9-15. 6 McMurtry claims that the two pieces added in a different hand at the end of the manuscript (fols 93v-95v) were written by inferior scribes, but their work appears every bit as competent and professional as that of the main scribe. The greatest difference in appearance is due to the use of a much thicker pen for the main corpus of the book.

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bifolium.7 However, unlike the leaves from OxfBLL a.8, which were copied by scribes associated with Petrus Alamire, OxfBA 831, fols 260r-261v, comes from the “workshop” of the individual known currently as Scribe B, Alamire’s predecessor (formerly identified with Martin Bourgeois).8 The full book would appear to have been a very large-scale chansonnier, fairly different from the only other secular manuscript known by this scribe (FlorC 2439); the contents of the surviving pages are parts from two French songs by Agricola (the first also attributed to Hayne van Ghizeghem) as well as a page of Wreede’s popular Nunca fue pena maior. Although OxfBA 831 is the only surviving northern source for Nunca fue pena maior, the inclusion of the Spanish song probably says nothing about the intended recipient or early history of the manuscript: Wreede was a Fleming, and this piece appears in manuscripts which transmit mainstream northern repertory as well as Iberian sources (in addition to acting as a cantus firmus for composers like La Rue and Pipelare).9 Nothing is known of how or when the music leaves from OxfBA 831 arrived in England, and they are situated today in a miscellany of documents and leaves from several centuries and locales. On the whole, it seems doubtful that the OxfBA 831 bifolium represents one of those manuscripts which would have been in a position to have any impact on music-making in sixteenth-century England. Similarly to the music fragment in OxfBA 831, it is impossible to know how or when three well-known French chansonniers arrived in England, these being CambriP 1760, LonBLH 5242, and LonBLR 20 A.XVI. Numerous origins and purposes have been hypothesized for CambriP 1760, none of which have been proven in any definitive way. Suggested recipients include Anne of Brittany, Louis XII, Henry Tudor (as Prince of Wales or as Henry VIII), Henry VII, and Arthur, Prince of Wales.10 The central problem of the issue of recipients is the testimony of a 1697 catalogue, which describes a miniature (now missing from the first folio) as 7 Descriptions of these two fragments (with a color reproduction of one page from OxfBA 831) appear in Kellman (ed.), The Treasury of Petrus Alamire, pp. 122-3. Other manuscripts from the Burgundian-Habsburg scribes are discussed below. 8 On the workshop concept, however, note James Carley’s reservations: “Rowan Watson points out (private communication) that the terms ‘workshop’ and ‘atelier’ tend to be used somewhat anachronistically in the discussion of the production of manuscripts in this period. Archival evidence, in fact, suggests collaboration by independent individuals” (‘“Her moost lovyng and fryndely brother sendeth gretyng.” Anne Boleyn’s Manuscripts and Their Sources,’ in Michelle P. Brown and Scot McKendrick (eds), Illuminating the Book: Makers and Interpreters: Essays in Honour of Janet Backhouse [London and Toronto, 1998], p. 276). 9 David Fallows, A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs, 1415-1480 (Oxford and New York, 1999), pp. 624-5. Fallows does note, however, that the ending of the song in OxfBA 831 agrees only with two sources from Spain and Naples, respectively (Kellman [ed.], The Treasury of Petrus Alamire, p. 122). 10 CCM, vol. 1, pp. 128-9. Other discussions of CambriP 1760 include Kahmann, ‘Über Inhalt und Herkunft’; Sydney R. Charles, ‘Hillary-Hyllayre: How Many Composers?’ ML, 55 (1974): 61-9, especially 62-4; and Fenlon, ‘La diffusion’, pp. 174-6. A facsimile of the manuscript has been published: Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys MS. 1760, facsimile edn by Howard Mayer Brown, Renaissance Music in Facsimile, 2 (New York and London, 1988).

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representing a Prince of Wales during the time of Henry VII.11 Overpainting in the illuminations of the manuscript obscures the matter further, by suggesting a change of recipient at some point during the book’s early history. The English royal arms at the head of the table of contents (fols 2v-3v, written in the same text hand as the rest of the manuscript) indicate in any case that the manuscript was probably in English hands soon after its creation. Further clues to its early whereabouts are to be found in the several sixteenth-century English inscriptions on the inside covers and flyleaves: the old shelfmark on folio 1r shows that the manuscript formed part of the Old Royal Library;12 the inside front cover contains a warning against theft, as well as a string of Hindu-Arabic numerals which writes, in a simple alphabetic cypher: “annestanhop / ismihope;” and on the inside back cover is “ffor my Lade anne [further text struck through].” These inscriptions link the book to the formidable Lady Anne Stanhope (Countess of Hertford, Duchess of Somerset), once an attendant upon Katherine of Aragon and eventually wife of Edward Seymour, Lord Protector of England at the beginning of Edward VI’s reign. CambriP 1760 cannot be characterized strictly as a chansonnier, roughly half of the book being devoted to sacred pieces. An unusual level of formality achieved in the book is demonstrated by the strict division by genre and number of voices (as also in ChiN M91/Sutton O4), mentioned explicitly in the table of contents. The tabula is exceptional in itself, in that every piece in the book is given a composer ascription; this fortunate survival reveals a high concentration of works by French composers, in particular Anthoine de Févin and Mathieu Gascongne. The inclusion of several works by Richafort as well confirms the unlikelihood of the book’s having been given to Arthur, Prince of Wales, who died in 1502; if the book was really prepared during Henry VII’s time, it would have to be much closer to the terminal date of 1509. A further item which warrants inspection with regard to CambriP 1760 is the presence of a Suscipe verbum setting (fols 5v-7r) ascribed in the opening table to “Bontemps.” In the absence of other pieces in the repertory of the period bearing an attribution to this composer, an interesting possibility for authorial identification presents itself. If this is the Possant Bonitamps who was a minstrel/ cornett player/organ tuner at the English court from the beginning of the sixteenth century to 1515,13 the inclusion of his work in CambriP 1760 could indicate a former (or continued) connection to the French court, as with other instrumentalists of the Tudors.14 LonBLH 5242 and LonBLR 20 A.XVI are more difficult to link with England in any way. As Paul Chaillon has shown convincingly, LonBLH 5242 was created 11 Edward Bernard, Catalogi Librorum Manuscriptorum Anglie et Hibernie (Oxford, 1697), vol. 2, p. 209, no. 6806. 12 On the history of the royal collection of books and manuscripts and its systems of organization, see James P. Carley (ed.), The Libraries of Henry VIII, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7 (London, 2000), pp. xxiii-xcii, especially lxiii-xci; Sir George F. Warner and Julius P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections (4 vols, London: Oxford University Press, 1921), vol. 1, pp. xi-xxxii; Sears Jayne and Francis R. Johnson, The Lumley Library, the Catalogue of 1609 (London, 1956), pp. 292-6. 13 See p. 104 above. 14 See Chapter 3.

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for Françoise de Foix, mistress of Francis I from 1515.15 Nothing of the book’s history is known until its acquisition in the eighteenth century by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford;16 nor are any clues to be found in the few marginal annotations in the manuscript, which are in a fairly modern hand in English.17 LonBLR 20 A.XVI can be associated with French royal figures of an earlier generation, Louis XII and Anne of Brittany (or perhaps Louise of Savoy), and similarly lacks any evidence relating to its early history.18 Although the dates of all three manuscripts just mentioned are separated by several decades (probably near 1510 for CambriP 1760 and LonBLH 5242, and the 1480s and 1490s for LonBLR 20 A.XVI), they share a high degree of formalism and skillful execution which mark them clearly as presentation books. Created for royal patrons—even if the intended recipients ended up changing during the composition of the manuscripts—such books were precious objects and were clearly valued as such. The clean appearance and good state of preservation of many deluxe manuscripts is certainly due to the exceptional care taken to protect them, but it is by no means clear that these books were merely stored on library shelves and had no effect on performance and transmission.19 Even in music manuscripts which have been identified as books used by ensembles at specific institutions (the Sistine Chapel choirbooks, for example), markings and marginalia which we would expect to indicate use in performance are exceptional. We must be conscious of a very different approach from our own as regards the relationship between sounding music and the written forms which were used to transmit polyphony—bearing in mind a much greater reliance on memory, as well as the employment of certain books to store and transmit their contents, rather than to act directly in performance. A view that would categorically discount any influence of presentation manuscripts rests entirely on negative evidence, and does not address the similarities observable in the known “practical” manuscripts. Of the five chansonniers of the period which are preserved wholly or partially in England, then, two can be shown fairly definitely to have arrived in the sixteenth century, while the early transmission of the others remains unknown. The one book which could not have been meant for royal presentation (LonBL 35087) was in 15 Chaillon, ‘Le Chansonnier de Françoise’. 16 Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts Preserved in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London, 1972), pp. 148, 232 (see also pp. xxi-xxxv on Harley’s collecting activities, which included large numbers of acquisitions both from English and foreign institutions). 17 See, for example, the top of fol. 22v. 18 The standard study of this book is Litterick, The Manuscript Royal 20.A.XVI. On the possible connection of the manuscript to Louise of Savoy (mother of Francis I), see Urkevich, Anne Boleyn, pp. 261-72. 19 A recent statement of the view that literary manuscripts created for monarchs of the period were intended purely for spectacular consumption, “meant to go unread”—with little in the way of supporting evidence—is offered in David R. Carlson, ‘The “Opicius” Poems (British Library, Cotton Vespasian B.iv) and the Humanist Anti-Literature in Early Tudor England’, Renaissance Quarterly, 55 (2002): 869-903 (quotation at 900). Iain Fenlon argues against the possibility that presentation manuscripts had little or nothing to do with musical practice, with regard to some of the books discussed here (‘La diffusion’, p. 174 n. 4).

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English hands in the sixteenth century and likely held some special interest for an insular owner. It would be rash to assume uncritically that the other books (and others of like sort which may have disappeared) had an impact on courtly musicmaking, but on the other hand it is no more justifiable categorically to deny such a possibility without supporting evidence. As outlined in previous chapters, the taste for Italian and French secular music at the early Tudor royal court is documented in numerous ways: as only a few examples one could cite Skelton’s allusions to popular song titles in his jabs at court characters; eyewitness accounts of the foreign dances performed by professionals and nobles alike; Sagudino’s request on Henry VIII’s behalf for new Italian songs; and, of course, the growing number of chansons which made their way into sources copied by Englishmen—including the early and quite significant example of the Henry VIII manuscript, with the monarch’s own compositions confirming his exposure to continental song (to be discussed below). For a musically literate and proficient king such as Henry VIII, there is little question of presentation chansonniers being unintelligible objects appreciated solely for their illustrations. Whether the king did take an extraordinary interest in his foreign manuscript gifts may be questioned; that he could understand their contents, there is little doubt. Alamire Manuscripts Prepared for Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon Fifty or so music manuscripts are now known from the complex connected to the early sixteenth-century Habsburg-Burgundian court, most of them associated with the figure of Petrus Alamire, who seems to have organized a quite professional “scriptorium” to produce these books.20 Given both the activities of Alamire on an international level (see pp. 40-41 above) and the unmistakable function of at least some of the books as political gifts, it is by no means extraordinary that four of the Alamire sources show signs connecting them to Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. Only one of these, LonBLR 8 G.VII, is now in England; it may be the case that the other three (JenaU 4, JenaU 9, MunBS F) never left the Continent at all.21 JenaU 9 is a special case which will be discussed elsewhere (see pp. 156-60 below), leaving three books of Burgundian court repertory with English heraldic emblems, all with considerable ambiguities in terms of dating and function. The main opening of LonBLR 8 G.VII, with its display of the English royal arms, the Beaufort portcullis and Katherine of Aragon’s pomegranate grafted onto the Tudor union rose, would seem to indicate clearly that the book was prepared for Henry VIII.22 Nevertheless, as noted independently by Frank Tirro and Herbert

20 The entire manuscript set is catalogued and described in Kellman (ed.), The Treasury of Petrus Alamire. Note the reservations expressed in p. 121 n. 8 above regarding the usage of terms such as “scriptorium” and “atelier” for manuscript production. 21 In Flynn Warmington’s list of these books, MunBS 34 is an error for MunBS F; Kellman (ed.), The Treasury of Petrus Alamire, p. 100. 22 Fols 2v-3r. See the published facsimile: London, British Library, MS Royal 8 G. VII.

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Kellman, the situation is complicated somewhat by other factors.23 The text of Févin’s motet Adiutorium nostrum (fols 4v-6r), originally composed for Anne of Brittany and Louis XII, was adjusted to suit Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, but the change is actually a physical one: the names “Anna” and “Ludovicus” were erased from the choirbook and replaced with “Katherina” and “Henricus.”24 Kellman, however, points out that the name “Georgi” (referring to the patron saint of England), replacing the “Renate” invoked in the text, stood in LonBLR 8 G.VII from the beginning with no sign of overwriting. The other erasures, therefore, must be copying errors (understandably produced, especially if any amount of bureaucracy was involved in communicating the name changes to the text scribe), and the match of hands between the new names and the rest of the text further corroborates the view that the book was always intended for Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon.25 The occasion when the book came to England remains entirely uncertain, various dates in the 1510s or early 1520s offering opportunities for presentation from different rulers.26 Numerous attempts which have been made to read specific programs into the choice and ordering of texts in the manuscript have proven inconclusive, even if such speculation is clearly invited by the unique inclusion of five consecutive settings of Dido’s lament Dulces exuviae from the Aeneid.27 With no unproblematic interpretation of the manuscript’s contents available, the endeavor remains questionable. Even Kellman’s safe assertion that the first three texts (Celeste beneficium, Adiutorium nostrum, and Nesciens mater) “express a wish for offspring” is partly conjectural: only Adiutorium nostrum had an obvious function of praying for children, through its invocation of St René—who has been removed in the London version; the other two texts only deal with childbirth in the generic way which is to be found in countless settings of texts related to Mary.28 It has been assumed before that LonBLR 8 G.VII passed at some point into the hands of the twelfth earl 23 Tirro, ‘Royal 8.G.vii’; London, British Library, MS Royal 8 G. VII, pp. v-xvii; Kellman (ed.), The Treasury of Petrus Alamire, pp. 110-11. 24 Tirro, ‘Royal 8.G.vii’, pp. 17-21; Kellman (ed.), The Treasury of Petrus Alamire, p. 110. 25 Kellman further refutes Tirro’s claim of the existence of overpainting in the panel on folio 2v with the English royal arms (London, British Library, MS Royal 8 G. VII, p. xiv n. 36). 26 For example, the 1513 meeting of the English and Burgundian courts at Lille: Honey Meconi, ‘Another Look at Absalom’, TVNM, 48 (1998): 18-21. Fenlon’s dating to 1519-32 (‘La diffusion’, pp. 177-8) rests on a suspicious conviction that the manuscript must have been a gift from Charles V (since the motet O sancta maria virgo virginum on folios 28v-30r prays for a “Karolus”), and only after his election as emperor—though no reason is offered for the latter assumption. 27 For the most recent attempt at a programmatic reading of the manuscript, which paradoxically demonstrates the suitability of its contents for a number of early sixteenthcentury female rulers, see Jennifer Thomas, ‘Patronage and Personal Narrative in a Music Manuscript: Marguerite of Austria, Katherine of Aragon, and London Royal 8 G.vii’, in Thomasin LaMay (ed.), Musical Voices of Early Modern Women: Many-Headed Melodies (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2005), pp. 337-64. 28 Kellman (ed.), The Treasury of Petrus Alamire, p. 110. Another programmatic reading of LonBLR 8 G.VII is Meconi, ‘Another Look’, pp. 20-21.

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of Arundel, Henry Fitzalan, to judge by the later piece in his honor (composed by “Morel”) inserted into the front of the manuscript; the library of Fitzalan’s sonin-law, John Lumley, was incorporated into the Old Royal Library in the early seventeenth century.29 Milsom notes, however, that the Lumley inventory of 1596 makes reference only to the canon, not to the manuscript, and suggests that LonBLR 8 G.VII never left the royal collection (the sheet with the canon being inserted only after the point at which the libraries merged).30 JenaU 4 and MunBS F are less definitely and singularly associated with Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. The number of portraits and heraldic emblems in JenaU 4, in fact, makes any number of recipients possible: we find on various important openings the Archduke Charles, Emperors Frederick III and Maximilian I, Henry VIII, Katherine of Aragon, Ferdinand of Austria, Ferdinand’s sisters Eleanor, Isabella, Mary, and Catherine—to name only some of the figures, portrayed as donors with accompanying saints.31 Coats of arms on various openings include Austria, New Burgundy, England, Maximilian’s imperial arms, and the BurgundyHabsburg imperial arms; folio 16r (which contains the portrait of Charles and the Habsburg arms) displays ten flags of Habsburg territories. The presence of so many “donors” in the book invites speculation as to the situation with intended recipients of other books as well; it is by no means definite that coats of arms and heraldic imagery in these manuscripts always point to the parties receiving the manuscripts, rather than those offering them. In the case of JenaU 4, the four heavily illuminated openings are clearly divided into separate families/figures: Maximilian I (fols 8v-9r); Archduke Charles (fols 15v-16r); Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon (fols 29v-30r; see Illustration 4.1); Ferdinand of Austria and his sisters (fols 42v-43r). In this case, hypotheses that the manuscript was prepared either for Maximilian I or for Henry VIII cannot take into account the apparently equal weight with which each of the four ruling figures is honored in the book. Repertory in the manuscript offers no further clues: only mass music is represented, over half of it by Pierre de la Rue (as can be expected of a book from Alamire’s workshop). As with the other Alamire books now in Jena, the only certain sixteenth-century owner of JenaU 4 is Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, whose library eventually passed to Jena as the foundation of what is now the Universitätsbibliothek.32 As for MunBS F, English royal emblems (greyhound, dragon, pomegranate) are present in several illuminations, but the left half of the first real opening of the manuscript is now missing—presumably on account of an original rich illumination, with heraldic or symbolic elements pointing to an original owner or donor.33 The three instances of English emblems in the book cannot be characterized as

29 London, British Library, MS Royal 8 G. VII, p. viii; Jayne and Johnson, The Lumley Library, pp. 284-6. 30 John Milsom, ‘The Nonsuch Music Library’, in Banks, Searle, and Turner (eds), Sundry Sorts of Music Books: Essays on the British Library Collections, Presented to O. W. Neighbour on his 70th birthday (London, 1993), p. 171. 31 Kellman (ed.), The Treasury of Petrus Alamire, pp. 90-93. 32 CCM, vol. 1, pp. 289-90. 33 Description by Eric Jas in Kellman (ed.), The Treasury of Petrus Alamire, pp. 119-21.

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Illustration 4.1 Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon with patron saints and English royal arms. Jena, Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Chorbuch 4, fol. 30r

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particularly prominent, acting rather as incidental elements in generic Ghent-Brugesstyle illuminations with the typical variety of flora, fauna, and grotesques. Jas notes that, physically, MunBS F and LonBLR 8 G.VII are “twins,” with the same size and certain shared layout features. In the specifics of their decorations, however, they are considerably different, comparing the many painted grotesques of MunBS F with the single illuminated opening of LonBLR 8 G.VII, which emphasizes its heraldic badges. Nothing is known of the early history of MunBS F, which contains masses by composers of the second generation represented in Alamire’s books: Moulu, Gascongne, and Richafort, alongside anonymi of a similar style. An inscription on the final page of music confirms that the book was around Munich by the early eighteenth century, in the possession of a Georg Schnevogel in Freising. If LonBLR 8 G.VII can be said with certainty to have been assembled for Henry VIII (although the first opening is the only one which demands association with the royal couple, so the entire book need not have been designed as an homage to Henry and Katherine), the situation with JenaU 4 and MunBS F is still unclear. JenaU 4 places Henry and Katherine only in an opening in the middle of the book, without any particular emphasis in comparison to the royal figures portrayed on other openings— the manuscript does not flatter a single ruler, but rather represents an international union, in all likelihood one of the various occasions linking England and the house of Habsburg during the 1510s (see Chapter 2). MunBS F shows only three minor instances of English emblems (which were perhaps not intended as such), but the absence of the main dedicatory illuminations prohibits any definitive conclusions. The London manuscript alone shows signs of having been in England in the sixteenth century. This group of sources (along with JenaU 9) does nevertheless reinforce the inclusion of England’s rulers in the international political events and alliances of the early sixteenth century; the relations which Petrus Alamire had with Henry VIII are surely a much less forceful reason for the creation of these manuscripts than their commissioning by wealthy rulers as diplomatic gifts. By way of admonition, however, it should be recalled that several lost manuscripts and partbook sets were given to Henry VIII by Alamire as personal gifts (in expectation of reward, of course), as we learn from Alamire’s own letters. Specifically mentioned are a set of six books in 1515 (presumably partbooks), and in 1517 an elegant parchment book and a set of five books.34 Certainly several possibilities exist among surviving books (both in England and on the Continent) which could match these items, especially since Alamire did not necessarily prepare the books himself (he was also giving the English king gifts of instrument sets at the time); the information is unfortunately too vague to hazard any safe guesses. All of the known Alamire sources with English connections, then, are to be considered on the terms which their iconography demands: products of diplomatic relations, the gifts which accompanied alliances or attempted to expedite them, the luxury items which European rulers (and few others) were interested in offering to each other.

34 Schreurs, ‘Petrus Alamire’, pp. 19-20. Dietrich Helms attempts to identify the book mentioned in 1517 as LonBLR 8 G.VII, without convincing evidence, however (Heinrich VIII., pp. 193-4).

Anglo-Continental Relations in Music Manuscripts

129

A Gift for a Tudor Reunion: LonBLR 11 E.XI One of the most peculiar sources to be considered in this study is also one in need of the closest examination and re-evaluation. The presentation book LonBLR 11 E.XI offers a unique opportunity to link a surviving polyphonic source definitively to one of Henry VIII’s foreign musicians, Benedictus de Opiciis, and with this information to arrive at a close dating and context relating to events at the Tudor court. Having received little attention in the musicological literature, the manuscript will need to be treated here with a detailed investigation from the most basic elements forwards.35 A short but large-scale choirbook in an early sixteenth-century Flemish style, LonBLR 11 E.XI relates through its illustrations and texts explicitly to Henry VIII and the Tudor dynasty, with compositions in Franco-Netherlandish style created for the occasion, in addition to a number of “generic” pieces. The earliest reference to the book is in Casley’s 1734 catalogue of the Old Royal manuscript collection, stored at the time in the dormitories of the Westminster School (after fire broke out in the storage space at Ashburnham House in 1731);36 presumably the book spent its earliest years in the possession of Henry VIII, but none of the surviving catalogues of his libraries lists any item which matches it. When and how it returned eventually to the royal collection (and from there to the British Museum) remains a mystery. A note on a flyleaf in an early sixteenth-century hand gives a date of 1516—a crucial piece of information which has not always been accepted, and has in other cases occasioned misinterpretations of the manuscript’s dedicatory context; we will return to this inscription below. The manuscript now measures 49 cm by 35.5 cm and is bound in a set of covers dating from 1757, when George II moved the collection of Royal manuscripts to the British Museum. A pair of new paper flyleaves appears at the beginning of the manuscript, and a similar pair at the end; the single parchment leaf following the front set (with the 1516 inscription) is probably original, and was certainly part of the book before it received its present binding.37 The main corpus consists of two gatherings of eight folios each, separated by the stubs from a third gathering which has been cut out, whose leaves were 1 cm shorter than the rest in the book. Physically, then, we have two decidedly separate surviving sections. Comparing this structure with the written contents of the book in Table 4.2, it becomes clear that this format matches a separation of the music into two groups; the distinctions between these sets will become more pronounced upon closer inspection (see also the gathering diagrams in Illustration 4.2).

35 The only dedicated study of the book is largely a non-musical discussion: Backhouse, ‘A Salute’. 36 David Casley, A Catalogue of the Manuscripts of the King’s Library (London, 1734); Warner and Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts, vol. 1, pp. xxx-xxxi, 360 (“Not in the old catalogues”). 37 See Casley’s description from the 1730s: “Hymnorum Liber cum Notis Musicis, compositus A. D. 1516” (A Catalogue, p. 195).

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The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

Table 4.2 Physical structure and contents of LonBLR 11 E.XI Gathering

Folios

Contents

Original flyleaf

1

“Me fieri ac componi fecit PO 1516”; pressmarks

2r

Opening illustration Music Attribution

1 2v-3r v

r

3 -9 -

2

M.Sampson.

Number of voices

Incipit

4 (ex 2)

Salue radix

4

Psallite felices

4

Sub tuum presidium

[one gathering cut out] 10v-11r

B.opicius. / Benedictus dE Opicijs

11v-13r

Sampson.

5

Quam pulcra es

13v-15r

4

Hec est preclarum vas

15v-17r

3

Beati omnes qui timent Dominum

Nothing in the musical and textual construction of the choirbook points to anything less than a professional production. The texts of the manuscript were all copied in lettre bâtarde by a single hand, with the exception of the inscription on fol. 1r, the original flyleaf (discussed below).38 The music, likewise, was entered by one copyist. It is evident on a number of openings that different ink was used for music and text (for example, at the bottom of fol. 4r, where the ink of the music has rubbed off to a greater degree than that of its text). Left and right vertical frame-rules appear on all non-blank pages starting at fol. 3v, drawn variously from top-to-bottom or bottom-to-top. Staves are rastrum-ruled, excepting fols 2v-3r, where the music is notated on two circular staves; the ruling becomes noticeably sloppier towards the end of the book, much like the manuscript’s decorative elements. In at least one case, a visible difference between staff gauge on different pages of a single opening (21mm on fol. 3v vs. 19-20mm on fol. 4r) could suggest a distribution of labor among several individuals, at least in the initial stage of laying out gatherings. Other marks confirm the systematic production process of the book, for example, brown Xs at the outer margins of several pages, probably markers for use in arranging the bifolia

38 Backhouse sees in the script and the style of the manuscript decoration the work of Henry VII’s librarian Quentin Poulet (‘A Salute’, p. 7); but it is unclear how far this presumed attribution can be supported by specific elements, rather than general style. Specific aspects such as scribal hands cannot be matched between LonBLR 11 E.XI and Backhouse’s examples of Poulet manuscripts.

Anglo-Continental Relations in Music Manuscripts

131 Psallite felices text

2 Salve radix

3 4 inscription

5

[blank]

6

1

Psallite felices

7 8 9 [blank] [original flyleaf]

Gathering 1 [blank]

10 Sub tuum presidium

11 12

Quampulcra es

13 14

Hec est preclarum vas

15 16

Beati omnes

17 [blank] Gathering 2

Gathering 3

Illustration 4.2 Gatherings of London, British Library, MS Royal 11 E.XI, with current foliation and contents

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The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

Illustration 4.3 London, British Library, MS Royal 11 E.XI, fol. 2r

Anglo-Continental Relations in Music Manuscripts

133

Illustration 4.4 London, British Library, MS Royal 11 E.XI, fol. 3r during assembly of the gatherings, which were meant to be cut off during binding and trimming.39 Artistically, the book contains several striking examples of elegant craftsmanship, most notably in the full-page opening illustration (fol. 2r, reproduced in Illustration 4.3) and in the roses encircled by the notation of the first composition, Salve radix 39 See the short description of this process in Jacobijn Kiel, ‘An Introduction to the Scribes and their Methods’, in Kellman (ed.), The Treasury of Petrus Alamire, p. 40.

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The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

(fols 2v-3r; see Illustration 4.4).40 Flemish-style illuminated initials appear at the beginnings of voice parts on numerous openings, mainly depicting various forms of flora. The initial on fol. 10v, at the start of Opiciis’s Sub tuum presidium, contains an image of the Virgin and Child on a crescent moon. According to Backhouse, the final initials in the manuscript (fols 15v and 16v) are in a different hand from those in the rest of the book; these are much more poorly—perhaps hastily—executed, and it is probably no coincidence that they are the last. A point of entry into the program and symbolic language underlying the materials in LonBLR 11 E.XI is offered by the full-page miniature reproduced in Illustration 4.3, an allegorical introduction to the dedicatory first gathering of the book. The lower half of the image depicts a walled island with four towers flying flags bearing the arms of England, the arms of Castile, and the cross of St George (twice). Within the circle of the island stands a gateway with portcullis, accompanied by three creatures: a lion with a dragon to the left and a greyhound to the right. A pomegranate bush grows on the right side of the island, underneath a Castilian banner. From the center of the garden, a more fanciful plant sprouts: a single root gives birth to several types of flowers, of which the most prominent is a rose miraculously combining red and white petals. In addition to other solid red roses (and buds) are a marguerite and marigold, on either side of the root where it splits two ways. For the most part, these are standard examples of Tudor iconography found in numerous manuscripts and descriptive sources: the walled island depicts England, whose Tudor rulers are represented by a flower combining the red and white roses of the houses of Lancaster and York. The dragon, lion, greyhound, and portcullis are likewise all images employed by Tudor monarchs, mainly in heraldic contexts; and the pomegranate was associated with Katherine of Aragon. Not all elements of the illustration are so standard, however, in particular the combination of other flowers with the Tudor rose; we will have occasion to return to this peculiarity later, which provides an indispensable key to pinpointing the context of the book’s creation. Three separate texts are integrated into the pictorial material of Illustration 4.3. At the bottom of the scene, the phrase “Salue felix Anglia” adorns the gateway structure and makes explicit the identification of the island with England. Woven around the branches of the plant on top of the edifice is a scroll bearing the inscription “Salue radix varios producens germine ramos / Quos inter ramus supereminet altior vnus.” These two hexameters form a portion of the text of the double-canon composition on the following opening, Salve radix, describing the plant itself in an allegorical celebration of the Tudor line and Henry VIII in particular:

40 Reproductions of the opening page appear also in Backhouse, ‘A Salute’, 11; Albert Dunning, Die Staatsmotette, 1480-1555 (Utrecht, 1970), Abb. 1; and Neville Williams, ‘The Tudors: Three Contrasts in Personality’, in A.G. Dickens (ed.), The Courts of Europe: Politics, Patronage and Royalty, 1400-1800 (London, 1977), p. 146. Salve radix is reproduced in Arthur Searle, Music Manuscripts (London, 1987), pp. 2-3; and the Contratenor only in Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII, p. 154.

Anglo-Continental Relations in Music Manuscripts Salve radix varios producens germine ramos quos inter ramus supereminet altior unus Cuius et ex summo purpura rosa micat qua stant unanimes pax et Iusticia septe claudunturque foras dissona corda senum.

135

Hail, Root, begetting varying branches from the sprout, Among which one branch rises above, From whose top the scarlet rose gleams; By which Peace and Justice stand enclosed in accord; And the dissonant hearts of the aged are closed outside.

The main text in the illustration, however, is the thirty-four-line poem in elegiac couplets, Psallite felices, whose verses stretched between the curved branches of the plant are clearly intended to evoke the form of a lyre. The text is a paean to the red and white rose, equated explicitly with Henry VIII (notably in the eighth couplet, ll. 15-16). Both in allegorical language related to the rose and in literal statements of unabashed directness, the verses laud the English monarch in no uncertain terms:

5

10

15

20

25

30

Psallite felices protecti culmine rose Purpuree. celo quam dedit ipse deus Anglicolis. et quam pax distulit prodere tellus Aduentu rose protinus orta fuit Cuius et in foliis radiantia lilia crescunt Distinctos flores hic parit una radix Albis et rubeis respersa coloribus Intus In numero florum micuit rosa rubens Altior exsuperans flores spectamine cunctos Pulchrior hac vix est visa colore prior Corpora fortificans sic membra debilia curans Dulcis odorifera pellit et omne malum Affert leticiam. mox tristia visa repellit Cunctis est morbis distribuenda dosis Est rex henricus bis quartus sanguine clarus Anglorum virtus purpura rosa micans Huius se merito studeat quis sudere votis Et vultu placido dicere Rosa vale Aspectu pulcher verbis affamine dulcis Omnibus acceptus gratis et ipse suis Bella gerens hostes vincit nam hector in armis Fera leonis Iram sic fugiunt emuli Est et pacificus constans moderamine plenus Magnanimus Justus hostibus atque gravis Magnificus dives largus pietate redundans Munera pro meritis distribuens omnibus Singula quis referet rose est inmensa potestas Que nullo claudi carmine tanta potest. Psallite fideles protecti culmine rose Cuius odoratu tristia cuncta cedunt Rex eterne deus qui mundi sceptra gubernas Cuius et ex gremio funditur omnis honos Quesumus ut regi des tempora longa videre Et post hoc sedeat rector in arce dei

Sing, happy ones covered by the summit of the scarlet rose, which God Himself gave from the heavens to the English; and the land which Peace tarried to bring forth rose up at once at the coming of the rose, in whose leaves shining lilies grow. A single root here bears different flowers, besprinkled within with white and red colors. Reckoned among flowers the red rose has gleamed, rising higher above all flowers in proof. More beauteous than this in color has scarcely been seen before; strengthening bodies, indeed healing crippled members; sweet, fragrant, it drives away every evil, brings happiness, thereupon repulses sorrowful visions; a dose is to be distributed for all maladies. The gleaming scarlet rose is the king Henry twice the fourth, celebrated in bloodline, virtue of the English. Through vows to him, let anyone be eager worthily to subject himself and to say with a peaceful face: Rose, fare well. Beauteous in appearance, sweet in verbal address, he is received by all and welcome to his own. Waging war he conquers enemies, a Hector in arms; his rivals flee like a wild beast from the wrath of the lion. He is a peacemaker, firm and abounding in governing great-souled, just to enemies and serious, magnificent, rich, generous, overflowing with piety, distributing gifts to all according to their merits; who could tell of them individually? The rose has boundless power which can be enclosed in no song. Sing, happy ones covered by the summit of the rose, through whose fragrance all sorrows withdraw. Oh God, eternal king who rule the dominions of the world, and from whose bosom all honor is poured, we beseech you to grant that the king see long seasons, and after this sit as governor in the citadel of God.

As with the Salve radix text, Psallite felices is related directly to the illustration in which it appears. Note, for example, the reference in line 5 to the “shining” fleursde-lys in the petals of the rose, depicted with gold in the crowned central rose of Illustration 4.3 and representing the English claim to France. Lines 6, 8, and 9,

136

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

moreover, recall Salve radix in describing the plant with its variety of flowers. Like the other text, Psallite felices is set to music in the first gathering of the manuscript, in an extensive motet ascribed to a certain Sampson; as with other elements of the choirbook, there appears to be some element of modeling or at least reference to current European courtly fashion, in this instance a textual reference to the incipit of Bruhier’s Vivite felices, written for the 1515 meeting of Francis I and Pope Leo X.41 In contrast to the two topical secular motets of the first gathering, the four remaining compositions in the choirbook set more typical sacred texts. The set consists of three Marian works, as well as a complete setting of Psalm 128, notable in the present context for its references to family and offspring. These texts, although generic, were well-suited to the English royal couple, still eagerly hoping for sons to be born in the 1510s. Quam pulcra es, a Song of Songs text similar to those used as Marian antiphons, could be read equally well in a literal sense as a love poem. Excepting the rare Hec est preclarum vas, the texts in this gathering are found in the Little Office of the Virgin which was the basis of contemporaneous Books of Hours, a feature which points toward a non-liturgical devotional setting. It goes without saying, nevertheless, that Marian works are among the most frequently encountered in contemporaneous motet collections, and can indicate little about specific programmatic design: this second gathering of LonBLR 11 E.XI has none of the direct references to England and the Tudors which characterize the first section, and its contents would have been appropriate in any number of motet manuscripts. The fact that it is physically a separate unit from the first gathering seems to suggest that the second section (and possibly the missing gathering as well) was added to fill out an otherwise extremely brief topical manuscript; or, conversely, that a generic motet collection (suitable for any patron) was given a dedicatory opening section to customize it for a particular recipient.42 In terms of musical style, all of LonBLR 11 E.XI’s compositions display a fairly homogeneous approach which places them unproblematically in the context of early sixteenth-century Franco-Netherlandish polyphonic writing; the two works from the first gathering (Salve radix and Psallite felices) are edited in Appendix B.1. A typical excerpt from Sampson’s setting of Psallite felices, Example 4.1 exhibits a type of syllabic declamation on repeated pitches which is to be found with frequency as well in the three final motets of the manuscript (Sampson’s Quam pulcra es, the anonymous Hec est preclarum vas and Beati omnes). These works share other features which are not encountered in Opiciis’s Sub tuum presidium or in the opening canon, for example, a tendency to switch between imitation by successive fifths (for example, the opening point of Hec est preclarum vas, stated on a, d, G, and C) and

41 BolC Q19, fols 48v-50r. 42 Changes of ownership and consequent modifications of heraldic imagery are, of course, not unknown in choirbooks of the period; consider, for one example, the manuscript CambriP 1760 (pp. 121-2 above). On the relation between music manuscripts and independent fascicles, see Charles Hamm, ‘Manuscript Structure in the Dufay Era’, Acta Musicologica, 34 (1962): 166-84.

Anglo-Continental Relations in Music Manuscripts

137

more standard “tonal” imitation (at the fourth or fifth, with occasional inversion);43 or the use of closely related sequential motives in Quam pulcra es and Beati omnes.44 Certainly, nothing in the compositional or notational style of either the Sampson pieces or the anonymous works in the manuscript (which could easily be the product of this same musician) suggests an English composer in any concrete manner. The employment of the modus cum tempore sign C2 and the composite mensuration/ proportion sign D3 in Psallite felices, Quam pulcra es, and Hec est preclarum vas represents a practice virtually unknown in English sources c. 1500. Likewise, in the notation of pitch indications, the lack of sharp signs in LonBLR 11 E.XI is typical

20

Ì

  Ì

lis

Et

quampax

di - stu-lit

8 9

"

lis

lis

se

8Ì

-

 

¡

ti-nus

ad - ven - tu

ro

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X -

se

Ì -

se

¡ lus K ¡ ¡ Ì

tel

¡

¡

ta

¡

  ¡ pro

pro

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¡

¡

ro - se

¡¡ ,

-

¡¡ , ti-nus

ti-nus

or - ta

or

-

¡¡ , Ì

tel

-

tel

-

fu

lus

fu

-

ad -

X -

it

Ì it

  Ì cu -

X

¡ Ì

-

ta

-

fu

lus

  ¡

Ì

¡ ¡ Ì

Ì

-

pro - de-re

K ¡ ¡Ì fu ¡ ¡ Ì or - ta

ro

  ¡

¡¡ Ì ,

pro - de-re

-

ad - ven - tu

pro - de-re

  ¡

¡¡¡¡¡ ¡

-

  ¡ ¡ ¡ Ì ,

di - stu-lit

or

¡ ¡ ¡ Ì

di - stu-lit

K ¡ ¡ Ì

ad - ven - tu

Ì

ro

quam pax

di - stu - lit

¡¡ ,

lus

8  ¡ ¡ ¡

ven - tu

pro

¡ Ì

¡ ¡ Ì ,

quam pax

K ¡ Ì

¡ -

Ì

  ¡

À

Ì

quam pax

¡

et

26

et

¡ Ì

Et

  Ì

X

tel

  Ì

À

8 X

pro - de - re

  Ì

À

lis

  ¡  ¡K ¡ Ì

K ¡ ¡ Ì

¡ Ì

it.

