Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, volume 2 Nicholas Ludford Missa Regnum mundi Richard Pygott Salve regina Blue Heron Scott Metcalfe Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, vol. 2 Blue Heron A Mass for Saint Margaret treble Julia Steinbok, Teresa Wakim, Shari Wilson mean Jennifer Ashe (Pygott), Pamela Dellal, Martin Near Nicholas Ludford (c1490-1557) • Missa Regnum mundi contratenor Owen McIntosh, Jason McStoots Sarum plainchant • Proper for the Feast of St Margaret tenor Michael Barrett, Sumner Thompson bass Paul Guttry, Ulysses Thomas, Peter Walker Richard Pygott (c1485-1549) • Salve regina Scott Metcalfe director 1 Introit: Me expectaverunt peccatores (0:00) RULERS PG UT 2 Kyrie XII (Conditor) (0:00) 3 Gloria / Missa Regnum mundi (0:00) Nicholas Ludford 4 Gradual: Specie tua (0:00) SOLOISTS PD SW Missa Regnum mundi and Salve regina edited and completed by Nick Sandon (Antico Edition RCM135 and 5 Alleluya: Veni electa mea (0:00) SOLOISTS PG ST RCM 104). Kyrie and Ite edited by Nick Sandon (Antico Edition LCM1). Used with permission from Antico 6 Credo / Missa Regnum mundi (0:00) Edition (www.anticoedition.co.uk). Other Sarum chant edited by Scott Metcalfe from Graduale ad usum Ludford Sarisburiensis (Paris, 1532). 7 Offertory: Offerentur regi virgines (0:00) Recorded September 18–21, September 26-27 & October 8, 2011 at the Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 8 Sanctus / Missa Regnum mundi (0:00) Ludford Engineering & mastering: Joel Gordon (assistant: Livia Lin) 9 Agnus Dei / Missa Regnum mundi (0:00) Producer: Eric Milnes Ludford Editing: Eric Milnes & Joel Gordon bk Communion: Feci iudicium (0:00) Cover photo: Green Iguana (Iguana iguana), Barro Colorado Island, Panama (Getty Images) bl Ite missa est (0:00) DEACON OM All other photos: Liz Linder (www.lizlinder.com), in the Italian Garden of the Codman Estate in Lincoln, Massachusetts (courtesy Historic New England.) bm Votive antiphon: Salve regina (0:00) SOLOISTS JM MB ST PG Graphic design: Pete Goldust & Melanie Germond Richard Pygott Total time: (00:00) © 2012 Blue Heron Renaissance Choir Notes and translations © 2012 by Scott Metcalfe. All rights reserved. A MASS FOR SAINT MARGARET Christianity, includes just two feasts of vir- gin martyrs celebrated with nine lessons at Many cyclical settings of the Mass are based Matins whose responsories and other texts upon a pre-existent melody, often a piece were drawn from the Common rather than of plainchant; the melody may be carried by from the saint’s own individual Office and the tenor of the polyphonic composition as a Proper. These are St Margaret of Antioch and cantus firmus. But why did composers choose the Welsh saint Winifred. Of the two, Margaret And sodeynly appered in hir sight, any one cantus firmus in particular? As Andrew was by far the more popular. Venerated as the Where as she lay bounden in prisoun, Kirkman puts it, “To build a Mass setting around protector of women in childbirth, she was In the lykenesse of a felle dragoun a borrowed melody is to unlock the potential commonly depicted emerging from or stand- of that melody for symbolic and emblematic ing astride a dragon, in an allusion to the most The olde serpent, whiche called is Sathan, significance. With its presence in each section colorful incident from her legend. More than And hastyly to assayle hir he began. of the Ordinary, it weaves a continuous meta- 250 churches in England are dedicated to her, phorical thread through the entire musical the most notable of which is St Margaret’s, setting, and hence through the ritual enact- Westminster, which lies immediately adja- With open mouthe, the virgyne to devour, ment of which it is part.”1 A chant proper to cent to Westminster Abbey and is today the the feast of a saint, for instance, would provide parish church of the Houses of Parliament. First of alle, he swolwed in hir hede, a suitable cantus firmus for a Mass to be sung St Margaret’s was Nicholas Ludford’s parish And she devoutly, hirself to socoure, on that feast day. The quotation might also be church from the early 1520s until his death, intended to attract the intercessory power of and he was buried there on August 9, 1557. Gan crosse hirself, in hir mortal drede; its divine honoree. But in the case of Nicholas Ludford was not employed at St Margaret’s— And by grace, anoon or she toke hede, Ludford’s Missa Regnum mundi, the cantus he spent most of his career at St Stephen’s The horrible beste, in relees of hir peyne, firmus (“Regnum mundi et omnem ornatum Chapel, a collegiate church attached to the seculi contempsi”) is the ninth responsory at royal palace of Westminister—but he seems Brast assondre and partyd was on tweyne. Matins from the Common of Virgin Martyrs— to have been an active parishioner, including that is, the liturgy prescribed for the feasts of all serving as warden. In 1533/4 St Margaret’s those