Music from THE ETON CHOIRBOOK LAMBE • STRATFORD • DAVY BROWNE • KELLYK • WYLKYNSON TONUS PEREGRINUS Music from the Eton Choirbook Out of the 25 composers The original index lists more represented in the Eton than 60 antiphons – all votive The Eton Choirbook – a giant the Roses’, and the religious reforms and counter-reforms Choirbook, several had strong antiphons designed for daily manuscript from Eton College of Henry VIII and his children. That turbulence devastated links with Eton College itself: extraliturgical use and fulfilling Chapel – is one of the greatest many libraries (including the Chapel Royal library) and Walter Lambe and, quite Mary’s prophecy that “From surviving glories of pre- makes the surviving 126 of the original 224 leaves in Eton possibly, John Browne were henceforth all generations shall Reformation England. There is a College Manuscript 178 all the more precious, for it is just there in the late 1460s as boys. call me blessed”; one of the proverb contemporary with the one of a few representatives of several generations of John Browne, composer of the best known – and justifiably so Eton Choirbook which might English music in a period of rapid and impressive astounding six-part setting of – is Walter Lambe’s setting of have been directly inspired by development. Eton’s chapel library itself had survived a Stabat mater dolorosa 5 may have gone on to New Nesciens mater 1 in which the composer weaves some the spectacular sounds locked forced removal in 1465 to Edward IV’s St George’s College, Oxford, while Richard Davy was at Magdalen of the loveliest polyphony around the plainchant tenor up in its colourful pages: “Galli cantant, Italiae capriant, Chapel – a stone’s throw away in Windsor – during a College, Oxford in the 1490s. We can imagine these (sung by itself on track 3). The Magnificat is Mary’s song Germani ululant, Anglici jubilant” (roughly translated as temporary fall from royal favour. It was under the rule of composers and their fellow-singers grouped around the of praise and joy in response to her cousin Elizabeth’s “The French sing, the Italians quaver, the Germans wail, Henry VII, who had claimed the monarchy for the Tudors huge choirbook on a lectern – seven or so men, and in own prophetic salutation: “Blessed art thou among and the English make a joyful noise!”). English musicians in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth, that the repertoire of the front, ten boys who with eyesight still undimmed could women, and blessed is the Fruit of thy womb”; and at had loved successions of joyful-sounding thirds (C+E, Eton Choirbook particularly flourished, and the Choirbook read from the top of the very large pages. The size of the some point no fewer than 24 versions of the Magnificat D+F) for generations before the Eton Choirbook, as can be itself was put together around 1500 – described in a 1531 pages meant they had to be parchment and, in order to be were added to the Choirbook, including a virtuosic setting heard in the first complete setting of the Passion (Naxos inventory as “a grete ledger of prick song secundo folio legible in the uncertain candlelight, the music was solidly by Hugh Kellyk 6 – of which this is believed to be the first 8.555861). By experimenting with full triads (C+E+G) John tum cuncta”. Putting together a Choirbook was no small inscribed on staves 2cm high. Each voice-part is written recording; and last but certainly not least, the ebullient Dunstaple – the first truly great English composer – was feat: as Magnus Williamson notes in his introduction to out by itself (without barlines) on one part of the open four-part setting by William Stratford 2 which we sing able to take this jubilation to a new level, such that in 1475 the recently-published DIAMM facsimile, not only would it double-page spread: unlike a modern score there is no here in alternating (and finally combined) choirs of upper the musicologist Tinctoris could claim that music had been have cost somewhere in the region of an entire annual vertical alignment between the parts and there is little to and lower voices. Stratford’s polyphony appears to transformed during his own lifetime into a “new art” (Naxos salary (of, say, a senior chaplain), but would also have show the existence of the tactus – or beat – apart from the contain two quirky but audible examples of rhythmic word- 8.557341). This “joyful noise” remained a quintessentially “required the skins of 112 average-sized calves”! groupings of the noteheads. The noteheads used painting: one lost beat between the words “the rich” and English characteristic through the extremes of Tallis’s practically throughout are in “black-full” notation (i.e. filled- “He hath sent empty away”, and one extra beat at the forty-part