9 it

Example 4.1 Sampson, Psallite felices, mm. 20-30

43 The judgment which Braithwaite passes on these pieces, thinking them English and seeing in their imitation at successive fifths “the application of a modern device without assimilation of a feeling for it” (The Introduction, p. 123), can only be accepted at the expense of ignoring general trends in early sixteenth-century imitative writing: consider such sophisticated parallel cases as Obrecht’s Salve crux and Laudes cristo, or various sections of Josquin’s Pange lingua mass. 44 Compare Quam pulcra es, mm. 46-49 and 88-94 with Beati omnes, mm. 97-100.

138

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

of early sixteenth-century continental notation, in opposition to contemporaneous English usage.45 The truly particular musical case in LonBLR 11 E.XI is the very first work, the double canon Salve radix. The composition’s striking circular presentation (Illustration 4.4) corresponds to certain peculiar contrapuntal properties not immediately discernible in its notation.46 The music fits the general stylistic profile of double-canon chansons set by northern composers of the period (of which a number were published in the 1520s by Antico and Attaingnant47), employing frequent repetition of staggered suspension cadences.48 The contrapuntal writing in Salve radix, however, combined with the pitch discrepancy of a fourth between canonic voices, leads potentially to a number of pitch spirals in performance: the preservation of essential perfect consonances occasions the addition of successive flats, in modern terms.49 The crux of the matter appears in measures 17 and 19, when the bassus must utilize an E-fa under the b-fas of the higher voices; this in turn requires E-fas in the contratenor, which must lead to A-fa in m. 20, and the process continues ineluctably onward (see Example 4.2). As with most examples of such pitch spirals, a key role is played by the repetition at different pitch levels of a short polyphonic segment involving leaps of 4ths and 5ths: mm. 20-23 are immediately repeated one step lower, and then what begins as a repetition at another 4th below, at least in the crucial bassus part (m. 28), turns instead into a repetition of even earlier material (m. 33), causing the entire process to repeat. As evidenced by the arcs and brackets in Example 4.2 highlighting melodic and contrapuntal relationships which need to remain perfect, the part-writing is designed here to lock the spiral into place. The pattern of addition of flats in this segment, in fact, encourages one particular systematic resolution which works smoothly, namely a realization in which each comes follows the intervals of its dux exactly;50 it may or may not be coincidental 45 Most of the major English MSS of the period could be cited here; cf., for example, LonBL 31922, LonBL 5465, EtonC 178, LonLP 1. That such notational distinctions were not necessarily overruled by individual or local scribal habit is suggested by the case of JenaU 9, where Alamire’s scribes retained English notational style; see pp. 156-8 below. 46 For a more detailed discussion of the compositional properties of Salve radix, see Theodor Dumitrescu, ‘Constructing a Canonic Pitch Spiral: The Case of Salve radix’, in Katelijne Schiltz and Bonnie J. Blackburn (eds), Canons and Canonic Techniques, 14th– 16th Centuries: Theory, Practice, and Reception History. Proceedings of the International Conference, Leuven, 4-6 October 2005 (Leuven-Dudley, 2007), pp. 141-70. 47 See Lawrence F. Bernstein, ‘La Courone et fleur des chansons a troys: A Mirror of the French Chanson in Italy in the Years between Ottaviano Petrucci and Antonio Gardano’, JAMS, 26 (1973): 7. 48 A notable candidate for comparison with Salve radix is Josquin’s En lombre dung buissonet (edited by David Fallows in Josquin des Prez, New Josquin Edition, ed. Willem Elders et al. [30 vols, Utrecht, 1987-], vol. 28); the points of similarity between these two works may in fact reveal a case of compositional modeling. 49 See the description of this process and the theoretical system supporting it in Margaret Bent, ‘Diatonic Ficta’, EMH, 4 (1984): 1-48; and ‘Diatonic Ficta Revisited’, MTO 2.6 (1996). 50 This would make the composition an example of what Zarlino called strict fugue (“fuga legata”), only permitted at the unison, fourth, fifth or octave—as opposed to strict

Anglo-Continental Relations in Music Manuscripts

139

that a result of such a realization is the preservation of exact interval patterns at each repetition of material (for example, mm. 20-23 and 24-7). Performance of this piece from the book in its circular form would be technically difficult, and points instead at memorization or retranscription, with an opportunity for considered preperformative analysis (the edition of Salve radix in Appendix B.1 includes multiple transcriptions, allowing comparison between a diplomatic original-notation scoring and a translation into modern notation). There is more than a hint of a puzzle in this work, as suggested already by the enigmatic text and circular notation. The text will come under further scrutiny below (p. 146). At this point, suffice it to note that the references to the figures of Pax and Iustitia in l. 4 link the work to a number of sixteenth-century canons notated in the form of a cross and featuring the psalm

[ 'DDJ] %

16

X

X

X

X X

J

[ ( DJ] "J

X

Ì9

Ì9

X

X

X X

Ì X X

Ì X X

Ì9A

Ì9

XA

‹ X

X

X 9

9

9

‹ X

9

X X

9

9

9

‹ X

9

X XA

A

Example 4.2 a. Salve radix, mm. 16-22 (dashed lines and arcs connect notes which should maintain a perfect relationship, either contrapuntal or melodic) 16

D

Ì

Ì Ì 8 Ì

Ì

Ì

D¡ DX

D¡ DX

Ì

Ì DÌ

DÌ

¡ Ì DÌ

D ¡D X

D¡ DX

Ì

¡ Ì DÌ

8D À Ì

Ì

Ì DX

X

DX

" Ì Ì

DX

X

DX

À

À DÌ DX DÌ

DX

DÌ DÌ

Example 4.2 b. Salve radix, mm. 16-22 (modern notation)

imitation (“imitatione legata”), allowed at any interval since the interval qualities of the comes could differ from those of the dux; Gioseffo Zarlino, The Art of Counterpoint: Part Three of Le Istitutioni harmoniche, 1558, trans. Guy A. Marco and Claude V. Palisca (New Haven and London, 1968), pp. 126-30, 135-8.

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verse “Iustitia et pax osculatae sunt” (Ps. 84:11).51 As a pendant to the circular canon in LonBLR 11 E.XI, the cross canons reinforce the importance of the presentation element in Salve radix; as the opening work of the manuscript, it will point toward the interpretation of the book’s context and dedication. The next stage in elucidating the historical position of LonBLR 11 E.XI comes with the scrutiny of biographical connections. Of the various figures who can be associated with the manuscript, several remain mysterious. For the composer Sampson, the only identification which has been suggested in the literature is Richard Sampson, one of Thomas Wolsey’s agents, later Dean of the Chapel Royal and Bishop of Lichfield.52 The well-documented biography of this ecclesiastical figure includes various periods on the Continent for educational and diplomatic purposes, but no indication of musical ability. Bowers’s entry in NG2 is rightly skeptical about assuming that he was the composer named in LonBLR 11 E.XI, noting that “his known career was that of a lawyer, and then a diplomat and trusted official of Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII, for whom composition can at best have been no more than a hobby.”53 What can be said for certain is that if Richard Sampson is the composer indicated here, with the initial “M” to be read as “Magister” or “Master” in the style of English scribes (a practice which does not occur in contemporaneous continental music books), the manuscript would have been created at the latest in 1513, the year in which Sampson received his doctorate. The incongruity of first name, career, and skill in continental contrapuntal style, on the other hand, suggest a path of less resistance in interpreting “M. Sampson” as an ascription to an unidentified foreign musician. As for the other composer named in the book, Benedictus Opicius or de Opiciis, we stand on firmer ground. The new documents and interpretations brought to light in Chapter 3 above prove conclusively that the Opicius family was of north Italian origin and that Benedictus’s father Petrus was active in the north for at least thirty years, working as a broker for Anglo-Flemish trade in Antwerp and London.54 Petrus Opicius, moreover, is the single plausible candidate for identification with the creator of the manuscript mentioned on its flyleaf (see Illustration 4.5): “Me fieri ac componi fecit [PO] 1516” [P. O. caused me to be created and put together, 1516.]55 Backhouse, while acknowledging that the style of script is contemporary with the manuscript, notes that the flyleaf need not be considered an integral part of the book.56 Treating the 1516 date merely as a terminus ante quem, Backhouse assigns 51 See Katelijne Schiltz, ‘La storia di un’iscrizione canonica tra Cinquecento e inizio Seicento: il caso di “Ad te, Domine, levavi animam meam” di Philippus de Monte (1564)’, Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, 38 (2003): pp. 227-56. 52 Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900, ed. Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee (22 vols, London, 1921-27), vol. 17, pp. 719-21; hereafter DNB. 53 Roger Bowers, ‘Sampson [first name unknown]’, NG2, vol. 22, p. 219. 54 See pp. 87-95 above. 55 As Backhouse notes, the earlier hypothesis that the “P. O.” of the inscription might be William Peto (tutor to Princess Mary, daughter of Henry VIII) is very unlikely given the dating of the manuscript (‘A Salute’, p. 6 n. 29). I will argue in the present discussion, furthermore, that the birth of Henry VIII’s daughter was not the main impetus behind the creation of the book, contrary to certain assertions in the musicological literature. 56 Backhouse, ‘A Salute’, p. 9.

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Illustration 4.5 London, British Library, MS Royal 11 E.XI, fol. 1r (detail) LonBLR 11 E.XI provisionally to 1513, when Henry VIII crossed the channel with a large traveling household in his “war” against France.57 Henry’s French campaign, as the monarch’s only personal visit to the Continent until the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520, provides a convenient and well-known occasion on which artistic gift-giving of numerous sorts could have occurred; a similar hypothesis has in fact been applied to the choirbook LonBLR 8 G.VII.58 But these ideas must remain no more than guesses, in the absence of references to the events of 1513 in either book. The constant stream of embassies, diplomatic events, and domestic celebrations at the Tudor court during the 1510s all provide equally plausible occasions for such presentations to Henry VIII. The evidence of surviving non-musical foreign art objects indicates that these exchanges could and did happen without specific impetus; certainly they did not require the presence of the monarch on foreign soil. What, then, of LonBLR 11 E.XI, with its perhaps trustworthy inscribed date and its heraldic imagery—is a more specific program discernable here? Preliminary clues are offered by connections to several other books. It has been noted above that a “Johannes Opicius” composed a number of classicizing poems presented to Henry VII in 1497 (in the volume LonBLC B. iv). Was this one of the several sons Petrus Opicius is known to have had? A recent investigation of the texts in the 1497 manuscript by Lena Wahlgren-Smith fits this piece of the puzzle into place neatly, by demonstrating numerous textual links between Johannes Opicius’s Dialogus and the text of Psallite felices from LonBLR 11 E.XI. Compare, for example, “Cuius odorifero tristia cuncta cadunt” (Dialogus 72) and “Cuius odoratu tristia cuncta cedunt” (Psallite felices 31); “Septimus Albionum Henricus qui sceptra gubernat” (Dialogus 105) and “Rex eterne deus qui mundi sceptra gubernas” (Psallite felices 32).59 To Wahlgren-Smith’s examples can be added “In cuius gremio pax manet” (Dialogus 112) and “Cuius et ex gremio funditur omnis honos” (Psallite felices 33); more generally, a comparison of the imagery in Psallite felices with

57 See pp. 35-8 above. 58 See p. 125 above. 59 Wahlgren-Smith, ‘Heraldry in Arcadia’, pp. 228-9. See also Lena Wahlgren-Smith, ‘An Early Tudor Political Pastoral: the Dialogus of Johannes Opicius’, in Hans Aili and Peter af Trampe (eds), Tongues and Texts Unlimited: Studies in Honour of Tore Janson on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Anniversary (Stockholm, 2000), pp. 243-60; and Carlson, ‘The “Opicius” Poems’.

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lines 105-28 of the Dialogus reveals broad similarities.60 With these initial links established, moreover, another book comes into play and further signs of the Opicius family’s involvement in Royal 11 E.XI begin to appear. Benedictus de Opiciis’s motet Sub tuum presidium appears both in LonBLR 11 E.XI and in an untitled 1515 book printed to commemorate the joyous entry of Charles, King of Castile (the future emperor Charles V) into Antwerp, during the time that Opicius was organist for the Confraternity of Our Lady at the cathedral.61 This handsome and modern book contains the first examples of polyphonic music printing in the Low Countries, surrounded by numerous texts, poems, and woodcut illustrations. The woodcuts feature brief textual tags encountered in modified forms in the London choirbook: the “Salve felix anglia” motto of Illustration 4.3 is derived from a banner over an image of the harbor of Antwerp reading “Salve felix andwerpia [sic]” in the 1515 book, and a different illustration provides a phrase connecting to one of Wahlgren-Smith’s excerpts linking LonBLR 11 E.XI and LonBLC B. iv.62 More explicit borrowing occurs, however, in the London choirbook’s copy of Benedictus’s motet. In this source we encounter the peculiar and, to my knowledge, unique addition at the bottom of the opening of a set of generic prayers, for a king and to the Blessed Virgin. As diagrammed in Illustration 4.6, these same prayers are to be found in the same order on the page of the 1515 book immediately following Sub tuum presidium, along with the Virgin and Child illustration taken into the initial of the manuscript. A further suggestion that the manuscript drew upon the print is provided by a variant reading from the motet itself: at measures 68-9 in the Tenor, two B minims stand next to each other in LonBLR 11 E.XI, where they are split across a line ending in the print (see Example 4.3). A hypothetical original reading may have contained a semibreve here, split in the print for rhythmic regularity at the line ending and recopied in this form into LonBLR 11 E.XI.63 That the Opicius family was involved in the creation of the Antwerp print is confirmed in the introductory texts of the book, and with the links to LonBLR 11 E.XI, the family’s responsibility for the presentation manuscript grows more certain. One remaining anomalous element in the manuscript provides further confirmation: the appearance of Opiciis’s name twice on the manuscript opening containing Sub tuum presidium, once at the top of fol. 10v in the hand of the main text scribe (in the same light-brown ink colour as the other composer ascriptions in the book), and again after the end of the Bass part on fol. 11r, in a different hand using a much smaller pen nib (see Illustration 4.7). The Italianate script reads “benedictus dE Opicijs”, corrected from the inexplicable original “benedictus di Opicijs”; a parallel correction in the main ascription on the opening changed “.B.opitius” to “.B.opicius”. 60 The entire Dialogus is transcribed and translated in Wahlgren-Smith, ‘An Early Tudor Political Pastoral’, pp. 254-59. 61 Lofzangen. See also C.P. Burger Jr., ‘Lofzangen en prenten ter verheerlijking van Keizer Maximiliaan’, Het Boek, 17 (1928): 23-48; and Verheyden, ‘De drukker’. 62 Lofzangen, fol. Ar: “Concio nostra tibi qui mundi regna gubernas ...” 63 The scribal habit of splitting notes at line endings is discussed in The Medici Codex of 1518: A Choirbook of Motets Dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, ed. Edward E. Lowinsky, Monuments of Renaissance Music, 3 (3 vols, Chicago and London, 1968), vol. 1, pp. 93-4.

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68

[Superius]

%

J

Ì Ì Ì Ì X

Ì Ì X

line break in 1515 print

Tenor

%

J

L Ì Ì Ì Ì Ì Ì ¡¡Ì Ì Hypothetical original tenor rhythm:

e e

e

e

d

ffe e

Example 4.3 Opiciis, Sub tuum presidium, mm. 68-9 (Superius and Tenor) The evidence for orthographic correction and the clearly exceptional addition of the second version of the name in an Italian hand suggest nothing if not the direct intervention of the composer himself. It is by now feasible to confirm that the “P. O.” on the flyleaf of LonBLR 11 E.XI stands for “Petrus Opicius;” but what of the 1516 date, inscribed there but rejected by Backhouse? There is, in fact, very good reason to trust this dating, and at this point the court life of that year provides the linking elements. The early months of 1516 were eventful times for the Tudor family.64 On 18 February, Queen Katherine gave birth to a daughter, the future Queen Mary I, who would prove to be Katherine’s only child to survive infancy. For Henry, of course, the birth of a daughter rather than a son was a cause of some disappointment, but at this early stage of his reign and marriage the king’s optimism and appetite for celebration remained as healthy as they would ever be. Equally significant for the king, however, was his reunion in May with his two sisters Mary and Margaret, which brought together the children of Henry VII for the first time in nearly thirteen years. Mary Tudor had been married in late 1514 to Louis XII of France to seal an Anglo-French peace. When her royal husband passed away less than two months later, the new French queen lost no time in returning to England. After Henry VIII pardoned her for secretly remarrying without his permission, she was often at court with her husband Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk and a close friend of Henry’s. Margaret Tudor, on the other hand, had left England in 1503 to marry James IV of Scotland. It was English troops who killed the Scottish king at the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513, and from that point Margaret’s position in Scotland had become increasingly perilous, in the midst of a bitter struggle for supremacy. Henry had been attempting for some time to ensure the safety of his sister when she was finally forced to flee the country and accept her brother’s invitations to London in 1516. The May celebrations ordered by the English king upon the return of Margaret Tudor to the royal court would have been notable for the monarch as a personally motivated event, lacking the diplomatic elements which characterized so many Tudor entertainments. Margaret made her entry into London at the head of a triumphal procession on 3 May, and further celebration during the month included a great 64 See pp. 38-40 above for the following historical summary.

Illustration 4.6 Left: London, British Library, MS Royal 11 E.XI, fol. 10v: Opiciis, Sub tuum presidium; Right: Lofzangen, fol. Cv: page following Opiciis, Sub tuum presidium

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Illustration 4.7 London, British Library, MS Royal 11 E.XI, fol. 11r (detail) tournament on 19 and 20 May. Charles Brandon had known for several months that Henry was preparing Maytime entertainments. Musical preparations for the spectacles must have been underway as well, with the rapid addition to the court establishment of a number of professional musicians from the Low Countries. As noted in Chapter 3, it was at precisely the same time that Benedictus de Opiciis and four Flemish sackbut players, companions of Hans Nagel, arrived at court, at the beginning of March.65 Henry and his agents had been pushing for months to obtain the wind players, and the sudden appearance of five professional musicians from the Low Countries broke with the considerably more gradual hiring process normally observed at the court before that point. The May 1516 celebrations were extraordinary, then, for a number of reasons. Their main peculiarity, however, was the reunion of Henry with his two sisters, and it is this aspect which leads back to the presentation choirbook. Considering Illustration 4.3 once more, the idiosyncrasies of the illustration can now be explained. Backhouse identified the three types of flowers in the plant as the Marguerite, Rose, and Marigold, even making the connection with the Tudor family: the Marguerite represents Margaret of Scotland, the Rose, Henry VIII, and the Marigold, Mary of France.66 Tracing up from the root where the marguerite and marigold sit on either side, it becomes clear that the two side branches and roses of the plant are intended 65 See pp. 70-71 and 93-4 above. 66 Backhouse, ‘A Salute’, p. 3.

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to represent the king’s sisters; the entire three-branched structure encloses the three children of Henry VII. The text on the scroll, describing the plant, points out that one flower rises higher than the others, which is depicted quite clearly with Henry’s crowned red and white Rose. The link to Margaret is emphasized further by the appearance of the thistle, emblem of Scotland, at the beginning of Sampson’s Psallite felices.67 As noted earlier, this is a combination of iconography which does not appear elsewhere in manuscripts for Henry VIII; and at no time other than 1516 would it have been appropriate to the situation at court. The secular motet text Salve radix (p. 135 above) now yields new interpretations. It is not, as some earlier discussions of the manuscript have claimed, a commemoration of a birth, more specifically, that of Princess Mary68—nor does the manuscript yield any specific iconographical support for that idea. The first three lines of the poem are a straightforward description of the plant in the opening illustration, with the root representing the Tudor line. The more enigmatic final couplet brings in the figures of Peace and Justice, as well as the idea of casting out the old. These are allegorical figures and concepts which made appearances both in early Tudor “disguisings” and in the court tournaments, where on various occasions Henry himself and companions such as Charles Brandon would enter the lists in the guise of old hermits, only to tear off their false white beards and reveal their youthful vigor.69 More to the point, this type of celebration of youth at the expense of the aged was associated in a more general sense with the month of May, as demonstrated in songs such as Dufay’s wellknown Ce moys de may (“Chantons dansons & menons chiere lye. pour despiter ces felons envieus”).70 The circle-canon Salve radix, then, is not merely a motet praising Henry VIII and the Tudor line; it is one suited to the secular court entertainments of one particular spring. Henry VIII’s court, however, did not experience just a single entertainment during the year-long stay of Margaret Tudor. Another lavish round of celebrations was devised for one of the court’s main annual festivals, the Feast of Epiphany or Twelfth Night, ending the Christmas season (still 1516 by the English style of dating). For the feast in 1516, we are fortunate to have the account of the event as reported in Hall’s The Vnion of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre & Yorke, demonstrating that this was a year when an intriguing new garden pageant made an appearance: This yere the king kept his Christmas at his maner of Grenewiche, & on the.xii. night,according to the old custome,he & the quene came into the hall,& when they were set,& the quene of Scottes also, there entred into the hall a Gardeyn artificial,called the Gardeyn of Esperance. This Gardeyn was towred at euery corner,& rayled wit rayles gilt,al ye bankes were set wit floures artificial of silke & golde,ye leues cut of grene sattyn,so yat they semed uery floures. In ye middest of this Gardeyn was a piller of antique worke,al golde set wit perle & stone,& on the toppe of the piller,which was.vi.square,was a louer or an arche embowed,crouned with golde:within which stoode a bushe of Roses 67 68 69 70

Fol. 3v. Braithwaite, The Introduction, p. 58; Fenlon, ‘La diffusion’, pp. 176-7. The Great Tournament Roll, vol. 2, pp. 54, 61, and 71. OxfBC 213, fol. 17v.

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red & white,all of sylke and golde,& a bushe of Pomegranates of lyke stuf. In this gardeyn walked.vi.knyghtes and.vi.ladyes richely appareyled,and then they discended and daunsed many goodly daunses,& so ascended ye gardeyn agayn,and were conueighed oute of the hall, and then the kynge was serued of a great banket.71

If the “Gardeyn of Esperance” bears a generic resemblance to garden pageants encountered occasionally throughout the period, the match is quite close to the image in Illustration 4.3. An artificial garden, with a tower at each corner, contains a pillar in the center from which a bush of red and white roses grows under an arch, as well as a pomegranate bush. By way of contrast, the previous garden pageant at court, the “Golldyn Arber in the Arche yerd of Plesyer” of 1510/11, is a clearly different scene: “it was solempne and ryche,for euery post or piller therof, was couered with fryse golde, therein were trees of Hathorne,Eglantines,Rosiers,Uines and other plesaunt floures of diuers colours,with Gillofers and other herbes all made of Satyn, damaske, silke syluer and gold,accordingly as the natural trees,herbes,or floures ought to be.”72 The signification of this convergence of elements brings the choirbook to one particular time and place; the two major Tudor celebrations in the year 1516 both contain elements which are reflected in the royal manuscript. In fact, the opening illustration can be described as combining the salient elements of each: the garden of the Twelfth Night entertainment is modified so that the generic Tudor bush of red and white roses is transformed into the peculiar plant described in Salve radix, symbolic of the king’s springtime reunion with his sisters. The entire dedicatory section of the manuscript seems to act as a memorial of the year’s entertainments, making the book a more personalized gift for the king than other well-known music manuscripts such as London Royal 8 G.VII or the Newberry-Oscott Partbooks.73 If the book were intended for presentation together with the garden pageant portrayed inside, its creators could not have chosen a more appropriate season. The lists of rewards offered by the king at New Year’s grow with every year in the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber, and in fact we know that Henry rewarded the Chapel Royal composer Robert Fayrfax for new books of polyphony presented at this time every year from 1515 to 1518.74 The young, enthusiastic, and musical king surely appreciated a handsome choirbook tailored to the court and his person in its iconography, in its texts, and in the involvement of one of his newest foreign virtuoso musicians. The story of the choirbook is tied intimately to the story of a successful businessman, his humanistically and musically trained sons, and the events of a unique year of reunion for the children of Henry VII. For Henry VIII, whose later years would be marked by the greatest personal and public turmoil, we have few equally eloquent testimonies to the enthusiasm, optimism, and sheer joie de vivre which bloomed in the garden of his youth.

71 72 73 74

Hall, The Vnion, sig. kkk.v.r-v. Ibid., sig. bbb.iiii.v. See pp. 124-6 above and 148-50 below. RECM, vol. 7, pp. 221, 227, 234, and 240.

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Other Continental Music Books and Fragments in England A number of unique, fragmentary, or even completely lost sources fill out our picture of what types of continental polyphony arrived in England during the early years of the Tudor dynasty. The “Newberry-Oscott Partbooks” (ChiN M91 and SuttonO 4) are known well to modern musicology, largely on account of the detailed study and edition by H. Colin Slim.75 Through examination of the decorations, paper type, and contents of these five elegant presentation books, Slim determined that the set was created in Florence in the 1520s, intended in all likelihood as a gift to Henry VIII. More specifically, Slim suggests that it was the Florentine embassy to England in late 1527 and 1528 which provided the opportunity for presentation of the gift, when Francesco Portinari attempted—unsuccessfully—to obtain English financial and military support for the last Florentine republic against Charles V and Clement VII.76 While the Florentine origin of the books and their final delivery to Henry VIII are well established, however, the exact dating and political intention of the donation remain open to question; and here the contents of the partbooks come into play. Strictly ordered by genre and number of voice parts (like the earlier manuscript CambriP 1760; see p. 122 above), the books contain four-voice motets, followed by five- and six-voice motets, closing with madrigals for four to six voices. The two motet sections, in particular, contain works alluding to the rulers and political situation of the mid-1520s. The opening composition, Sermisy’s Quousque non reverteris pax, acts as a prayer for peace in France and for the return of Francis I, captured by imperial forces at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 (“Quousque non reverteris pax orba ghallis ... Revertere in terram nostram, pax sanctissima. Et redde nobis lilium nostrum, suis radicibus avulsum spinis circumdatum.”).77 The closing work of the motet section, on the other hand, is the anonymous but Verdelotian Nil maius superi vident, a piece honoring Henry VIII both in its main text and in the ostinato tenor composed of a soggetto cavato dalle vocali of the text “Henricus dei gratia anglie rex.”78 More controversial is the significance of the Salve rex (a Salve regina parody) which appears seven places before the end of the motet section; Slim asserts that the piece must have been written for the election of Christ as king of Florence in early 1528, denying any topical significance for the ostinato tenor “O clemens” (quoted from the Salve regina chant).79 Several elements aside from the ostinato highlight the word “clemens” in the motet: the music for the secunda pars in the tenor partbook is prefaced by a phrase written in large calligraphic letters, “Tu es Clemens” (a treatment which occurs nowhere else in the partbooks; see Illustration 4.8); and the text in all voices ends at “O clemens,” finally matching that of the cantus firmus and omitting the final invocations in the Salve regina text. It is inconceivable that, for musicians 75 Slim, A Gift; ‘A Royal Treasure’; Ten Altus Parts at Oscott College, Sutton Coldfield (n.p., n.d.). 76 Slim, A Gift, vol. 1, pp. 105-11. 77 “When wilt thou return, bereft peace, to the French ... Return, most holy peace, to our land. And give us back our lily, torn up by its roots and surrounded by thorns.” Text and translation ibid., vol. 2, p. 433; on the context, see ibid., vol. 1, pp. 76-7. 78 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 80, 155. 79 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 77-80; see also Slim, Ten Altus Parts, p. 6.

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and patrons in 1520s Florence, this network of references to one word would not bring to mind the current pope Clement VII. The seven longa rests at the opening and seven breves’ rest between each repetition of the tenor in all likelihood relate to the motet dedication as well (emphasized by the unusual rest configurations on the first staff of Illustration 4.8); more significantly, the monumental inscription “Tu es Clemens” can only be a reference to the scriptural phrase which is at the foundation of papal authority: “Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam” (Matthew 16:18). Would contemporary listeners and readers not have recognized the similar double-meanings in the text of the Florence-motet Florentia tempus est penitentie by the papal composer Costanzo Festa: “Revertere ad Dominum Deum tuum tamquam clementissimum;” “Plora peccata tua, clamans: Clemens, peccavi, miserere mei”?80 In Festa’s work, imploring Florence to repent and accept the rule of Clement VII, these references have a clear function of equating papal authority with that of the Lord (the literal “clemens” of the text, just as it is literally Christ who is addressed as “clemens” in Salve rex).

Illustration 4.8 Chicago, Newberry Library, Case MS.-VM 1578.M91, Tenor partbook, fol. 63v (detail) It may be conjectured safely, therefore, that the motet layer of the Newberry-Oscott Partbooks is framed by works honoring three of the day’s most powerful and embattled princes: Francis I, Henry VIII, and Clement VII. Fenlon has suggested that the League of Cognac, formed in 1526 to unite France, England, Venice, and Florence against Charles V, is a better fit for the dedicatees in the partbooks’ motets 80 Costanzo Festa, Opera omnia, ed. Alexander Main and Albert Seay, CMM 25 (8 vols, n.p.: American Institute of Musicology, 1962-79), vol. 5 (ed. Seay), pp. 86-91.

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than the 1528 embassy, when Florence was threatened by Clement VII.81 Regardless of any general ill-feeling towards Clement VII in Florence in 1525-26 noted by Slim,82 the partbooks were a political gift, and the city was in an alliance with the Pope when the League of Cognac was formed. The appearance of the Clement motet makes perfect sense in this context, even were it not composed specifically for the occasion; the most likely composer, Philippe Verdelot, did, after all, have connections to Clement earlier in the 1520s.83 The motet for Francis I, as well, is a work written precisely with reference to the political situation which led to the formation of the League of Cognac; and Henry VIII would be a logical recipient for the partbooks, as nominal “protector” of the League.84 Whether the books were created and came to England in 1526 or in 1528, however, is of minor consequence for the musical impact they might have had. After many years of Anglo-Italian courtly contacts, with exchanges of polyphonic songs as well as musicians, the Newberry-Oscott books brought the very first traceable examples of the new madrigal to England, in addition to an unusual and valuable example of a continental political motet written for the English monarch. As an offering to a king with an increasingly Italianate musical establishment, such an item cannot have gone unappreciated. The choirbook LonRC 1070 is a manuscript comprised mainly of Franco-Flemish motets of the first ten or fifteen years of the sixteenth century, known today primarily on account of an inscription linking the manuscript to Anne Boleyn (“Mres A Bolleyne / Nowe thus”).85 Lowinsky, building on the traditional position that the book was created for Boleyn, concluded from a study of the texts and heraldic features of the manuscript that it was made and presented during Anne’s years as queen of England (1533-36), probably by the Flemish Groom of the Privy Chamber Mark Smeton.86 From their first appearance, Lowinsky’s findings were highly speculative, and some scholars rejected the late dating and supposed English origin of the manuscript.87 More recently, Lisa Ann Urkevich has re-evaluated the physical, visual and musical elements of LonRC 1070, concluding that Boleyn must have received the book from one of the several high-ranking foreign ladies upon whom she attended both in England and on the Continent. The new research confirms numerous key points which conflict with Lowinsky: Urkevich confirms the view that the book originated in the early years of the century; demonstrates that the images throughout the manuscript do 81 Fenlon, ‘La diffusion’, pp. 178-9. 82 Slim, Ten altus parts, p. 6. 83 Dunning, Die Staatsmotette, p. 294; H. Colin Slim and Stefano La Via, ‘Verdelot, Philippe’, NG2, vol. 26, p. 428. 84 See p. 47 above. 85 The major studies of LonRC 1070 are Lowinsky, ‘A Music Book’; and Urkevich, Anne Boleyn. The final version of Lowinsky’s study, in his Music in the Culture of the Renaissance, includes an updated catalogue of the manuscript (with concordances) by Bonnie Blackburn (pp. 511-19). “Nowe thus” was the motto of Thomas Boleyn (ibid., p. 495). 86 On Smeton, see p. 97 above. 87 See, for example, Edward Nowacki, ‘The Latin Psalm Motet 1500-1535’, in Ludwig Finscher (ed.), Renaissance-Studien: Helmuth Osthoff zum 80. Geburtstag, Frankfurter Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft, 11 (Tutzing, 1979), p. 164; and Anthony M. Cummings, ‘The Transmission of Some Josquin Motets’, JRMA, 115 (1990): 9.

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not, in fact, point to Boleyn;88 and suggests Marguerite d’Alençon, sister of Francis I, as the likely original owner.89 Urkevich’s specific hypothesis of ownership, for its part, has little more evidence for support than any other. The later addition of three Parisian chansons to the manuscript, one by the French court composer Claudin de Sermisy, has hardly more significance than the appearance of compositions by Josquin in a source of the period: of the first generation of composers of this type of chanson, Sermisy was the most popular and widely published author.90 Furthermore, while Urkevich’s interpretation of the “IHS” and “MA” written into a calligraphic initial on folio 93r as the symbol of Jesus and the initials of a patron is less far-fetched than Braithwaite’s “In hoc signo Mistress Anne,” it nevertheless misses the obvious and standard reading of “MA” in this context as the abbreviation for “Maria”—that is, there is nothing in this decoration to point to specific owners.91 The issue of a possible Tudor connection in the text of the anonymous O salve genitrix (fol. 22v) in the statement “Vincis et ipsa Rosas,” addressed to Mary, can be dismissed both by comparison to Tudor poetic references to the rose (in which an affirmation even that Mary exceeds the rose is certainly out of place), and through observation of the earlier generic medieval use of this Marian image.92 If LonRC 1070 remains a book of unknown specific origin, its French provenance near the beginning of the sixteenth century, with the chanson additions made around 1520 at the earliest, is fairly secure. The sixteenth-century hand of the inscription with Boleyn’s name and the family motto “Nowe thus” leave little doubt that the book was in England at an early date, and it is another one of those manuscripts which was probably too humble in style and decoration to travel as a royal presentation book. Furthermore, it is striking that an indication of the manuscript’s use by English performers has survived, in the form of added sharps on several folios—some of which are canceled by a specifically English letter-f form of the fa sign (see Illustration 4.9, third and fifth staves).93 This mark, which Warmington 88 Urkevich, Anne Boleyn, pp. 24-34, 175-6. 89 Ibid., pp. 201-204, 255-7. The position that LonRC 1070 was written specifically as a book for women to use in performance, on the basis of texts and voice ranges (ibid., pp. 225, 274), seems to me to be sustainable only without reference to other contemporaneous manuscripts; in a comparative context, LonRC 1070 is too generic to warrant such a conclusion. 90 As in the contents of the very first Attaingnant prints in the later 1520s, such as RISM 15283. See the discussion of LonBLR A58 and LonBLR A56, below, for another chanson set where Sermisy is by far the most represented composer. 91 Urkevich, Anne Boleyn, pp. 36-7, 202-203; Braithwaite, The Introduction, p. 48. Urkevich’s examples of “IHS” appearing in illustrations associated with noble figures are not directly comparable to the instance in LonRC 1070, through differences in format. On the other hand, for several of the many examples of “IHS” and “MA” appearing together as Jesus and Mary in contemporaneous iconography, see Burger, ‘Lofzangen’, pp. 30-32. 92 Urkevich, Anne Boleyn, pp. 228-9. Urkevich nevertheless continues to treat the text as a possible Tudor reference. 93 See fols 1v-5r; the sharps, often clearly squeezed in and in a different pen than the rest of the music, can be compared to sharps written by the original scribes, for example on fols 15r and 35v.

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describes as “a sign that resembles a letter h (to designate F natural, often to cancel a previous sharp),” is actually a clef, analogous to the round !, as demonstrated in Bathe’s Briefe introduction to the skill of song from the 1580s.94 Although it is used in LonRC 1070 as a cancellation mark, its more general status as an indicator of the position of fa can be observed in a decidedly abstract melodic experiment in OxfBDI 133, fol. 145v, where the sign is consistently paired with mi-signs one step below (see Illustration 4.10). The added sharps in the French book serve the purpose mainly of showing raised thirds in resting cadential sonorities (not leading notes), precisely one of the areas in which early sixteenth-century English sources are much more liberal with marked sharps than are continental books.95 Nor do the added accidentals appear in the Parisian chansons, whose interest for English musicians is otherwise attested by LonBLR A56 and LonBLR A58 (discussed below), but rather in the anonymous opening motet Forte si dulci. The testimony of LonRC 1070, then, provides a rare and important confirmation of use by musicians who were almost certainly not associated with the manuscript’s original context—indeed one of the rare examples of added accidental performance marks of any sort in a choirbook of the period. Before leaving the description of continental music manuscripts which came to England in the sixteenth century, several fragments and possible lost sources warrant mention. The Missa Adieu mes amours in a book listed in a 1529 King’s College, Cambridge inventory96 could just possibly be a hypothetical and unique example of an English chanson parody mass, on Cornysh’s song transmitted in LonBL 31922; it is more likely, however, to have been an actual continental work, like Obrecht’s mass on the popular chanson rustique. Was this a foreign work in an English book of liturgical music, or perhaps a continental source entirely? At an earlier period, Strohm speculates that a “Mass of the Passion of Our Lady” brought to Henry VII in 1493 “can hardly have been anything other than a Mass of the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady,” a devotion receiving new support at that point in Habsburg-Burgundian circles and honored in polyphonic compositions by Pipelare, La Rue, and others.97 Identification of this mass with a foreign work is problematic, however; devotion to the Sorrows of the Virgin was widespread in England as on the Continent (Duffy in fact notes that “this was of course a European rather than a merely English phenomenon”), in the specific forms of the Five Sorrows or the Seven Sorrows as well as in more general expressions of Mary’s sufferings, for example, the immensely popular Stabat mater and related texts, with their polyphonic settings in EtonC 178.98

94 Kellman (ed.), The Treasury of Petrus Alamire, p. 100; William Bathe, A Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Song (London, 1596), sig. Avr; modern reprint and edition: facsimile edn by Bernarr Rainbow (Kilkenny, 1982); ed. Kevin C. Karnes (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2005). 95 The demonstration and evaluation of the differences in practices of notation of accidentals on England and the Continent is beyond the scope of the present study, but remains a promising aspect of future analytical study. 96 Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain, p. 433. 97 Strohm, The Rise of European Music, pp. 389-90. 98 Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, pp. 258-65.

