LOVE & DEVOTION in MEDIEVAL ENGLAND the DUFAY COLLECTIVE & VOICE WILLIAM LYONS Director
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LOVE & DEVOTION IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND THE DUFAY COLLECTIVE & VOICE WILLIAM LYONS director The Dufay Collective: Jon Banks, William Lyons, Rebecca Austen-Brown 2 I have set my hert so hy Love & devotion in medieval England 1 Blowe, northerne wynd (Lyons) 4.01 Source: London, British Library, Harley MS 2253, f.72v [lyric only] 2 I have set my hert so hy (Anon.) 2.52 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 381, f.20 3 Plus pur l’enoyr (Anon.) 2.14 Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 5943, f.163v 4 Bryd one brere (Anon., arr. Lyons) 2.54 Cambridge, King’s College, Muniment Roll 2 W.32v 5 Le grant pleyser (Anon.) 2.37 Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 5943, f.165v 6 Maiden in the mor lay (Lyons) 5.01 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D.913, flyleaf [lyric only] 7 Wel wer hym that wyst (Anon.) 3.12 Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 5943, f.162v 8 Esperance (Anon.) 2.24 Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 5943, f.165r 9 Adam lay ibowndyn (Lyons) 2.26 MS Sloane 2593, ff.10v–11 [lyric only] 3 10 Danger me hath, unskyfuly (Anon.) 1.30 Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 5943, f.166r 11 Alysoun (Lyons) 6.21 London, British Library, Harley MS 2253, f.63v [lyric only] 12 Ye have so longe kepe schepe (Anon.) 4.22 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 381, f.20v 13 Wyth ryth al my herte (Anon.) 4.29 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 381, f.22 14 Nowel: owt of youre sleep aryse (Anon.) 4.37 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arch. Selden B 26, f.14v 15 I rede that thu be joly and glad (Anon.) 1.57 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 381, f.22v 16 I syng of a mayden (Anon., arr. Lyons) 4.05 MS Sloane 2593, ff.10v–11 [lyric only] 17 Hayl Mary, ful of grace (Anon.) 4.11 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arch. Selden B 26, f.23r 18 Ave Maria I say (Anon.) 3.19 Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 5943, f.168r–168v 19 Corpus Christi Carol (Lyons) 4.24 Oxford, Balliol Library, MS 354, folio 165v [lyric only] 4 20 Gresley Dances (Anon., arr. Lyons) 9.16 I. Ly bens distonys II. Trobyll me the bordon III. Eglamour IV. Alas the herd whill that I coth dans V. This enderis day VI. Ly bens distonys [reprise] Matlock Record Office, D77 BOX 38 [Gresley], pp 51–79 76.12 The Dufay Collective William Lyons recorder, double pipes, flute, whistle Rebecca Austen-Brown recorder, vielle, rebec, gittern Jon Banks gittern, harp Jacob Heringman lute, gittern Voice Trio Emily Burn · Victoria Couper · Clemmie Franks directed by William Lyons Recording: 16–20 December 2014, St Michael & All Angels Church, Oxford, England Recording producer & balance engineer: Adrian Hunter Cover design: Paul Marc Mitchell for WLP Ltd. Booklet photos: Ꭿ William Lyons, Adrian Hunter ൿ 2015 The copyright in this sound recording is owned by William Lyons Ꭿ 2015 William Lyons www.thedufays.com Marketed by Avie Records www.avie-records.com 5 I have set my hert so hy Love & devotion in medieval England At one time the received perception among historians was that in musical terms medieval England was very much a backwater, overlooked and overwhelmed by the flood of musical production and innovation taking place in mainland Europe, in particular France and Italy. That view has changed considerably over recent decades, thanks to a greater appreciation of the context of England in relation to its mainland neighbours and the realisation that to apply modern notions of borders and linguistic, political and geographical factors is misleading and irrelevant to an age in which, as regards ‘high’ culture at least, there was considerable common ground and cross-fertilisation of musical ideas between kingdoms linked by politics and family ties. The kings of England spent much of their time – indeed, in some cases their entire lives – ensconced in France, and it is unlikely that they would have viewed ‘English’ court culture as separate from that of France. The predominant courtly language was French, and remained so well into the 16th century. Another factor, namely the preservation of original texts and music, has had a significant bearing on the historical relevance of English music to medieval culture. During the 14th and 15th centuries in France and Italy, a conscious effort was made to preserve the music of former and present times in ornate monumental collections of vernacular and Latin songs. In England there is evidence that the same practice occurred, but owing to various external factors very little concrete evidence survives to show the extent of such collections. What is clear is that there was, in the 14th and 15th