saints who are virgin martyrs but who do churchwardens bought a book of polyphonic not have their own special set of texts— which music from him for 20 shillings. It thus seems seems unpromising. Why compose such a most likely that Ludford originally composed splendid Mass for such an apparently generic the Missa Regnum mundi for a festal mass at St John Lydgate, The Lyfe of Seynt Margarete St. Margaret of Antioch. Illuminated manuscript ca. 1440. purpose? Margaret’s on her feast day, July 20; perhaps it (c. 1426), ed. Sherry L. Reames, Middle English Legends of Women Saints was included in the book of music that Ludford (Kalamazoo, MI, 2003), lines 283-94. In fact, the Use of Salisbury, the liturgical sold to the church. Felle: fierce, anoon: before, brast: burst; calendar that governed medieval English on tweyne: in two. 4 5 The Missa Regnum mundi and Why did Bull copy so much music so quickly? became, at best, obsolete; at worst it was choirbooks, four sets of partbooks, and one the Peterhouse partbooks He appears to have been acting on commis- viewed as gaudy ornament to a despicable rit- organ manuscript. (Compare this paucity to, sion. The monastic foundation at Canterbury ual. Many musical sources were destroyed and for example, the sixteen choirbooks owned Once composed, a polyphonic Mass might was dissolved by Henry VIII in April 1540, if a manuscript escaped deliberate destruction in 1524 by a single establishment, Magdalen make its way in the world for uses inde- just one of nearly a dozen great monastic by zealots, it might yet be subjected to other College, Oxford.) Bull’s manuscripts, a set of five pendent of its original purpose, so a Mass cathedrals dissolved in 1539-41, mostly to be indignities: partbooks (one each for the standard five parts whose cantus firmus referred to St Margaret refounded in short order as secular institu- of early sixteenth-century English polyphony: might be sung on other occasions. If this were tions subject not to an abbot (a member of a A greate nombre of them whych treble, mean, contratenor, tenor, and bass), not so, Ludford’s Mass would certainly not religious order), but to a bishop and thus to the purchased those superstysyouse made their way to the library of Peterhouse, have survived until today, for the only source king as head of the Church of England. Since mansyons [former monasteries], Cambridge, by the 1630s, where they survived we have of the piece is one unrelated to St many of the refounded cathedrals aspired to reserved of those librarye bokes, yet another cataclysm of Protestant destruc- Margaret’s, Westminster, or indeed to any other considerably more pomp and circumstance some to serve their jakes [privies], tion, that wrought by the Puritans in the church that might have celebrated her feast than their monastic predecessors, which typi- some to scoure their candelstyckes, 1640s. Today they may be consulted on the with such grandeur. How precisely, we do cally did not attempt ambitious polyphony, and some to rubbe their bootes. worldwide web in astonishingly high-resolu- not know, but by 1539 the work had arrived they sought to hire a large choir of professional Some they solde to the grossers tion photographs taken by the Digital Image at Magdalen College, Oxford, where it was singers as well as recruit choirboys for train- and sope-sellers…. Yea the univer- Archive of Medieval Music (www.diamm.ac.uk). copied by the professional singer and music ing. Bull appears among twelve vicars-choral sytees of thys realm are not all scribe Thomas Bull into a large collection of on a list of the staff of the newly-refounded clere in this detestable fact…. I Or, at least, some of Bull’s set may be viewed Masses, Magnificats, and votive antiphons that Canterbury Cathedral. The first of the twelve know a merchaunt man, whych there. Somewhere along the way the tenor he would bring with him in 1540 when he is Thomas Tallis; there are also ten “queresters” shall at thys tyme be namelesse, partbook disappeared, along with several joined the choir of Canterbury Cathedral. Bull’s (choristers, “quire” being the normal sixteenth- that boughte the contentes of two pages of the treble book. Now, of the 72 work is manifestly that of a professional copy- century spelling of the word) and their master. noble lybraryes…. Thys stuffe hath pieces in the set (known today as the Henrician ist hired to assemble, in considerable haste, a The new choral establishment would also he occupied in the stede of graye set of Peterhouse partbooks, for their present great quantity of music intended to be sung require an entirely new library of up-to-date paper [wrapping-paper] for the location and the monarch during whose reign in church services, rather than for study or polyphonic repertory, and this Bull supplied, space of more than these x yeares, they were copied), 39 are transmitted uniquely, for presentation to a noble as a gift.