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Illustration 4.9 London, Royal College of Music, MS 1070, fol. 1v (detail)

Illustration 4.10 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 133, fol. 145v Among the many leaves from liturgical manuscripts recovered from Bodleian Library bindings now kept in the guard book OxfBLL a.6 are two folios from books of polyphonic music (along with numerous pages from chant books).99 99 The polyphony leaves of OxfBLL a.6 are described briefly in CCM, vol. 2, p. 282. It should be noted as well that folios 77-80 are the original covers to a set of four partbooks,

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One of these, folio 113, contains early sixteenth-century English mass music, and falls outside the scope of the present discussion. The other, folio 109, is a large (if incomplete) choirbook leaf, preserving part of an anonymous four-voice Tone 8 Magnificat setting which also appears in VatSP B80 and MilD 1.100 Charles Hamm calls this work a “virtual twin” of the Magnificat by Antoine Busnoys in BrusBR 5557;101 certainly there seems to be no evidence—stylistic or paleographical—of an English connection for the fragment.102 A note on the current verso (originally the recto) records that the leaf came from the binding of Bodleian book Heb. b. 6. The polyphonic manuscript fragment in OxfBLL a.8 (fols 2r-3v) has been mentioned above in connection with OxfBA 831: this undecorated bifolium from the center of a choirbook gathering was transmitted to England in the cover of a 1607 catalogue from the Vienna Hofbibliothek, and so is not relevant to the present discussion.103 A folio from the modern guard book LonBL 70516, fol. 80, contains a single voice setting three sections of the Passion prayer Adoro te domine ihesu criste (associated with devotion to the Wounds of Christ104), probably from a choirbook of the early sixteenth century. Helms allows the possibility that this is a continental fragment, on account of the style of the noteheads and initial “A,” but continental origin is highly unlikely: both the musical style of the piece and the presence of notational habits such as double-looped flats clearly signal English provenance;105 moreover, another voice of the motet appears in the Henrician Medius partbook LonBLH 1709 (fols 5r-7r). A recently-discovered choirbook fragment in the Durham University Library, which appears to be of Franco-Flemish style from around 1500, was certainly not in England in the sixteenth century. The leaves were used in the binding of a print from 1554, with an ex-libris from the Jesuit College in Brussels (from the seventeenth century?); other binding materials of the print come from late fifteenthcentury Burgundian accounts.106 None of the continental music fragments recovered which contain pen trials identifying early owners or users. An additional item of musical interest is the monophonic addition to the bottom of folios 89v-90r, with text in a fifteenthcentury English hand. 100 This is number 368 in Winfried Kirsch’s catalogue of Magnificat settings: Die Quellen der mehrstimmigen Magnificat- und Te Deum-Vertonungen bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Tutzing, 1966), p. 247. The piece is edited (without reference to the Oxford source) in Antoine Busnoys, Collected Works, ed. Richard Taruskin (New York, 1990-), vol. 2, pp. 193-207. 101 Charles Hamm, ‘The Manuscript San Pietro B 80’, RM, 14 (1960): 45. 102 The CCM entry states that the polyphonic fragments in OxfBLL a.6 were “presumably copied in England,” but this judgement can only apply safely to fol. 113. 103 Kellman (ed.), The Treasury of Petrus Alamire, p. 123. 104 On the devotional use of this text, see Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, pp. 239-44. 105 Helms, Heinrich VIII., p. 58. Examples of contemporaneous English manuscript fragments of a very similar style include OxfBM e.21 and OxfBLL a.6, fol. 113 (mentioned above). 106 The book’s shelfmark is S. R. 9. D. 3; information on the book provided by Julia Craig-McFeely. Margaret Bent informed me of the fragments originally. I have identified the music as part of a four-voice Paschal Kyrie setting, the style of which would fit comfortably in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, and am currently preparing a detailed study of the fragment.

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from bindings of books now in England, therefore, can be shown to have come to the country in the early Tudor period. A more nuanced understanding of the basic distinctions between English and continental notational and stylistic features would have allowed more accurate information in the main bibliographical references to these sources. Foreign Manuscripts Containing English Music If commissions from Petrus Alamire of presentation manuscripts with iconography pointing to the English royal couple were largely the result of political motivations, as surmised above, the appearance of actual music from the English court in two manuscripts from the Habsburg-Burgundian court scriptorium tells a somewhat different story. VienNB Mus. 18746 is a set of partbooks which contain almost exclusively secular music in five parts.107 Famous for preserving two inscriptions with Alamire’s own signature (one of which dates the set to 1523), the Vienna books were apparently a project which enjoyed closer involvement than usual from Alamire. It may be this personal connection with the books’ unusual structure and content that is responsible for the inclusion of a piece entitled “La sol mi fa mi Cantus de anglia” in the midst of a string of Josquin chansons (unattributed in the source, like almost all of the other pieces; see Appendix B.2 for a transcription of the work). Stylistically, the piece fits easily into the type of instrumental works based on solmization subjects which was cultivated by both continental and English composers in the early sixteenth century. Although more continental in style than many English pieces of the time, La sol mi fa mi displays certain characteristics which could suggest English work, such as the typically English cadential forms in mm. 49 and 55, and the frequent appearance of off-beat dotted notes (where a continental source would usually split one note into two) as in mm. 58-9, 62-3, 667, and 70-71. This is perhaps the only piece in its source which seems to have been conceived instrumentally from the start, but the complete absence of literary texts (beyond titles) in the partbooks points to an intention of instrumental performance for the entire set (especially since Alamire’s inscriptions indicate that the books are finished in their current state).108 Alamire himself had some interest in five-part instrumental works, having composed such a Tandernaken setting;109 that similar instrumental music must have 107 Kellman (ed.), The Treasury of Petrus Alamire, pp. 160-62. 108 Jaap van Benthem uses the lack of texts as well as errors in the musical readings transmitted in VienNB Mus. 18746 to argue that the source was not useful for practical performance (‘Einige wiedererkannte Josquin-Chansons im Codex 18746 der Österreichische Nationalbibliothek’, TVNM, 22 [1971-72]: 18). However, if one assumes that the lack of text was intentional (as I think must be the case), the situation becomes simply a case of a source with more errors than normal; I am aware of no print or manuscript from the period which is completely free of errors, regardless of signs of use by performers. Nor would VienNB Mus. 18746 make any sort of suitable presentation manuscript, being one of the only Alamire books lacking completely in decorations. 109 Schreurs, ‘Petrus Alamire’, p. 20.

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been in vogue at the English court at the same time can be seen from some of Henry VIII’s own compositions, as well as the other contents of LonBL 31922.110 The title “cantus de anglia” could, of course, suggest that the composition was merely known and played in England, perhaps by one of the mainly foreign wind ensembles at the royal court, and actually represents the work of a foreign composer (or group). Alternatively, perhaps it is merely the cantus ostinato (not always solmised la sol mi fa mi) which is “de anglia”—but no plausible source or text phrase for a soggetto cavato dalle vocali comes to mind. Whatever the case, the piece’s source suggests some sort of connection with the court. The probable time for Alamire to have picked up the English work which found its way into VienNB Mus. 18746 is the years around 1515-18, when the copyist had close relations with the English court in the function of an informer on the activities of Richard de la Pole. Although Alamire’s several visits to England had to be kept quiet due to the sensitive nature of his activities, he continued to flatter the king with gifts of books and instruments, and received payments and loans at court.111 There was no lack of opportunities for Alamire to pick up English court music, and the presence of such an unusual item in VienNB Mus. 18746 strengthens the partbooks’ ties to Alamire’s personal activity. With JenaU 9, the other manuscript from Alamire’s circle containing music from England, we return to the realm of formal, decorated parchment choirbooks (see Illustration 4.11). This short and damaged book now contains only two works, both missing pages through the removal of a single bifolium, but was clearly a handsome and carefully-executed manuscript.112 The main work, unattributed and untitled in the source, is Fayrfax’s mass O bone ihesu, for which JenaU 9 is probably the earliest source—and the one closest to the composer, if (as seems very likely) Alamire acquired his exemplar directly from the English royal court.113 The copying of a work from an English source led to the appearance of certain characteristics of the notation in JenaU 9 which are unique within the Habsburg-Burgundian court manuscript complex: these include the combination of black clefs with void notation;114 a red “2” marked under notes which are doubled in length through alteration; red capitals for textual clause beginnings;115 double-looped round ! signs

110 See pp. 163-7 below. 111 Schreurs, ‘Petrus Alamire’, p. 19. 112 See Flynn Warmington’s description in Kellman (ed.), The Treasury of Petrus Alamire, pp. 98-100. 113 An overview of the sources for the mass appears in Robert Fayrfax, O Bone Iesu, ed. Roger Bray, EECM 43 (London, 2002), pp. x-xii. Regarding the lack of ascription in JenaU 9, it should be noted that the mass is missing its final folio, where composer attributions are frequently located in English sixteenth-century sources. 114 English sources from this time favor void and full notation fairly equally, although the more formal productions seem to have retained full notation more often; many examples of void notation with full clefs can be observed in LonBL 31922. Note also the exceptional appearance of void clefs in LonBL 31922, along with a single-looped flat on a line, for a continental work, Moulu/Isaac’s Amy souffrez (fol. 90r). 115 As may be observed in the color reproduction of fols 1v-2r in Kellman (ed.), The Treasury of Petrus Alamire, 98-9. I have only seen the rest of the source in black-and-white

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Illustration 4.11 Robert Fayrfax, Missa O bone ihesu, with English royal arms. Jena, Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Chorbuch 9, fol. 1v reproduction, and so have not been able to check for entire text sections in red ink, as appears in English sources such as EtonC 178.

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on staff lines (not spaces);116 the “f” sign to show fa in F fa ut or f fa ut;117 the explicit notation of rests when parts are silent for entire sections (even with accompanying textual pausatur instructions); and the use of the mensuration sign C where at this point one would expect D in continental music.118 Alamire’s scribes (Warmington’s music scribe C2 and text scribe X119) appear to have been quite sensitive to the English notational features of their exemplars, and took care to transmit them. The use of the same signs in the other composition in JenaU 9 indicates the English origin of this work as well, as the musical style affirms. Originally occupying three openings in the manuscript, the piece now lacks its first three folios. The text which begins at what would have been the second opening, “Resurrexio xpristi,” suggests that the entire composition was based on the devotional text Anima cristi known from contemporaneous Books of Hours. As noted by Warmington, this prayer was to be recited at the Elevation during mass, and the musical setting emphasizes the phrase “O bone ihesu.” Although only two voices of the motet survive where “O bone ihesu” appears in the text, several factors convene to highlight the phrase (see Example 4.4): the two voices are in near-homophony here, reciting on breves and semibreves; the phrase ends the section, with a double barline following; and one of the two voices enters after resting for sixteen breves. The context of the preceding music in this section makes it clear then that the exclamation “O bone ihesu” was a homophonic four-voice conclusion to a string of duets.

D ¡Ì Ì ¡ ¡¡ "

[mi]

D

-

‹

‹

¡Ì ¡ X

net

‹

‹

X

me

‹

À Ì Ì Ì X O

O

C

X

X

X

bo

-

ne

ihe

-

X

X

X

bo

-

ne

ihe

-

Ì Ì

9

su

9 su

Example 4.4 End of “Resurrexio xpristi” section in Anima cristi (JenaU 9, fols 15r-16r)

The suitability of this motet for insertion into the Fayrfax mass which precedes it has recently been a matter of some controversy, Roger Bowers expressing the view that in the absence of other contemporaneous English settings of elevation motets such as O salutaris hostia, “this anonymous piece gives every indication of having

116 This distinction is not followed with complete consistency, but the same situation obtains in the English sources: see, for example, the numerous double-looped round ! signs in spaces in LonBLR A58. 117 On this sign, see pp. 151-3 above. 118 Since this mensuration sign (C) only occurs in the Sanctus in JenaU 9, and D in other movements, its appearance there may be a mere scribal oversight. 119 Flynn Warmington, ‘A Survey of Scribal Hands in the Manuscripts’, in Kellman (ed.), The Treasury of Petrus Alamire, pp. 41-52.

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been a conventional Jesus votive antiphon.”120 The fact that Anima cristi did not occurr “as part of the proper of the authorized liturgy” points directly to a major issue in understanding the role of any of the private prayer texts drawn from Books of Hours and set to music in this period. Why do we have polyphonic settings at all of first-person prayers such as the various “Adoro te” Jesus-texts?121 If a motet sets a text which was to be recited privately by an individual during the mass in order to obtain indulgences, are we to conclude nevertheless that its non-liturgical status excluded the possibility of its performance during that ceremony? What of decided alterations to the mass’s textual structure, such as the Milanese motetti missales, or, closer to the present question, the actual replacement of an Osanna in Pierre de la Rue’s Missa de sancta anna with an O salutaris hostia? Given the spread of the practice of marking the Elevation with a motet on the Continent at precisely this period, it is not at all inconceivable that a work emanating surely from the English court in the 1510s should emulate this fashion;122 it is even possible that motet and choirbook were fashioned specifically for one of the diplomatic occasions when the English court structures were at their most ostentatious and ‘international’. The matter may be elucidated further when an exactly matching text for ... Resurrexio cristi is discovered. The highlighting of the text phrase ‘O bone ihesu’ and the resultant link to the mass in JenaU 9 become more significant in the light of recently discovered documents linking Fayrfax to the Guild of the Holy Name at St Paul’s Cathedral in London.123 During the 1510s, Fayrfax and other Chapel Royal gentlemen and children were brought in by the guild to sing Jesus masses, and a document of 1528/9 mentions that Fayrfax had given a mass to the Jesus chapel. With these connections established, Mateer and New speculate that the new mass for which Fayrfax received payment from Margaret Beaufort (who had a particular devotion to the Name of Jesus124) in 1507 could have been O bone ihesu, written for the reconstitution that year of the fraternity of the Holy Name by Henry VII.125 Although the documented information on the number of illuminations in the book which Fayrfax gave to the guild rules out identification with JenaU 9, it is striking that the Alamire book seems to have the same singular focus. To judge from the musical style, Anima cristi seems to have

120 Roger Bowers, ‘More on the Lambeth Choirbook’, EM, 33 (2005): 659-64, at 663; in response to a communication of David Skinner in EM, 33 (2005): 155-7. 121 This matter is discussed further in Bonnie J. Blackburn, ‘For Whom Do the Singers Sing?’, EM, 25 (1997): 593-609. Blackburn’s list of first-person texts from Petrucci prints (p. 606) notably includes Gaspar van Weerbeke’s setting of Anima cristi. 122 Cazeaux claims that the practice of singing O salutaris hostia at the elevation was a peculiarity of the French court (La musique à la cour, p. 101); but the La Rue mass and the appearance of other O salutaris hostia settings such as the group in the Occo Codex (BrusBR IV.922, fols 4r-6r) argues otherwise (the text, as the fifth stanza of the hymn Verbum supernum prodiens, has no other use as an independent item). 123 See David Mateer and Elizabeth New, ‘“In nomine Jesu”: Robert Fayrfax and the Guild of the Holy Name in St Paul’s Cathedral’, ML, 81 (2000): 507-19. 124 Kisby, ‘A Mirror of Monarchy’, p. 221. 125 Mateer and New, ‘“In nomine Jesu”’, pp. 514-15.

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come from the pen of Fayrfax,126 and the extant non-musical evidence points to the same man. Whether or not JenaU 9 was the fine parchment book given to Henry VIII by Petrus Alamire in the 1510s, it seems unlikely that it was intended for a non-English recipient, even if it ended up among the books of Frederick the Wise. The care taken to preserve English notational peculiarities (such as are absent from the “English” piece in VienNB Mus. 18746) is the first sign that the manuscript was to serve English singers. The particular devotional focus of the volume, moreover, together with the unmistakable emphasis on Tudor heraldry in the decorations, render it perfectly suited to English royalty in the 1510s. If La sol mi fa mi represents a true example of English music reaching the Continent in this period, JenaU 9 more likely was either in England during its useful period or intended for use there, before its transformation into a collector’s item. English Manuscripts Containing Continental Music The continental sources described above in this chapter which arrived in England during the early Tudor period, whether by design or by fortune, point to some of the means by which foreign styles could have come to affect English music-making. Numerous sources of English provenance, however, show a more direct connection to works from the continental repertory, in as much as English copyists took the effort to record these compositions in their collections—in other words, there is no question whatsoever of these books being treated as exotic gifts and their contents ignored, if such was even the case at any point with the presentation books. By the second half of the sixteenth century, foreign pieces and pieces in the continental tradition by foreigners living in England were appearing with ever greater frequency in English manuscripts, which continued a trend reaching back to the early decades of the century, and to some extent to the second half of the fifteenth century as well.127 The sources included in the present study fall in the early stages of this development, in which the sporadic presence of foreign works in mainly insular sources foreshadows the later systematic transmission of continental pieces in England. From the start of the period under review, LonBL 5665 (the “Ritson Manuscript”) is an important source in many respects: for its transmission of smaller-scale English liturgical music of the later fifteenth century, its collection of polyphonic carols, and its sample of English songs which clearly imitate the classic Burgundian courtly chanson.128 Certain stylistic relationships between the manuscript’s music and that of 126 This suggestion was made to me by David Skinner. The work is edited (as ... Resurrexio Christi) in Fayrfax, O bone Iesu, pp. 82-5. 127 Detailed listings of Latin and French music appearing in sixteenth-century English sources are compiled in May Hofman and John Morehen, Latin Music in British Sources c1485-c1610, EECM Supplementary Volume 2 (London, 1987); and Jane Bernstein, ‘An Index of Polyphonic Chansons in English Manuscript Sources, c.1530-1640’, RMARC, 21 (1988): 21-36. Bernstein’s chronological limit excludes early sources such as LonBL 31922. 128 On the Burgundian-style songs, see Theodor Dumitrescu, ‘An English Adoption of the Burgundian Chanson’, in Suzannah Clark and Elizabeth Eva Leach (eds), Citation

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fifteenth-century continental sources attest to a closer affinity of LonBL 5665 with foreign styles than is usual for English sources of the period.129 In terms of content and non-musical items, various elements of LonBL 5665 hint at the slight French influences of the book as well. Inscriptions running across the bottoms of some openings mention John Trouluffe and Richard Smert, whose names appear alone on certain folios as compositional ascriptions as well. Among the inscriptions, we find on fols 16v-17r “Smert deu garde” and “Trouluffe bon iour,” the first perhaps being a reference to the phrase “Dievs wous garde” in the carol Nowell nowell from earlier in the book—all in all, the sorts of passing exclamations which might reflect no more than a traditional French linguistic presence in England.130 Smert and Trouluffe were clerics in the area around Exeter in the 1460s and 1470s, and some sections of LonBL 5665 do have the appearance of a provincial source, but the book seems to have done some traveling, as have, perhaps, some of the owners as well: note the payment from Henry VII’s account book in 1492 to someone named Smert “for an Englisshe boke.”131 Slightly better known in the history of the Ritson book are the links to the music of Gilles Binchois. As noticed originally by Robert Mitchell, the carol Pray for vs thow Prince of Pesse (fols 37v-38r) shares a considerable amount of musical material with a Credo setting by Binchois in TrentC 92.132 Wright speculates that Binchois was borrowing from the carol for his Credo, a direction of influence which would fit with the traditional view of the contenance angloise and the effect of English music on Binchois in particular. With another case of a piece from LonBL 5665 linked to Binchois, on the other hand, there is little doubt that the English work is borrowing from the continental composer. The two-part Votre trey dowce regaurt on folio 144v uses the tenor of Binchois’s song as the foundation for a curious newly composed counterpoint, made up of repeated statements of a single motive on different pitch

and Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Musical Culture: Learning from the Learned (Rochester, NY and Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2005), pp. 174-83. The only study devoted completely to the Ritson book is Catherine Ann Keyes Miller, A Fifteenth Century Record of English Choir Repertory: B. M. Add. Ms. 5665, A Transcription and Commentary (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1948). John Stevens gave consideration to the book in Music and Poetry, especially pp. 5-10 and 338-50; and most recently Dietrich Helms has re-evaluated the manuscript: Heinrich VIII., pp. 13-24 and 449-54. The carols and secular music of LonBL 5665 are edited in Mediaeval Carols, ed. John E. Stevens, MB 4 (London, 1958); and Early Tudor Songs and Carols, ed. John E. Stevens, MB 36 (London, 1975). Miller’s dissertation was the only available edition of the liturgical music until the recent publication of The Ritson Manuscript. 129 For example, in the ornamentation forms employed at cadential points; this area is in need of further investigation elsewhere. 130 Helms, Heinrich VIII., pp. 18-19. On the regular employment of French in latemedieval English education, see Elizabeth Eva Leach, ‘Learning French by Singing in 14thCentury England’, EM, 33 (2005): 253-70, especially pp. 253-6. 131 Helms, Heinrich VIII., p. 19. 132 Wright, ‘Binchois and England’, pp. 88-9. The Binchois piece is number 18 in Gilles Binchois, The Sacred Music of Gilles Binchois, ed. Philip R. Kaye (Oxford and New York, 1992).

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levels, treated with some melodic and rhythmic freedom. Kemp (elaborating on a suggestion made by Stevens) hypothesizes that the piece represents a style of improvised dance music, in this case a saltarello, as it might have been played by musically illiterate minstrels.133 Whether or not the musical evidence of the piece alone can justify such specific conclusions,134 another English source for the same tenor points in that direction. A leaf at the front of the Sarum processional LonBLH 1512 (folio 2) was used as a musical scrap page of sorts in the fifteenth century, on which various users drew staves by hand and wrote out short fragments (along with the textual pen trials encountered so commonly on blank manuscript pages). Among the items on the recto side we find Binchois’s tenor (with the label “VOTRE”) written in stroke notation, with the ending in mensural notation to accommodate note values shorter than the semibreve.135 The use of stroke and similar notations may well have been intended to aid performers who were uncomfortable with the mensural notation system;136 in any case, this style was normal in the notation of basse dance tenors, as can be observed in the well-known dance manuscript BrusBR 9085. A further English example of slow-moving tenors notated in this manner can be seen in OxfBDI 167 fol. 31v. This sheet contains three tenors, entitled “Quene note,” “Auxce bon youre delabonestren,” and “Eterne rex altissime Redemtor et ...” along with a mensurally notated discant part for the Quene note tenor.137 No further text survives for the French song Auxce bon youre, but a polyphonic version of the music (with only the initial “A”) is found in TrentC 87 (fols 117v-118r).138 That Quene note is also a French tenor is probably indicated by the heading “ffrankus” which is attached to the 133 Kemp, ‘“Votre trey Dowce”’. 134 At times Kemp’s reasoning decidedly ignores established musical practices of the period, for example in his suggestion that the basse danse was the only form in which polyphony was improvised over a chanson tenor in its original metrical shape (pp. 40-41). Tinctoris specifically allows for either plainchant or measured music as tenors when he writes “omnis contrapunctus aut super cantum planum aut super figuratum fit” (Liber de arte contrapuncti, Lib. 2, Cap. 21; Opera theoretica, vol. 2, p. 110); in fifteenth-century works based on cantus firmi extracted from polyphonic pieces (as opposed to plainchant), chanson tenors are the rule rather than the exception. Kemp also asserts inexplicably that the mensuration sign P in both voices suggests that the piece was intended for dancing. 135 This item is described, in the context of a discussion of stroke notation, in Strohm, The Rise of European Music, pp. 352-6. Fallows notes that the Binchois tenor in LonBLH 1512 agrees more closely with the readings in the Ritson manuscript than with other versions: A Catalogue, p. 406 (the dating here of the Binchois addition in LonBLH 1512 as c. 1540 is a typographical error for c. 1450). 136 Note, however, the reservations in Clive Burgess and Andrew Wathey, ‘Mapping the Soundscape: Church Music in English Towns, 1450-1550’, EMH, 19 (2000): 19. 137 The polyphonic piece is transcribed, not completely accurately, in Sacred & Secular Songs, Together with Other MS. Compositions in the Bodleian Library, Oxford: Ranging from about A. D. 1185 to about A. D. 1505, ed. Sir John Stainer (2 vols, London and New York, 1901), vol. 2, p. 181; facsimile in vol. 1, no. XCVIII. The music on this page was not necessarily entered as early as implied in CCM, vol. 2, p. 278 (following Stainer), since it is a later addition to the book; a miscellaneous piece of writing on the next folio includes the date 31 July 1513. 138 Fallows, A Catalogue, p. 94.

Anglo-Continental Relations in Music Manuscripts

163

music in the decoration at the beginning of the top staff;139 Eterne rex (a faburden of the chant) appears to be the only English tenor on the page. As for the counterpoint to Quene note, its notation is certainly English, to judge by the black clef and use of a double-looped round ! sign. The discant voice is not nearly as motivic as the Votre trey dowce discant in the Ritson book, but is rhythmically quite active and includes segments of sequential patterning. Quene note and Votre trey dowce clearly belong to similar performing traditions (see the extracts in Example 4.5), and the use of French song tenors or other tunes as the basis for dance music provides a plausible function for this music. Recall as well the references in Skelton’s poems to Votre trey dowce and the dance tune Roty bully joys, indicating the fashion for such songs at the English court.140 

15

D ¡ Ì 8D Ì

¡ Ì Ì

X

 

¡ ¡ ¡ ¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡ Ì X



X

  Ì

Ì

X

Ì

X

Example 4.5 a. Quene note, mm. 15-20 (OxfBDI 167 fol. 31v) 19

Ì X

   ¡¡¡¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ Ì

  ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡

  ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡

8Ì X

X

X

Ì

X

Ì

X

Example 4.5 b. Votre trey dowce, mm. 19-23 (LonBL 5665, fols 144v-145; after Stevens [ed.], Early Tudor Songs and Carols)

At a slightly later period than that of LonBL 5665, the importation of more modern forms of continental music is brought to the fore in the so-called Henry VIII manuscript, LonBL 31922.141 Famous for containing a sizeable collection of songs ascribed to Henry VIII, the manuscript preserves in all likelihood an early Tudor court repertory, even if it bears no indications of having been at court. LonBL 31922 has traditionally been dated to the 1510s on account of the composers represented

139 The word might possibly relate, on the other hand, to Henry VIII’s trumpeter Francesco Franco (on whom, see p. 67 above). 140 See p. 20 above. 141 Discussions of this source include Stevens, Music and Poetry, pp. 1-21 and 386-425; Warwick A. Edwards, ‘The Instrumental Music of Henry VIII’s Manuscript’, The Consort, 34 (1978): 274-82; and more recently, Helms, Heinrich VIII., pp. 36-57. The music is edited in Music at the Court of Henry VIII, ed. John E. Stevens, MB 18 (2nd, revised edn, London, 1973).

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

164

as well as topical references in certain texts; more recently, however, Helms has proposed a dating of 1522-23, by connecting the text of You and I and Amyas (fols 45v-46r) to the Château Vert entertainment of March 1522, and dating the binding of the book to 1523 at the latest.142 With the exception of a few additions, the entire manuscript was written in one hand, displaying English notational characteristics. The contents of the book are mainly works by English composers, but the compiler mixed in at least fourteen continental pieces, many of which were among the most famous and widely-distributed of their day (see Table 4.3). Table 4.3 Definite continental compositions in LonBL 31922 No.

Title

Composer

Location

1

Benedictus

Isaac

3v-4r

2

Fortune esperee

3

Alles regretz

Van Ghizeghem

5v-6r

4

En frolyk wesen

Barbireau

6v-7r

5

La my

Isaac

7v-9r

36

De tous bien plane

Van Ghizeghem

40v-41r

37

Iay pryse amours

41v-42r

42

Ough warder mount

46v-47r

43

La season

Compère

47v-48r

45

Gentyl prince de renom

[Henry VIII]*

49v-50r

83

Dulcis amica

Prioris

88v-89r

85

[Amy souffrez]

Moulu/[Isaac]

90r

91

[Basse dance tenor setting]

95

Belle sur tautes-Tota pulcra es

Agricola

99v-100r

99

Fors solemant

Févin

104v-105r

4v-5r

Notes: Numbering is from Stevens’s edition, and composition titles are given as in LonBL 31922. All composer ascriptions are supplied from other sources. Only pieces which have been found in continental sources are included. * This ascription in LonBL 31922 presumably refers to the added fourth voice. The composition is anonymous in its continental sources.

The pride of place given to five celebrated continental works at the head of the manuscript hints at the importance of foreign music for the style of many of the English pieces preserved in this source. The compositions of Henry VIII in particular show an affinity with the stylistic traits of the mainstream foreign works here represented, but certain works by William Cornysh in LonBL 31922, particularly Fa la sol and Adieu mes amours, are clearly in imitation of continental music as well (see, for example, the imitative opening and paired duet device in Example 4.6, from Adieu mes amours). Table 4.3 does not include the English polyphonic settings of 142 Helms, Heinrich VIII., pp. 48-9, 36-41.

Anglo-Continental Relations in Music Manuscripts

165

known continental tunes, encountered in Henry VIII’s Taundernaken (fols 82v-84r) setting as well as Un vray amoure (86v-87r). The latter piece presents an interesting case, as the superius alone is borrowed from Compère’s Alons fere nos barbes. While the other parts are newly composed, it may be the case that the English king’s contribution is merely the simple altus part (as in Gentyl prince).143 While it is impossible to know by what means the foreign pieces in LonBL 31922 were transmitted to England, the connection to Henry VIII, and more specifically the presence of what may be his early attempts at composition in the manuscript, offers a hint.144 As mentioned above, certain compositions by William Cornysh and Henry are modeled directly or indirectly on continental works, or use them for pre-existent voice parts. Although Cornysh’s foreign-styled pieces are self-contained works by a competent composer, some of Henry’s are anything but. If the appearance of foreign works as general or specific models in the manuscript is actually connected to Henry’s musical education, then it is probably through Gilles Duwes, tutor to Henry in French and music (and royal librarian after Henry’s accession to the throne), that the compositions found their way eventually into LonBL 31922.145 Nevertheless, no far-fetched explanation is needed for the particular choices of pieces in the book: surely any of the number of foreign musicians at court would have been perfectly familiar with these classics and probably played them regularly. And “playing” is just the style of performance suggested by the textless transmission of true foreign works in LonBL 31922: although the question of texting remains controversial, and it certainly is possible to sing these pieces through memorization with a separately transmitted text (or with solmization syllables), it is decidedly not the scribe’s habit in LonBL 31922 to leave English-texted pieces with incipits only. The English compositions either receive reasonably complete texting, or none at all; particularly striking is the appearance of complete texting in the French-texted pieces by English composers, Cornysh’s Adieu mes amours and the anonymous Sy fortune which can be identified stylistically as a probable work of Henry VIII146—the language, therefore, was not a barrier to including text. One need look no further than Petrucci’s Harmonice musices odhecaton A (1501) to find the same style of transmitting these pieces with incipits only, derived probably from contemporaneous manuscript practices (for example, FlorC 2439);147 it was surely in a source of this format that the pieces arrived in England. Holman, in fact, has attempted to associate the textless works in LonBL 31922 particularly with the Van Wilders, suggesting that the instrumental compositions of the manuscript were

143 See Helms, Heinrich VIII., pp. 308-12. 144 For the suggestion that some of the pieces in LonBL 31922 ascribed to Henry are “elementary teaching exercises” see Fallows, ‘Henry VIII’, p. 35. 145 On Duwes, see p. 82 above. 146 Helms, Heinrich VIII., pp. 375-7. 147 See the recent facsimile edition of the 1504 printing of Harmonice musices odhecaton A by Stanley Boorman and Ellen Beebe (New York, c. 2001); the standard transcription is Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A, ed. Helen Hewitt (Cambridge, MA, 1942).

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

166 1

‹



‹

‹

Ì A

‹

8

‹

8 Ì

¡ ¡ Ì

¡

A

-

dieu

mes

¡

-

dieu

mes

¡¡Ì

a

-

‹

‹  ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡

¡¡ ¡ ,

¡¡¡Ì

mours

‹

‹

-

‹

¡¡Ì

a

‹

8

‹

¡ ¡ Ì

¡

‹

‹

Ì A

¡ -

dieu

7

Ì

X

mours

X

et

‹

8

¡ ¡ ¡ Ì mon

Ì A

8 Ì

dieu mes

a -

‹

¡¡ X

8 ¡ ¡ Ì mes

-

a

¡¡¡¡Ì

Ì

-

¡

mours

Example 4.6 a. William Cornysh, Adieu mes amours (extracts; after Stevens [ed.], Music at the Court of Henry VIII): mm. 1-9

  34

‹

‹

Ì Ì Ì X

‹

‹

 Ì Ì Ì 8 Par - don - nez

 Ì Ì Ì 8

Par - don - nez

‹

‹

X

Ì

moi

tres

X moi

Ì tres

X



Ì

Ì  X

X

moi

Ì Ì Ì X

tres

Ì

hum

X

-

ble

-

ment

X

moi

tres

hum

-

ble

-

ment

Par - don - nez

 8

Ì

Par - don - nez

‹

Ì

9

hum - ble - ment

Example 4.6 b. mm. 34-40

Je

‹

 À X 

‹

 À  X

hum - ble - ment

X

Ì  Ì X 

Je

Je

Anglo-Continental Relations in Music Manuscripts

167

brought by or written for the musical family, and are intended for performance by a viol consort.148 The only real evidence Holman cites for this view is the compilation of the manuscript at the time when members of the family first arrived in England (c. 1515), introducing the viol to the country at the same time. Helms’s dating of the source to 1522 at the earliest removes the temporal link; and the hypothesis that the viol came to England first around 1515 through the Van Wilders is rejected above in Chapter 3.149 Although there is no reason that viols not be used for performing the music in LonBL 31922, and the 1520s probably saw the development of the first homogeneous viol consort at the English court, the evidence is not nearly specific enough to limit this source (or just about any other from the period) to a particular type of ensemble. Probably not much later than the copying of LonBL 31922—at most a decade or two—come the first surviving examples in English sources of the new Parisian chanson, in the manuscripts LonBLR A58 and LonBLR A56. Both books contain a variety of musical materials, including keyboard scores of sacred and secular music, as well as voice parts in traditional mensural notation, and, in the case of LonBLR A58, lute tablatures.150 For LonBLR A58 in particular, questions of origin and purpose have been confused by the apparent number of scribal hands and different styles of music represented, while LonBLR A56 is known mainly for its early examples of major sixteenth-century English keyboard music forms. The designation of LonBLR A58 as a musical commonplace book, seemingly the only way to account for its contents, however, must be qualified. The sudden change of the main hand in the book after folio 25, as shown by the work of Helms, is accompanied by a change of paper type, including a difference in watermarks, which continues until folio 50, when the original hand returns.151 On the basis of this evidence, Helms suggests that the modern bound book is made up of two original manuscripts (designated as LonBLR A58.1 and LonBLR A58.2), one of which was inserted into the middle of the other at some point before their last binding. LonBLR A58.1 was originally a book of tenor parts of English songs of the sort found in LonBL 31922; at some point, later and more miscellaneous materials were added to the end, including the lute tablatures. On the other hand, LonBLR A58.2 does not display the homogeneity of the main corpus of LonBLR A58.1, and could be described more justifiably as a musical commonplace book. One text hand makes appearances in LonBLR A56, LonBLR A58.2, and the additions to LonBLR A58.1, confirming the links suggested by certain striking similarities of repertory. LonBLR A58.2 and LonBLR A56 each contain a block of chansons surrounded by English music, the contents of which are listed in Table 4.4. The transcriptions 148 Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, p. 74. On the Van Wilder family in England, see p. 80 and 83-6 above. 149 See p. 80 above. 150 On LonBLR A58, see Stevens, Music and Poetry, pp. 129-31 and 279; Bernstein, The Chanson, pp. 30-36; John Ward, ‘The Lute Music of MS Royal Appendix 58’, JAMS, 13 (1960): 117-25; and Helms, Heinrich VIII., pp. 63-79, 455-7. LonBLR A56 is discussed in Bernstein, The Chanson, pp. 36-41; and Kenton Parton, ‘On Two Early Tudor Manuscripts of Keyboard Music’, JAMS, 17 (1964): 81-3. 151 Helms, Heinrich VIII., pp. 64-5.

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The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

in LonBLR A56 are keyboard scores in the style used in most of that manuscript, whereas LonBLR A58 contains Altus parts alone for these pieces, set off from the preceding and following music by script style.152 Table 4.4 Chanson sections in LonBLR A58.2 and LonBLR A56 Title

Composer

Location

Continental source

LonBLR A58.2 [De trop aymer]

28v-29r

[1528]5

[Longtemps y a]

Sermisy/Dulot

29r

15304

[Le content]

Sermisy

29r-v

15283

v

15293

Sermisy

29v

15283

Apre de vose

Sermisy

30

r

15283

[Las je my plains]

Sermisy

30r

15283

[De retourner] Se[courez moy]

29

r-v

[Il est jour]

Sermisy

30

Dun vince la belle

Sermisy

30v

15283 15283

v

30 [Vous scavez bien]

Lupi

30v-31r

15303

Grace & vertu

Roquelay

31r

[1528]5

Apre de vowse

Sermisy

18v

15283

Sermisy

r

15283

19v

15293

LonBLR A56 Dun vincella [De retourner]

19

r

20 Grace & vertew

Roquelay

20v-21r

[1528]5

Note: Composition titles are given as in the English sources where available; Bernstein’s index states incorrectly that Aupres de vous and Grace vertu are untitled in LonBLR A58 (‘An Index’, p. 30). All composer ascriptions are supplied from other sources, with RISM sigla of concordances supplied from Bernstein, ‘An Index’.

