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The Lost Music of Canterbury Music for several saints from the Peterhouse partbooks FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019 The Parish of All Saints, Ashmont SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2019 First Church in Cambridge, Congregational The Lost Music of Canterbury In Memoriam Music for several saints from the Peterhouse partbooks Janet Haas Robert Fayrfax (1464–1521) Thomas Ryan O Albane deo grate Sanford Sylvan John Taverner (c. 1490–1545) Donald Wilkinson O Willelme pastor bone Arthur Chamberlayne (b. 1470s?) Ave gratia plena Maria The Lost Music of Canterbury INTERMISSION Today‘s program explores music from one feature illuminations and other fancy Hugh Aston (c. 1485–1558) trimmings that added value beyond the O baptista vates Christi of the largest and most important extant sources of sacred English polyphony from musical contents.) He appears to have Nicholas Ludford (c. 1490-1557) before the Reformation, the Peterhouse been commissioned to supply Canterbury Salve regina partbooks—so called because they are Cathedral with a complete repertoire of now housed at Peterhouse, the oldest and polyphonic music. The monastic foun- smallest of the Cambridge colleges. The dation at Canterbury was dissolved by Pre-concert talk in Cambridge by Scott Metcalfe partbooks, which contain a large collec- Henry VIII in April 1540, one of nearly a tion of Masses, Magnificats, and votive dozen great monastic cathedrals dissolved antiphons, seem to have been copied at in the years 1539-40. Most were refounded Magdalen College, Oxford, in the lat- as secular (i.e. non-monastic) institutions ter years of the reign of Henry VIII, by which were subject not to an abbot—a Sonja DuToit Tengblad Michael Barrett the professional singer and music scribe member of a religious order—but to a Brenna Wells Jason McStoots Blue Heron is funded in part by the Thomas Bull, just before Bull left Oxford bishop and thence to the king, who had Shari Alise Wilson tenor Massachusetts Cultural Council, declared himself head of the Church of a state agency. to take up a new position in the choir at treble Canterbury Cathedral. England. Monks sang mostly plainchant Paul Guttry and did not generally attempt virtuosic Jennifer Ashe David McFerrin Pamela Dellal Steven Hrycelak The Dorchester concert is supported in part Bull wrote down, within a very short time, polyphonic music, but the new founda- by a grant from the Boston Cultural Council, Martin Near bass a local agency which is funded by the Mass a great quantity of music in plain, care- tion cathedrals aspired to more pomp and mean Cultural Council, and administered by the fully checked, and highly legible copies circumstance and so they needed to hire a Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture. Scott Metcalfe that were evidently intended to be used choir of professional singers and to recruit Philippe Gagné director BLUE HERON for liturgical performance, rather than for and train choirboys. By the late summer Mark Sprinkle 950 Watertown St.Suite 8 All works edited and completed by Nick West Newton, MA 02465 study or for presentation to a noble as a of 1540 Canterbury Cathedral had assem- contratenor (617) 960-7956 Sandon and published by Antico Edition [email protected] gift. (Presentation manuscripts normally bled a roster of ten “queresters” (choris- (RCM58, 106, 120, 133, and 138). www.blueheron.org 2 3 ters, “quire” being the normal sixteenth- and the Protestant reformers who came able fact…. I knowe a merchaunt man, scribed and catalogued for the first time in century spelling of the word), their master, to power upon the accession of his young whych shall at thys tyme be name- the middle of the 19th century, the tenor and twelve vicars-choral or professional son, Edward, took a dim view of such pop- lesse, that boughte the contentes of book had disappeared, along with several ish decorations as professional choirs and two noble lybraryes for .xl. shyllyn- singing-men. Thomas Tallis is listed first ges pryce, a shame it is to be spoken. pages of the treble. Now, of the 72 pieces in of the “vyccars,” Bull sixth. And in addi- the highly sophisticated Latin music they Thys stuffe hath he occupyed in the the set, 39 are transmitted uniquely, while tion to singers, the new choral establish- sang. All the elaborate polyphonic mu- stede of graye paper [wrapping-pa- another dozen or so are incomplete in ment needed to acquire an entire library of sic of late medieval English Catholicism per] by the space of more than these their other sources. The result is that some polyphonic repertory. This Bull supplied, became, at best, obsolete; at worst it was .x. yeares, & yet he hath store ynough fifty pieces of music—a significant portion bringing nearly 70 works with him from viewed as a gaudy ornament to a despica- for as many yeares to come. of what survives from pre-Reformation ble ritual. Many musical manuscripts were Oxford and adding several more to the The Preface, “Johan Bale to the Read- England—now lack their tenor, and some