centuries, an explosion of written poetic output in the vernacular, rather than in the courtly convention of French. Of these thousands of poems, only a handful have survived intact with music – ‘intact’ because the accepted performance practice of poetry in this period was that it was to be sung, or at least recited with musical accompaniment. The paucity of extant material belies the fact that the lyrics we now refer to as ‘poems’ were intimately bound to music. In this spirit of reconstruction, I have taken the lyrics of Maiden in the mor lay, Alysoun, Corpus Christi Carol and Blowe, northerne wynd and set them to adapted original or newly composed melodies, thus repositioning them in their original context. The carol is a uniquely English genre, having developed from French dance origins into a song form with both secular and devotional subjects. Of the four carols sung here – Adam lay ibowndyn, I syng of a mayden, Nowel: owt of youre sleep aryse and Hayl Mary, ful of grace – the latter three are associated with the Nativity, while the first deals with Adam’s travails after the Fall. Both Adam and I syng of a mayden survive without music, and so I have adapted the contemporary carol Ecce quod natura for I syng and created a new setting of Adam in the style of a robust carol (which would appear to be the origin of this lyric). With all of these new settings, the intention is to present the songs in a purely historical setting; to a greater or lesser extent, elements of modern or traditional ideas have been allowed into the mix. To recapture the essence of a sung lyric as opposed to the exact period of the poetry has been the intention, with the hopeful result that these new settings compliment the original music and words around them. This recording focuses on what vernacular songs and even rarer instrumental music have come down to us in the form of intact manuscripts from the 14th and 15th centuries or as separated folios reused as flyleaves or as binding for later works. The manuscripts and dialects used for the poems indicate a broad swathe of highly developed poetic output from the far north-east to the south-west of England. Subject matter usually follows the standard motifs of ‘fin amor’ [courtly love] as perfected by the Troubadours, or devotional texts, but there are also more typical English preoccupations with the weather, as in Blowe, northerne wynd. The troubadour commonplace of unrequited love is given a twist with the naming of the object of desire in Alysoun and Wyth ryth al my herte, the latter with the piteous pleading refrain that simply repeats the name of ‘Annys’ again and again and again. The vast majority of the music in this recording comes from sources found in various parts of England, and 6 demonstrates the beauty and breadth of verse being written. In particular, I have drawn from two major and well-known manuscripts containing secular songs: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 381 and Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 5943. The poets in these and the other sources on this disc remain largely anonymous; sadly, an assessment of their output is made impossible by the lack of a coherent and comprehensive overview of the conditions and practices of poets and musicians at that time. All of the music and song that is contained in medieval sources comes from the milieu of ‘high’ culture: that associated with courtly, noble and religious houses. Apart from the church, where the practice of writing down music for repeated performance had been in place for centuries, most music was learnt, transmitted and performed from memory. While melodically and rhythmically many of the pieces in this recording might suggest folk or popular roots, the sad truth is that medieval English folk and popular music does not survive in any clearly defined state; the ample testimony in documentary archives, in literature and in visual imagery for abundant music-making is not balanced by extant lyrics and melodies. The reason for such a regrettable loss is clear. Although surely known to the literate classes of society, folk and popular music were not preserved by or for that class; those individuals competent to notate such texts and tunes were never given a mandate to do so. Folk musicians in an oral tradition, moreover, would not have needed notation, and one can imagine that minstrels might even have resisted the idea, viewing it as a threat to the trade secrets of their guild. This having been said, the threefold division of music into church, courtly and folk is convenient but ultimately fraught with problems, the main clearly being the identification of a ‘learned’ style of performance as regards religious and popular music-making. In fact, vocal styles and instrumental playing techniques may well have varied very little across the board; it was perhaps the style that differed rather than the musical techniques themselves.