The list of continental concordances in Table 4.4 displays a remarkable level of homogeneity, nearly all of them occurring in early Attaingnant prints (the very first 152 The question of how many scribes worked on this section is not necessarily as easily resolved as is implied in Helms’s listing of hands, which assigns all of LonBLR A58.2 to one scribe (Heinrich VIII., pp. 455-7). The unmistakable change of pen at the beginning of the chanson section on fol. 28v is accompanied by particularly pronounced changes in the formation of C clefs and downstem notes, for example; however, earlier leaves show shifts in forms which undermine attempts to differentiate several distinct hands. Whatever the case, it is certain that the chansons were entered either at a different time or else by a different scribe than the preceding and following sections. The notational style also confirms that an English scribe entered the music of the chansons.

Anglo-Continental Relations in Music Manuscripts

169

prints of this type of music), particularly the Chansons nouvelles of 1528. Moreover, the readings in the manuscripts suggest derivation from those printed versions.153 Although the untitled composition on folio 30v of LonBLR A58.2 and folio 20r of LonBLR A56 has not been discovered yet in any other source, it is surely another chanson from the same milieu, given the style of the composition and its position in the sources; a transcription appears in Appendix B.3, both as a combination of keyboard score and solo Altus (Appendix B.3.a) and as a four-part score which can be derived unproblematically from the other format (Appendix B.3.b). Of particular note is the fact that the chanson groups in the two English books are more closely related than the mere match of contents suggests. As reported in Parton’s early description of LonBLR A56, the keyboard transcriptions include only three voices of the originals, and the missing voice in each case is the altus, to be found in LonBLR A58.2.154 The direct connection is confirmed by the composition following the chanson section in each source: in LonBLR A58.2, the opening of fols 31v-32r contains a four-voice setting of the hymn A solis ortus cardine (notated in choirbook format on the bottom four staves of each page) with a plainchant tenor moving in semibreves; the same composition appears in keyboard score on folio 21v of LonBLR A56. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that these sections of LonBLR A56 and LonBLR A58.2 were meant to be used together as a pair, and were copied out around the same time. When exactly was that copying time? On the basis of watermark evidence, Helms places LonBLR A58.2 sometime around 1530; his dating of LonBLR A56 is similarly around 1530 or slightly later, even though the watermarks correspond to papers from the late 1520s.155 The evidence of these manuscripts demonstrates that the latest French music was present in England at this period with little delay; and while the majority of the chansons in these sources are by the French royal court composer Claudin de Sermisy, the appearance of these pieces across the channel surely needs no explanation as specific as Bernstein’s tentative suggestion that they were brought back from the 1532 meeting of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn with Francis I in Boulogne.156 There were more regular means for prints and manuscript music to travel, especially given the number of foreign musicians at the English court who continued to make journeys back to the Continent.157 Bernstein suggests, based on the texts which Philip van Wilder utilized, that “many more French chanson publications may have circulated at the Tudor court than can be assumed from surviving sources.” In this regard we may also note the presence of a “priksongbooke in printe” in a 1523 inventory of Wolsey’s Hampton Court (years before the first book of polyphony was printed in England).158 Nor is it known when a bound collection of nine Petrucci 153 Bernstein, The Chanson, p. 36. 154 Parton, ‘On Two Early Tudor Manuscripts’, p. 81. The pieces are not, however, in the same order in both manuscripts, as reported by Bernstein (The Chanson, p. 40): compare the positions of De retourner in Table 4.4. 155 Helms, Heinrich VIII., pp. 76-7. 156 Bernstein, The Chanson, pp. 41-2. 157 For a case around 1530, see the mention of Nicholas Forceville in Chapter 3, p. 71 above. 158 Bernstein, ‘Philip van Wilder’, p. 63.

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The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

prints, issued between 1503 and 1519, entered England, eventually becoming part of Lumley’s collection (alongside many continental prints from later in the century); Milsom suggests that a panel-stamped binding from Leuven datable to c. 1534-42 formed the original covers to the set.159 Likewise, a copy of Petrucci’s Misse henrici Izac of 1506 was once part of the royal collection.160 As for the foreign repertory and its first use in the English books, the manner of appearance in LonBLR A56 is similar to that of the foreign pieces in LonBL 31922: incipits are the only form of texting in a source which normally gives fairly complete texts.161 Again as in LonBL 31922, the pieces chosen for these later English books were among the best-known examples of their type. Where the sources differ considerably is in the implication in LonBLR A56 and LonBLR A58.2 of performance of the compositions as keyboardaccompanied solos;162 this is one of the rare examples of practical sources from the period offering hints about ensemble format. Conclusions With as rich a variety of sources as has been examined in the preceding discussion, it should be clear that the influence of foreign style was making itself felt in the English royal court at the beginning of the sixteenth century in the form of complete pieces and manuscripts. Those who would claim skeptically that the rich presentation manuscripts of the period were treated only as passive display items, or even completely ignored by their recipients, must at the very least recognize that the presence of foreign pieces in English books indicates an active receptive process and appreciation of some continental music. In terms of the types of books and music which found their way onto English soil, it is largely “mainstream” FrancoNetherlandish music which is represented. This is no surprising realization in itself, but one would have perhaps expected evidence of greater Italian influence, given the importation of Italian musicians and evidence of manuscript exchanges noted in Chapters 2 and 3 above.163 The situation in any case is by no means one-sided: from the surviving sources we know for sure that the new Italian madrigal and “Parisian” chanson made their first appearances in England almost as soon as they were first disseminated on the Continent. The selections of compositions included in the manuscripts of English origin reveal without a doubt a certain predilection for foreign secular music. Here, the manuscript 159 Milsom, ‘The Nonsuch Library’, pp. 159-60. This is the set noted in the Lumley catalogue as “Missae Josquin Fore Sempronii 1515;” Jayne and Johnson, The Lumley Library, p. 285. 160 Helms, Heinrich VIII., pp. 181-2. 161 The setting of A solis ortus cardine mentioned above, however, is also exceptional in receiving only an incipit. 162 This interpretation, suggested by both Stevens (Music and Poetry, pp. 129-31) and Bernstein (The Chanson, pp. 40-41), is questioned by Helms, who offers the less plausible alternative that the intabulation or performance of all four voices was beyond the skill of the musician who arranged the works (Heinrich VIII., p. 77). 163 See, for example, pp. 40 and 83 above.

Anglo-Continental Relations in Music Manuscripts

171

tradition confirms the expectations engendered by the position of foreign musicians at court. The standard body of singing men and boys in the Chapel Royal remained purely English in the early sixteenth century, while the king’s entertainments and private music were populated largely by the court’s continental instrumentalists. In these cases, the dance tunes and well-known songs which found their way into books like LonBL 31922 and LonBLR A58.2 were surely heard with some regularity, being the most distributed and well-loved songs of their day. On the other hand, the case of works such as Benedictus de Opiciis’s Sub tuum presidium setting in LonBLR 11 E.XI provides evidence that the foreign minstrels of the court did not confine their repertoire to secular works (similarly, the instrumental ensembles of the Continent were used to playing sacred polyphony outside any liturgical or para-liturgical context).164 If we lay aside the unresolvable issue of whether institutions such as the Chapel Royal became familiar with the sacred works in the foreign sources, the musicians of the secular establishment at least could have made good use of the motet repertory of the foreign manuscripts. As mentioned above, the chances are slim that a musical king such as Henry VIII would have ignored and cast aside books with the richest musical and visual treasures of the foreign courts he wished to emulate, particularly given the foreign inclinations of his own compositions and his musical upbringing by a French tutor. The books which were created to impress, and the books which merely transmitted compositions in a humbler manner, all had in some way their effect on musical life; that the remainder of the sixteenth century saw continual growth in the importation of foreign music attests to the position of these sources as the earlier stage of a real and important transmission tradition.

164 On the repertory of foreign instrumental ensembles, see Brown and Polk, ‘Instrumental Music’, pp. 141-4.

Chapter 5

English Music Theory and the International Traditions In tracing a set of historical and artistic interactions primarily through the lens of early Tudor court culture, it has been argued above that seemingly “apolitical” arts and music were of vital importance in consolidating rulership; that England’s monarchs strove to impregnate their inner circles and public personae—even if somewhat artificially—with the marks of contemporary international princehood. Repeatedly, however, elements of Anglo-Continental interaction have come into view in contexts removed from court life at various distances, whether in the princely aspirations of the aristocratic households, the day-to-day contacts accompanying foreign trade, or the travels and correspondences of students and humanists. In the great majority of such instances, there is no propagandistic motivation to be discerned underlying the exposure of English individuals to foreign productions (and we should beware likewise of considering the actions of monarchs such as Henry VIII with such a uniformly utilitarian view). There was indeed at any given point an active undercurrent of cultural and intellectual exchange which was affected only in a gradual and diffused manner by the prevalent tastes of the royal court. The purposes of the present chapter bring us precisely to one of these conceptual areas where court culture is at best an incidental element: the theorization of music in practice and speculation, and the written remnants indicating common ideas and applications of the theoretical systems. Any question regarding music theory in the early Tudor period is bound to be restricted by a lack of sources, both primary and secondary. The available modern literature does very little to offer a sense of how early Tudor musicians formulated the most basic principles of their art, much less how such principles would relate to the foreign practices entering the country. It is imperative, then, not only to consider what the English may have been learning from outside the country in the years around 1500, but likewise to establish in the first place what was already known, taken for granted, and passed down through generations of masters and pupils. The creation and transmission of music theory in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, if it is possible to take it in and characterize it as a whole, was by and large a highly tradition-oriented and conservative endeavor (a fact easily forgotten when focusing on the innovations and peculiarities of individual treatises); and in this sense there is a considerable level of continuity between sources created at a distance of decades and even centuries. The present study, on this account, attempts to trace conceptions current in the early Tudor period—as far as these can be discerned from the surviving remnants—back to at least the opening of the fifteenth century. Considering a wide variety of fifteenth-century English theory sources together and

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The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

situating them in a comparative context, it becomes possible to establish a basic repertory of theoretical concerns and categories, offering a view of the common currents which informed insular music-making with greater surety than the scrutiny of any single source can afford. It is difficult to speak of isolationism or pronounced national traits when treating this sort of material: as the following discussion argues, the common features of the theoretical writings from this period are neither particularly new nor restricted to individual countries. Bearing these approaches in mind, it is feasible to aim at several specific goals: to establish a clearer picture of the theoretical foundations used for the training of English musicians; to identify the basic assumptions which retained validity throughout the period, and those which may have changed; and to come to a better understanding of which elements were common to theory throughout Europe at this time, and which may have been specifically English (or British).1 A Survey of Theory Sources and Categories in Fifteenth-Century England To establish a background for the consideration of theory sources specifically from the early Tudor period, and to allow for the inevitable imprecision in dating numerous manuscripts, the initial step of the investigation treats books dating back as far as c. 1400. The first means of establishing a basis for discussing the theoretical framework known to English musicians is to determine which writings and treatises were copied into English sources, whether newly written or not, and whether by native or foreign authors. The importance of these items for the present study, after all, is that English musicians found them pertinent enough to take the trouble of copying them; the fact that many of the treatises date from considerably earlier than their fifteenth-century English copies is significant, but in no way invalidates their relevance for the later period. Similarly, the foreign authorship of various treatises serves to underline the manner in which the writings of the fourteenth century and earlier were by this point an established and international corpus in England. The teachings related to Guido d’Arezzo or Jean de Muris, for example, received from the fifteenth-century copyists in England no treatment which would differentiate them from the insular theory of the preceding centuries.

1 When the term “music theory” arises in the present investigation, it is employed in the modern sense, encompassing concepts which would have been categorized both as “theory” and as “practice” in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. For many of the items to be discussed, there is no simple method (and no good reason) to make a categorization into theoretical or practical, particularly when so much of the writing from the period touches to some extent on both aspects.

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Table 5.1 Major theoretical writings in English sources, c. 1400-1500 Author

Title/Subject

Source(s)

Editions

Amerus

Practica artis musice

OxfBB 77 (138v-139r)

CSM 25, pp. 109-12

Anonymous

Commentary on Boethius

OxfA 90 (1r-102v) OxfBB 77 (1r-93r)

Commentarium Oxoniense1

Anonymous

Liber argumentorum Guidonis monachi de musica

CambriT O.9.29 (78r83v)

ExpMGA, pp. 19-302

Anonymous

Liber de speciebus musicae

CambriT O.9.29 (83v85r)

ExpMGA, pp. 31-58

Anonymous

Metrologus

LonBLA 130 (100rb118r) OxfBB 515 (78r-87r) LonBL 8866 (64r) LonBLLA 763 (61r68v) VatRE 1146 (67r-70v)

ExpMGA, pp. 67-92

Anonymous

Musica Gwydonis

LonBLLA 763 (3r-51v) OxfBB 77 (106r-138r)

CSM 28, pp. 43-206

Anonymous

Plainchant treatise

LonBLLA 763 (69r87r)

-

D’Arezzo, Guido

Epistola ad Michaelem

CambriT O.9.29 (73v78r)

GSM, vol. 2, pp. 43-50

D’Arezzo, Guido

Micrologus

CambriT O.9.29 (57r67r)

CSM 4, pp. 79-234

D’Arezzo, Guido

Prologus in Antiphonarium

CambriT O.9.29 (72r73r)

GSM, vol. 2, pp. 34-7

D’Arezzo, Guido

Regulae rythmicae

CambriT O.9.29 (67v71v, 85r)

GSM, vol. 2, pp. 25-32

Bartholomaeus Anglicus (tr. John of Trevisa)

De proprietatibus rerum (incl. music section)

pr. Wynkyn de Worde (1495); var. MSS versions

Anglicus, On the properties3

Berno Augiensis

Prologus in Tonarium

VatRE 1146 (17r-21v)

GSM, vol. 2, pp. 67a77a

Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus

De Institutione Musica

OxfBTC 1 (1r-85r)

Boethius, De institutione musica4

Hanboys, John

Summa

LonBL 8866 (64v-86r)

Regule5 CS, vol. 1, pp. 403-48

Isidore of Seville

Sententiae de musica

LonBLH 3151 (27r29v)

GSM, vol. 1, pp. 20a24b

Marchetto da Padova

Lucidarium

VatRE 1146 (7r-8r)

Marchetto, The Lucidarium6 GSM, vol. 3, pp. 78-80

Muris, Jean de

Compendium

VatRE 1146 (2r-5r)

CS, vol. 3, pp. 102-6 GSM, vol. 3, pp. 301-6a

VatRE 1146 (65v-66r)

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Author

Title/Subject

Source(s)

Editions

Muris, Jean de

Libellus cantus mensurabilis

CambriCC 410/II (1r-6r) VatRE 1146 (35r-44v)

Muris, Ars practica7 CS, vol. 3, pp. 46-58

Muris, Jean de

Musica speculativa

OxfBB 300 (110ra115ra)8 OxfBB 77 (95ra-99va) PrinG 95 (87r-99v)

GSM, vol. 3, pp. 256a83b

Muris, Jean de

Notitia artis musicae

CambriT R.14.26 (107r-118v) OxfBB 77 (100ra-103vb) OxfBB 300 (115ra118va)

CSM 17, pp. 47-110 GSM, vol. 3, pp. 292301

Odington, Walter

Summa

CambriCC 410/I (1r36r) LonBL 56486 (A) (1r-2v)

CS, vol. 1, pp. 182-250 CSM 14, pp. 42-146

Pseudo-Odo

Dialogus de musica

CambriT O.9.29 (85v95r) VatRE 1146 (24r-34v)

GSM, vol. 1, pp. 25163a

?Tewkesbury, John of

Quatuor principalia

CambriT O.9.29 (1r53r) LonBL 8866 (4r-64r) OxfBB 515 (4r-77v)

Aluas, The Quatuor principalia9 CS, vol. 4, pp. 200-98

Walsingham, Thomas

Regulae

LonBLLA 763 (98v105r)

CSM 31, pp. 74-98

Notes: Shaded sources represent significantly incomplete versions. 1 Commentarium Oxoniense in musicam Boethii: Ein Quelle zur Musiktheorie an der spätmittelalterlichen Universität, ed. Matthias Hochadel (Munich, 2002). 2 Expositiones in Micrologum Guidonis Aretini; Liber argumentorum, Liber specierum, Metrologus, Commentarius in Micrologum Guidonis Aretini, ed. Joseph Smits van Waesberghe (Amsterdam, 1957). 3 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus De proprietatibus rerum: A Critical Text, trans. John Trevisa; ed. M.C. Seymour et al. (3 vols, Oxford, 1975-87). 4 Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, Anicii Manlii Torquati Severini Boetii De institutione arithmetica libri duo, De institutione musica libri quinque, ed. Godofredus Friedlein (Leipzig, 1867). 5 Regule / Robertus de Handlo, and, Summa / Johannes Hanboys: A New Critical Text and Translation on Facing Pages, with an Introduction, Annotations, and Indices Verborum and Nominum et Rerum, ed. Peter Lefferts (Lincoln, NE, c. 1991). 6 Marchetto da Padova, The Lucidarium of Marchetto of Padua, ed. and trans. Jan W. Herlinger (Chicago, 1985). 7 Johannes de Muris, Ars practica mensurabilis cantus secundum Iohannem de Muris: Die Recensio maior des sogenannten “Libellus practice cantus mensurabilis”, ed. Christian Berktold (Munich, 1999). 8 Version B. 9 Luminita Florea Aluas, The Quatuor principalia musicae: A Critical Edition and Translation, with Introduction and Commentary (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1996). The introduction to Aluas’s edition discusses the possible authorship of John of Tewkesbury.

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177

In the first instance, Table 5.1 offers an overview of the major treatises which found their way into fifteenth-century English books.2 Readers familiar with the new developments in continental theory in the fifteenth century will perhaps be struck by the retrospective nature of the contents of Table 5.1: the latest treatises were written in the fourteenth century, and others considerably earlier. The famous fifteenth-century compendia of authors such as Prosdocimo, Ugolino, Johannes Gallicus, Ramos de Pareja, and Tinctoris did not make their way into surviving English copies. Yet the presence of new names and recent works is a deceptive criterion by which to judge theory books; indeed, the desire in critical editions to divorce the individual “texts” of authors such as Tinctoris from their source contexts has drawn attention away from the close study of the manuscripts themselves—individual, often retrospective, compilations linked to particular institutions or persons and serving particular needs.3 Taking a broader view of fifteenth-century theory transmission, it can be seen that these complete treatises in the English sources were by no means hopelessly out of date (moreover, as will become apparent below, a much wider array of writings survives in the form of small anonymous notes of considerably less formal construction, which must be accorded equal standing with the larger treatises for the practical teachings they transmit). The classic writings of Jean de Muris and others, which remained the most famous and widespread treatises of several centuries, formed the basis for music teaching in university environments at this time both in England and on the Continent.4 Any thought that the recopying of treatises which were several centuries old betrays a particular conservatism in English musical education (and hence, reflects the country’s musical isolation) should be tempered by a comparison with the manuscript situation in other countries: the treatises of Guido d’Arezzo, Jean de Muris, and even occasionally English works like the Quatuor principalia

2 The data presented here have been compiled mainly from RISM B III/4 and B III/6 (Christian Meyer, Michel Huglo, and Nancy C. Phillips, The Theory of Music: Manuscripts from the Carolingian Era up to c.1500 in Great Britain and in the United States of America, RISM B III/4 [Munich, 1992]; Christian Meyer, Giuliano di Bacco, and Cesarini Ruini, The Theory of Music: Manuscripts from the Carolingian Era up to c. 1500: Addenda, Corrigenda, RISM B III/6 [Munich, 2003]), with some additions and modifications from other literature— which is not a wholly unproblematic approach. The dating of a number of these manuscripts is rather uncertain, and the issue is complicated further by the presence of multiple copyists and copying dates within single compilations. Furthermore, some English theoretical works (e.g., Robertus de Handlo’s Regule) survive only in copies of now-lost or fragmentary sources which may have been copied during the timespan covered by the table. Judgements for inclusion have been made on an individual basis. 3 Consider, for example, one of the more well-known theory books of the period, the Ghent MS from 1503-4 (GhenU 70): there we find the manuals of Tinctoris rubbing shoulders with extracts of venerable treatises such as the English Quatuor principalia and the Micrologus, among many other fragmentary and complete older items. 4 See Carpenter, Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Universities; Andrew Wathey, ‘Notes on Discant and Mensuration from Fifteenth-Century Oxford’, in Patrizia Dalla Vecchia and Donatella Restani (eds), Trent’anni di ricerca musicologica: studi in onore di F. Alberto Gallo (Rome, 1996), p. 63.

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continued to enjoy continental circulation at the same time that the new generations were producing their momentous treatises.5 The collection of manuscripts in which the formal theoretical works were transmitted in fifteenth-century England consists largely of compilations dedicated solely or primarily to music theory (listed in Table 5.2). Even if no external evidence existed for the provenance of these books, it would be fairly reasonable, on the basis of their contents, to guess at the monastic and university origins of many of them. Carpenter points, for example, to the Oxford connections of treatises like those by Hanboys and Odington, or the widely distributed Quatuor principalia.6 Likewise, many of the more speculative of the anonymous items also grew out of contact with the required university music texts like the De institutione musica of Boethius, and other classics by Augustine and Isidore. It has been suggested in fact that the circulation of non-musical manuscripts among university scholars, over a period of decades, may have been a common cause for the addition of music theory works to such books (as in the case of OxfBLM d. 83).7 Monastic use is confirmed in other sources, for example in the note recording the possession of LonBLLA 763 by Waltham Abbey; the signatures of Thomas Tallis in this same book indicate its interest even in the sixteenth century, and its probable reason for preservation after the Dissolution.8 An explicit reference to the teaching of the Gamut to boys in LonBL 21455 (fol. 8v) suggests use by the magister of a choir school in day-to-day instruction.9

5 The state of some other fifteenth- and sixteenth-century continental theory manuscripts can be observed through a survey of RISM B III/4, which catalogues many non-English books, for example, LonBL 22315 (copied by Nicolaus Burtius) and LonBL 4920 (the Spataro notebook). On the foreign transmission of Quatuor principalia, see Aluas, The Quatuor principalia, pp. 35-6. 6 Carpenter, Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Universities, pp. 86-8. 7 Wathey, ‘Notes on Discant’, p. 63. 8 Roger Bray, ‘Sacred Music to Latin Texts’, in Roger Bray (ed.), The Sixteenth Century, The Blackwell History of Music in Britain, 2 (Oxford, 1995), p. 89 (the reference to the manuscript at p. 337 n. 110 as “London, British Library, MS Lansdowne 462” is an error). An inscription in a sixteenth-century hand at the bottom of folio 124r of the manuscript identifies it as “Liber Sanctae crucis de Walltham.”, and the main contents of the verso of this folio are two versions of the signature “Thomas Tallys”. 9 “In primis. Γ, a, b, c, d, e, f, g, a, b, ", c, d, e, f, g, a, b, ", c, d. Quarum disposicio a doctoribus aut tacita aut nimia obscuritate perplexa adest et iam pueris breuiter et plenissime explicata ...” For further information on the teaching of English choirboys in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Jane Flynn, ‘The Education of Choristers in England during the Sixteenth Century’, in John Morehen (ed.), English Choral Practice, 1400-1650 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 180-99.

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Table 5.2 English manuscripts dedicated primarily to music theory, c. 1400-1500 Manuscript

Date

Contents

CambriCC 410/I

s.xv in.

Odington (Summa); monochord division

CambriCC 410/II

s.xv ex.

Muris (Libellus cantus mensurabilis); miscellaneous notes (counterpoint, note values, ligatures, proportions)

CambriT O.9.29

s.xv (14211)

Quatuor principalia; Liber argumentorum Guidonis monachi de musica; Torkesey/Brunham (Declaratio trianguli); Guido d’Arezzo (Micrologus, Regulae rythmicae, Prologus in Antiphonarium, Epistola ad Michaelem); Guido de Sancto Mauro (Liber de speciebus musicae); Pseudo-Odo (Dialogus de musica); miscellaneous notes (ligature rules, solmization, intervals, meters, counterpoint, proportions)

LonBL 8866

s.xv (c. 1425-50)

Quatuor principalia; Metrologus (excerpt); Hanboys (Summa, [tractatus])

LonBL 21455

s.xiv/xv

Cum de mensurabili musica; Torkesey/Brunham (Declaratio trianguli); miscellaneous notes (solmization, counterpoint, the Gamut, consonances)

LonBLLA 763

s.xv (c. 1450)

Musica Gwydonis; Metrologus; Muris (Regule); Torkesey/ Brunham (Declaratio trianguli); Walsingham (Regule); miscellaneous notes (modes, origins of music, plainchant, colors, intervals, counterpoint, proportions)

OxfA 90

s.xv (before 1457)

Commentary on Boethius

OxfBB 77

s.xv

Commentary on Boethius; Musica Gwydonis; Amerus (Practica); Muris (Musica speculativa, Notitia artis musice); miscellaneous notes (ligatures, mensural music)

OxfBB 300

s.xiv/xv

Muris (Musica speculativa [B], Notitia artis musice); miscellaneous notes (instruments, mensural music)

OxfBB 515

s.xv in.

Quatuor principalia; Metrologus; miscellaneous notes (glosses on Quatuor principalia, proportion triangle, Greek modes, intervals, Greater Perfect System, origins of music)

OxfBTC 1

s.xv

Boethius (De institutione musica)

VatRE 1146

s.xiv/xv2

Muris (compendium, Libellus cantus mensurabilis); Marchetto, Lucidarium (excerpt); Berno, Prologus in Tonarium; Pseudo-Odo (Dialogus de musica); Torkesey/ Brunham (Declaratio trianguli); Boethius, De Institutione Musica (excerpt); Metrologus (excerpt); miscellaneous notes (proportions, plainchant performance, monochord, modes, mensuration, the Hand, solmization, origins of music)

Notes: Dates in the table use the standard format explained in N.R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books (2nd edn, London, 1964), p. x: “s.xv in.” indicates first half of the fifteenth century; “s.xv ex.” indicates second half of the fifteenth century; “s.xiv/xv” indicates late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. 1

Not 1416, as in RISM B III/4, p. 10. Although the copying of the theoretical items of this manuscript has traditionally been assigned to the later fourteenth century, Anna Maria Busse Berger has pushed the creation date of one treatise into the early fifteenth century (on account of its proportional teachings): Mensuration and Proportion Signs: Origins and Evolution (Oxford and New York, 1993), pp. 58, 66, 166, 177. This revised dating must move up the copying of all items into the fifteenth century. 2

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The majority of the manuscripts enumerated in Table 5.2 contain items represented here as “miscellaneous notes,” in each case revealing an individual interest in musica practica. Alongside the major treatises, these less formal notes are both generic enough in character and brief enough that they defy attempts to treat them on the same “authorial” terms. It is here that the compilation activity of particular scribes/editors/teachers/students comes into its own and takes on significance, in the choices of subjects, their ordering and contextual interactions with neighboring texts. These are items which could hardly be categorized as “treatises” on their own, but will occur in groups which touch on numerous aspects of practical music, forming collections which offer the same sort of basic information as that contained in unified practical treatises. The amount of excerpting and partial transmission of writings—including fragmentary scraps of notes and diagrams copied onto single leaves of books dedicated to other purposes—creates complex variant situations, and a significant proportion of these notes are unavailable in any modern editions. The difficulties in determining where one item leaves off and another begins, or in discerning any particular order to various scattered elements, discourage the attempt either to interpret the shorter writings as formal sections of musica practica treatises, or to consider these instructions as discrete units which circulated independently of each other. A realistic view lies somewhere in between, and includes examples of both situations. It will be helpful to consider these notes in several broad divisions, grouping items together which focus on such subjects as: intervals and consonance theory; counterpoint (discussed separately in the following section); mensuration and proportions; speculative and historical topics. The manuscript context for these various minor “treatises” can be observed in Table 5.3, which presents these writings as separate items with their sources. Table 5.4, on the other hand, provides an overview of the manuscripts which contain these notes; it is notable that this source set is considerably more miscellaneous and non-musical in character than that of Table 5.2, attesting to the diffusion of practical music concepts into other (mainly learned and academic) settings. Table 5.3 Minor theoretical notes in fifteenth-century English sources Title/Subject

Source(s)

Consonances

BosMLB 7 (54r-56v); CambriT R.14.26 (119v, 120r-v, 120v-121r); LonBL 21455 (10r-v); LonBLH 3151 (43r)

Counterpoint

CambriCC 410/II (6v-7v, 7v-9v, 9v, 13v-15v); LonBL 21455 (6r-7r, 9r, 9v-10r, 11r); LonBLLA 763 (94r, 105v-113r, 113v-116v); OxfBLM d.83 (63r)

De octo tonis (relationship between modes and planets)

LonBLLA 763 (52r-v)

Definition of synemmenon

LonBL 8866 (64r)

Distinccio inter colores musicales et armorum heroum

LonBLLA 763 (88v-89r)

Humanistic music discussion

CambriT R.14.26 (53r-54v)

Musical instruments

OxfBB 300 (118vb-119vb); PrinG 95 (84r-86r)

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181

Title/Subject

Source(s)

Mensuration

NYorkPM B. 12 (73v); OxfBB 300 (119vb-120rb); OxfBLM d.83 (63r, 63v-64r); VatRE 1146 (44v-51r)

Miscellaneous (intervals, ligatures, etc.)

CambriCC 410/II (9v-10v); CambriT O.9.29 (br, 55r-56v); CambriT R.14.26 (5v, 119r-v); LonBLLA 763 (53r-55r, 68v, 91r-94r); OxfB F.5.25 (242r); OxfBB 77 (94v, 104ar-105ar, 139r); OxfBB 515 (3r, 87r-88v); PrinG 95 (80r-82r); VatRE 1146 (57r-62v)

Modes

CambriT O.2.13 (97v); VatRE 1146 (21v-24r, 51v-55r)

Modus psallendi in choro

LonBLR 5 A.VI (30v-31r)

Monochord division

CambriCC 410/I (36r); VatRE 1146 (16v, 57r-62v)

Musica docet de numero

CambriP 1236 (109r-110r); LonBL 18752 (18r-v)

Notational devices

CambriP 1236 (104r-108v)

Origins of music

LonBLLA 763 (55v-59r); OxfBB 515 (89r-90r); VatRE 1146 (66r)

Plainchant

VatRE 1146 (9v-16v, 57r-65v)

Proportions

CambriCC 410/II (11r-v, 11v-13v); DubTC 516 (129v-131v); LonBLLA 763 (87v, 117r-122v, 123r124r); NYorkPM B. 12 (63r-68v, 69r-76r, 69v-70r, 70r-73r, 73v); VatRE 1146 (5v-7r, 8v-9r)

Regula de monocordo

LonBL 21455 (8v)

Solmization/Hand

CambriT R.14.52 (256ar); LonBL 21455 (2r); LonBLLA 763 (52v); VatRE 1146 (63r-65v)

Speculative music discussion

CambriT R.14.26 (6r-9r)

Speculum cantantium sive psallentium

LonBLLA 763 (59v-60v)

Triangle (proportion/mensuration)

CambriT O.9.29 (53v-54v); CambriT R.14.52 (256av-256bv); LonBL 21455 (7r-8v); LonBLLA 763 (89v-91r, 94r-v); NYorkPM B. 12 (73v); OxfBB 515 (2r-v); PrinG 95 (82v-83v) VatRE 1146 (55v-57r)

Tuning (harp/lute)

CambriT O.2.13 (97v); CambriT O.2.53 (71r)

Table 5.4 Fifteenth-century English sources containing minor theoretical notes Manuscript

Date

Main contents

BosMLB 7

s.xv

Miscellany

CambriCC 410/I

s.xv in.

Music theory

CambriCC 410/II

s.xv ex.

Music theory

CambriP 1236

s.xv (1459/60-65)

Sacred mensural music

CambriT O.2.13

s.xv/xvi

Miscellany

CambriT O.2.53

s.xv

History

CambriT O.9.29

s.xv (1416)

Music theory

CambriT R.14.26

s.xv

Academic miscellany

CambriT R.14.52

s.xv/xvi

Miscellany (medicine/astrology)

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182 Manuscript

Date

Main contents

LonBL 8866

s.xv (c. 1425-50)

Music theory

LonBL 18752

s.xv in.

Miscellany (medicine/astronomy)

LonBL 21455

s.xiv/xv

Music theory

LonBLH 3151

s.xv in.

Academic miscellany

LonBLLA 763

s.xv (c. 1450)

Music theory

LonBLR 5 A.VI

s.xv (1446)

Theology

NYorkPM B. 12

s.xiv/xv

Miscellany (astronomy/mathematics/music)

OxfB F.5.25, flyleaf

s.xv

Single leaf with music theory

OxfBB 77

s.xv

Music theory

OxfBB 300

s.xiv/xv

Music theory

OxfBB 515

s.xv in.

Music theory

OxfBLM d.83

s.xv ex.

Grosseteste, commentary on Aristotle

PrinG 95

s.xiv-s.xv

Miscellany (astronomy/mathematics/music)

VatRE 1146

s.xiv/xv

Music theory

Interval and Consonance Theory The teaching of derivation of intervals and consonances, traditionally an element of both practical and speculative theory, continues to hold a place in the fifteenthcentury collections. The earlier side of this category of teaching is represented by the instructions for monochord division, which can be observed under several forms. Most widely distributed is the treatise beginning “Musica docet de numero sonorum,” which can be found in LonBL 18752 (fol. 18r-v), the later book CambriP 1236 (fols 109r-110r; more on this manuscript below, pp. 200-202), and the manuscripts LonBL 32622 and LonBLH 866 (which are earlier and fall outside the limits of this study). Even in its brevity, this work does not dispense with a short introduction on the discovery of music and its earliest development; unlike some of the purely technical notes considered here, Musica docet would have been of use and interest to performers and non-performers alike. Briefer yet and more purely technical is the Regula de monocordo in LonBL 21455 (fol. 8v).10 The fragment beginning “Quia dictum est quod licet monocordum intendere” from CambriCC 410/I (fol. 36r),11 at the end of Odington’s Summa, is not a monochord division (as stated in RISM B III/4); rather, it consists of a brief discussion of extending the Gamut and monochord by an extra tone above d superacuta, focusing on the derivation of the proportion between Γ and the new note. After the division of the monochord, a logical step into the territory of musica practica is the treatment of intervals, and at a further level, the division of these into consonances and dissonances. Already the monochord discussions point toward their relation to the Gamut and the connected interval system: Musica docet actually precedes its instructions with a listing of intervals, and the Regula de 10 Edited in CSM 8, pp. 72-3. 11 Edited in CS, vol. 1, p. 250.

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monocordo explicitly links monochord division points to locations in the Gamut. Tables of hexachords and solmization appear both on their own and as parts of larger items; examples include the lone diagram on folio 2r of LonBL 21455 or the version connected to a poem by “Kendale” in LonBLLA 763 (fol. 52v). Such diagrams would continue to appear with little modification in both theoretical and practical sources, English and continental, throughout the sixteenth century. Isolated written discussion of solmization is present in CambriT O.9.29 (fol. 55r). Outside these contexts, explanations of consonance theory appear in a variety of forms. The short Latin section on this subject which appears in the mainly nonmusical miscellany LonBLH 3151 (fol. 43r) treats consonances in verse, while more traditional expositions appear in the counterpoint treatises, or isolated as in CambriT R.14.26 (fols 119r-121r). LonBL 21455 contains a discussion of consonances (fol. 10r-v) which forms part of one of the counterpoint treatises in the collection, listing in particular consonances which can be used below the tenor on different Gamut steps.12 It is unfortunate that this latter discussion was not included in the published editions of the treatise, as it contains one of the few surviving discussions of musica ficta from English manuscripts of the fifteenth century—but describing one of the less recognized uses of the term. The relevant excerpt is short enough to include here, on the merit of its unusual discussion of a type of sharpward system transposition: fficta musica est. accipere notas vbi non sunt. # quadrata & ficta musica assimilant vnum vel eundem. Ita quod debes mutare clauem de Csolfaut in clauem de ffaut. & tunc facies de dlasolre Gsolreut. de #quadrata accipies tuum vt in gsolreut & de ficta musica accipies tuum vt in dlasolre & ideo muta clauem de Csolfaut in clauem de ffaut. Sic erunt # quadrata & ficta musica similes sicut apparet hic.

% ¬

" ¬

[Musica ficta is the receiving of notes where they do not exist. # quadrata13 and musica ficta act in one and the same way, so that you must change the clef of c sol fa ut into the clef of F fa ut; and then you will make G sol re ut out of d la sol re. You will receive your ut of # quadrata in G sol re ut and you will receive your ut of musica ficta in d la sol re; and thus, change your clef of c sol fa ut into the clef of F fa ut. In this way # quadrata and musica ficta will be alike, as appears here:]

What the English writer describes here is a way of performing in a system where the Gamut step d la sol re receives the syllable ut, effecting a mental transposition by reading C clefs as F clefs; the result is that a semitone is performed consistently between f fa ut and g sol re ut—in modern terms, an F# key signature; by early 12 The counterpoint treatise was edited by Bukofzer and Georgiades (see pp. 188-90 below), but without the consonance discussion at the end. There is no division in the manuscript, and no reason to suspect that these are two separate works; the language of the consonance discussion in particular indicates clearly that it is part of the treatise. 13 That is, " durum / “bequarre,” one of the three standard hexachordal proprietates along with ! molle / “bemolle” and natura / “propirchaunt.” Clearly this passage refers to musica ficta strictly as a fourth proprietas, rather than in its more well-known sense.