motet Spem in alium (Naxos 8.557770) and However magnificent, the music in semibreves and minims) which survived later in words “his seed for ever”. Gibbons’s ravishing Hymnes and Songs of the Church of the Eton Choirbook is just the England than on the Continent, rather than the more (Naxos 8.557681) to English composers of the 20th tip of a titanic schedule of familiar “black-void” notation (which is more-or-less what Almost the final addition to the century and today. But it is in the Eton Choirbook itself that devotions and supplications we still use today). Red ink, too, provided a way of Choirbook is a Passion setting – some unsurpassed heights of musical ecstasy were which took place in the College conveying further instructions to the performers: red text the first by a named composer, reached, mirroring the lofty perpendicular style of the Chapel. Each day some seven is used in sections for reduced numbers of voices, while Richard Davy. The opening architecture of the 15th and early 16th centuries. masses were said or sung, and red noteheads introduce the notion of binary pages of his St Matthew in addition there were the various ‘imperfection’ into a mensural world of rhythmic Passion 4 have been lost, so Founded along with King’s observances which had sprung proportions grounded on the Trinitarian foundation of the the story begins here with Jesus College, Cambridge in the early up over the centuries around the person of Mary, the virgin mediaeval theorists – three against two: triplets and standing in front of Pilate. 1440s by Henry VI, Eton mother of Jesus (later to be silenced at the strokes of pen hemiolas, as musicians call them today. Davy’s polyphony sets the College was to be a haven of and sword of Protestant Reformers); feastdays, of which spoken parts of the narrative, with the rest of the text education, devotion, and charity there were many, required yet more celebration, with a intoned by a single voice), and is notable for its intense in the middle of political particular emphasis on the events of Passiontide and Holy and fast-changing response to the text – for instance, the turbulence – the final stages of Week. The College’s statutes of 1443/4 made provision for, way the names of Barrabas and of Jesus are contrasted. the Hundred Years’ War with among others, 16 choristers and 4 clerks, who were to have A main index was compiled after all these pieces had France, the so-called ‘Wars of good voices and be skilled in reading, song, and polyphony. been added; the only two pieces not listed in this index are by Robert Wylkynson and were presumably added consistency and harmonic direction (i.e. when “beauty” Note on the recording technique between 1500 to 1515 during his time in charge as should triumph over “necessity”), and years of rehearsal Informator choristarum at Eton. The final page of the with the ensemble trying out different possibilities for each The main pair of microphones on this recording are important area with non-harmonic distortion makes a manuscript contains what John Milsom has described as part’s vocal line. The result, we can be sure, is never indeed unorthodox, and this will be the first commercial recording more difficult for the brain to process, and its “most bizarre” item, Wylkynson’s Jesus autem going to be one hundred per cent the same as 500 years release that has used them. They are an attempt to therefore more tiring to listen to. The result of removing transiens / Credo in Deum 7 – a canonic setting, for 13 ago, but we can be equally positive that these “wrong provide the listener with a new approach to the idea of the distortion is in many ways unremarkable. Lines (as in voices, of the Apostles’ Creed (as shown on the cover of notes” (as some critics might term them) are on the right high resolution sound. “High resolution” in audio is this beautiful polyphony) should be easier to follow, this album). The names of the twelve apostles are track, as once-pallid polyphony bursts into resonant generally taken to mean extending frequency range, and individual voices should be clearer and easier to place, inscribed above successive phrases of the Creed in the combinations of tones that match the vivid blues, golds, providing the widest dynamic possibilities across that and the timbre of each voice should be more easily manuscript, and the opening chant “But Jesus passing and greens of the Choirbook itself. And on that note, we range. This would seem like a good idea; however, distinguishable. This microphone development is a work- through them” can be heard passing from one voice to are delighted that our performances have been recorded producing microphones that operate well across such an in-progress, but I believe it may prove the beginning of an another.