IN CHAINS OF GOLD Magdalena Consort, director Peter Harvey: Julia Doyle (JD) - Treble The English Pre-Restoration Verse Anthem Catherine King (CK) & Eleanor Minney (EM) - Mean Charles Daniels (CD), Samuel Boden (SB), Jeremy Budd (JB) & Nicholas Todd (NT) - Contratenor VOLUME 1 Greg Skidmore (GS) & Simon Gallear (SG) - Tenor ORLANDO GIBBONS – COMPLETE CONSORT ANTHEMS Peter Harvey (PH) & Will Gaunt (WG) - Bassus Fretwork (FW) Asako Morikawa, Emily Ashton, Reiko Ichise, Sam Stadlen & Richard Boothby - viols Track Solo verses (order of appearance) instruments His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts (HMSC) 1 Behold, thou hast made my days CD FW [4.33] Jeremy West, Jamie Savan & Helen Roberts – cornetts 2 We praise thee, O Father EM, NT, PH, GS, SG, CK, SB FW [4.53] Abigail Newman, Stephanie Dyer & Stephen Saunders – sackbuts 3 In Nomine a5 No. 1 FW [4.07] Kirsty Whatley - harp 4 This is the record of John CD FW [4.02] Silas Woolston – organ 5 Great King of Gods CD, JB, PH HMSC, organ [4.41] William Hunt – Artistic Director 6 Do not repine, fair sun part 1 JB, SB, PH FW [4.43] 7 Do not repine, fair sun part 2 JD, CK, SB, JB, PH FW [2.58] www.signumrecords.com 8 In Nomine a5 No. 2 FW [4.09] 9 Glorious and powerful God PH, CD FW [4.59] 0 Blessed are all they that fear the Lord SB, CK, EM, CD , JB, SG, WG, GS, PH, NT FW, harp, organ [4.35] “... to return to the expressing of the ditty, the matter is now come to that state that though a song q O all true faithful hearts CD, CK, EM, NT, SG, PH HMSC, organ [3.42] be never so well made and never so aptly applied to the words yet shall you hardly find singers to express it as it ought to be, for most of our churchmen, so they can cry louder in their choir than w Sing unto the Lord PH, WG, CD, JB FW [5.19] their fellows, care for no more, whereas by the contrary they ought to study how to vowel and sing e In Nomine a5 No. 3 FW [3.42] clean, expressing their words with devotion and passion whereby to draw the hearer, as it were, r See, see, the Word is incarnate CD, SB, CK, PH, SG FW [5.48] in chains of gold by the ears to the consideration of holy things.” t Lord, grant grace EM, SB FW, HMSC, organ [3.10] Thomas Morley ‘Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practical Musick’ (1597) Total timings: [66.38] Cover Image – Allegory of Eloquence, after Dürer (c. 1503) - 3 - ORLANDO GIBBONS appreciated its easeful amenities as much as pithiness in phrasing, no over-elaborate in its choir-stalls. Headings for some anthems Complete CONSORT Anthems had Elizabeth I. One shred of comment about word-painting. By and large, they conformed; even note occasion of composition; that, at a services for him in its chapel mentions anthems even in Chapel, where royal fiatcould (and time when such remarks are as rare as hens’ teeth. Orlando Gibbons, a probationer Gentleman to ‘organs, cornets, sagbot, and other excellent did) countermand the strictures at will. of the Chapel Royal when James VI of instruments of musicke’. Tantalisingly little Sumptuous restraint, though, may be the One undeniable strain is semi-liturgical, fulsome Scotland gained the English crown in 1603, survives to recreate its aural bloom, unless phrase for emergent solutions conceived adulation. ‘Great King of Gods’ prefaced the was appointed his majesty’s privy-chamber one compares the ambience at Hampton: the by predecessors to Gibbons, like his senior one and only return by James to his native land, virginalist in 1620 after a decade’s casual only space left to match lost Greenwich and colleague, John Bull, and developed by him. in 1617. Its chordally weighted, upbeat stately entertaining, recompensed by random bounties. Whitehall by dimensions, date and build. Less major mode confidently instructs Jehovah of Unexpectedly, he died in 1625, less than echoic than stone cathedral vaults, these The essence of his urbane, elegant art, complex Psalm 95 to safeguard the king’s passage and three months after James. Despite a curtailed semi-private wood-panelled auditoria profited but still strikingly direct and personal, is hard finally translate his person bodily heavenwards, life-span, his brilliant output for voices, chamber from subtle reinforcement of intimate sonorities. to encapsulate. A ‘metaphysical’ label is more thwarting decay. ‘O all true faithful hearts’ ensemble and keyboard is a major glory of readily affixed to the era’s verse and prose interposes choruses like victory-galliards to the first Stuart reign. Its church side brings to A keen theologian, and doughty veteran of than music, even his; yet they trace parallel encourage public rejoicing in April 1619 over life court’s ritual: a sincere piety, enmeshed verse and prose, in his own right, James happily paths. Some needful context, if nothing else, is an avoided narrow shave: ‘A thanks Giving with dutiful and unique celebration of the enough left patronage of the arts to his queen furnished by a