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theoretical standards, a fourth proprietas.14 Another treatment of musica ficta from the same manuscript (fol. 6r), in an unrelated item, again equates this term (here called musica falsa) with the use of fa in g sol re ut.15 Here as elsewhere, however, the concepts at work turn out to have a roughly contemporaneous continental parallel. A counterpoint treatise from the early fifteenth-century Italian manuscript VercBA 11, while acknowledging as in LonBL 21455 the general mobility of musica ficta or “musica colorata,” again uses specifically this title when constructing d-based hexachords: “Acuta musicha collorata [incipit] in d la sol re acuta et terminatur in ! fa " mi.”16 This will not be the only explicit link between English and Italian counterpoint treatises. Rhythm and Mensuration In the matter of rhythmic divisions and the explanation of mensural notation, the English writings of the fifteenth century remain closely related to the Ars Nova traditions which the fourteenth-century English theorists had helped to create and transmit. Writings such as the unedited discussion on folios 119v-120r of OxfBB 300 concern issues such as the possibility of rhythmic divisions beyond the level of the minima, a matter of philosophical import which was still a sticking point for Tinctoris in the 1470s.17 The “prykke of reduccyon” from OxfBLM d. 83, as pointed out by Andrew Wathey, receives its earliest mention in a book of the midfourteenth century, but also appears in late-fifteenth-century continental treatises.18 Mensuration diagrams showing the divisions of notes under signs are to be found in practical sources as well as theory books, through to at least the end of the sixteenth century. Examples such as those in OxfBLM d. 83 and the early sixteenth-century music book LonBLR A58 (fol. 51r) represent the British usage whereby Major and Minor Mood are determined by the lower-level mensurations (as noted explicitly 14 This item is not the only theoretical mention of the consistent use of F#, whether marked explicitly or not. On John Hothby’s treatment of the subject in the Calliopea legale, see Theodor Dumitrescu, ‘Leading Tones in cantus firmi and the Early L’homme armé Tradition’, Studi Musicali, 31 (2002): 25-7; see also Pier Paolo Scattolin, ‘La regola del “grado” nella teoria medievale del contrapunto’, Rivista Italiana de Musicologia, 14 (1979): 50-51. A rare example of a polyphonic piece from the period with such a system notated explicitly is Lebertoul’s O mortalis homo from OxfBC 213, fol. 41v, which shows a round ! clef in g sol re ut. 15 Edited as part of a so-called Ars nova treatise in CSM 8, pp. 73-8. 16 Anna Cornagliotti and Maria Caraci Vela (eds), Un inedito trattato musicale del Medioevo: Vercelli, Biblioteca Agnesiana, cod. 11 (Tavarnuzze, Impruneta, and Florence, 1998), p. 84. Less sustainable is the idea that the concept of proprietates colloratae based on D is already present in Petrus de Palma Ociosa’s Compendium de discantu mensurabili (ibid., p. 17). While this treatise describes how to construct a D-hexachord using musica falsa, there is no special status associated with this location; Petrus de Palma Ociosa’s statements about musica falsa are rather more explicitly extensible and in line with the standard teaching. 17 See Tinctoris, Proportionale, Lib. 1, Cap. 5 (Opera theoretica, vol. 2a, p. 17). 18 Wathey, ‘Notes on Discant’, p. 66. The musical writings from this source are transcribed on pp. 69-72 of the same article.

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in the later “Scottish Anonymous” treatise, LonBL 4911, fol. 8v).19 Another British peculiarity (not merely English, as demonstrated by the Scottish Anonymous) is the mensuration naming convention based on forms such as “Perfect of the More” and “Imperfect of the Less,” found in OxfBLM d.83; its longevity is revealed by later appearances in LonBLR A58, LonBL 4911, and Morley’s Plaine and Easie Introduction.20 Latin versions in LonBL 10336 and CambriP 1236 (see below) indicate that the system is a regional usage, rather than merely an English-language (or unlearned) convention. The issue of proportions, necessary in music both for the derivation of intervals and in rhythmic notation, is the focus of Chilston’s small treatise in LonBLLA 763 (fols 120v-122v),21 as well as the following item (“Proportio est duarum rerum ...,” fols 123r-124r), and writings in CambriCC 410/II (fols 11r-v, 11v-13v) and NYorkPM B. 12 (fols 63r-68v, 69r-76r, 69v-70r, 70r-73r, 73v). That many of these texts derive from a common source is indisputable, although linguistic variance in the English notes is a constant characteristic demonstrating the elaboration of stock subjects and phrases. Compare, for example, the versions of the opening statements of a short set of instructions in three sources:22 For ye schul of your proporciouns the more vndirstondynge haue aftir my symple vndirstandynge .Y. schal declare it yow. But for the names of hem be more conuenient. and more schortly sett in latyn than they wolde be in Englisch. therfore y schal leue alle the names of hem standynge stille in latyn. and schortly declare hem to yow in englisch. (NYorkPM B. 12, fol. 63r) For ye schall of your proporcions the mor openly knowynge haue after mynn vnderstondynge schale declare them to youe but for the names therof ben mor conuenyent And mor schortly set in latynn thann they wold be yn englyssche therfor Y schall let the names of thaymm stonde stylle in latyn And as schortly As Y kann declare hemm to you in englysshe. (DubTC 516, fol. 129r) NOW passid al maner sightis of Descant and with him wel replesshid. yt natural appetide not saturate sufficientli but feruentli desirithe mo musical conclusions as nou in special of Proporcions and of them to haue plein informacion. of the whech aftir myn vnderstonging ye shal haue opin declaracion. But for as moche as the namys of hem be more conuenientli and compendiusli sette in latin than in englissh therfor the namis of hem shal stonde stille 19 LonBL 4911 is discussed and edited in Judson Maynard, An Anonymous Scottish Treatise on Music from the Sixteenth Century, British Museum Additional Manuscript 4911, Edition and Commentary (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1961); see also Isobel P. Woods, ‘A Note on “Scottish Anonymous”’, RMARC, 21 (1988): 37-9. Helms notes the existence of a similar table in LonP E122/201/5; Heinrich VIII., p. 103. 20 Thomas Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597), ed. R. Alec Harman (2nd edn, London and New York, 1963). 21 Edited in Sanford B. Meech, ‘Three Musical Treatises in English from a FifteenthCentury Manuscript’, Speculum, 10 (1935): 265-9. 22 All edited by Peter Lefferts in Texts on Music in English (http://www.music.indiana. edu/tme/) under the title On the Nature of Proportions: http://www.music.indiana.edu/tme/ 15th/DEPRPA1A_MNYPMB12.html; http://www.music.indiana.edu/tme/15th/DEPRPA1C_ MDTC516.html; http://www.music.indiana.edu/tme/15th/DEPRPA1B_MLBLL763.html.

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Neither the frequent variance at the very low level of individual terms and phrasings, nor the underlying repetition of basic and well-known aspects of proportion theory in these works, is to be considered extraordinary. Indeed, what these items attest to is a solidified and comfortable understanding of basic proportions in theory and in practice among various teachers and practitioners. Much like the treatment of simple counterpoint (see below), the use of rhythmic proportions was still relatively new in the fifteenth century by comparison with basic pitch theory or with the classic tenets of musica speculativa; and the English seem to have cultivated this new aspect of musica practica quite actively. The first surviving discussion of proportions with practical rhythmic examples in mensural notation using Hindu-Arabic numerals may well be the “treatise” beginning Pars aliquota est in the English manuscript VatRE 1146 from c. 1400, by no means significantly later than the first comparable continental examples.23 Mensural proportion examples survive in several other English sets throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries; in the form of John Dygon’s treatises, this interest led to one of the most fascinating fusions of English and continental theory (see pp. 202-8 below). The connection between proportion and mensural relationships is also the cause of the frequent appearance of triangle and shield diagrams in English theory sources. The versions of the latter which appear in LonBLLA 763 with the accompanying Trianguli et scuti declaratio (fols 89v-91r) are attributed there to John Torkesey, under whose name these items are mainly known today. Anonymous versions (for example, LonBL 21455, fols 7r-8v), and at least one with a conflicting attribution (Robert de Brunham in CambriT O.9.29, fols 53v-54v), circulated in both the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.24 General and Miscellaneous Notes The other miscellaneous practical subjects treated in the shorter items of the English books represent a variety of topics considerable enough to confirm a healthy interest in all details of practice. Notes on different types of instruments and the construction of organ pipes appear in OxfBB 300 (fols 118v-119v) and again in PrinG 95 (fols 84r86r).25 Unedited examples and rules concerning the reading of ligatures are present in CambriT O.9.29 (fol. br), CambriCC 410/II (fol. 10r-v) and in an addition to OxfBB 77 (fol. 94v). The Modus psallendi in choro of LonBLR 5 A.VI (fols 30v-31r) and the Speculum cantancium siue psallencium found in LonBLLA 763 (fols 59v-60v) give 23 See Berger, Mensuration and Proportion Signs; and on English proportional theory in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, see my introduction to John Dygon, Proportiones practicabiles secundum Gaffurium, ed. and trans. Theodor Dumitrescu, Studies in the History of Music Theory and Literature, 2 (Illinois, 2006). 24 The treatise is edited in CSM 12, pp. 58-63. 25 Discussions and transcriptions can be found in Joseph Smits van Waesberghe, Cymbala: Bells in the Middle Ages, MSD 1 (Rome, 1951); and Klaus-Jürgen Sachs, Mensura fistularum: Die Mensurierung der Orgelpfeifen im Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 1970).

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general guidance for communal plainchant performance. Other subjects scattered in brief fragments throughout the manuscripts of the period include tetrachords, poetic meters, alphabetic cyphers for notation, and modality in plainchant. In the matter of non-practical writings, or at least notes on subjects without any direct technical application to performance, speculative items include the sections of LonBLLA 763 on musical (and heraldic) colors (fols 88v-89r), or the relationship between the modes and the planets (52r-v), both subjects which would be treated later in Tucke’s notebook (see below). Writings with mainly historical, speculative, or pseudo-humanistic aims include the discussion of the origins of music in OxfBB 515 (fols 89r-90r) and LonBLLA 763 (55v-59r),26 along with several items in CambriT R.14.26 (“Numquid in corporibus celi ...,” fols 6r-9r; “Anima juvenis rationalis ...,” fols 53r-54v). To derive some more general observations from the survey of theory transmission within the manuscripts: a dearth of major fifteenth-century English “treatises” cannot be held in any way to imply a dearth of theoretical interest in general. Sources associated with all manner of learned and musical environments (university, monastery, choir school) confirm that the basic materials of the late-medieval musica practica and musica speculativa traditions continued to hold an important place for English practitioners. There is very little evidence of any early conception that there is a distinction to be made between English and foreign theory. Occasional differences of naming conventions (the British “larga” for “maxima,” “perfect of the more” and related titles for individual tempus-prolatio combinations, “propirchaunt” as a proprietas27) act as just that: distinctions in nomenclature, without a deeper essential differentiation, but which nevertheless demonstrate an active native engagement and reception of traditional international teachings. The fragmentary, note-based, and often seemingly oral transmission of many small theoretical items is, of course, by no means unique to England, as has been noted above. The overwhelming focus on extracting larger individual “works” from the continental manuscripts has left many such foreign notes unexplored. In our desire to capture the earliest indications of novel concepts and procedures, it is only too easy to overlook the abundance of small-scale informal or extracted writing which testifies to the continued importance of standardized, indeed conservative, fundamental late-medieval musica practica elements throughout Europe.

26 Edited and discussed in Gilbert Reaney, ‘The Anonymous Treatise De origine et effectu musicae, An Early 15th Century Commonplace Book of Music Theory’, MD, 37 (1983): 101-19. 27 On the long history of the English use of the term “propirchaunt” (in both English and Latin versions), see Bonnie J. Blackburn, ‘Properchant: English Theory at Home and Abroad with an Excursus on Amerus/Aluredus and his Tradition’, in Rena Charnin Mueller and John Nádas (eds), “Quomodo cantabimus canticum?”: Studies in Honor of Edward Roesner (Middleton, WI, forthcoming). I am grateful to Dr Blackburn for providing me with a copy of her essay prior to publication.

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The Question of “English Discant” The single area of fifteenth-century English theory which has received detailed study by numerous scholars in modern times is the counterpoint teaching represented in various closely related states in the theory manuscripts. The purpose of the twentiethcentury investigations, for the most part, was either to discover contemporaneous written documentation of elements of compositional style perceived as particularly English, or else to attempt to determine the geographical and chronological origins of “fauxbourdon” and related styles. Whatever their individual intentions, the modern investigations examining the very same sources have, more often than not, come to conflicting conclusions about many aspects of the treatises and the traditions they represent. Understanding the precise implications and limitations of the English discant treatises is a matter both of untangling the knot of divergent interpretations advanced in the twentieth century and of situating the early writings in a comparative, international, context. Our first modern notions of what the discant manuals contain were colored by particular pre-conceptions of English style, and the resulting interpretations justified the pre-conditions with neat circularity. The idea of “English discant,” as championed mainly by Manfred Bukofzer, arises from a reading of the English counterpoint treatises under the assumption that they describe a form of polyphony characterized by strict parallel movement in 6-3 sonorities.28 Bukofzer argued that this practice was tied closely to popular and unlearned forms of music-making, citing as additional evidence the use of the vernacular in the treatises, their practical and (perceived) colloquial tone, and the appeal to enjoyment as justification for musical decisions.29 A year after Bukofzer’s book appeared, the doctoral dissertation of Thrasybulos Georgiades was published, offering an entirely different set of conclusions regarding essentially the same set of primary sources.30 Georgiades, comparing the teachings of the fifteenth-century English treatises to those of the Ars Nova, both continental and English, found them to be fundamentally the same, and rejected the long-held notion that the English treatises were describing a style of performance in strict parallel motion. Sylvia Kenney followed Georgiades’s interpretation of the treatises to argue that “English discant” never really existed as a phenomenon separate from discant known elsewhere. Instead, Kenney explained the differences between English and continental style in the fifteenth century with the idea that English composers clung to a “pure discant style” which had lost currency in the art music of the continental composers.31 Other authors have touched on the issue in relation to the unresolved

28 Bukofzer, Geschichte. See especially the first chapter, “Allgemeiner Charakter des englischen Diskants,” pp. 17-27. 29 This last point, indicative of the popular musicological view that medieval theorists only accounted for mathematics in formulating their precepts, was laid to rest long ago by Richard Crocker: ‘Discant, Counterpoint, and Harmony’, JAMS, 15 (1962): 4. 30 Georgiades, Englische Diskanttraktate. 31 Kenney, Walter Frye, pp. 91-122. This chapter (“The Theory of Discant”) appeared in an earlier version as ‘“English Discant” and Discant in England’, MQ, 45 (1959): 26-48.

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questions surrounding the origins and practices of fauxbourdon, which will be seen to bear only a tangential relationship to the discant instructions.32 The “English discant” treatises were already appearing in the fourteenth century, and this type of writing was still being copied past the middle of the fifteenth century. Table 5.5 lists the manuscripts and locations for the fifteenth-century treatises.33 Although previous studies have dealt with the contents of these treatises in very specific detail, it will be helpful here to have a brief overview of their typical format and teachings. The first standard element is enumeration of the consonances used in discant, and their division into perfect and imperfect concords. Rules follow Table 5.5 Counterpoint instructions in fifteenth-century English manuscripts MS

Date

Locations of instructions

Incipits

CambriCC 410/II

s.xv ex.

6v-7v 7v-9v

“Sequitur de contrapuncta” “Verumtamen quilibet discantare” “Alia si vis incipere discantum” “Here begynnes a shorte tretys”

9v 13v-15v LonBL 21455

s.xiv/xv 6r-7r 9r (incomplete) 9v-10v 11r

LonBLLA 763

s.xv in.

94r

OxfBLM d.83

s.xv ex.

63r

“Regula discantus” “It es to wyte that ther ar. iij degres of discant.” “Circa modum discantandi” “Septem sunt Conc. in discantu”

“Septem sunt species discantus” “This Tretis is contriuid 105v-113r (Power) vpon the Gamme” 113v-116v (Pseudo-Chilston) “Here folwith. a litil tretise” “How many cordys be ther of dyscant?”

32 See, for a few of the numerous examples, Heinrich Besseler, Bourdon und Fauxbourdon: Studien zum Ursprung der niederländischen Musik (Leipzig, 1950); and Trowell, ‘Faburden and Fauxbourdon’. 33 Most of these short items have appeared transcribed in modern publications. Sanford B. Meech published the last two from LonBLLA 763 (along with Chilston’s treatise on proportions), which were printed again by Georgiades and Bukofzer; Meech, ‘Three Musical Treatises’. Georgiades and Bukofzer also printed two treatises from LonBL 21455 (beginning on folios 9r and 9v). Bukofzer alone brought out the selection on folio 11r of LonBL 21455, in addition to the treatise beginning on folio 13v of CambriCC 410/II (as well as some sources from the fourteenth and late sixteenth centuries). Some items have been reprinted by Sachs, and Wathey has printed a transcription of the musical contents of OxfBLM d.83; Sachs, Der Contrapunctus; Wathey, ‘Notes on Discant’, pp. 69-72.

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prohibiting parallel motion of perfect consonances, and permitting the discanter to move parallel with the plainsong in imperfect consonances (up to a certain number of times); this licence sometimes takes the form of an exception to an explicit requirement that the discant use contrary motion with the plainsong. Various treatises break off here, while others continue to a section which details the system of “sights.” This device presents a means by which discanters can read the notation of the plainsong and imagine their improvised parts on the same staff, while in actuality they sing in different ranges. Typically there are three sights, the Mean sight, the Treble sight, and the Quatreble sight, representing different pitch ranges above the plainsong (and different given starting and ending intervals with the plainsong); certain treatises explain sights which are even with or lower than the plainsong (pseudo-Chilston’s “Countirtenor” and “Countir”). After the explanation of the sights, various writers present further explanations and examples of the different voice-leading possibilities for discanters. As with most of the less formal items in the theory manuscripts, the discant instructions tend to break off as abruptly as they began. What must be noted particularly with regard to the format of these manuals is that it is in line with the characteristics of the sizeable international set of counterpoint manuals collated and examined comparatively in Sachs’s definitive study.34 The enumeration of consonances and dissonances, divisions into perfect and imperfect consonances, prohibitions of certain types of parallel motion, exhaustive voice leading lists in place of abstracted rules, even the incipits of counterpoint manuals follow similar courses throughout Europe: How many cordys be ther of dyscant? Be ther ix. Which [x]? A unison, iijde, v, vj, viij, x, xij, xiij, xv. etc. (OxfBLM d.83, fol. 63r)35 ix accorde siin daer men contrepoont ende alle discant mede seet, de welke siin: unisonus, unisono [sic], 3e, 5te, 6te, 8ve, 10e, 12e, 13e, 15me [etc.]. (BrusBR 10876-83, fol. 142v)36 Here begynnes a shorte tretys of the reule of discant. It is tho witt that there are acordance with on ten nowmber, but there are 9 in use whuch 9 be thees: the unisoun, the thirde, the fyfte, the sexte, the eyght, the 10, the 12, the 13 and the 15 [etc.]. (CambriCC 410/II, fol. 13v)37 Qui veult savoir l’art de deschant, il doibt savoir qu’il sont 13 especes de chant, c’est assavoir: unisson, demiton, ung ton, ton et demi, [etc.]. (ParisBNL 14741, fol. 8v)38 Quot sunt concordationes que a pueris vocis non mutatis supra voces hominum possunt cantari? Undecim. Que sunt? Unisonus, tertia, quinta, sexta, octava, decima, duodecima, 34 Sachs, Der Contrapunctus. 35 Wathey, ‘Notes on Discant,’ pp. 69-72. 36 Wegman, ‘From Maker to Composer,’ p. 417 n. 17. 37 Bukofzer, Geschichte, p. 143. 38 Gilbert Reaney (ed.), De musica libellus: ms. Paris, Bibl. nat., lat. 6286 / anonymus; Tractatus de discantu: ms. Saint-Dié, Bibl. municipale, 42 / anonymus; Compendium discantus: ms. Oxford, Bodl. Libr., Bodley 842 / Pseudo-Franco de Colonia; Traitié de deschant: ms., Paris, Bibl. nat., lat. 15139 / anonymus; Traitié de deschant: ms., Paris, Bibl. nat., lat. 14741 / anonymus, CSM 36 (Neuhausen, 1996), p. 69.

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duplex sexta, duplex octava, duplex decima et duplex duodecima. (GhenU 70, fol. 34va)39

The English instructions, then, are specifically related in general layout and approach to the continental manuals. It is one of their supposed peculiarities, however, which has led to their interpretation as being particularly related to English compositional styles. The aspect of these sources which has engendered the most confusion in modern discussions is the function of “sights.” For Bukofzer, the sights could only work if each voice were to maintain a constant interval with the plainsong.40 The primary sources, however, give no such rule; Kenney’s simple explanation of the sights as a practical tool for aiding in improvisation and in notating counterpoint examples successfully challenged Bukofzer’s view.41 The one place, in fact, where one of the discant manuals links parallel motion to one of the sights is in a description of “The sight of ffaburdon with his a cordis,” treated as a fourth—and separate—sight in the last discant treatise of LonBLLA 763.42 On the Englishness of the sight technique, we have the word of John Hothby, who calls the process discantus visibilis;43 Guillelmus Monachus, also, in his short chapter on the various modi anglicorum, describes the use of an octave-transposition sight.44 One source tells a different story: the sixth chapter of the second tractatus in the Musices opusculum of Nicolaus Burtius describes how to make counterpoint against a tenor, using an octave-transposition sight. Burtius qualifies this technique not only as being somewhat crude and practical (classifying it with the term contrapunctus praticorum), but also as being in use among the ultramontani, and in particular among the French.45 Another supposedly insular element of the discant manuals, then, cannot be considered as such without some amount of qualification. Moreover, and more importantly, there is the matter of the connection of the sights with the “gradus” theory encountered in Italian counterpoint manuals of the fourteenth and fifteenth century.46 This teaching treats the learning of consonances 39 CS, vol. 3, p. 70. 40 Bukofzer, Geschichte, p. 26. 41 Kenney, Walter Frye, pp. 101-3. More questionable, however, is Kenney’s assertion that the terms “mene,” “treble,” and “quatreble” do not retain the same meanings as the voice labels “triplum,” “motetus,” and “quadruplum” (p. 103). “Motetus” is not a particularly relevant term for this discussion, but “medius,” “triplum,” (or “triplex”) and “quadruplum” (or “quadruplex”) are the Latin names for these sight terms and voice parts, as seen in the treatise beginning on folio 9v of LonBL 21455. The names for the sights are quite clearly the same as the names of the voice parts which typically use them. 42 Fol. 116r. In this connection, it should be obvious that the other types of polyphony described in most parts of these treatises have very little to do with fauxbourdon. 43 Johannes Hothby, De Arte Contrapuncti, ed. Gilbert Reaney, CSM 26 (Neuhausen, 1977), p. 102. 44 Guilielmus Monachus, De Preceptis Artis Musicae, ed. Albert Seay, CSM 11 ([Rome], 1965) pp. 29-30. 45 Nicolaus Burtius, Musices opusculum (Bologna, 1487; repr. Bologna, 1969), sig. eviijr-fir. 46 For an overview of gradus theory, see Scattolin, ‘La regola del “grado”’.

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in two-part counterpoint by associating each voice with one hexachord; the “gradus” or degree in operation is defined by the interval difference between the hexachords: unison, fourth, or fifth, as well as octave compounds (the interval of a second is excepted since it can only occur by setting the soft and hard hexachords against each other). Sachs recognized that the sights of the English treatises, with their defined pitch levels in relation to the cantus firmus, must be closely related to the gradus theory—indeed, we find the terms “degree” and even “gradus” in the English manuals alongside the typical sight names.47 What we are really dealing with in the English works, however, is two separate elements which have been largely conflated in the treatises, that is, the sights as a transposition scheme, on the one hand, and the degrees as a system of defining pitch levels for discanting parts, on the other. The sights have been grafted onto a modified gradus theory which allows discanting parts to go beyond the ambitus of the hexachord without changing degree, and therefore names intervals by size rather than by solmization syllables, as in gradus theory: each standard English degree (treble, mean, and so on) receives in the sight theory an interval of transposition with which it is associated (although the actual intervals and degree names vary from source to source). If the relationship between gradus theory and the system encountered in the English manuals is a complex one indicating the existence of multiple of states of the same basic principles (much like the relationship between individual counterpoint manuals throughout Europe), a common ancestry and connection for the English and Italian systems is nevertheless indisputable and suggests contact in matters both of written composition and of extemporization.48 The further testimony of Guillelmus Monachus regarding the contrapuntal procedures of the English, moreover, is a valuable if idiosyncratic source of information. De preceptis includes three sections related to English practice: “Ad habendum veram et perfectam cognitionem modi Anglicorum;” a “tractatus circa cognitionem contrapuncti, tam secundum modum Francigenorum quam Anglicorum, cum duabus et cum tribus vocibus et cum quatuor compositis;” and a “Regule contrapuncti Anglicorum.”49 In the first of these discussions, Guillelmus employs the appellations “faulxbordon” and “gymel” for the modi which he describes, demonstrating three-voice and two-voice parallel styles respectively; subsequent in the same section is a set of instructions for writing for three unchanged voices (“Regula ad componendum cum tribus vocibus non mutatis”). Both modi use octavetransposition sights, which Guillelmus employs to notate his examples on a single staff; the practice of gymel described here, then, involves voices in different and distinct ranges, unlike the type of writing signaled by this term in English practical 47 Klaus-Jürgen Sachs, ‘Die Contrapunctus-Lehre im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert’, in Frieder Zaminer (ed.), Die mittelalterliche Lehre von der Mehrstimmigkeit, Geschichte der Musiktheorie, 5 (Darmstadt, 1984), pp. 208-24. 48 Indeed, one of the main sources for gradus theory is a c. 1400 treatise which is transmitted in a later version under the name of Johannes de Anglia; Scattolin, ‘La regola del “grado”’, pp. 30-31. 49 Monachus, De Preceptis, pp. 29-30, 33-8, 38-44. Seay’s grouping of the two last sections into a single chapter is editorial; the use of the “Incipiunt ...” formula at the start of the “Regule contrapuncti Anglicorum,” however, indicates that it is to be treated as a separate section.

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sources such as EtonC 178. More significantly, the section on counterpoint “tam secundum modum Francigenorum quam Anglicorum” agrees in all basic respects with the English counterpoint treatises, and again describes an octave sight.50 The final “Regule contrapuncti Anglicorum” section once more treats fauxbourdon and gymel (the latter noted explicitly as being sung by “supranus” and “tenor”). Guillelmus notes differences of practice between English fauxbourdon and fauxbourdon “apud nos,” which have been explored and debated in the scholarly explorations of fauxbourdon practice, and which are only tangentially related to the question of standard English counterpoint.51 It seems from the appearance of separate sections devoted to the same material (fauxbourdon and gymel as modi Anglicorum) that Guillelmus may have drawn on several sources here; the appearance of a traditional brief counterpoint treatise (with a sight explanation) between these sections perhaps implies that Guillelmus’s description of basic (French and English) counterpoint is even derived from an English source. Several further characteristics of the English treatises are in need of comment. Table 5.5 above describes these writings as “counterpoint treatises,” whereas the controversies in the musicological literature have focused on “discant.” In this context, the terms are in fact synonymous. Power calls the process “counterpoint” at one point in his manual, whereas the others refer mainly to “discant.”52 A similar conflation of the terms can be observed in the Latin and vernacular writings of continental theorists, with some manuals treating “discantus” and others “contrapunctus” (with the latter term gaining greater currency in the fifteenth century, but never complete supremacy); note, for example, the fifteenth-century references to “deschant” and “contrepoont” on pp. 190-91 above. The false terminological distinction between “English discant” and continental “counterpoint” is not to be underestimated in its separative effects on modern conceptions of English style. A less theoretically tangible stylistic question which has arisen regarding English works is the status of imperfect consonances (thirds and sixths). In a comparison with the continental writings, Georgiades examined the approach to imperfect consonances in the treatises. His conclusion that English theorists showed no more favor to thirds and sixths than did their continental counterparts dealt another blow to the attempt to read a specific “Englishness” into the counterpoint of the treatises; the guiding principle of these works is the employment of contrary motion when 50 Seay and Coussemaker give divergent readings at the opening of this sight description, neither of which seems to be free of error: “Nota quod ad habendam perfectam perfectionem consonantiarum ocularem” (ibid., p. 35) and “Nota quod ad habendam perfectam perfectionem consonantiarum acutarum” (CS, vol. 3, p. 291). A hypothetical original reading would be: “Nota quod ad habendam perfectam cognitionem consonantiarum acutarum” since the sight is used to deal with consonances up to a 12th above the cantus firmus. Bukofzer, however, reads “perfectionem ocularem” as a technical term equivalent to Hothby’s “discantus visibilis” (Geschichte, p. 23). 51 See, for example, Besseler, Bourdon und Fauxbourdon, p. 105; Trowell, ‘Faburden and Fauxbourdon’. 52 Kenney also points out that Power’s use of the term “counterpoint” is strictly in line with the teachings of the Ars Nova theorists (Walter Frye, p. 99). See also Sachs, Der Contrapunctus, p. 38.

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possible.53 This is a conclusion, of course, which regards the theoretical standpoint: that the status of the third in written compositions may well show national variation, when allowed as a resting sonority, is a separate issue with particular relevance for English style in the fifteenth century. The investigation of the chronological shift toward acceptance of the third will need to be carried out largely in the field of compositional style as represented in the polyphonic sources—the manuals of simple counterpoint show no such development in the fifteenth century. It can be concluded safely, then, that the old concept of “English discant” as espoused by Bukofzer does not derive from a sustainable reading of the theoretical sources; the teachings of these treatises are fundamentally the same as those of the traditional continental counterpoint instructions. This is not, however, the only lingering spectre which haunts the issue of rationalizing and defining English fifteenthcentury style. If the English theoretical sources are now accepted as belonging generally to an international counterpoint tradition, the term “English discant” has instead been shifted onto the style of written compositions in a manner no less problematic. Understandings of the term in the modern literature are by no means unanimous: witness, for example, the discrepancy between the versions discussed here by Kenney (still cited as “an excellent summary”54) and Strohm. There is little to surprise us in this disagreement: “English discant” is of course an entirely modern term and can be stretched to fit any number of repertories. The unifying element is a perceived simplicity and “consonance,” an easy characterization to assert but difficult to demonstrate rigorously; hence flexible definitions such as “a method of extemporizing or composing an added voice (discantus) to a given plainsong with little or no disparity of rhythm.”55 As related above, Kenney’s explanation for stylistic differences between English and continental music in the fifteenth century posits that the English compositions correspond in a direct manner to the discant taught by the treatises, while continental musicians had moved to a florid and more dissonant style. It is in the attempt to portray surviving polyphonic compositions— especially if one is considering typical polyphonic compositions—as examples of “pure” discant that Kenney’s interpretation encounters serious difficulties. It will be helpful at this point to recall the basic characteristics of the musical grammar in the late-medieval counterpoint treatises, as illustrated clearly by Bent and others.56 Simple counterpoint, in its strict definition, is (1) dyadic (that is, two-voiced); (2) note-against-note; and (3) completely consonant. This is the same counterpoint that is taught in the English treatises; the compositions of Frye, on the other hand, as well as those of any other English composer, cannot be held up as an example of the same. 53 Georgiades, Englische Diskanttraktate, pp. 62-6, 90. 54 Wegman, ‘From Maker to Composer’, p. 418 n. 23. 55 Strohm, The Rise of European Music, pp. 76-7. 56 See, for example, Margaret Bent, ‘On False Concords in Late Fifteenth-Century Music: Yet Another Look at Tinctoris’, in Anne-Emmanuelle Ceulemans and Bonnie J. Blackburn (eds.), Théorie et analyse musicales 1450-1650: Actes du colloque international Louvain-laNeuve, 23-25 septembre 1999, Musicologica Neolovaniensia Studia, 9 (Louvain-la-Neuve, 2002), pp. 65-7; Margaret Bent, ‘The Grammar of Early Music: Preconditions for Analysis’, in Cristle Collins Judd (ed.), Tonal Structures in Early Music (New York, 1998), pp. 15-59.

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Example 5.1, presenting one of the passages used as an example in Kenney’s book,57 is not an untypical excerpt from Frye’s Nobilis et pulcra mass, supposedly written in “pure discant” style. Kenney’s assertion that “purely ornamental melodic figures are totally absent”58 ignores the passing dissonances in the upper voice (third and fifth measures, the latter in a mensurally strong position59), as well as the clear rhythmic differentiation between the voices. The counterpoint of the treatises—standard simple counterpoint—allows no dissonance whatsoever. Simple counterpoint, as Bent maintains, is neither a direct instruction for, nor a direct description of, the vast majority of written art music which we see in the sources. It is the basis of the musical grammar. It may or may not be true that Frye’s compositions contain a greater abundance of consonant intervals than those of his continental contemporaries; this is strictly a matter of the musical surface and subject to a different type of analysis. The underlying counterpoint of continental and English pieces alike is pan-consonant; one cannot begin with the discant manuals and reach the masses of Frye without an intervening theory of florid or dissonant counterpoint. If we are willing to admit that the teaching of simple counterpoint by continental theorists provides no direct description of continental works, we should not be fooled by a different approach to the musical surface in the English pieces. Even a minor amount of dissonance is still some amount of dissonance, and this is more than the treatises describe. In this sense, “pure discant” can only be a compositional reality in a tiny subset of pieces outside the theoretical tracts; and it is telling that this subset not only includes non-English repertories, it is in fact composed mainly of works from continental sources.60 The term “English discant” is at this point so Frye, Missa Nobilis et pulcra, Sanctus (Osanna I), mm. 95-100 (BrusBR 5557, fols 45v-46r)

Example 5.1

95



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57 Kenney, Walter Frye, p. 129. 58 Ibid., p. 130. 59 The dissonant fourth in m. 99 is even contrapuntally suspect unless the passage is to be interpreted in proportio dupla (with a breve mensura), on account of the position of the unsuspended dissonance at the beginning of a semibreve mensura; see Tinctoris, Liber de arte contrapuncti, Lib. 2, Cap. 23-4 (Opera theoretica, vol. 2, pp. 121-7). 60 Examples of this kind of writing—note-against-note pan-consonant res factae— include the “cantus planus binatim” settings in AmiensBM 162; for a catalogue of such works (along with many more examples of “simple” polyphony which nevertheless cannot be described as contrapuntus simplex), see Kurt von Fischer and Max Lütolf, Handschriften

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loaded with historical misinformation that it would be best discarded completely; if differences between fifteenth-century English and continental counterpoint are to be sought, this must occur outside the theoretical context, and indeed outside the realm of underlying counterpoint. English Theory in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries If the fifteenth-century sources discussed in the preceding sections can be characterized as representing a mixture of retrospective formal treatises with more immediate fragments of mainly practical interest, the relatively fewer sources dating from near the end of the century and into the sixteenth century offer a similar varied picture. University texts appear both directly and as influences on new writings, and occasional literary and scholastic works deal with music in technical terms. The appearance of shorter notes and diagrams, even in practical or non-musical sources, moreover, demonstrates the continued importance of basic theoretical concepts. Wholly traditional solmization diagrams, mensuration tables, and proportion tables occur as isolated figures in the musical sources LonBLR A56 and LonBLR A58 from c. 1530;61 similarly basic and brief textual items list hexachord locations and consonances in the commonplace book OxfBTa 407 (fols 8r, 14v).62 The compilation CambriT R.14.52, another source from the turn of the century for solmization and proportion diagrams, includes the triangle (fols 256ar-256bv; see p. 186 above); definitions of music and modus appear in LonBLS 1585 (fol. 45v). The music theory notebook assembled by John Tucke (LonBL 10336, to be discussed below), moreover, contains numerous such short and basic items which are easily overlooked in the mit mehrstimmiger Musik des 14., 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, RISM B IV/3-4 (2 vols, Munich and Duisburg, 1972). The application of the name “English discant” in Kenney’s sense, on the other hand, to the score-notated works of the Old Hall Manuscript and similar compositions (see Strohm, The Rise of European Music, pp. 76-9) would be subject to the same criticisms as with Frye’s masses: the pieces are in no way a direct application of the counterpoint taught in the English treatises (nor is that counterpoint particularly English), being rhythmically differentiated and allowing dissonance (see Strohm’s Example 9, ibid., p. 78). Strohm’s identification of further particular characteristics of “English discant” pieces brings in the matter of discanting simultaneously above and below the plainsong (in three-voice writing). This characterization offers crucial information about English three-voice scored works c. 1400, but has little connection to the theoretical data and would be better made without the name and its misleading implications. It is certainly true that “Pseudo-Chilston” (LonBLLA 763, fol. 113v-116v) describes a sight of “countir” which stays below the plainsong in voice; but the use of a sight/degree which stays consistently below the plainsong is a special feature of this treatise, and is as unusual within the set of English treatises as within the general counterpoint teaching of the period. The theoretical and practical function of the low contratenor voice in continental contexts is discussed in Kevin N. Moll, ‘Voice Function, Sonority, and Contrapuntal Procedure in Late Medieval Polyphony’, Current Musicology, 64 (2001): 26-72. 61 On these sources, see pp. 167-70 above. 62 The second of these items (which reverses perfect and imperfect consonances) is mentioned in Wathey, ‘Notes on Discant’, p. 65.