collection after arriving in Canterbury. lost and many destroyed, and if a manu- er,” The laboryouse Journey & serche of of these (including the works by Fayr- script escaped deliberate destruction by Johan Leylande for Englandes Antiqui- fax, Aston, and Ludford on this program) The music Bull copied includes works by zealots, it might yet be subjected to other tees (1549) are also missing all or part of their treble. the most famous masters of the early six- indignities: We are able to sing the Peterhouse music teenth century, such as Robert Fayrfax, Very few collections of church music sur- nowadays thanks to the extraordinarily John Taverner, and Thomas Tallis, and by Neither had we been offended for the losse of our lybraryes, beynge vived the upheaval. The main sources skilled recomposition of the missing parts less celebrated but nonetheless first-class so many in nombre, and in so deso- extant from the entire first half of the by the English musicologist Nick Sandon. composers such as Nicholas Ludford and late places for the more parte, yf the sixteenth century are a mere three choir- (Sandon also pieced together the story Hugh Aston, as well as a number of won- chiefe monumentes and moste no- books, four sets of partbooks, and one or- of the partbooks and their origins that I derful pieces by musicians whose careers table workes of our excellent wry- gan manuscript. (Compare this paucity to, have related here.) Sandon finished his are less well documented and who have ters, had been reserved.… But to for example, the sixteen choirbooks owned destroye all without consyderacyon, dissertation on the Peterhouse partbooks, been virtually forgotten for the simple is and wyll be unto Englande for ever, in 1524 by a single establishment, Mag- including recompositions of most of the reason that so little of their work survives: a moste horryble infamy amonge the dalen College, Oxford, not one of which missing parts, in 1983. In the years since Richard Pygott, John Mason, Robert Jones, grave senyours of other nacyons. A survives.) We do not know what happened he has revised and refined his work and Robert Hunt, and others. Several of these great nombre of them whych pur- to Bull’s five partbooks (one each for the issued it in Antico Edition, completing the men, like Arthur Chamberlayne, cannot chased those superstycyouse man- standard five parts of early sixteenth- syons [the former monasteries], re- entire, monumental project in 2015. be identified with certainty: Chamber- served of those librarye bokes, some century English polyphony: treble, mean, layne’s Ave gratia plena Maria is the only to serve theyr jakes [privies], some contratenor, tenor, and bass) after 1547, but Music for several saints known piece ascribed to him and the only to scoure theyr candelstyckes, and by the 1630s they may have made their way known candidate for identification with some to rubbe their bootes. Some to the library of Peterhouse, where they The splendid masses and antiphons copied the composer is a “Chamberleyn” docu- they solde to the grossers and sope- would survive yet another cataclysm of into the Peterhouse partbooks offer dra- mented as a chorister at Magdalen College sellers, & some they sent over see to destruction, that wrought by the Puritans matic support to the picture of late medi- the bokebynders, not in small nom- eval English Catholicism drawn by Eamon in 1485-6. bre, but at tymes whole shyppes full, in the 1640s. to the wonderynge of the foren na- Duffy in his 1992 bookThe Stripping of the The new choral institution at Canterbury cyons. Yea, the universytees of thys Or, rather, most of Bull’s five partbooks Altars. Duffy shows that lay Catholicism in would not last long. Henry died in 1547 realm, are not all clere in this detest- survived. By the time the books were de- English parishes was deeply-felt and thriv- 4 5 ing on the very eve of being officially -ex Llewellyn Harrison, the eminent histori- phe that English music suffered in the late his tenure at Cardinal College to be sung tinguished. The Peterhouse music proves an of music in medieval Britain) “was the 1540s and early 1550s, when a very highly as part of the daily devotion to St. William the same for “high culture” at Oxford and universal and characteristic expression of developed, confident and ambitious mu- which was prescribed in the founding stat- Canterbury as well. These are not the ar- the devotional fervour of the later Middle sical culture and the infrastructure that utes of the college. After Wolsey’s fall from tistic products of a religious culture that Ages.” The most popular texts were made sustained it were brought to an end virtu- grace with Henry VIII in 1529, followed by was decaying, losing its sense of purpose, available to pious lay-people in prints such ally overnight, and most of its works and his arrest and death in 1530, the antiphon’s or doubting the efficacy of its traditional as the diglot Prymer or Book of Hours is- much other evidence of its activity were text was revised and redirected to Christ rituals.

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