priceless score salvaged by the for the kings happy recoverie from a great Divine Right of Kings. Chapel was central Anna or crown prince Henry, but began to mid-century publisher John Playford; assumed dangerous sicknes’. His ominous nephritis, to his career, and mobile; its mandate, appreciate the assured English style of enlisting by him a Gibbons autograph, though most aggravated by melancholy after Anna’s death to attend a monarch on circuit. From the music into state-church ceremonial. He shrewdly likely copied for family soon after his death. in January, had alarmed doctors; many subjects warren of Whitehall, it decamped to royal appointed a well-born, energetic Chapel Dean Intriguing pre-print versions given for his were also concerned, by now mellowing to his residences scattered about London, including (a position latterly not even filled by Elizabeth), Madrigals (1612) and Fantazies of III. Parts (c. genial if autocratic foibles. The one gratulatory, another waterside palace now less-remembered: who addressed stagnant pay-rates. A new 1622) are trumped by a unique array of verse ensemble-backed item not in score is ‘Do Greenwich, former Placentia. The Tudors had mood informed composition, especially in verse anthems with ensemble parts. Church sources not repine’: a welcome ode for that Scottish favoured it for family and state business alike; anthem; a better showcase for soloistic hold some of these ‘consort anthems’, but Progress of 1617, to mildly pagan verse by first disembarkation-point to greet impressible declamation than full anthem. Into that, with sparser organ backing; only one survives Joseph Hall, one of the English bishops corralled foreign dignitaries arriving up the Thames. Gibbons put his full incantatory Orphic in extant household partbooks. Still, cathedrals into dancing attendance. A florid first section, Court musicians of all stripes felt obliged to persuasiveness. Composers for the earlier did employ ensembles. The score witnesses structured by verses but a bit racier than keep town-houses nearby, like the Ferraboscos; Elizabethan Anglican rite had been enjoined similar breadth of practice in the Chapel, down church norms, commiserates with Phœbus the Laniers even ran a playhouse. James to decorum in effects by Calvinist reformers: to rubrics for decani-cantoris alternatim effects Apollo on being outshone by James during his - 4 - - 5 - stay in Edinburgh. A dancier sequel anticipates murderous proclivities came to light: a Lucrezia popular, borrows blissful, indulgently prolonged the same day sennight before his death’ (so ensuing revels inside Auld Reekie’s palace, Borgia-like poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, syncopations from John Bull’s keyboard In dating it to late April 1618, and possibly a first Holyrood House; mimicking the measures to leading to death sentences for the pair, Nomine style. Graduating midway to a dance- use by the distinct choral foundation at Saint be trod by rustic fairies from Lothian dells, commuted by royal indulgence to permanent strain, it finally shoots the rapids in frothing George’s Chapel, Windsor). Here, too, homophony alongside classical nymphs. To perform it, the house-arrest. This contretemps did nothing to roulades. The last, also touched by virtuosic coalesces to reinforce a lone voice, but here Chapel was shipped up wholesale to the Water dent the setting’s cathedral popularity. keyboard traits, may borrow a motif or two with sombreness; emphasising starkly the of Leith, well in advance. from Ferrabosco’s third exemplar, and its less psalmist’s invective against worldly wealth. Virtual Maestro di Cappella thereafter, Gibbons usual scoring for two basses. Gibbons liked The pathos conveyed hints at contrition by Dean ‘Blessed are all they’, Psalm 128 in Prayerbook found another post in the household of a new to observe an earlier Elizabethan finesse with Maxey, a notorious amasser of ecclesiastical wording for the solemnisation of marriage, Prince of Wales (later Charles I) in 1616. It the habitually slow-moving plainsong part: benefices, among them a royal chaplaincy. carries barely inferior cachet, for Boxing resulted in an opus or two of innovative ‘breaking’ it, freeing it at node-points to quote Day 1613 in Whitehall Chapel: ‘A Weddinge string chamber music. His ‘In Nomines’, though, main motifs bandied by other voices, though Others have no precise occasion noted. Anthem first Made for my lord of summersett’. reflect an older world. Composition developed in a token form easily missed from outside ‘Glorious and powerful god’ is set apart from Robert Kerr, the Scots favourite who preceded around its cantus firmus, unchanged from a the texture. contemporary repertoire by its functional the great Duke of Buckingham in the king’s mass movement of the 1540s by John Taverner, uniqueness, though it answers a recent vogue: affections, had fallen for a demure court in creative emulation.