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light of the more unique elements of the manuscript. In the absence of new formal writings with named authors, it has been tempting to conclude that the recovery of early-Tudor music-theoretical conceptions is a largely hopeless task (it is telling that the most frequently cited English “theory” source from c. 1500 is not a treatise of any sort, but rather an allegorical poem which conveniently bears the famous name of William Cornysh).63 What the situation in the practical sources, commonplace books, and rare theory books shows, however, is that the basic concepts encountered in the earlier writings remained current and active for practical musicians and students. With the appearance of printed foreign musica practica treatises in England from the early sixteenth century at the latest, moreover, those basic concepts began to be known in the compendium form which the English would again take up in the last years of the century.64 As has been mentioned already, the English theory sources of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries show no evidence that native musicians at this period were interested in creating comprehensive, large-scale treatises on the order of the contemporaneous continental examples. England did, nevertheless, produce one major musical thinker of international repute in the second half of the fifteenth century. John Hothby, known today mainly on account of his activities in Italy, was the first English theorist in around a century to leave behind a substantial body of attributed writings dealing with many aspects of speculative and practical music. The first definite references to the English Carmelite appear in the last twenty years of his life, beginning with an appointment in Lucca in 1467.65 He claims in his Epistola to have travelled Italy, Germany, France, Great Britain, and Spain before coming to Lucca.66 In 1486, the new English king Henry VII recalled Hothby to his native country, and he died in the north in 1487. The manuscript situation for Hothby’s theoretical writings is complicated by the number of different states of certain treatises (including various states of translation), and difficulties with attribution: it seems likely that some of the writings today considered to be Hothby’s work belong actually to a second English theorist active on the continent (“Dominus Johannes de Anglia”).67 Many of the individual transmission problems are probably due in 63 See, for example, Roger Bray, ‘Music and Musicians in Tudor England: Sources, Composition Theory and Performance’, in Bray (ed.), The Sixteenth Century, pp. 3-6. 64 See pp. 216-17 below. 65 The biographical information summarized here appears in Bonnie Blackburn’s entry on Hothby in NG2, vol. 11, pp. 749-51. Blackburn notes that a supposed 1435 reference to Hothby in Oxford is actually the result of a mistaken identification. More plausible, however, is the possible identification of Hothby with John Otteby, Carmelite Friar in the Oxford Convent in 1451 (Woodley, John Tucke, p. 52 n. 5). 66 Strohm suggests as well that Hothby may have been in Bruges in the late 1460s in the company of bishop Stefano Trenta of Lucca, recruiting singers and supervising the creation of the “Lucca choirbook.” Certainly some connection between Hothby and Bruges is likely, at least through the Carmelite Nicasius Weyts. Strohm, Music in Medieval Bruges, pp. 122-3, 43-4, 66. 67 Gilbert Reaney, ‘The Musical Theory of John Hothby’, RM, 42 (1988): 119-33; Gilbert Reaney, ‘The Manuscript Transmission of Hothby’s Theoretical Works’, in Michael D. Grace (ed.), A Festschrift for Albert Seay: Essays by his Friends and Colleagues (Colorado Springs,

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large part to faults and variants created by students noting the contents of Hothby’s lectures; in this light, the occasional appearance of older theorists’ teachings under Hothby’s name is comprehensible. If the majority of Hothby’s writing survives in Italian manuscripts, at least one work, the Proportiones secundum Joannem Otteby, is known only from English sources.68 That Hothby was influential on the Continent is in no doubt, through the distribution of his writings in manuscript as well as through his direct interaction with students. The Englishman engaged Bartolomé Ramos de Pareja in the early stages of the theoretical controversies which would run throughout several decades within a mostly Italian circle of theorists, eventually involving Gaffurius, Aaron, Spataro, and others.69 It is perhaps also Hothby (or the other “Johannes de Anglia”) to whom Spanish theorists refer with the name “Johannes de Londonis.”70 In his battle with Ramos, Hothby came off as a staunch traditionalist, defending Pythagorean tuning and Guidonian pitch concepts against Ramos’s proposed radical reforms. Hothby’s teaching does build from the traditional frameworks; however, he is known to modern scholarship more on account of the new and idiosyncratic elements of his treatises, such as his extensions to the standard pitch system to cope with a wide variety of sharp and flat notes. The use of unusual terminology for certain concepts is a prominent feature in some of the theory by the English writer, linking him back to insular traditions; this subject will be discussed further below.71 Hothby’s relevance for English theory and performance has been denied before; even Woodley calls it “largely continentally oriented” and passes it by.72 This view returns us to the question of exactly what fundamental differences existed between “continentally oriented” theory and that of England. As argued above, the bases of an English musician’s conceptual system in the fifteenth century, as represented in the practical and speculative discussions transmitted in the theory sources, were not substantially different at the lowest levels from the continental teachings still prevalent. Both were rooted firmly in traditions which went back far earlier than 1400. With regard to Hothby, it is evident that those elements of his treatises which seem 1982), pp. 21-31. On “Johannes de Anglia,” see Jeffrey Dean, ‘Okeghem’s Attitude Towards Modality: Three-Mode and Eight-Mode Typologies’, in Ursula Günther, Ludwig Finscher, and Jeffrey Dean (eds), Modality in the Music of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, MSD 49 (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1996), p. 213 n. 36. 68 LonBL 10336 and its copy, LonLP 466. I follow Woodley in considering Reaney’s Regule cantus mensurati secundum Ioannem Otteby to be part of a single treatise beginning Quid est proportio? (John Tucke, pp. 50-52); certainly if these are to be treated as separate works, the explicit to the Regule calling it Proportiones makes little sense, nor would there be a reason to attribute Quid est proportio? to Hothby. 69 Many of the details and most important documents relating to these debates can be found in Blackburn, Lowinsky, and Miller (eds), A Correspondence. 70 See the list of authorities mentioned in Spanish treatises in Bonnie J. Blackburn, ‘Music Theory and Musical Thinking after 1450’, in Strohm and Blackburn (eds), Music as Concept and Practice, pp. 309-10. 71 Hothby’s theories, especially regarding plainchant, are investigated in Timothy L. McDonald, The Musica Plana of John Hothby (Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University, 1990). 72 Woodley, John Tucke, p. vii.

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startling and new derive that character from their relationship with an international medieval tradition, known in England as elsewhere. Certainly Hothby’s name and reputation were known in England, to judge by the fact that he earned the attention of Henry VII. Furthermore, the appearance of his writing in English sources testifies to a direct transmission of his ideas to English musicians, which is a likelier case than the importation of his theory from Italian manuscripts.73 In the discussion below of William Cornysh’s allegorical poem, we will find English usage of a terminology hitherto considered unique to Hothby’s writing. The instructions of Hothby need to be considered much more closely by those examining questions of practical English music theory (which, as noted above, shared more features with Italian theory in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries than is generally recognized)—for example, in the matter of interpreting pitch notation and implied accidentals, where the English teacher offers definite evidence with indirect links to earlier insular theory.74 The solid evidence concerning Hothby’s activities is too scarce to draw firmer conclusions, but the implications are clear: as an individual, Hothby may have had more influence than any other late-fifteenth-century musician in the transmission of musica practica concepts between England and various areas of continental Europe, and his writings deserve scrutiny in this light. We turn now to the three manuscripts from the early Tudor period devoted entirely to music theory, LonBL 10336, LonLP 466, and CambriT O.3.38: perhaps a limited set by comparison with foreign survivals, but revealing of numerous insular peculiarities, as well as of the continuing international basic teaching. One of the English Hothby sources, LonBL 10336, known as the “notebook of John Tucke,” is among the only English theory sources from the early Tudor period to have been the subject of detailed investigation.75 This small book apparently grew out of notes from Tucke’s student days at Winchester and Oxford, and contains material covering a wide and unusual range of musical concepts. The treatises by known authors in the manuscript are the Libellus cantus mensurabilis of Jean de Muris and the Proportiones of John Hothby, in addition to a summary of portions of the Quatuor principalia. The remaining musical material is anonymous, but not completely unique to this source: LonLP 466 is a direct copy of much of LonBL 10336, made in the 1520s by

73 A musical item which, according to Fallows, demonstrates Hothby’s influence in England is the composition entitled Holde faste, which appears in a group of puzzle pieces in LonBLRM 24.d.2 (“John Baldwin’s Commonplace Book,” dating from the end of the sixteenth century). This hexachordal puzzle features flatward motion at least as far as D-flat; see the facsimile and discussion in David Fallows, ‘The End of the ars subtilior’, Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis, 20 (1996): 30-31. It must be noted, however, that such flatward motion is also known from English works probably contemporaneous with Hothby such as Plummer’s mass (Kyrie omnipotens pater) in BrusBR 5557 and ArunC 534; it is simpler to consider Holde faste as deriving from ideas more generally known than specifically from Hothby. 74 See Theodor Dumitrescu, ‘The Solmization Status of Sharps in the 15th and 16th Centuries’, Studi Musicali, 33 (2004): 260-62. 75 Woodley, John Tucke. A close examination of CambriT O.3.38 appears in my introduction to Dygon, Proportiones; see pp. 202-8 below.

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William Chelle (succentor, precentor, and registrar at Hereford Cathedral).76 More importantly, certain sections appear in varied versions on folios 104r-107v of CambriP 1236, a manuscript which contains mostly polyphonic music and could be dated towards 1475.77 This last book also preserves some unique theoretical material, as well as the Musica docet de numero sonorum treatise (mentioned above, pp. 181-3). The theory of Tucke’s notebook and CambriP 1236 is particularly noteworthy in that it represents the development of certain earlier English traditions in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The terminological approach of creating individual figure, or devices, with Greek (or pseudo-Greek) titles, has little parallel in continental theory; in English writings, however, the specific formulas employed for this style of theory were set at the latest by the middle of the century, as in LonBL 8866 (c. 1425-50): “Sinemmenon est figura quedam ...” (fol. 64r). Titles from Tucke’s notebook and CambriP 1236, such as typus, epogdoycus, emyolica, and metamorphoseos (terms which, as often as not, receive from Tucke definitions completely unrelated to known uses of these words), point to the learned and speculative nature of the content, suggesting ties with university teaching outside the standard Boethian curriculum.78 Nevertheless, the devices are usually demonstrated with some sort of notational (and therefore practical) examples, and are often strikingly simple and literal-minded. The device called typus (or transumpcio), as an example, involves nothing more than the transformation or ornamentation of a melody by replacing each note with a three-note upper returning figure.79 Just as astonishing as Tucke’s miscellaneous figure are his descriptions of the types of coloration and their meanings. Included in the list of colors representing proportions are black, green, yellow, blue, red, “sanguine,” and purple; a wide variety of proportions results from combinations of these different colors, as described by Tucke.80 In a similar fashion, the device called diaphonicos is explained as a means of composing using the heraldic colors argent, sable, or, azure, gules, and vert.81 The wording of Tucke’s text on diaphonicos is closely related to a short text which appears in the earlier manuscript LonBLLA 763, entitled Distinccio inter colores musicales et armorum heroum (fols 88v-89r; see Table 5.3 above).82 Both extracts are concerned mainly with establishing an order of priority for the different musical and heraldic colors, rather than dealing with possible musical meanings. The colors from Tucke’s first list, which are associated with proportions, represent a wider array than survives today in the musical sources; aside from two examples of blue notation in 76 Woodley, John Tucke, p. 65. 77 Ibid., p. 66. Descriptions of the Pepys manuscript (CambriP 1236), which focus mostly on the polyphonic music, include Sydney R. Charles, ‘The Provenance and Dates of the Pepys Ms. 1236’, MD, 16 (1962): 57-71; and Frank Ll. Harrison, ‘Music for the Sarum Rite: MS. 1236 in the Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge’, Annales Musicologiques, 6 (1958-63): 99-144. 78 Transcriptions of many selections from Tucke’s book appear in Woodley, John Tucke, pp. 67-109. 79 Ibid., p. 78. 80 Ibid., p. 68. 81 Ibid., pp. 70-71. 82 See also CambriCC 410/II, fol. 13v.

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the Old Hall Manuscript (LonBL 57950), black and red (in full and void versions) are the only ones used. Woodley has pointed to instances of possible renotation in the Ave Maria mass of Thomas Ashwell in the Forrest-Heyther partbooks (OxfBMS e.376-81), necessitated by a transcription from polychromatic notation into black void and black full.83 Similarly, Bray considers the colors black, yellow, blue, red, and green to have been usual in formal versions of the notation of tenor cantus firmi in early Tudor masses.84 There is reason to be cautious about assuming the existence of lost polychromatic originals, given the circumstantial nature of the evidence. The surviving instances of esoteric notation achieve their results without the use of unusual colors; moreover, there are numerous examples of the employment of mensuration and proportion symbols for experimental purposes. The representation of proportions will be discussed further below, in connection with the manuscript CambriT O.3.38. Various of Tucke’s devices have their equivalents in continental contexts, such as epogdoycus, a straightforward method by which a composer or scribe can notate a melody using arabic numerals instead of note shapes to represent lengths. It is interesting to note that, although Woodley associates epogdoycus with stroke and strene notation for singers without mensural literacy, this device is only known from speculative areas. On the British side, the closely related descriptions of this figura in LonBL 10336, LonLP 466, and CambriP 1236 are joined by a puzzle canon resolutio in the late-sixteenth-century Scottish Anonymous treatise, LonBL 4911 (fol. 33v, using the process without the name); on the Continent, the device is used in a pair of “twin” compositions notated with puzzle canons.85 The concept behind Tucke’s ambigua (reversal of note lengths) was apparently used by the theorist Giovanni Spataro in a motet, as described in a letter to Marc’ Antonio Cavazzoni of 1517.86 This same letter describes the application of planet names to notes, as in the metamorphoseos of LonBL 10336. This idea, moreover, recalls the most classical of speculative theory, and can be found in other writers of the period, such as Hothby’s

83 Woodley, John Tucke, pp. 110-22. 84 Roger Bray, ‘Music and the Quadrivium in Early Tudor England’, ML, 76 (1995): 2-4, 12-14; Roger Bray, ‘Editing and Performing Musica Speculativa’, in Morehen (ed.), English Choral Practice, p. 54. Specific examples of the possible forms of a polychromatic original appear in Bray’s recent edition of the Faryfax mass O quam glorifica: Robert Fayrfax, Two Masses: ‘Tecum principium’ and ‘O quam glorifica’, ed. Roger Bray, EECM 45 (London, 2004). 85 One of the compositions, Avertissies vostre doulx euil - Averte oculos, appears in EscSL IV.a.24, and is presented in facsimile in Maria Rika Maniates, ‘Combinative Chansons in the Escorial Chansonnier’, MD, 29 (1975): 124-5. The other, Philippe, Nescitis quid petatis, is found in BolC A71, fol. 290r (indexed in Bonnie J. Blackburn, ‘A Lost Guide to Tinctoris’s Teachings Recovered’, EMH, 1 [1981]: 29-116). In both works, the tenor is notated with numerals (without giving a name for the device), while the contratenor is to be performed “ut cancer” (in retrograde), with all note shapes and ligatures drawn backwards. I am grateful to Bonnie Blackburn for bringing the second composition to my attention. 86 Woodley, John Tucke, p. 98; Blackburn, Lowinsky, and Miller (eds), A Correspondence, pp. 209-10.

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antagonist Ramos.87 Some of Tucke’s other terms, such as arsis and thesis, are known from theoretical and practical examples throughout western Europe. The material from CambriP 1236 is on the whole of the same style as what is found in Tucke’s notebook. After descriptions of numerous devices (fols 104r-107v) which are also in Tucke’s manuscript, the compiler entered certain considerably more esoteric items, including definitions of “Cacophonicus” and “cacodemon,” and Latin transliterations of the Arabic words for numerals. This last entry may owe its presence at this point in the manuscript to the set of proportional examples which takes up the next few pages. There appear to be frequent mistakes either in the copying or in the composition of these items, which include not only considerably crude counterpoint, but also a number of garbled terms such as “subsesquitercia biparciens 9as” (a nonsensical combination of subsuperparticular and superpartient proportions), which cannot be reconciled with proper proportional terminology. We can observe in these proportional “experiments” a stage in the active English exploration of practical proportions mentioned above (pp. 185-6), a field taking in not only the straightforward examples in VatRE 1146 and LonBLLA 763 but also more idiosyncratic explorations to be discovered in several other writings. One such exposition of an idiosyncratic proportional system brings together the experimentation of Tucke’s book and the more widespread teachings of a major foreign treatise. The third of the early-Tudor books devoted entirely to music theory, manuscript CambriT O.3.38, has gone almost completely ignored in the modern literature, but certainly represents the most extended and thoroughly applied English attempt at creating a system of notating practical rhythmic proportions. Rufus Hallmark published a short notice over three decades ago describing the contents of the manuscript, after which few references have appeared outside of catalogues or dictionary entries.88 The introduction to the present writer’s edition and translation of the book furnishes an extended investigation of its contents, characteristics, and historical context, and so the present discussion will limit itself to the relevant conclusions.89 The Cambridge manuscript is, in fact, a source bearing some of the most explicit evidence of Anglo-Continental theoretical contact. As Hallmark 87 Woodley, John Tucke, pp. 86-92; Blackburn, Lowinsky, and Miller (eds), A Correspondence, p. 204; Ramos de Pareja, Bartolomeo, Musica practica Bartolomei Rami de Pareia Bononiae, impressa opere et industria ac expensis magistri Baltasaris de Hiriberia MCCCCLXXXII: Nach den Originaldrucken des Liceo musicale mit Genehmigung der Commune von Bologna, ed. Johannes Wolf (Leipzig, 1901), pp. 58-61. Texts connecting planets to notes of the Gamut or the Greater Perfect System also appear in LonBLLA 763 (fol. 52r-v) and CambriP 1236 (fol. 106r-v). 88 Rufus Hallmark, ‘An Unknown English Treatise of the 16th Century’, JAMS, 22 (1969): 273-4. Catalogue entries with physical descriptions of the manuscript appear in Montague Rhodes James, The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge: A Descriptive Catalogue (4 vols, Cambridge, 1900-1904), vol. 3, pp. 220-21; and RISM B III/4, pp. 8-9. Brief references also appear in articles by Thurston Dart and Andrew Wathey: Thurston Dart, ‘Origines et sources de la musique de chambre en Angleterre (1500-1530)’, in Jean Jacquot (ed.), La musique instrumentale de la Renaissance (Paris, 1955), p. 82; and Wathey, ‘Notes on Discant’, p. 66. 89 Dygon, Proportiones, pp. 1-66.

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discovered in examining the manuscript, the texts of the book’s two treatises are not completely original, but represent rather a selection of extracts and paraphrases from the fourth book of the influential Practica musice by Franchinus Gaffurius (Milan, 1496), accompanied by unique material. All of the musical examples, with two exceptions drawn from Gaffurius’s book, are unique to the Cambridge manuscript—inspired by the compositions of the Practica musice, but applied in an English compositional and notational style (see Illustration 5.1). If the English manuscript offers very few clues concerning its origins and the purpose for its creation, the ascription of one treatise to a known composer offers enough of a lead to come to a number of conclusions. At the end of the first treatise (fol. 12r) stands an inscription reading “Quod Joannes Dygonus Modo Vuylborus,” allowing identification of the redactor with the composer John Dygon, prior of St Augustine’s monastery in Canterbury from 1528 until the abbey’s dissolution in July 1538 (after which he took up the name Wylbore).90 Dygon was by all accounts a learned man, from 1512 holder of a B.Mus. from Oxford University and eventually of the degree of Baccalaureus Sacrae Theologiae as well. Equally significant is the information from John Twyne’s work on early British history De Rebus Albionicis (published posthumously in 1590):91 therein we learn that Dygon (one of the main interlocutors in the book) studied in the early 1520s at the University of Leuven with the great humanist Juan Luis Vives, returning eventually to England with the Spanish scholar (who then entered the service of Henry VIII). The biographical elements (Dygon’s formal music studies at university and his time spent studying on the Continent) are in place, then, to explain the formulation of the Cambridge treatises, which combine the framework and approach of an Italian model with insular peculiarities. The manuscript itself may date from as late as the 1540s,92 but all of the features of compositional and notational style, combined with Dygon’s biographical details, point to a dating for the original writing of the treatises in the 1510s or 1520s (allowing that Dygon may have encountered the Practica musice before his time in Leuven). The relationship of the Cambridge treatises to Gaffurius’s book is by no means a straightforward one; Dygon’s work as editor, commentator, and composer resulted in a fluid combination of disparate source elements. Each of the two major sections or treatises follows the same structure, ultimately derived from the Practica musice, a basic traversal of proportions divided into genera and species, with definitions followed by musical examples. If it seems that the fourth book of the Practica musice is mostly a repetitive enumeration of proportions, the version by Dygon acts even more as a work of pure reference. Dygon skips Gaffurius’s careful introduction, with its technical definition of proportion and references to ancient authorities, opening instead directly with the “practical” material; one is reminded of the torso-style transmission of counterpoint manuals in manuscript compilations, concerned only 90 On the interpretation of the authorial inscription and the documentary details of Dygon’s biography, see ibid., pp. 14-24. 91 John Twyne, De Rebus Albionicis, Britannicis atque Anglicis, Commentariorum Libri Duo (London, 1590). 92 Ibid., pp. 60-65.

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Illustration 5.1 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.3.38, fol. 14r with precise practical instructions.93 The musical examples are composed largely in the spirit of Gaffurius’s demonstrations in the Practica musice, featuring discanting upper voices switching into proportions against freely composed tenors. As may be observed in Example 5.2, comparing the English and Italian versions of one of the two examples copied from the Practica musice, it is largely differences of an ornamental nature which mark surface distinctions in the English approach.

93 See the survey of sources and texts for counterpoint instructions in Sachs, Der Contrapunctus, pp. 186-220.

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Examination of the examples copied from Gaffurius’s book in CambriT O.3.38 confirms that it was ultimately the printed version of the Practica musice which served as the source for Dygon’s treatises, rather than Gaffurius’s earlier manuscript version.94 This information strengthens the case for seeing Dygon’s book as one of the first fruits of the English importation of printed continental treatises (see below, pp. 215-17). But there are more significant rifts in the style of the examples. Dygon’s employment of exactly four coloration patterns corresponds precisely to those mentioned in William Cornysh’s 1504 musical allegory: black void, black full, red void, and red full95—red coloration having disappeared much earlier from the Dygon, GB-Ctc O.3.38, fo. 6r Discantus.

Tenor.

Ì Ì Ì Ì X X ‹ % Ì ¡ ¡¡ Ì Ì ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ Ì ¡X % CX

[Red]

Ì  ¡Ì Ì X

C

10 . 7

¬

Gaffurius, Practica musice (1496), sig. hhviv-hhvijr CANTVS

TENOR

C Ì Ì Ì Ì X X % Ì ¡ ¡¡ Ì X Ì X % DX  C

Example 5.2

‹ X

10 7

Ì  ¡Ì Ì X ¬

Gaffurius proportion example as transmitted by Dygon (mm. 1-4)

continental sources. In the matter of proportional notation, moreover, Dygon chooses not to adopt the major revisionary element proposed by Gaffurius and Tinctoris, namely, the cumulative successive application of proportions within a single voice part.96 Although pairs of Hindu-Arabic numerals serve to open proportional sections in the Cambridge treatise as in the Practica musice, Dygon cancels these with mensuration signs rather than an inverse proportion; for example, Gaffurius’s mensuration/proportion pattern: C → 2:1 → 1:2 would be replaced by: C → 2:1 → C , and Dygon’s pattern:

94 Dygon, Proportiones, pp. 38-42. 95 “In musyke I have lernyde iiij colors as thys / blake full blake uoyde & in lyke wyse rede” (ll. 71-2); the entire poem is edited in Appendix C and discussed below, pp. 209-13. 96 On this notational and conceptual revision, see Berger, Mensuration and Proportion Signs, pp. 164, 182-5; and Ruth I. DeFord, ‘On Diminution and Proportion in FifteenthCentury Music Theory’, JAMS, 58 (2005): 39-40.

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O → 3:2 → 6:1 → O → 3:1 → 12:2 → O would be notated in the Tinctoris/Gaffurius system as: O → 3:2 → 4:1 → 1:6 → 3:1 → 2:1 → 1:6 . English musicians were of course not alone in retaining this older notational standard, with numerical proportions being related to a single base rate, rather than applied cumulatively: the common case of 3:2 proportions being “canceled” in sixteenthcentury continental sources by the original mensuration sign reflects precisely this practice, and needs to be taken into account when considering the extent to which the mensural reforms of Tinctoris and Gaffurius were actually adopted in common use.97 Textual revisions of Gaffurius in the Cambridge manuscript point to further nuances of practice. The occasional passages inserted by Dygon concern issues in English proportional usage, while sections such as Gaffurius’s lengthy digression on the proper notation of sesquialtera are removed. Exemplary in the present regard are Dygon’s practical demonstrations of the use of inductiones, the specifically English technique of “leading into” difficult proportions with simpler proportions and rhythms designed to facilitate the transition. For example, instead of going directly into 9:2 a composer can help performers by writing a bar of 3:2 first, so that in cumulative terms only the familiar proportions 3:2 and then 3:1 are applied. The passage where Dygon first mentions inductiones in fact attempts to confront a number of confusions current in the composition of common proportions: Huic uero proportioni sextuple due, ut uides, inductiones sunt. prima sesqualtera. secunda tripla. quibus facile & uere hanc proportionem sextuplam mensurare queas. Multi uero &, ut dicam, indocti proportionem triplam pro sextupla componunt. sex enim minimas ad unam semibreuem imponunt. quod est tripla. Si sex minimas ad unam minimam. aut sex semibreues ad unam semibreuem componerent tunc proportionem sextuplam viderent. Set hec proportio sextupla ob celeritate nec facile digitis nec labiis per minimam exprimi potest. Semper igitur sextuplam, ut hic proponitur. per semibreuem componere solemus.98 [However, this proportion sextupla has two inductiones, as you see. The first is sesquialtera, and the second is tripla. With these inductiones you can measure this proportion sextupla easily and truly. Many, however (and I would say, unlearned), compose in the proportion tripla in place of sextupla; for they set six minimae against one semibrevis, which is tripla. If they were to compose six minimae to one minima, or six semibreves to one semibrevis, then they would see the proportion sextupla. But on account of its swiftness, this proportion sextupla cannot be executed easily at the minima level, neither by fingers nor by lips; therefore we are accustomed always to compose the proportion sextupla at the semibrevis level, as is proposed here.]

As noted in Chapter 2, Richard Pace in 1517 mentioned the employment of inductiones as a British specialty: “our British musicians have found with great subtlety of mind those things they call the inductions of proportions, and in that one thing they’ve 97 For typical examples of D canceling 3:2 proportions in continental manuscripts, see BolC Q19, fols 24v-25r; and CambriP 1760, fols 14v-15r. 98 CambriT O.3.38, fol. 2r; Dygon, Proportiones, pp. 76-7.

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surpassed all antiquity.”99 Thomas Morley at the end of the century criticized the technique, wondering “that a thing which neither is of any use, nor yet can be proved by any reason, should so much be stood upon by them who take upon them to teach the youth nowadays”—only to teach the technique without comment elsewhere in his book: “every Proportion whole is called the Induction to that which it maketh being broken, as Tripla being broken in the More Prolation will make Nonupla, and so is Tripla the Induction to Nonupla; or in the Less Prolation will make Sextupla, and so is the Induction to Sextupla. But let this suffice.”100 A further level of transformation is applied to Gaffurius’s material in the second half of the Cambridge book, which constitutes another treatise in its own right, although based textually and musically on the first half of the manuscript. Repeating the traversal of individual proportions by genera, but skipping all definitions and just about any textual material besides the tags introducing musical examples, this second treatise demonstrates a system for proportional notation based on combinations of mensuration signs (O, C, Q, G, P, E, and H). Rather than a complex and obtuse means of exploring length relationships under different simultaneous mensuration signs, however, the system is in fact a rather straightforward purely notational alternative to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system: each sign represents a numerical value based on its binary/ternary divisions in the mensuration system, and signs which are combined are simply summed to produce a single numerical value. With E employed as a basic symbol for “1,” the combinations demonstrated on the page in Illustration 5.1 can be translated as follows: CC : E = 2 + 2 : 1 = 4 : 1 semibreves 8 : C = 8 : 2 semibreves OC : E = 3 + 2 : 1 = 5 : 1 semibreves CCC : E = 2 + 2 + 2 : 1 = 6 : 1 semibreves With several exceptions (P and H alone for tripla at the semibreve and minim levels respectively), this system is carried through consistently in polyphonic examples which match those of the first treatise in all aspects of style (and which are surely again the work of John Dygon). The advantage of the sign-based system, in being able to specify whether proportions are to be applied at the minim or semibreve level, does not seem to have served to popularize it any way, but on a theoretical level the creation of this scheme is significant. Following on from earlier English experiments, for example John Hothby’s equally unique designation of basic proportions with the signs y, H, z, w, E, and x, the system in the Cambridge manuscript is matched by a set of otherwise inexplicable proportional equations in the John Tucke notebook (in a section on notating/reading proportions “through the signs which are called circles”), for example:101 OC : O = 5 : 3 C:E=2:1 99 See p. 57 above. 100 Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction, pp. 136, 172. 101 See Dygon, Proportiones, pp. 48-57, 136-59; Woodley, John Tucke, pp. 68-71, 121-2.

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EE : C = 4 : 1 The relationship between the Tucke and Dygon proportion signs suggests, in fact, a specific intellectual environment. The notes concerning these signs were copied into Tucke’s book between 1504 and 1507, while Tucke was studying for the M.A. at New College, Oxford. It was only several years later, in 1512, that Dygon took his bachelor’s degree in music from the same university. If Tucke’s manuscript has been taken as an indicator of the sort of practical music instructions which would have been encountered at Oxford, Dygon’s treatises can be read precisely as an extension and systematization of one aspect of such instructions. It would be going too far to posit that Dygon’s proportion treatises were created to fulfill university requirements—the known examples of music degree exercises are all compositions, typically a mass and antiphon.102 The ostensible purpose of the theory in the Cambridge manuscript, nevertheless, is to build upon a system which the monk in all likelihood encountered at university, regularizing and expanding it to encompass potentially every proportion of greater inequality. Of vital significance, moreover, is the fact that this expansion owes not only its form but its very existence to the writings of Tinctoris and Gaffurius. Just as those theorists attempted to extend a proportional notation system based largely on habit and inconsistent usage, Dygon’s experiment applied the same principle to a specifically English (and exclusively theoretical) notation system; the very idea of applying rhythmic proportions such as 13:7 and 19:4 in polyphony was a direct result of the Englishman’s contact with his Italian model. If the notes of Tucke’s book bear occasional connections to “fringe” practices elsewhere in Europe, often intellectualizing processes that otherwise may have represented isolated experiments, the Dygon treatises invite an entirely different characterization. A remarkable synthesis of recent continental theoretical work with particularly English practices, these items offer an invaluable window onto the prehistory of later continental influences on British theorists (as represented by books such as Morley’s Plaine and easie introduction, The pathway to musicke, and the Scottish Anonymous treatise; see below, pp. 216-17). In the examination of the explicit theoretical sources of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, we have witnessed a host of disparate elements brought together, from the treatises of Muris and Hothby to the Greek-named figure of Tucke’s notes and Dygon’s symbol-based proportional notation. There remains one major, if indirect, source of information on theory and practice which must be taken into account to complete the picture of English musical conceptions. Various literary sources from the period under discussion offer additional ideas concerning the employment of musical terminology and the common understanding of matters related to performance, with no pretensions of providing thorough or technical discussions. One of the most interesting of such items, and the best known to musicology, is Cornysh’s poem A treatise bitwene Trowth and enformacion. This allegorical work, written in 1504, appears in two manuscripts (LonBLH 43 and

102 Bray, ‘Music and the Quadrivium’, pp. 5-8.

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LonBLR 18 D.II) as well as a 1568 print of Skelton’s works.103 Of the three sources for the poem, LonBLH 43 seems to contain the earliest and best version (at least in terms of musical terminology), although it has been largely ignored in previous discussions of the work—as well as a nearby poem in the same manuscript, “A balade of trouthe” which appears to have drawn on some of the non-musical portions of Cornysh’s poem as its inspiration. Examinations of Cornysh’s poem have relied on individual sources, and in the case of musical information, reliance on the printed version has led to faulty readings alongside incorrect interpretations of technical terms encountered in the text.104 For reference in the following discussion, Appendix C offers two editions of the poem: Appendix C.1.1 presents the first transcription based on a collation of all sources, taking LonBLH 43 as the base text and arriving at a version which makes sense of the musical imagery as far as feasible; and Appendix C.1.2 offers a parallel transcription of the three sources, to facilitate comparison of their frequent minor variants. The “Balade of trouthe” inspired by the Cornysh Treatise is edited additionally in Appendix C.2. Judging the usefulness of the content of Cornysh’s poem for the study of music theory remains a difficult matter. The text’s twenty stanzas refer to a wide variety of concepts and aspects of musical practice and theory, but the poem can in no way be treated as an instructional manual, and many of the statements contained therein are cryptic at best. The prologue discusses truth and false information without mention of music (excepting a reference to dies ire). After this point, with the opening of the “parable” proper, the poet devotes each stanza to an example of how music can go wrong, with descriptions of players misusing their instruments, or performers misreading difficult notations (stanzas 5-11). The main narrative which follows describes the trial of Cornysh (the narrator) in allegorical terms as a musical performance (stanzas 12-20). The idea of a polyphonic performance as a contest between the different performers, a display of “mastry,” appears in a number of earlier

103 John Skelton, Pithy pleasaunt and profitable workes of maister Skelton, Poete Laureate. Nowe collected and newly published (London, 1568). Transcriptions and discussion of Cornysh’s poem are published in E. Flügel, ‘Kleinere Mitteilungen aus Handschriften’, Anglia, 14 (1892): 467-71; and Nan Cooke Carpenter, ‘Skelton’s Hand in William Cornysh’s Musical Parable’, Comparative Literature, 22 (1970): 169-72. 104 For example, Carpenter’s explication of the word “quatrible” as “descant in fourths” is clearly mistaken, “quatreble” (in its Latin form quadruplex) being a part name like “treble” and “mean” (see p. 191 n. 41 above), referring usually to a voice which is higher than the normal treble (as in the quoted line of the poem: “His proporcions be so hard with so high a quatrible”). A more significant error in the poem’s readings appears on the same page of Carpenter’s article, where the terms “noble dyapason” and “noble dyatesseron” instead of “doble dyapason” and “doble dyatesseron” dissipate the force of the musical imagery (which at this point depicts Enformation forcing the narrator into creating dissonance while they are supposed to be performing together). Carpenter, ‘Skelton’s Hand’, p. 165. At numerous other points, the compositor of the printed text (or his source) has misunderstood musical terminology and produced readings which make syntactic sense but change the meaning, for example, in the transformation of color names from “blake full blake uoyde & in lyke wyse rede” to “Blake, ful blake, verte, and in lykewyse redde”.

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plays both English and foreign.105 A characteristic and contemporaneous example occurs in Medwall’s Fulgens and Lucrece (1497?), resulting in two characters arguing over which one had ruined a song (in which the third part, notably, is taken by a serving girl), and therefore a wager (ll. I:1107-39):106 B. Nay, yf thou wylt her with maystry wynne, With boyes game thou mayst not be gyn; That is not her intent. A. What is best that we do, than? B. Mary, canst thou syng? A. Ye, that I can, As well as ony man in Kent! B. What maner of song shall it be? A. What so ever thou wylt. Chose the; I hole me well content. And yf I mete the not at the close, Hardely, let me the wager lose By her owne jugement! Go to, now! – wyll ye set in? B. Nay, be the rode! ye shall begyn. [A.] By seynt Jame, I assent. Abyde! Jone, ye can gode skyll; And if ye wolde the song fulfyll With a thyrd parte, It wolde do ryght well, in my mynde. An. Synge on, hardely, and I wyll not be behynde, I pray the with all my hert. Et tunc cantabunt. B. I am so whorse it wyll not be! A. Horse, quod a? nay, so mot I the, That was not the thynge! And a man sholde the trowth saye, Ye lost a crotchet or two by the waye, To myne understondynge. B. Why, was I a mynyme before? A. Ye, be the rode! that ye were and more. B. Then were ye a mynyme behynde. Let me se, yet syng a gayne And marke whyche of us twayne Plesyth best your mynde.

105 For several examples, see Wegman, ‘From Maker to Composer’, pp. 418-20. 106 Medwall, The Plays, pp. 136-7. Another musical scene in the play is mentioned above, pp. 20-21.

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In Cornysh’s poem, the situation is more grave than Medwall’s lighthearted contest of skills: the narrator’s true enemy in the judicial system is “Enformacyon,” who in musical terms is performing together with the narrator, but does so in ways intended to lead to disaster. On the musical level of the poem, Enformacyon uses tricks which mislead the narrator and cause him to sound dissonances and other faults in the performance; for example, “I kepe be rownd and he be square”; “I assayde to acute and when I cam / enformacyone was mete for a doble diatessaron.” These are not musical ideas thrown idly into the text: they describe errors which by all accounts must have been typical for performers improvising or reading notation together (in the first example, one performer in the soft hexachord with b-flat against another in the hard hexachord with b-natural; in the second, a lower voice moving in such a way that the upper voice sounds the dissonance of a seventh against it). The traditional interpretation of the allegory, which sees Enformacyon as the narrator’s accuser, is not the only possibility, nor indeed the most convincing. The descriptions of the narrator trying to create counterpoint with Enformacyon, rather, give the distinct impression that this latter character represents the narrator’s advocate, who purposefully pleads his case poorly (a “friend” of Cornysh’s at court?). At every mention of his own actions under the guidance of another, Cornysh’s frustration is palpable, as is his bitterness at being misled into losing his case: “Enformacyone hathe tauзt hym to solff thys songe / pacyence parforce content yew wyt wronge”; “They seyde I was horsse & myзt not syng / my uoyce ys to pore yt ys not audyble”.107 An interpretation such as Bray’s, which reads the narrative as a struggle between composers (the narrator) and performers who take liberties (Enformation), cannot easily be upheld by close observation of the text. In particular, the idea that the narrator did not wish to use sharps and flats in performance is based on a misreading of one stanza which demands closer investigation here.108 The extract in question deals specifically with the matter of pitch realization in performance, progressing from a basic understanding of the monachord to the use of musica ficta; as usual, Enformacyon displays his “mastry,” whereas the narrator’s performance is ruined through no fault of his own (ll. 113-17):

107 Cornysh’s sense of helplessness with regard to his legal representation was not at all unusual at the time, as one gathers from Barclay’s 1509 expanded translation of The Shyp of Folys: There is one and other alleged at the barre And namely suche as chrafty were in glose Upon the lawe:the clyentis stande afarre Full lytell knowynge hower mater goose And many other the lawes clene transpose Folowynge the example/of lawyers dede and gone Tyll the pore Clyentis be etyn to the bone Sebastian Brant, The Shyp of Folys of the Worlde, trans. Alexander Barclay (London, 1509), f. 16v. 108 Roger Bray, The Interpretation of Musica Ficta in English Sources, c. 1490-c. 1580 (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1970), pp. 23-6, 207.

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The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations Enformacyone hym enboldyde of þe monacorde from consonants to concords he musyde hys mastry I assayde þe musyks bothe knyзt & lorde but none wold speke þe sownd borde was to hy then kept I þe playne keys þat marde all my melody

These few verses are packed with technical jargon to a greater extent than has been realized, and a full understanding of the scenario requires reference to a point from the theoretical writing of John Hothby. A particular lexical usage which has so far been considered to be unique to Hothby’s famous Calliopea legale is the employment of the terms “principe,” “comite,” and “demostratore” to refer to the different types of notes within a hexachord. Within the standard pitch framework of the period, the principe corresponds to the note called mi, the comite is fa, and the other four notes are the demostratori.109 While it was generally recognized that the crucial function of placing hexachords on various pitches is to define the location of semitones, Hothby went as far with his analogy as to state that the two pitches which define the semitone are the rulers of the hexachord. Cornysh’s allegory provides the only evidence that the idiosyncratic terminology in the Calliopea legale was used outside of Hothby’s immediate circle—a fact which has been obscured up until now by a misreading in the available transcriptions. The term “musyks” in line 115 appears in the plural in both manuscript versions, not as the singular (“musyke”/“musike”) which appears in the published transcriptions. The plural form “musyks” is in fact a technical term from the sixteenth-century English keyboard vocabulary, employed to refer specifically to sharp and flat keys, as opposed to what were called the “playne keyes,” a usage discernable in documents relating to English organs.110 With these definitions from Hothby and English keyboard usage in mind, unraveling the quoted passage becomes a more straightforward matter. The narrator is performing on a keyboard instrument. When he first tries to use the sharp and flat keys, he finds that the instrument is faulty (though how exactly a high sound board affected the musyks is unclear), and must constrain his playing to the plain keys, which ruins the song. There is no question of Cornysh’s having preferred not to use flats and sharps, as in the interpretations of Bray and Doe.111 What is equally significant for the present discussion, however, is that the terms “knyзt” and “lorde” in line 115 are in apposition to “musyks;” they are used here to refer to sharps and

109 The meaning of the terms is discussed in McDonald, The Musica Plana, pp. 51-2 and 102-5. McDonald points out that, although the word “demostratore” might seem to be related to the Greek “demos” and could refer to the rulers’ subjects, the text of the treatise makes no such reference; rather, the term is explained with reference to the pointing function of the index finger. 110 Keith Elcombe, ‘Keyboard Music’, in Bray (ed.), The Sixteenth Century, p. 255. Even in the mid-seventeenth century, Tomkins’s specification of the organ built at Worcester in 1614 distinguishes “the keyes & musicks” (quoted in Wulstan, Tudor Music, p. 202). 111 Roger Bray, ‘The Interpretation of Musica Ficta in English Music c.1490-c.1580’, PRMA, 97 (1970-71): 31; Paul Doe, ‘Another View of Musica Ficta in Tudor Music’, PRMA, 98 (1971-72): 118-19.

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flats, or mi and fa—precisely as in Hothby’s comite and principe.112 These particular words were surely chosen by Cornysh on account of their punning suitability to the allegory of the poem: on the “non-musical” level the narrator calls upon friends in the nobility for support, “but none wold speke.” For the primary-level musical reading, however, the terms are used as part of a large technical vocabulary in the poem, the other items of which would have been known to learned musicians and familiar to general readers as musical terms of some sort. Other elements of the Cornysh poem relate indirectly to the theoretical writings known from contemporaneous English sources. The author claims to know four colors in music: black full, black void, and full and void versions of red. It must be significant that a text with such musical pretensions and technical terminology makes no mention of the large array of colors encountered in LonBL 10336 and LonBLLA 763 and hypothesized as normal in English speculative music (by Bray; see p. 201 above). Just as striking is the appearance of exactly these four combinations, and no more, in Dygon’s proportion treatises, which already departed from their continental model in introducing red full and red void. The later observations by William Bathe (probably published in 1596) on notational pecularities encountered in older manuscripts again go no farther than red and black coloration: “Musitions in old time, borrowed colours of the Painters, sometimes making it red,and sometimes black, &c.”113 Cornysh’s credentials in the knowledge of the respected older “mastyrs of musyke” is put on display when he lists Tubal, Guido, Boethius, Jean de Muris, Philippe de Vitry “and them all” as his trainers for the performance (l. 96). Aside from Tubal, who features frequently as a mythical inventor of music in the short music histories of the late-medieval period, these men are the authors of the most famous and widely distributed music treatises of the time. As noted above, English (and foreign) theory sources copied after c. 1400 show a familiarity with each of these authors. As further confirmation of Cornysh’s speculative pretensions in his texts, it is worth reprinting here what survives of the text of his song Concordans musycall, from the printed book of XX Songes of 1530:114 Concordans musycall Iugyd by the ere of syзtys gydyng to thexpert thyng

112 Margaret Bent has drawn my attention to a similar analogy in Johannes Boen’s Musica, in which Boen calls thirds and sixths the “nuntie et ancille” of fifths and octaves (but not as recurring technical terms, as in Hothby). See Wolf Frobenius, Johannes Boens Musica und seine Konsonanzenlehre (Stuttgart, 1971), p. 70. 113 Bathe, A Briefe Introduction, sig. Bvr; ed. Karnes, p. 73. 114 R. Imelmann, ‘Zur Kenntnis der vorshakespearischen Lyrik: I. Wynkyn de Wordes “Song Booke”, 1530, II. John Dayes Sammlung der Lieder Thomas Whythornes, 1571’, Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, 39 (1903): 135. I have arranged the verses using as a starting point John Milsom, ‘Songs and Society in Early Tudor London’, EMH, 16 (1997): 283 n. 63. The line break which I posit between “shall” and “gyue” fits the text into the rhyme royal scheme (ababbcc), and the break between “thyng” and “touchyng” assigns one of the senses to each of the first three lines. Since this is the text of the lowest voice only, presumably the upper parts contained further text which would make better sense of the poem. Imelmann discusses possibilities at pp. 138-9.

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Closely related in subject and style to Cornysh’s “treatise” is the section of the Lekonfield Proverbs displayed on the walls “In the garet at the New lodge in the parke of lekingfelde.”115 These moralizing verses, painted on the walls of the residence of Henry Algernon Percy, Fifth Earl of Northumberland, are preserved along with the Cornysh poem in a neat copy in the book LonBLR 18 D.II. Among the thirty-two mostly four-line stanzas of the music section, the most common theme is the bad or incorrect performance of songs, whether through misuse of voice or instruments, or through bad pricking (notation) and understanding. The opening stanza makes reference to Tubal and Pythagoras, and stanzas twenty-four and twenty-five treat colors in music, listing only black and silver. The strong thematic relations with Cornysh’s poem are reinforced further by the occasional presence of apparent quotations, such as the phrase “ite maladicti take it for thy wronge” of the twentyninth stanza, significantly in the context of discussing “pervers prickinge” (difficult or bad notation) by which “thy melody be marrede.” Flügel offers the possibility that the Lekonfield Proverbs could be the work of William Cornysh, although this speculation is based solely on the links between the music section and Cornysh’s poem.116 Several final sources from the early Tudor period merit a brief mention as the only printed English discussions of music before 1500. These include the section on music from John Trevisa’s 1398 translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum (written before 1250), printed by Wynken de Worde in 1495;117 a section of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon, printed in various version by de Worde, in 1482 and again in 1495;118 a brief discussion of music as one of the seven liberal arts in Caxton’s translation of the Mirror of the World by Gautier de Metz, including

115 Transcribed in Flügel, ‘Kleinere Mitteilungen’, pp. 477-80. There are scattered references to music as well in the other sets of Proverbs. See also Francis M.C. Cooper, ‘The Leckingfield Proverbs’, MT, 113 (1972): 547-50. 116 Flügel, ‘Kleinere Mitteilungen’, p. 472 n. 1. 117 Anglicus, On the Properties of Things. The music section is contained in chapters 130-144 of the nineteenth book, and was reprinted in its entirety by John Hawkins: A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (2 vols, London, 1776; repr. London, 1853), pp. 266-71. Hawkins mentions a lengthy supplement added by Batman in his 1582 printing of Trevisa’s translation, but gives none of this text. Manuscript versions of the Trevisa translation circulated both before and after its printing, as evidenced by the books NYorkCP 263 (sixteenth century) and NYorkPM M. 875 (early fifteenth century): see RISM B III/4, pp. 168, 171. 118 A plate from the 1495 edition is reproduced in Robert Steele, The Earliest English Music Printing: A Description and Bibliography of English Printed Music to the Close of the Sixteenth Century (London, 1903), Fig. 1. An earlier printing of the Polychronicon, from 1482, leaves blank space for its music example to be filled in by hand.

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an illustration;119 and a number of stanzas from the anonymous Court of Sapience, again printed by Caxton.120 The 1495 edition of Higden’s book features a printed music example demonstrating basic intervals on an eight-line staff (including an error) along with brief explanations of the ratios underlying the same. This is little more than a decade after the printing of Ramos de Pareja’s Musica practica (1482), placing the Polychronicon excerpt among the earliest printed theoretical discussions with a notated music example. The other discussions are decidedly less technical. The Court of Sapience, in its brief “tractatus de musica” mentions the derivation of solmization syllables from the hymn Ut queant laxis and sounds a familiar call to auctoritas: But whoso lust of musyk for to wyt For veray ground to Boece I hym remyt. And to a clerk whiche cleped is Berno, Johan de Muris, and John de Musica, To Guydo eke in his Metrologo

The text of Anglicus contains typically traditional descriptions of musical terms as well as details concerning a number of instruments, with frequent and explicit reference to Isidore. In a section entitled “Quid sit numerus sesquialterus,” the author describes his difficulty in dealing with the mathematical material: “Thise wordes ben in themselfe deepe and full mystyk, derk to understondynge. But to them that ben wyse and cunnyng in arsmetrik and in musyk, they ben more clerer than moche lyghte; and ben derke and alle unknowen to them whyche ben uncunnynge, and haue no usage in arsmetrik.” The source situation which gives us a picture today of sixteenth-century English theory leaves a large gap after the beginning of the century; the only books dedicated primarily to theory before the later years of the century are Tucke’s notebook (and Chelle’s copy) and the manuscript containing Dygon’s treatises. Another important development, however, can be detected in the first decades of the century, in the form of the transmission of printed continental treatises to England. The Musice active micrologus (1518) of Andreas Ornithoparcus arrived in England very soon after its original publication: the Oxford bookseller John Dorne in 1520 (upon returning from a trip overseas) listed among his items for sale a “Musica activa” along with two copies of “Opus aureum” (Nicolaus Wollick’s book, printed in 1501).121 The former work is known to the English-speaking world still mainly through John Dowland’s 1609 translation, and was referenced by Morley, demonstrating a lasting interest in England.122 If Dorne’s list includes no mention of the Gaffurius book on which John Dygon based his treatises (probably at Oxford, as suggested above; see 119 Oliver H. Prior (ed.), Caxton’s Mirrour of the World, Early English Text Society, Extra Series, 110 (London, 1913; repr. 1966), pp. 38-40. 120 The Court of Sapience, ed. E. Ruth Harvey (Toronto, 1984), pp. 68-71. 121 Helms, Heinrich VIII., pp. 166, 424-5. 122 Andreas Ornithoparcus, Andreas Ornithoparcus his Micrologus, or Introduction: Containing the Art of Singing, trans. John Dowland (London, 1609; repr. Amsterdam and New York, 1969).

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p. 208), there must have been some circulation of the Italian print: we may note that a 1502 edition of the Practica musice, now in the British Library, was at some point part of the Old Royal Library,123 demonstrating the book’s presence in England. Of the other copies of continental theory prints surviving in English libraries, marginal annotations in sixteenth-century English hands testify to the early presence (and use) of some of these books in England (see Illustration 5.2), although the sources still await a systematic survey. Examples include the Bodleian Library volume 4o W 9 (2) Art. Seld., combining Michael Koswick’s Compendiaria musice artis aeditio with Wollick’s Enchiridion musices, or the British Library K.1.g.5 copy of Gaffurius’s Practica musice (where the many annotations by Hawkins obscure the presence of other sets of notes in sixteenth-century hands). The penetration of continental treatises into sixteenth-century England had, of course, its direct effect with a source such as CambriT O.3.38. In the longer term, however, it transformed the form and function of English theory, if we can judge from the next appearance of such writing in the late sixteenth century. A direct dependence upon foreign writing was acknowledged by Morley, who employed as authorities figures such as Glarean, Zarlino, Spataro, Gaffurius, Listenius, and Ornithoparcus (among others unnamed), alongside venerable writers like Handlo, “Author Quatuor Principal” and “Francho.”124 The anonymous author of The pathway to musicke (printed in 1596) drew on similar material; Morley notes that the author of this book took his material from older Latin treatises of German authors, and mockingly points out misunderstandings of the material.125 In a more removed case which synthesized the musical practices of “Bretons” with those of continental musicians, the author/compiler of the “Scottish Anonymous” treatise (LonBL 4911, probably c. 1580) made use of published treatises mainly of the Germanic pedagogical tradition, including those by Ornithoparcus, Heyden, Wollick, Rhaw, Gaffurius, Finck, and Agricola.126 Even without direct quotations and transmission of foreign works, as seems to be the case with William Bathe’s Briefe introduction to the skill of song (printed in 1596?),127 the basic form and layout of the work—a compendium intended to introduce beginners to the basics of musical practice in a comprehensive manner—is adopted from continental models, and not to be found in the surviving English writings of the previous periods. It is in these works that we encounter the results of trends which were only in their initial stages during the early sixteenth century, even if the chronological gap makes them appear ex improviso, full-formed and fully informed on foreign thinking. As with polyphonic music, the number of foreign theoretical works entering the country was rising as the century progressed, and more importantly, so was their status for native musicians.

123 Helms, Heinrich VIII., pp. 181-2. 124 Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction, pp. 319-22. 125 Ibid., pp. 130-31; Carpenter, Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Universities, p. 182. 126 The entire treatise is edited and examined in Maynard, An Anonymous Scottish Treatise; on the dating, see ibid., pp. 169-72, and Woods, ‘A Note on “Scottish Anonymous”’. 127 For the most recent assessment of the dating of Bathe’s treatise and its printing, see the introduction to Bathe, A Briefe Introduction, ed. Karnes, pp. 3-15.

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Illustration 5.2 Gaffurius, Practica musice, with sixteenth-century manuscript annotations. London, British Library, M.K.1.g.5, sig. e.[6]v Examination of the gradual shifts of practice and conception which accompanied this process of transmission and integration needs to form an essential counterpart to the study of foreign influences on later Tudor compositional styles. Conclusions From the lively English theoretical activity of the fourteenth century to the resumption of large-scale forms for such writing in the later sixteenth century, a continuous tradition propagated numerous basic systems and assumptions underlying the

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sophisticated art music of the practical sources. The teachings of the newer English writings, even when their authors claimed to offer completely new perspectives on practical matters, provide every evidence of the very long continuity of the latemedieval systems. Such elements of music theory as the Gamut, mensural rhythm (of varying types), and simple counterpoint were formulated at a basic enough level that they could serve as a foundation for parsing compositions in radically varied styles, from the tenor motet to the Elizabethan madrigal. Where the writings of the English show the most obvious shifts over the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is in the matter of format and transmission, as well as in the sixteenth-century turn towards more recent continental models. The influence of major foreign treatises, as hinted by Dygon’s work in CambriT O.3.38, began to grow in the sixteenth century as the country saw the appearance of more continental performers and compositions, and as the musicians of England adopted more consciously the characteristics of foreign styles. For the English practitioners at the end of the fifteenth century, on the other hand, the teaching of musica practica was encapsulated to a much smaller degree in complete self-standing treatises. Compilations of sometimes extremely brief notes on numerous practical issues were mixed freely with the speculative and practical treatises of previous centuries, at the same time that scholar-musicians created idiosyncratic devices linking practical and theoretical concerns. The music theory of early Tudor England defies any single characterization; it stands near the beginning of shifts in practice which would change the face of English music during the sixteenth century, while at the same time it maintains extremely close links with the past. As with so many cases in the histories of music theory, this period could perhaps be understood best in a transitional light. There is little doubt, however, that for the musicians who received these teachings from their youngest years, the conceptual picture was largely a stable entity. Neither Jean de Muris, nor Guido d’Arezzo, nor even Boethius himself had, to the late-medieval mind, created the systems which they described. For the musici of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the inventores of music had discovered that which was present from the beginning of creation, and which was an expression of divine truths; the fundaments of music may have been revealed to humankind imperfectly and in various stages, but as guiding principles of the world they knew neither change nor periodization.

Conclusion At the waning of the fifteenth century, England received a new monarch—a usurper, a warrior who came to power through the military defeat of the previous head of state. At the time, Henry VII’s grasp on the throne must have appeared uncertain, a position which could crumble with the slightest shifts of power among factions at home and abroad. But the Tudor line lasted. The dynasty outlived the other pretenders to the throne, executed those whose personal resources were too threatening, avoided the occasional conspiracy, and involved the country seriously in international affairs throughout the entirety of the sixteenth century. The first Tudor king knew well the value of appearances; in public spectacle as well as in courtly life from day to day, the royal household impressed its splendor upon the influential and the lowly alike. In order to forge a place as a real power on the European scene, it was imperative for the English court to participate in the same strategizing and spectacular shows of diplomacy as its foreign allies and enemies, and the enactment of this policy had repercussions at every level of the royal household. Conversely, those who would obtain and retain royal favor knew that they would have to play this early “globalization” game, and the elegant literary praises of the monarch in the fashionable vehicles of the day derived both spirit and letter from foreign models. Courtiers, servants, and foreign rulers augmented the king’s library with new illuminated manuscripts and printed books fit to match any of those abroad, while simultaneously some of the finest examples of Renaissance painting and sculpture found a home in England’s ruling circles. Henry VII’s courtly policies, however, were only an early stage in a process of internationalization which progressed to further extremes under his son. The environment of the court at the turn of the century, in which foreign intellectuals, courtiers, and artisans found respected positions and held influence with the king, proved to be crucial in Henry VIII’s formation. From the 1510s through the 1540s, the royal household continued to expand, with the addition of continental artists, scholars, and musicians playing a major role. During the first decades of the new reign, every eyewitness account confirms that the king was intensely interested in the “pastimes” of the court: hunting, dancing, music, and all forms of entertainment. His own training in musical performance and composition was of a distinctly international bent, to judge from the music which bears Henry’s name, and testifies to the extent that the monarch himself was able to control the character of his household institutions. On more than one occasion, the king made a special effort to import fully formed instrumental ensembles from the Continent. It is in these years, moreover, that we find the first real stages of transmission of continental polyphony into England, in the costly and carefully executed foreign choirbooks which were offered to the king as gifts, alongside more humble manuscripts and even the occasional music print. Henry’s acquisitions of servants, companions, music books, and instruments need to be seen in the context of courtly luxury which the king cultivated, but the example

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of the court was significant for a wider social class; it is in the direct relations of royal and noble households, and then the indirect diffusion of these models, that the artificially molded environment of the court had its final impact. The effects on English musical practice appeared gradually, but definitely. The general segregation of the foreign instrumentalists at the early Tudor court did not prevent the slow adoption of their repertory into the native sources, becoming a rapid current of integration by the second half of the sixteenth century. That a figure such as Philip van Wilder would eventually act as an important influence on English composers is indicative of the developing interest in foreign practices, reflected as well in the stylistic characteristics of the English-texted sacred music of the Reformation. The theoretical side of the picture exhibits a similar increase in awareness of foreign precedents by the end of the sixteenth century, following the appearance of specific continental treatises in England earlier in the century. As with compositional style, there was always a layer of basic theoretical elements which could be considered common to both England and the Continent, and which had remained largely unchanged since the fourteenth century (and earlier in many cases). There was at the same time, however, a certain amount of cosmetic difference in the presentation of these teachings and their related terminologies, a characterization in the end which may turn out to reveal merely our failure to take close enough account of the active manuscript transmission of fragmentary and informal writings—a disconnection between English and foreign styles of theoretical writing in the decades surrounding 1500 which is really a difference between formal theoretical compendia and anonymous, more often personalized, notes on musical practice and speculation. The sense of disconnection between English and foreign theoretical habits, therefore, has much to do with our emphasis on formalized, authorial texts, and has led to artificial differentiations in our interpretations as well: the idea, for example, that English manuscripts contain instructions for “English discant” while continental books teach “counterpoint,” when the real distinction lies between contrapunctus simplex and contrapunctus diminutus. Again there is an connection to be drawn to the elements of compositional and performative style, where discernable national differences at a surface level—the level of diminished or florid counterpoint—are accompanied by a single approach to and definition of simple counterpoint, the underlying grammatical basis of local movement. It is with an awareness of this common base of compositional grammar that we should consider the changing stylistic details of English polyphony, mainly in the period following the one examined here. English and continental musicians had for a while employed different musical dialects; the language, however, was the same. The reasons for the shifts in this musical relationship are numerous and varied; they involve to a great degree the actions and vanities of a privileged class, but the eventual effects were widespread. The story of England’s musical interactions with continental Europe has been told here from several angles, in a series of studies intended to illuminate links of a historical, social, and intellectual nature. In the consideration of stylistic influence in early music, it is only too easy to treat such material in the form of passing introductory remarks to what is usually considered the more tangible and ultimate goal: the direct comparison of scores, the analysis of why the notes are

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placed where they are, the revelation of structures and underlying processes which is held to constitute an understanding of compositional languages. Laying aside the specific goals and benefits of musical analysis, however, we are well aware today that the endeavor can be aided immensely through an increased awareness of the contextual factors surrounding individual repertories. And in the case of the English music of the early Tudor period, one such crucial contextual factor—the subject of the present work, the interactions of English and continental music on a historical level—has too often been discarded. It may be possible to draw arguments from the sole consideration of musical structures to the effect that English composition from the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries developed in its own independent path, cut off from foreign trends (although here again, an approach of argumentation through negative evidence will weaken over time as new information and ideas on parallel developments appear). More significantly, however, that isolationist view will now have to come to terms somehow with the many non-analytical, definite documentary illustrations of musical contact. With the material presented in the overview of cultural and historical matters at the opening of this study, we can at least do away with the notion that political circumstances in the later fifteenth century ushered in a period of artistic isolation in England. The struggles for power amongst the highest ranks of the nobility caused no cessation of immigration or of the international trade which was so vital to the country’s economy; even those who found themselves in the midst of the political turmoil—including Edward IV and Henry VII—ended up seeking refuge on the Continent when the situation was too precarious at home. Students continued to travel to the universities of Italy and the north for new educational opportunities, as renowned European thinkers and writers made a home in England. Those who would claim that English music remained unaffected by foreign practices can no longer rely on convenient assumptions about historical factors preventing Anglo-Continental interactions. If a disconnection is to be sought and explained, it must be presented against a rising tide of foreign artistic and intellectual work entering England. With regard to the musical personages themselves, there is no doubt that foreigners were achieving positions of importance in England from the earliest years of the Tudor reign. If the music-historical investigations of half a century ago could point to occasional examples of continental musicians at the royal court and elsewhere, the much more complete documentation of court management available in publications today invites a reconsideration of the situation. With the full extent of a regular foreign presence at court documentable for large sections of the period, a new and clearer picture emerges. The changes to the musical forces of the court during the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII were considerable, but in the main these changes were constant additions and expansions—additions overwhelmingly of foreign instrumentalists, bringing with them new instruments, new styles of playing, and new repertories. The kings knew the value of these importations, even during the occasional violent outbursts of xenophobia in London. Henry VII and Henry VIII were forging intimate links with the courts of the Continent, forcing their way into the games of competition and rivalry, demanding a real role on the stage of power politics. The exact roles of the foreign musicians at court (to say nothing of those visiting for short periods, of whom many further traces are certainly

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lost with most of the Privy Purse accounts) remain shadowy. Indications of their activities outside the court, presented here in occasional references first encountered often by chance, suggest that further unnoticed appearances of these musicians in contemporary non-court documents will help to fill in the picture. In the end, it remains highly significant that there was a substantial and growing body of foreign musicians precisely in one of the country’s most important and influential musical centers. Of the notable peculiarities of the foreign musical presence at the royal court, of course, the lack of singers brings up the troublesome matter of the foreign choirbooks (and perhaps liturgical prints) entering England. During the period under review, no documentable secular chamber choir existed yet at the court, and the Chapel Royal continued to attract (and acquire) the finest native-born vocal talent. Musical sources definitely employed in services by the Chapel Royal of those years no longer survive. The only music books, in fact, which we can be sure were at court are the foreign collections like LonBLR 11 E.XI and CambriP 1760, whose preservation was surely aided by a special attention to handsome visual presentation. If these books were ever used for singing—and at the very least in works such as Salve radix, Psallite felices, and Nil maius superi vident we have music which Henry VIII would be keenly interested in hearing with its text—who would have performed their compositions, and when? Only a single feasible solution presents itself: the members of the Chapel Royal, who were the only professional singers regularly at court and who were involved (both men and boys) on frequent occasions with secular entertainments. These secular occasions could have featured virtually any type of composition, but the paraliturgical devotions flourishing in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries offered a considerable amount of flexibility as well, and seem to have developed largely along similar lines in England and on the Continent (for example, evening devotions featuring a Marian anthem). The texts of the sacred foreign works, notoriously difficult to place into specific liturgical usages, would have been no less appropriate in England than elsewhere. The most straightforward reading of the situation with the musical personnel and the music books at court, with little to contradict it, is that from at least the 1510s onward the English singers in royal employment were coming into increasingly frequent personal contact with foreign works. On the secular side, French-texted works by Henry VIII and William Cornysh leave little doubt that authentic chansons held some favor at court—and such works made early appearances in English sources such as LonBL 31922, LonBLR A56, and LonBLR A58. Later, English sacred compositions would begin to show the effects of exposure to continental writing, detectable in works such as Taverner’s Mater cristi and its related mass. The collected set of foreign sources in England, then, is of considerable importance and deserves closer consideration in the study of insular compositional development, at an earlier period than has generally been recognized. The problems of weighing the importance of native and foreign sources against each other becomes even more acute in the realm of sixteenth-century English music theory, where so few sources of any sort survive. Gaining any sense of the basic conceptual systems underlying musical practice at the time is a matter of tracing scattered hints and teachings from later books back to an earlier stage of

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transmission in the fifteenth century. For this purpose at least, to say nothing of its intrinsic interest for the study of fifteenth-century English music, the overview of the fifteenth-century theory sources is a necessary stage lacking in previous investigations. Both the survey of the early sources and the state of affairs observed in the late Tudor treatises confirm a significant observation: at the level of basic musica practica—leaving aside occasional experimental and idiosyncratic formulations in both English and foreign writings—the theoretical systems informing musical practice were largely the same in England and on the Continent. Whatever may be said particularly of English compositional techniques, the English counterpoint teachings in the manuscripts are decidedly part of an international discant tradition, no different in their instructions than the closely related foreign expositions of contrapunctus simplex. For the sixteenth century, the source situation parallels that of the music books: our knowledge of sixteenth-century theory books in England includes an equal if not greater amount of foreign than native teaching, when we take the imported printed treatises into account. The Dygon-Gaffurius manuscript, symptomatic of this form of transmission, gains in importance with the realization that it may be (depending upon its dating) the only surviving English theory book written between the Tucke/Chelle compilation and Bathe’s print. What once existed of Tudor music theory may unfortunately be largely lost; perhaps it was a relatively small corpus to begin with. Nevertheless, the continuing identification of foreign writings which were known in sixteenth-century England offers a new and promising window onto the ideas influencing insular compositional and performative practice at the time. In every detail of the picture painted here, I have argued, there is something to inform our ideas about how to approach the music itself. The various types of AngloContinental connections established in the present study, considered together as elements of discernable general trends rather than isolated and unrelated exceptional cases, pave the way for new analytical investigations into English musical practice. This is the task which remains as a major scholarly desideratum: a large-scale reconsideration of the compositional and analytical relationship between English and foreign styles. At this stage, numerous approaches to further research in this direction promise to yield complementary results and can be considered to provide the outline of such a study, as described below. Notational Principles and Peculiarities At a certain surface level, English manuscript sources exhibit distinctive features of notation; obvious examples include the appearance of double-looped round ! signs and the use of full notation and red coloration at a much later stage than continental sources. These seemingly superficial characteristics, however, point to a more extensive network of notational variations extending into the concrete domain of musical practice. We have British peculiarities of mensural interpretation at the modus level (as acknowledged by the Scottish Anonymous treatise) as one example, or the thoroughly distinctive approach to the notation of sharps encountered in a certain set of English manuscripts, for example, EtonC 178 and CambriT O.3.38. For all the distinctions in scribal practice which are known and occasionally mentioned,

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The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

there has been no attempt at a definition of English notational style in comparison to mainstream habits. An investigation into the extent and meaning of these particular usages (which could probably benefit from occasional evidence in the later sixteenthcentury treatises) may well reveal specific conceptual implications within notational practice; equally significantly, such an investigation should provide crucial information about distinctions within the English sources themselves, highlighting separate stylistic layers within the insular repertory. Transmission Variants and Stereotyped Formulas Closely related to the notational situation is the appearance of variant versions of certain types of passages in pieces with multiple sources. Examples relevant to the issue of English style have been encountered above in the discussion of Dygon’s transmission of examples by Gaffurius (pp. 205-6 above). Further cases of this nature (English manuscript variants for foreign works) are present at least in LonBL 31922. If the peculiar attributes of the English variants for these pieces hint at tangible differences of performing style, especially in the execution of cadence formulas, a more thorough—probably statistical—analysis of the appearance of such formulas in entire sources will certainly yield concrete results. Even the most cursory comparison of English books such as LonBL 5465 and EtonC 178 with contemporaneous continental sources confirms that different approaches and sets of stereotyped phrases are in play—but at a surface level, operating on top of an underlying dyadic contrapuntal grammar which is identical in English and continental writing. Compositional Practices Cursory discussions of English music c. 1500 tend to set off insular polyphony from contemporaneous continental work by pointing to a number of stylistic traits: largescale construction, highly decorative florid counterpoint, lack of structural imitation, a static type of harmonic movement. These are observable features in several wellknown sources, most famously EtonC 178. To what extent, however, has our picture of English style been colored by reliance on that one compositional approach, at the expense of ignoring the less spectacular sources of smaller-scale sacred polyphony (e.g. YorkB 1, LonBL 5665)? Do the features mentioned above really typify English compositional style, or do they belong rather to a specific subset of compositions written in a certain register, for particular institutions and occasions? If we are to include all or most of the English music produced during the early Tudor period in our conception of insular composition, then we must modify the generally known stylistic profile considerably. The characteristics which really set insular works apart from their foreign counterparts, but not from each other, may be far less obvious than is often claimed. The comparative investigation of foreign and English writing with regard to specific aspects of compositional practice offers a means of pinning down the true manifestations of musical “Englishness.” Numerous starting points for the issue of compositional style present themselves: the data collected on ensemble scoring by scholars such as Bowers and Fallows

Conclusion

225

can provide a useful tool for investigating whether and when any rupture occurred between the English and continental treatments of scoring, as developed from the three-voice chanson-style scoring of the early fifteenth century. Cantus firmus usage in different types of large- and small-scale English works can be set off against comparable foreign practices. The growing regularized use of suspension dissonances appears to be less important in Eton-style works than in contemporaneous and earlier small-scale English writing, providing a suggestive case for the simultaneous existence of multiple English styles with different relations to continental practice; likewise with imitation. Other practices could be added to the list, the comparative treatment of which may redress significant imbalances in our perception of English composition. Case Studies in Compositions and Genres A more secure grasp of national traits in compositional style can facilitate study of those works which shed light on the border areas of English and foreign practices. From various sources and periods, we have insular compositions which have been clearly influenced by specific continental styles or ideas: the Burgundian-style songs in LonBL 5665, the chansons and textless works of William Cornysh and Henry VIII in LonBL 31922, the pavanes and other dances of LonBLR A58, the Missa Ut re my fa sol la of Avery Burnett, to name various examples. Less overtly but still unmistakably, foreign approaches found their way into more conventional English works: the Mater cristi mass by Taverner with its declamatory repeated duets and well-marked phrase structure; Browne’s Stabat juxta cristi crucem, positioning a cantus firmus drawn from a secular polyphonic song against a Marian devotional text (likewise, the famous use of the tune Western wind as the basis for inter-related masses by Taverner, Sheppard, and Tye); the York Custodi nos mass, including a motivic sequential section ending of the type associated with late-fifteenth-century continental writing; perhaps the mass God save king harry of Ashwell, if it is indeed constructed on a soggetto cavato dalle vocali in imitation of Josquin’s famous mass for Ercole I d’Este. Investigation of the particularities of these and other works will bring us closer to an understanding of the characteristics and effects, immediate and eventual, of international stylistic contacts. In a related manner, closer investigation of compositional genres is necessary, from the point of view both of where English works differed from the mainstream (for example, in the lack of Kyrie settings in large-scale early Tudor cyclic masses) and of how modern categorizations have informed our sense of disconnection between English and continental works (English “votive antiphons” such as Gaude virgo and Salve regina are no different in function than continental “motets” on those same texts). The relationship between Mass-Motet(-Magnificat) sets and the continental imitation mass needs further elucidation, as well as the means of transmission for new texts and genres which appeared on both sides of the channel, for example, textless compositions based on named solmization motives. These examples of the broad scope for further consideration of the issue of Anglo-Continental relations follow the implications of the present investigations. It is in such analytical studies that we must finally confront head-on the issue of

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The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

insular and international practices in that most resistant area, the polyphony of the English church. What can be expected in return, at the least, is a new set of tools for discerning national traits in compositions, and a more nuanced understanding of the English polyphonic tradition in its own right. The comparative and combined treatment of foreign and insular works ought reasonably to lead eventually towards a reconciliation of analytical approaches which have much to learn from each other. Developing historical and cultural observations into a call for new musicanalytical attitudes, then, this study ends with a new jumping-off point. “Englishness” in a musical sense is an extremely slippery concept, and too easily employed without a reasonable set of defining parameters. Only in the comparative international confrontation of styles in compositional, notational, and performative areas will a reasonable understanding of truly English musical developments emerge. Gaining a more complete sense of the multitude of styles in the available sources (including fragments), it has been suggested above, will certainly lead to new conceptions of the divisions within insular musical approaches. Related closely to the desire for such a reappraisal is the hypothesis that the most idiosyncratically insular of sources and compositions have been treated as representative of English style as a whole, and that the style of these works may have seen fairly limited use within England itself. Any such attempt, moreover, to come to terms with the origins and histories of the stylistic divisions within early-Tudor music will benefit from making connections with the concrete historical circumstances discussed above. The simple exclusion of consideration of foreign musical influences, supposedly on historico-political grounds, can no longer stand as a legitimately contextualized approach. Insularity of early English musical style might still be argued from certain perspectives and for certain repertories, but insularity in modern analysis remains a needless and indeed ahistorical limitation. After a century of nationalist musical agendas and sometimes rather arbitrary divisions within our historical researches, the time is ripe for a measure of corrective reintegration. So long as the process remains self-critical, all we stand to lose is the baggage of past ideologies.

Appendix A A.1. Letter from Henry VIII to Margaret of Austria, 12 October 1511 Source: Lille, Archives départementales du Nord, B 18854, no 30256 Cover: Treshaulte et excellente princesse. Nostre treschere et tresamee cousine et bonne commere la duchesse douagiere de Sauoye Letter: Treshaulte et excellente princesse Nostre treschere et tresamee cousine et bonne comme[re] trescordiallement nous Recommandons. Pour la bonne Relacion que faicte nous a [...] de nostre bien ame. Pierre dopicijs. pere de benoist dopicijs ce porteur nostre subget [...] aussi que le feu Roy mon seigneur et pere dont dieu ait lame / auoit ledict pierre en sa tressingu[liere] faueur et bonne Recommandacion. Nous suysmes de tant plus desirans le preferem[ent et] aduancement. de ses negoces et affaires / et de ses enfans / Si vous pryons tresace[rtes] Treshaulte et excellente princesse. nostre treschere et tresamee cousine et bonne com[mere] que en faueur de ceste nostre presente Rescripcion / vous vueillez auoir / luy sesdicts enf[ants et] leurs negoces et affaires de pardela / en vostre bonne faueur et tressinguliere Recommandaci[on] Offrans de nostre part. faire le semblable pardeca. a vostre desir et Rescripcion. quant le c[as] escherra / Ainsi que scayt nostre seigneur quj Treshaulte et excellente princesse. nostre tresche[re] et tresamee cousine / et bonne commere / vous ait en sa tressaincte et digne garde. / Escrip[te] en nostre chasteau de vvindesore / Le xije Jour doctobre. Lan xvc et vnze. vostre loyal cousin et bon compere HENRY R. [Cover: Very high and excellent princess, our very dear and very beloved cousin and good companion, Dowager Duchess of Savoy Letter: Very high and excellent princess, our very dear and very beloved cousin and good companion: very cordially we recommend to you, because of the good relationship which is made unto us [...] of our well-beloved Peter de Opiciis, father of Benedictus de Opiciis the bearer of this letter and our subject; and as much as the late king, my lord and father (God keep his soul), held the said Peter in his most special favor and good recommendation; we desire all the more the preferment and advancement of his business dealings and affairs, and of his children. We pray you very firmly,

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The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

very high and excellent princess, our very dear and very beloved cousin and good companion, that on behalf of this present writing, you keep him, his children, and their business dealings and affairs over there in your good favor and most special recommendation; offering on our part to do the same over here at your desire and writing, when the need will arise, as knows our Lord; and may He keep you, very high and excellent princess, our very dear and very beloved cousin and good companion, in his very holy and worthy protection. Written in our castle of Windsor, the 12th day of October, the year 1511. Your loyal cousin and good companion, KING HENRY]

Appendix A

229

A.2. Will of Benedictus de Opiciis and Related Documents a. London, Guildhall Library, MS 9171/10 (London, Bishops Commissary Court, Registers of wills, 1374-1857, v. 10), fol. 52v (Excerpt) Margin: benedicti Odycys Entry: In the name off. God amen. the yere of owre lorde god ml. ccccc and xxiiijti the xixti day of auguste wytnyssithe that I benedict odiciys late seruand to the kynggis nowbull grace ordayne and make this my present testament and laste well as here after dowthe folow fyrste I be quete my sowlle vnto all myghty god my make and Redembyr and my body to be buryed in the churche of hale halou the more nexte the stylyerd Item I be quete to xxx powre pepolle xxx pence also I be quete my trusty and my faythe full frende master frawncis knyfe of his charyte to mynyster suche goodis as I haue & se me honestly buryed and to desspose my goodis for the welthe of my sowlle and all crestyn sowllis and thes to be my laste well and wrytton after my mynde thes beyng wettenes master Iohn tull my curat master godfray william watson andrew alyn wit othis moe &c Probatum fuit suprascriptum testamentum coram nobis Willelmo Clyff &c xvjto septembris ao domini supradicto Comissaque fuit administracio bonorum dicti defuncti executori in eodem testamento nominato in forma iuris iurat’ saluo iure &c [The above testament was proved before us, William Clyff, etc., 16 September, the year of Our Lord stated above; and the administration of the goods of the said deceased was committed to the executor named in the same testament, sworn in the form of law, reserving the right, etc.]

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The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

b. London, Guildhall Library, MS 9168/7 (London, Bishops Commissary Court, Act books (probate and administration), 1496-1858, v. 7), fols 109r-110r (Excerpts) [109r, 3 September 1524] Margin: omnium sanctorum majoris Entry: benedictus de poysyllis decessit testatus ffranciscus ffranco habet ad comperuit personaliter cui assignatum est ad exhibendum & probandum testamentum die sabbati proximo [Margin: All Hallow the More [All Saints the Greater] Entry: Benedictus de Opiciis died testate. Francesco Franco is to appeared personally, to whom it was assigned to exhibit and prove the testament the following Saturday.] [109v, 9 September 1524] Margin: omnium sanctorum Entry: franciscus franko habet ad exhibendum inventarium benedicti de poysyllis [Francesco Franko is to exhibit the inventory of Benedictus de Opiciis.] [110r, 16 September 1524] Left margin: omnium sanctorum maioris Right margin: vj d. Entry: Benedictus de poysillis odycyys decessit testatus comperuit franciscus franco [inserted: cuius iuramento probatum fuit &] Commissa fuit administracio eidem francisco in forma iuris iurat’ [Benedictus de Opiciis died testate. Francesco Franco appeared, by whose oath the testament was proved, and the administration was committed to him, sworn in the form of law.]

Appendix A

231

A.3. Foreign Musicians at the English Court, c. 1485-1530 Name

Dates at court

Previous locations

Role

Adrian

-1503-09-

? Andolf

1501-02

Antonia, John de

-1525-42

Arten, Henry van

1516-21-

Minstrel, sackbut

Arten, John van

1516-37-

Minstrel, sackbut

Bernard, Jasper

-1528-31

Blasia, Alvisy de

-1525-

Sackbut; =Alvise Bassano?

Bonitamps, Possant

1498-1515

Minstrel, cornett

Bourgions, Glande

1518-25-

Tabret

Brescia, Peter de/ Bustis, Giovanni Pietro de (“Zuan Piero”)

1512- c. 1536

Broen, Hans

-1501-

Brouard, Bartram

1508-10

Court of Philip the Handsome

Minstrel

Browne, Benedict

1513-66

Pavia

Trumpet/Serjeanttrumpeter

Brussels, Peter van

1513-15

Drumslade

Burgh, Guilliam van de

-1495-13

Sackbut, ?flute

Casa Nova, Peter de

-1483-14-

Marshal of the Trumpeters

Cecil, John de

-1502-14-

Trumpet Lute Castello

Venice

Brescia

Sackbut

Sackbut

Lute

Sackbut

Spain; formerly with Philip the Handsome

Trumpet

? Cockeren, Petit John

-1503-13-

Minstrel

? Crevila, Christopher

1518-19

Minstrel

Droyt, John

1529-31

Minstrel

Duche, Michael

1514-15

Drumslade

Duvait, Guilliam

-1529-73

Minstrel, flute

Duwes, Gilles

-1501-35

Estampion, Gregory

-1525-

Organ maker

Floure, Gerarde de

-1528-32-

Trumpet

Forceville, Claise/ Nicholas

1516-40

Sackbut

Francis, Peter

-1528-65

Trumpet

Frenes, Rowland de

1514-17

Minstrel

Friburg, George

1513-15

Drumslade

Friburg, Stephen van

1513

Drumslade

France

Lute; Richmond librarian, French teacher, etc.

232

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

Name

Dates at court

Previous locations

Friburg (Febrewycke), Windell van

1513

Drumslade

? Furness, John

-1490-1509-

Minstrel

? Furness, John

-1511-37

Trumpet

Guilliam

-1494-1503

Lute

Hamburg, George van

1519-21-

Drumslade

Harop, Gery van

1513

Drumslade

Harop, Melchior van

1513

Drumslade

Highorne, Hans

-1525-42

Court of Charles V?

Hossenet, Hans

-1525-53

Court of Charles V?

Viol

John, John de

-1525-32-

France

Priest; Organ maker

Justinian, Dominic

-1503-09-

Trumpet

? Kechyn, William

-1511-21-

Bagpiper

Knyf (alias Francklyn/ Franco), Francis

1511-40/1?

Italy?

Role

Viol

Trumpet/SerjeantTrumpeter

Lambert, Genan/Genyn

-1513-14-

Trumpet

Lanoa, Jacques/ James de

-1500-14-

Trumpet

Loriden, Marcus

-1485-1514

Minstrel

? Manseno, Alexander

1506-21-

Sackbut

? Manseno, Jacob

1512-17

Sackbut

Marcasyn, Jenyn

1490-1510

Minstrel

Marcator, Miguel

1527-44-

Organ maker; diplomat

Maria, Peter

1529-31

Memo, Dionysius

1516-19-

Venice

Friar; Organist; composer

Nagel, Hans

-1501-04

Leipzig/Augsburg

Sackbut

Nezumbryke, Hans

1514-43

Sackbut

Drumslade

Opiciis, Benedict de

1516-24

Osbroke, Leonard van

1513

Antwerp

Organist; composer Drumslade

Padua, John de

1506-07

Shawm

Peler, Edward de

-1502-13

Sackbut, minstrel

Peler, Johannes de

1482-1512

Sackbut, trumpet, minstrel

Petala, Mark Anthony

-1525-52

Venice

Sackbut

Piper, James

1519-25-

Germany?

Drumslade/?Fife

Planche, Peter (Pierre) de la

1529-38

French court

Tabret, sackbut

? Pleasance, Geoffrey

-1513-14-

Trumpet

? Pring [Fring?]

-1503-

Trumpet

? Pyrot, John

-1525-29

Rebec

Appendix A Previous locations

233

Name

Dates at court

Role

Restanes, Jenyn

-1513-

Trumpet

Retheling, Hans van

1513

Drumslade

Robert, Balthazar

1509-38

Tabret

Rochardes, Jacques

1515-21-

Tabret

Rokenbaugh, Bartholomew

?1514-44-

Drumslade

Rokke, Jacques

1486-90-

Minstrel

Salle, Nowell de la

1519-39

Minstrel, tabret

Salvador, Ipolito de

-1525-31-

Venice

Sackbut

Salvator, Fraunces de

-1525-

Italy

Sackbut

Severnac, (Petit) John

1518-57/8

France

Rebec, flute

Simon, Peregrine (alias Mayhou)

-1525-41 or 1542

Padua

Sackbut

Smeton, Mark

1529-36

Flanders

Groom of the Privy Chamber; virginals

Toulouse, Piers de

1511-14

Toulouse

Shawm

Troches, Guille (Guillam, William) (de); (Little/Petit Guillam)

-1529-61

France

Minstrel, flute

Vacher, Gregory [le]

-1528-30

Paris?

Tabret

Wilder (Weldre), Matthew van

1516-17-

court of Philippe le Beau

Lute

Wilder (Weldre), Peter van

1519-62

‘Millom’

Lute and viol

Wilder, Philip van

1525-53

Lute; musician in the Privy Chamber; composer

Wilmorth, Adrian

-1503-07

Sackbut

Wincle, Jan (John) van

1516-31-

Burgundian court

Sackbut

Wincle, Lewes van

-1525-31-

Antwerp?

Sackbut

Note: A dash before the first year means “in or before” that year; a hyphen after the last year means “in or after” that year.

Appendix B B.1. Secular motets from LonBLR 11 E.XI For editorial principles, see the Introduction. Each motet is presented first in a diplomatic “original-notation” transcription, followed by a version in modern notation. All accidentals in the modern versions are the result of translating early staff notation into a modern realization, and do not correspond to explicitly marked mi and fa signs in the manuscript. Where such a sign does appear in the manuscript, its presence is indicated with an asterisk above the staff in the modern score. Critical apparatus Measure numbers are followed by bold voice name, then error/variant Abbreviations: S C T B ’ b

Superius Contratenor Tenor Bassus after voice name indicates canonic comes brevis; sb: semibrevis; m: minima

Salue radix: 5 [6

C sb sb FE for sb sb EE (error) C’ sb sb BA for sb sb AA (error)]

Psallite felices: 24-8 28 89 88-94 103 126 160 161 205-7 206-7 211 273-4 289-90 290 293

All text: “aduentum” for “aduentu” C m m GE for m m GD (error) B text: “cuncta” for “visa” B text: “-pel-” written early, repeated on next page B sb m AG for sb m AF (error) T text: “vale.” for “micans” S m m GE for m m GD (error) C text: “gratis” for “gratus” B text: “-dans” written early, repeated on next page T text: “-dans” written early, repeated on next page S text: “distribuendo” for “distribuens omnibus” C b similis ante similem imperfected C text: “s” struck out before “hoc” B text: “victor” for “rector” T text: “victor” for “rector”

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

236

Salve radix Canon fuga Indyatessaron.

Salue radix varios

Contratenor. Salue radix varios Canon fuga Indiatessaron.

Salue radix varios producens

Bassus. Salue radix varios producens

7

producens germine ramos

producens germine ramos

germine ramos

germine ramos

14

quos Inter ramus supereminet altior vnus

quos Inter ramus supereminet altior vnus

quos inter ramus

quos inter ramus

supereminet

Appendix B

237

21

supereminet

altior vnus

altior vnus

21

Cuius et ex summo

Cuius et ex summo

purpura rosa micat

Cuius et ex summo

Cuius et ex summo

purpura rosa micat

21

purpura rosa micat

qua stant vnanimes

qua stant vnanimes

purpura rosa micat

qua stant vnanimes

qua stant vnanimes

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

238

42

pax et Justicia septe

pax et Justicia septe

pax et Justicia septe

pax et Justicia septe

42

claudunturque

claudunturque

claudunturque foras

claudunturque foras

55

foras dissona corda senum

foras dissona corda senum

disona corda senum

disona corda senum

Appendix B

239

Salve radix [Canon fuga In dyatessaron.]

Sa1 - ve ra

Contratenor.

Sal-ve

dix va

dix va

ra

[Canon fiiga In diatessaron.]

Sal ve

Bassus.

ra

Sal - ve

7

ri

ri

pro

OS

pro

OS

ri

du -cens

-

va - ri

dix

du-cens

va

ger

mi-ne

mi-ne

ger

ra

pro

du-cens

ger - mi

ne

pro - du - cens

ger - mi

ne

ra

OS

OS

dix

ra

14

ra

mos

mos

ra

mos

quos

quos

quos

in

ter

in - ter

ra

mus

ra

ra

in - ter

mos

quos

in - ter

mus

ra

su - per

mus

mus

su -

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

240

21

mi

e

su

mi

e

su - per

net

per

per

e

e - mi

mi

al

net

ti-or

u

al

ti-or

u

nus

net

al

ti - or

u

al - ti - or

net

u

nus

21

Cu

nus

ius

Cu

nus

Cu

ms

et

Cu

ius

ius et

ex

et

ex

ex

sum

it

sum

pur

mo

mo

pur

ex

sum

sum

mo

pu - ra

mo

pur

pur - pu - ra

21

pu - ra

sami

ro

ro

cat

sami

pu - ra

ro

sa

ro

sa

mi

-

mi

-

qua stant

cat

cat

qua

stant u

qua stant

cat

qua

stant u - na

u

na

u

Appendix B

241

42

ni

na

ni

mes

mes

na

ni

ni

mes

et

pax

mes

pax

et

pax

et

Iu

sti

pax

et

Iu

sti - ci

Iu

sti

ci

a

Iu

sti

ci-a

55

ci-a

clau-dun

sep • te

a

sep

te

sep

-

clau dun

te

sep

tur que

tur que

clau dun-tur que

clau-dun-tur - que

te

fo

fo

fo - ras

55

fo

ras di

ras

ras di

so - na cor

dase

so -na cor

di

so - na cor

di - so - na cor

dase

-

da

num

num

da

se

se - num

num

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

242

M. Sampson: Psallitefelices [Superius] PSalite felices Contra. Psallite felices T[enor] Psallite felices Bassus. Psallite felices

6

protecti

culmine

Rose

protecti

purpuree

culmine rose purpuree celo

protecti culmine rose

protecti culmine rose

purpuree

12

ipse De

celo quam Dedit

us

quam dedit ipse Deus

purpuree

celo quam dedit

celo quam dedit

ipse Deus

ipse deus

Appendix B

243

18

Anglicolis

Et quam pax distulit

prodere tellus

anglicolis

et quam pax distulit

Et quam pax distulit

Anglicolis

anglicolis

et quam pax distulit

24

adventu rose

protinus orta

prodere tel

prodere tellus

prodere tellus

lus

adventu rose orta fuit

adventu ro

se

adventu rose

protinus orta fuit.

protinus orta fuit

29

fuit

Cuius et in folliis radiantia

cuius et in foliis

radiantia lilia

lilia

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

244

35

distinctos flores hic parit vna ra

crescunt

distinctos flores hic parit vna ra

crescunt

41

dix

dix

albis et rubeis dispersa

al

bis et rubeis dispersa

coloribus Intus

47

coloribus intus

in numero florum

in numero fo

rubens

rum micuit rosa

micuit rosa

rubens

Appendix B

245

53

altior exsuperans

flores spectamine

altior exsuperans

spectamine

altior exsuperans

altior exsuperans

59

cunctos

pulchrior hac vix est visa colore prior

cunctos

flo

res spectamine

spectamine cunctos

visa colore

cunctos

pulchrior hac visa est vix colore prior

64

prior

visa colore prior

corpora fortifi

corpora for

tificans

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

246

69

cans

sic membra debilia curans

sic membra debilia

curans

74

dulcis odorife

pellit

ra

dulcis odorifera

pellit

dulcis odorifera

pellit

dulcis odo

rifera

80

om

ne

malum

et omne

malum

et omne ma

pellit et omne

lum

malum

affert

Appendix B

247

85

le

ticiam

affert

mox tristia

leticiam

visa

mox tristia visa repel

mox tristia visa repel

mox tristia visa re

91

repel

lit

lit

cunctis est morbis

lit

cunctis est morbis

pellit

97

cunctis est morbis

Distribuenda

Distribuenda Do

Distribuenda

distribuenda Do

distribuenda Dosis

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

248

103

sis

Dosis

Distribuenda

Do

107

Dosis.

sis.

sis.

112

Est rex henricus.

Est rex henricus

Est rex henricus.

Est rex henricus

Appendix B

249

117

Bis quartus sanguine clarus

Bis quartus

clarus

sanguine

Bis quartus sanguine clarus

Bis quartus

sanguine clarus

123

Anglorum virtus purpura rosa micans

Anglorum virtus

purpura rosa mi

Anglorum virtus purpura rosa micans

Anglorum virtus purpura

129

cans

huius se merito studeat

rosa micans

huius se

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

250

136

rosa micans

quis subdere votis

merito

Et vultu placido dicere

quis subdere votis

studeat

142

Et vultu placido

Dicere

Di

Et vultu placido Dicere

Et vultu placido dicere

147

rosa vale.

Rosa vale

rosa vale.

Rosa vale.

Dicere

cere

Appendix B

251

153

Aspectu pulcher

verbis affamine dulcis

aspectu pulcher

verbis affamine dulcis

159

omnibus acceptus

omnibus acceptus

et

gratus

gratus

ipse suis

et

165

hostes vincit

bella gerens

ipse suis

hostes vincit

bella gerens

bella gerens

bella gerens

hostes vincit

hostes vincit

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

252

171

nam hector in

nam hector

in armis

armis fera leo

nis iram

fera le onis

iram

sicfugiunt emuli

sicfugiunt

177

Est et pacificus

Est et pacificus

Est et pacificus

emuli

est et pacificus

183

constans mode

ramina plenus

constans moderamina ple

constans

moderamina plenus

constans

moderamina plenus

Appendix B

253

189

magnanimus lustus

nus

magnanimus lustus

magnanimus lustus

195

hostibus atque grauis

magnanimus lustus

hostibus atque grauis

hostibus atque grauis

hostibus atque

magnificus

grauis

magnificus

201

diues largus

pietate redun

diues largus

pietate

pietate redun

redun

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

254

207

distribuens omnibus

dans

munera pro meritis

dans

distribuens omnibus

munera pro meritis

dans

distribuens

munera pro meritis

distribuens

212

Singula quis referet

sin

omni

gula

bus

quis referet

singula quis referet

singula quis

referet

218

rose

est inmensa

rose est inmensa potestas

rose est inmensa potestas

rose est inmensa potestas

potestas

Appendix B

255

224

que nulloclaudi

carmine tanta

que nullo clau

potest

di carmine tanta potest

230

Psallite fideles

psallite fide

les

Psallite fideles

psallite fideles

236

protecti

culmine rose

protecti

cul

protecti culmine rose

protecti

culmine

mi

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

256

242

cuius odoratu

rose

ne

cuius odoratu

cuius odoratu

cuius odoratu

rose

251

tristia cuncta

cedunt

tristia cuncta cedunt I

tristia

tristia

cuncta

cun

cedunt

cta

cedunt

258

Rex eterne deus

Rex eterne deus

Rex eterne deus

qui mundi

Appendix B

257

264

qui mundi

sceptra gubernas

qui mundi sceptra gubernas

qui mundi sceptra guber

gubernas

sceptra

270

funditur

cuius

nas

et ex gremio

omnis

funditur omnis honos

funditur omnis honos

cuius et ex gremio

cuius et ex gremio

funditur

omnis honos

277

honos

quesumus ut regi des tempo

quesumus vt re

quesumus

quesumus

ra longa

gi des tempora longa videre

vt re

gi des tempora longa videre

vt regi des tempora longa vide

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

258

285

3 videre

et post hoc sedeat rector

Et post hoc sedeat rector 3 et post hoc sedeat

re et post hoc sedeat rector

291

in arce dei

in

arce

dei

in arce dei

in arce dei

rector in arce de

in

299

Amen.

Amen

Amen.

dei

Amen.

arce

Appendix B

259

M. Sampson: Psallite felices [Superius]

Psa

Contra.

Psal

TJenor]

Ii

te fe

Ii

fe-li

te

Psal

Bassus.

Ii

Ii

te

fe

Ii

Psal

Ii

5

ces

pro

tec

ti

ces

pro

cul

mi

tec

ti

ces

te

fe

Ii

ces

pro

pur

pu

rc c

tec

ne

Ro

pro

tec

ti

ti

cul

mi ne

10

sc

cc

cul

mi ne

ro

se pur

pu

re

e ce

cul

mi ne

ro

se

pur

pu

re e

ro

se

pur

pu

re e

ce

lo

quam De

lo

quam de

ce

lo

quam

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

260

15

dit

dit

lo

An

se

An

se

De

us

quam

de

dit

dit

de

De

us

An

an

se

'P

gli

co

De

us An.

gli

co

us

an

g l i

co

se de

ip

co

An

2C

lis

Et

quanpax

stu-lit

di

pro

et

lis

Et

lis

lis

et

quam pax

quam pax

quam pax

di

dc-rc

tel

stu lit

stu-lit

di

stu-lit

di

lus ad

pro

de-re

de-re tel

pro

25

ven-tu ro

se

pro - de-re

tel

lus

lus

tel

pro-ti-nus

lus

ad-ven-tu

ad-ven-tu ro

ad ven tu

ro

se

se

pro

pro

fu

ta

or

ro

or

ta fu

ti-nus or

ta fu

se

ti-nus or

ta fu

Appendix B

261

30

it

Cu

it

et in

ius

ius et in

eu

fo

li

fol

li-is ra

li

is ra di an

ti

a li

di an ti

li

li a eres

a

it.

it 35

a

di - stinc

cunt

eres

cunt

di

stinc

tos

flo

res [hie] pa-rit

pa - rit

tos

flo - res hie

al

bis

et

ru-be-is di - sper

u - na

40

u

na

dix

ra

dix

ra

al

bis

et

ru - be - is di

sa

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

262

45

sper

co lo-ri-bus in

sa

co-lo-ri - bus in-tus

tus

in nu-me-ro flo rum mi

in nu-me - ro flo-rum

mi-cu-it

ro

51

al

ti

ti - or ex

al

cu-it

ro

bens

ru

sa

ru

sa

or ex-su

bens

56

su

res

flo

pe-rans

pe rans

al

al

ti

or ex

ti - or ex - su

spec

ta

spec

ta

su

perans

mi ne

cunc

mi

ne

cunc

pe rans flo

res

spec

ta

mi

ne

spec ta

cunc -

Appendix B

263

61

pul-chri-or

tos

tos

mi-ne

vt - sa co - lo

vi

sa

co

vi

sa co - lo - re pri

sa

est vix co - lo

tos

cunc

tos pul

hac vix est

chri-or

hac vi

repri

re pri

lo

re pri

66

or

or

cor

or

or

cor

sicmen

po ra for-ti- fi - cans

[sic] men

po-ra for - ti - ficans

bra de-bi-li

bra de - bi - li - a

72

dul

cis

o

do

ri

fe

ra

dul

cis

o

do

ri

fe

ra

a eu

rans

dul

cis

o

do

ri

fe

ra

cu

rans

dul

cis

o

do

ri

fe

ra

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

264

79

pel

lit

om

pel

lit

pel

lit

et

om

ne

ma

pel

lit

et

om

ne

ma

et

ne

ma

om

ma

ne

84

lum

af fert

ti

lum

af

fert

ci

le ti

ci

am mox

am mox

lum

mox

lum

mox

89

tri

sti

a

vi

tri

sti

a

vi

tri

sti

a

vi

tri

sti

a

[vi

sa

sa

re

pel

sa

re

re

pel

sa]

re

pel

Appendix B

265

94

lit

lit

cunc - tis

cunc

tis

lit

pel

est

mor

bis

cunc

tis

est

est

mor

bis

Di-stri-bu en - da

mor

Di

bis

di - stri-bu-en

lit

100

di - stri - bu

en

da

Do

stri - bu - en

da

di - stri - bu

da

Do

sis

104

sis

en

da

Do

Do

e

Do

da

Di - stri

Do

bu

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

266

108.

sis

Est

rex

hen

sis

Est

rex

hen-ri

Est

rex

hen

ri

eus.

Est

rex

hen

ri

eus

sis.

sis.

ri

eus.

eus

117

Bis

quar

tus

san

gui-ne

cla

Bis

quar

tus

san

gui-ne

Bis

quar

tus

san

gui-ne

Bis

quar - tus

san

cla

cla

gui - ne

cla

123

aïs

An

glo

rum

vir

tus

pur

pu

ra

rus

An

glo

rum

vir

tus

pur

pu

ra

rus

An

glo

rum

vir

tus

pur

pu

ra

rus

An

glo

rum

vir

tus

pur

pu

ra

Appendix B

267

129

ro

sa

mi

ro

sa

mi

cans

ro

sa

[mi

cans]

ro

sa

mi

cans

hu

ius

cans

se

hu

135

ro

tis Et

quis sub-de-revo

ri

me

ius

se

to stu-de

at

me

to stu

ri

de - at

vul-tu

quis sub-de-re vo

141

sa mi

pla

tis

ci-do

cans

di

Et

ce-re

Et

di

vul-tu pla - ci-do di

vul-tu pla

ci-do Di

Di

ce

re

Et

vul-tu pla-ci do Di

ce

re

Di

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

268

146

ce - re

ro

sa

va

le.

ce - re

Ro

sa

va

le

ce

re

ro

sa va

ce

re

Ro

sa

le.

va

le.

153

A

spec

tu

pul

cher

a

spec

tu

pul

ver

cher

bis af

fa mi

ver-bis af

ne dul

fa - mi - ne dul

158

om

eis

cis

om

ni-bus ac-cep-tus

ni-bus ac cep-tus

gra

tis

gra tis

et

Appendix B

269

163

ip - se su

et

is

ip - se

bel la

su

is

su

la

bel

bel

bel

la

ge

rens

168

ho - stes vin

rens

rens

ge

la ge

tes vin

hos

ho

rens

stes

ho - stes vin

cit

cit

vin

cit

cit

nam

nam

hec-tor in

hec

tor in ar

ar - mis

mis fe -

174

fe

ra le

o

ra le - o - nis

nis i

ram

sic fu - gi

i - ram sic fu - gi - unt

unt e-mu

li

e - mu - li

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

270

179

Est

et

pa

ci

Est

et

pa

ci

Est

et

pa

ci

eus

fi

eus

fi eus

et

est

fi

pa

ci

fi

eus

185

con

stans mo-de

ra

mi

na

pie

con

stans mo - de

ra

mi

na

pie

con

stans mo - de

ra

mi

na

pie

con

stans mo-de - ra

mi

na

pie

190

nus

nus

ma-gna - ni

nus

nus

pie

nus

ma

ma-gna-ni-mus

mus

gna-ni-mus

lu

stus

lu

stus

lu

ma

Appendix B

271

195

stus

ho

sti-bus at - que gra

gna-ni-mus lu

vis

stus

ho

ho

ho

sti-bus at-que

gra

sti bus at - que gra

sti-bus at - que gra

vis

200

ves

di

vis

di

vis

ma-gni

ma

ves

lar

lar

gus

ft - eus

gni

fi

e - ta - te

gus

eus

Pi

e - ta - te

Pi

e - ta - te

206

re

dun

dans

mu

re

dun

dans

re

dun

dans

ne-ra pro me-ri-tis di stri-bu-ens

mu

mu

ne

ra pro me-ri

ne-ra pro me - ri - tis

tis

di

di-stri-bu -

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

272

211

di - stri - bu

om

en[s

stri-bu - ens

ni-bus]

ni

om

Sin

gu

la

quis

sin

gu-la

bus

sin

gu

sin

gu

ens 216

re

quis

fe

ret

re-fe

ret

se

ro

est

in

men

men - sa

ro

se

est

in

la

quis

re

fe

ret

ro - se

est

in - men

la

quis

re

fe

ret

ro

se

est

in

222

sa

po

po

te

sa

po

men

sa

stas

te

stas

po

que nul - lo

te

stas

te

stas

clau

di

car

que nul - lo

Appendix B

273

227

ta

mi-ne tan

clau

mi-ne tan-ta

di car

test

po

po

test

232

Psal

psal

li

te

li

te

fi - de

les

fi-de

Psal

li

te

de

ft

les

psal

li

te

fi

237

pro

tec

ti

les

de

les

pro

pro

cul

mi

tec

ti

tec

ne

ro

cul

pro

tec

ti

ti

cul

mi - ne

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

274

241

se

mi - ne

mi - ne

cul

ro

ro

se

ro

se

se

246

eu

ius o

do

eu

ius o

do

eu

ius o

do

eu

ius o

do

tu

tri

sti-a

tu

tri

sti-a

ra

tu

tri

sti-a

ra

tu

tri

sti-a

ra

ra

253

3 2 cunc

ta

dunt

ce

3 2 cunc

ta

ce

dunt

3 2 cunc

ta

ce

dunt

3 2 cunc

ta

ce

dunt

Appendix B

275

258

3 3 3 3 Rex

e

3 3 Rex

c

ter

ne

de

3 3 Rex

e

ne

ter

de

us qui

263

qui

ter

ne

mun

de

di

us

us

mun

qui mun

di scep

qui mun - di

di

scep

bcr

nas

tra

seep

tra

scep-tra

di

268

gu

tra

gu

gu

ber

ber

ber

nas

eu

ius

et

ex

nas

eu

ius

et

ex

nas

eu

ius

et

ex

gre

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

276

273

fun

mi

di

o

tur

om - nis

fun - di - tur

om nis ho

om

gre

mi

o

fun

gre

mi

o

fun - di - tur

di

tur

ho

nis

ho

om - nis ho

278

nos

que

su

mus

ut

nos

que

su

mus

ut

nos

que

su

mus

nos

que

su

mus

re

re

ut

gi

des tem

gi

des

re

ut

tem

gi

des

re

gi

284

3 3 Ion

po-ra

ga

de

vi

3 3 po-ra

Ion

ga

vi

de

3 3 tem

po

Ion

ra

ga

vi

de

3 3 des

tem

po-ra

Ion

ga

vi

de

Appendix B

277

289

3 3 re

et post hoc se

de-at

ree

tor

re

et post hoc se

de-at

rec

tor

re

et post hoc se

de-at

vie

tor

re

et post hoc se

de-at

vie

tor

in

3 3 3 3 in

ar

ce

3 3

295

ce

ar

in

ar

de

i

de

i

ce de

in

ar

in

i

A

ce de

in

ce

ar

300

men,

A

i

A

men

men.

A

ce de

ar

men.

de

i

278

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

B.2. La sol mifa mi Cantus de anglia (VienNB Mus. 18746, No. 46) Superius Cantus

vagans

Contratenor

Tenor

Bassus

8

15

Appendix B

22

29

36

279

280

43

49

55

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

Appendix B

62

69

76

281

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

282

B.3.a. Untexted chanson (LonBLR A58.2, fol. 30v; LonBLR A56, fol. 20r) LonBLR A58.2

LonBLR A56

7

14

21

Appendix B

B.3.b. Untexted chanson (LonBLR A58.2, fol. 30v; LonBLR A56, fol. 20r) Four-part score

6

11

283

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

284

16

21

26

Appendix C C.1 William Cornysh, A tretyse by twene enformacione and musyke C.1.1 Critical Edition Principal source: H LonBLH 43, fols 88r-91r Secondary sources: R LonBLR 18 D.II, fols 163r-164r S Skelton, Pithy pleasaunt and profitable workes (London, 1568) Editorial Principles In matters of orthography (including separation of words and capitalization), the readings of H have been allowed to stand. Each of the three sources differs frequently from the others in terms of non-significant variable elements (for example, i/y or doubling of consonants) which are not recorded in the present collated edition; such variants can be observed in the parallel edition provided in Appendix C.1.2 below. All other variants are noted at the foot of the page by line number. All stanza titles are lacking in H and are provided from R, as is text where lacunae exist in H. Notes are formatted as: line number; text in edition; variant text or comment; source Example: “2 euyle]il RS ||”: line 2, “euyle” reads as “il” in R and S.

286 i

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations In the fleete maade be me William Cornysshe otherwyse called Nysshewhete Chapelman wit the moost famost and noble kyng henry the viith his reygne the xixth yere the moneth of Iuly A Treatise bitwene Trowth and enformacion

vi

A. B. of. E how. C for. T. was P.in. P

via

Prologus

1

The knowlege of god. passythe comparysone. the deuyle knowthe all euyle thyng consentyd or done and man knowthe nothyng saue only by resone and resone in man ys dyuers of operacyone how sholde then man be parfyte of cognycyone for resone shall so resone that somtyme amonge A man by enformacyone may ryghtwosly do wronge

The hoole content

8

The auctorysyde gospell & resone holdythe therwit whos lyterall sense agreythe wit þe fore seyyng qui ambulat in tenebris nescit quo uadit now moralyse ye farthyre & peyse the countyrweyyng I mene by twene trouthe and sotell conueyyng who gothe in the darke must stomble amonge blame neuyre a blynd man thow he go wronge

Gospell

15

A Juge to the Jury nedys must geue credence Now what if the purpose fals maters to compase The Juge must procede yet in hym non offence ffor as they gif verdit the iugement must pase But where the faute is non dormit Judas ffor by fals enformacion many tymes amonge right shalbe rewled and the rightvwuse shall do wronge

Example

22

But wo to soche enformers who euyre they be that makythe ther malys þe matyre of þe pore and wit out conscyens ryght or pete dysgorgythe ther uenome undyr þat colore Alas not remembyrd ther sowls dolore when dies illa dies ire shalbe ther song Ite maledicti take that for yor wrong

Euell enformacion

28a 28

b

29

Explicit prologus A tretyse by twene enformacyone and musyke Musyke in hys melody requyrythe trew sownds who settythe a songe sholde geue hym to armony who kepthe trew hys tunys may not pas hys bownds hys alteracyons in prolacyons must be prykyde trewly for musyke ys trew thow mynstrels makthe mastry The harper carthe nothyng but reward for hys song merely sounds hys mouthe when hys tong gothe all of wronзe

the examples

i-vi lacking H || via Prologus]Prologue. RS || 2 euyle]il RS || 5 sholde]can RS || 7 ryghtwosly]right wysly R]ryghtewisly S || 9 wit]to RS || 11 countyrweyyng]contriuyng S || 15 lacking H || 16 Now...to lacking H || 17 The...non off lacking H || 18 ffor...must lacking H || 19 But...Juda lacking H || 20 ffor...amo lacking H || 21 right...shall lacking H | do wronge]haue wronge H || 22 euyre lacking RS || 24 cruelly lacking H || 26 remembyrd]remembring R]remembryng S || 28a lacking RS || 28b tretyse]parable RS || 31 bownds]soundis R]sonds S || 32 in]and RS || 35 of wronзe lacking H

Appendix C

287

36

A harpe geuythe sownde as yt ys set the harper may wreste it untunably yff he pley wrong good tunys he dothe let or by mystunyng the uery trew armony A harpe well pleyde on shewthe swete melody a harper wyt hys wrest may tune þe harp wrong mystunyng of a Instrument shall hurt a trew song

the harpe

43

A song þat ys trew and full of swetnes may be euyle songe & tunyd amys the songe of hym selff yet neuyrtheles ys trew and tunabyle & syng yt as yt ys then blame not þe song but marke well thys he þat hathe spyзt at an othyr mans song wyll do what he can to haue it song wrong

A songe

50

The clauycorde hathe an euynly kynde as the wyre ys wrestyd hy and lowe so be hys tunys to þe pleyers mynde for as yt ys wrestyde so must yt nede showe as by thys reson ye may well knowe A Instrument mystunyde shall hurt a trew song yet blame not þe clauycord þe wrester dothe wrong

A clarrycorde

57

A trompet blowne hy wyt to harde a blast shall cause hym to uary from þe tunable kynde but he þat blowthe to harde must swage at last and fayne to fall lower wyt a temporat wynde and then the trumpet the trew tune shall fynde for A Instrument ouyr wyndyd ys tunyd wrong blame none but þe blowere on hym yt ys long

A trumpet

64

Who pleythe on the harpe he shold pley trew Who syngythe a song let hys uoyce be tunabyle Who wrestythe þe clauycorde mystunyng eschew Who blowthe a trompet let hys wynd be mesurabyle for Instruments in them selff be ferme & stabyle And of trowthe wolde trowthe to euery mans song Tune them then trewly for in them ys no wrong

Trew councell

71

In musyke I have lernyde iiij colors as thys blake full blake uoyde & in lyke wyse rede by theys colors many sobtyle alteracyons ther ys that wyle begyle one thow in connyng he be well spede wyt a pryke of Induccyon from a body þat is dede he shall try so hys nombyrs wyt swetnes of hys song That þe here shalbe plesyde & yet he all wrong

Colours of musyke

37 it lacking H || 41 hys]is R || 42 a]an RS || 47 but lacking H || 49 do inserted above line R || 50 clauycorde]clarricord R]claricord S | euynly]tunely S || 52 so be hys tunys]So it tunythe R]So it tuenyth S || 53 nede]needys R]nedes S || 55 A Instrument]Any Instrument RS || 56 clauycord]clarrycord R]claricord S || 59 at last]at the last RS || 61 trumpet the trew]trumpet trew H || 66 clauycorde]clarricorde R]claricorde S || 68 them]tehym R || 72 blake full blake uoyde]Blake, ful blake, verte, S || 75 of lacking H | Induccyon]Indicion RS || 77 þe here]therer R]the eare S

288

The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

78

I pore man unable of thys scyens to skyll saue a lytyle practyse I haue by experyens I mene but trouthe and of good wyll to remembyre the doers þat usythe soche offence not one sole but generall in sentence by cause I can skyle of a lytyle song to trye the trew corde to be known from þe wrong

The practiser

85

Yet trouthe was drownyde & he not sanke but style dyde flete aboue the watyre enformacyone hade pleyd hym soche a pranke that wyt power the pore had lost hys matyre by cause þat trouthe began to clatyre Enformacyone hathe tauзt hym to solff thys songe pacyence parforce content yew wyt wronge

Trouthe

92

I assayde theys tuns my thouзt them not swete The concords were nothyng musycall I callde mastyrs of musyke connyng & dyscrete and the fyrst pryncypall whos name was tuball guydo. boyce. Ihonn de murys. vitriaco & them all I prayde them of helpe of thys comberus song prykyde wyt force & lettyrde wyt wronge

trouthe

99

They seyde I was horsse & myзt not syng my uoyce ys to pore yt ys not audyble Enformacyone ys so curyus in hys chauntyng that to bere þe trew playne song yt ys not possyble hys proporcyons be so hard wyt so hyghe a quatryble and the playne song in þe margyne so craftely bounde þat the trew tunys of tuball can not haue the ryзt sounde

true answere

106

Wele quod trouthe yet ons I trust uerely to haue my uoyce and syng agayne and to flete oute trouthe & claryfy yt trewly and ete sugyre candy a day or twayne and then to the deske to syng trew & playne Enformacyon shall not allway entune thys song my parte shallbe trew when hys contyruers shalbe wrong

trouthe

113

Enformacyone hym enboldyde of þe monacorde from consonants to concords he musyde hys mastry I assayde þe musyks bothe knyзt & lorde but none wold speke þe sownd borde was to hy then kept I þe playne keys þat marde all my melody Enformacion drave a crochet þat passyde all my song With proporcio parforche dreven on to longe

Enformacion

79 a lacking S || 82 generall]generally RS || 90 thys]hys R]his S || 108 yt lacking S || 111 thys]hys RS || 112 parte]partis R]parts S || 115 musyks]Musyke S || 118 Enformacion...crochet lacking H || 119 lacking H | proporcio]proporcion S

Appendix C

289

120

Soferauns cam in to syng a parte go to quod trouthe I pray you begyn nay soste quod he the gyse of my arte ys to rest a long rest or I set in nay by long restyng ye shall nothyng wyn for enformacyon ys crafty & so hy in hys song that yf ye fall to restyng Infeythe yt wylbe wrong

dialoge

127

Enformacyone wyll teche a doctor hys game from superacute to the doble diapason I assayde to acute and when I cam enformacyone was mete for a doble diatessaron he sang by apothome þat hathe ij kyndes in oone wit many sotell semytunys most mete for thys song pacyens parforce content you wyt wrong

Trouthe

134

I kepe be rownd and he be square the one ys be mole & þe othyre be quary yf I myзt make tryall as I cold & dare I shold shew why theys ij kynds do uary but god knowthe all so dothe not kyng hary for yf he dyd then change sholde thus thys song pyte for pacyens & conscyens for wrong

Trouthe

140a

Me nysswhete parabolam

122 soste]sofft S | arte]parte S || 126 yt]in S || 128 doble]noble S || 131 apothome]a pothome RS || 132 thys]his RS 134 be square]by square RS || 136 cold]couthe R || 139 thus thys]this mi R]this .iiii. S || 140a lacking H | Me nysswhete]Nenyssvvhete S

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