In 1611, an important work of Byrd’s appeared called Psalms, Songs and Sonets: some solemne, others joyfull, framed to the life of the words: Fit for Voyces or Viols. In the dedication, the composer gives this good advice: “Onely this I desire; that you will be but as carefull to heare them well expressed, as I have beene both in the composing and correcting of them. Otherwise the best Song that euer was made will seeme harsh and vnpleasant.... Besides a song that is well and artificially made cannot be well perceived nor vnderstood at the first hearing, but the oftner you shall heare it, the better cause of liking it you will discouer; and commonly the Song is best esteemed with which our eares are best acquainted.”
Over the door of the music hall in Oxford University, is a canon (or round) for three voices, said to have been written by William Byrd. Some day, if you have not already seen it, you will have the thrilling experience of visiting the venerable college, and you may remember to look for this canon.
As today we consider no home complete without a piano (or pianoforte which is its real name), so in the 16th and 17th centuries we would have found a little key board instrument so small that it could easily be swallowed whole by one of our grand pianos, and you would never know where it had disappeared! It was known by several names,—spinet, clavecin, and virginal or virginals. Another instrument belonging to the same family and period is the harpsichord, which is more like our grand piano in shape. But later we will tell you more of the pianoforte’s family tree, and of its tiny but important grand-parent.
It was quite the proper thing for all the ladies of the realm to play the virginals, and the Queens, Mary, Elizabeth, and Mary, Queen of Scots, were excellent performers.
The very first music printed for the virginals in England was called Parthenia (from the Greek word Parthenos, meaning unmarried woman or virgin). The printed title also tells us that it was “composed by three famous masters, William Byrd, Dr. John Bull and Orlando Gibbons Gentilmen of his Majesties most illustrious Chappell.” There are twenty-one pieces from the old dances which formed the Suites, of which you will soon hear,—Preludiums, Pavanes, Galiardes, a Fantasia, and one The Queene’s Command. It was published in 1611, on staves of six lines, instead of five, as we use, and it was the first musical work engraved on copper plates!
Another most valuable collection was for many years called Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal Book, but is now the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, and the original manuscript is in the Fitzwilliam museum at Cambridge. It was supposed to have been “Good Queen Bess’” book, but it was not, as some of its compositions were composed after her death. It is not known who copied 220 pages of music, but it may have been a wealthy Roman Catholic, Francis Tregian, who spent twenty-four years in prison on account of his religious faith. This name, abbreviated or in initials, is found in several places in the manuscript. An edition in our notation has been made by J. A. Fuller Maitland and W. Barclay Squire. Many of the old songs of English minstrelsy are found among the numbers, and they were arranged for the instrument by the famous composers of that day. There are also original compositions as well as “ayres” and variations. Among the composers we find Dr. John Bull, Thomas Morley, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, Giles Farnaby, Richard Farnaby, Thomas Tallis, Jan Sweelinck, the Dutch organist, and many others. Here are some of the quaint titles: St. Thomas’ Wake, King’s Hunt, The Carman’s Whistle, The Hunt’s Up, Sellonger’s Round, Fortune My Foe, Pawles Warfe, Go from My Window, Bonny Sweet Robin, besides many Pavanes, Galiardes, Fantasias, and Preludiums.
There is also a collection of Byrd’s virginal music called My Lady Nevell’s Booke. Lady Nevell may have been a pupil of Byrd. There are two collections of this same kind at Buckingham Palace, the home of the King of England,—Will Forster’s Virginal Book and Benjamin Cosyn’s Virginal Book. In the index of the latter, we read: “A table of these Lessons following made and sett forth by Ben Cos.” In all, he copied more than 90 compositions!
Later came John Playford, music publisher, whose first musical publication, The English Dancing-Master (1650), contains almost a hundred old folk tunes. Select Musical Ayres appeared three years later, and is a typical 17th century song collection of first-class poems by Jonson, Dryden and others set to music by well-known composers. His book on the theory of music, used for almost a century, contained “lessons” for the viol, the cithern and flageolet. His Dancing Master, a collection of airs for violin for country dances, has brought to us many popular ballad tunes and dance airs of the period.
In these collections we often find the names Fancies, Fantazia, or Fantasies, a type of composition that grew out of the madrigal and led to the sonata. It was the name given to the first compositions for instruments alone like the ricercari of the Italians, which were original compositions and not written on a given subject (called in England “ground”), or on a folk song. The Fancies were sometimes written for the virginal, and sometimes for groups of instruments such as a “chest of viols” or even five cornets(!).
“Chest of Viols” may sound queer to you, but it isn’t! It was the custom in England at that time for people to have collections of instruments in or out of chests. So, when callers came they could play the viol, instead, probably of bridge! You can read about these interesting old days in Samuel Pepys’ Diary. He played the lute, the viol, the theorbo, the flageolet, the recorder (a kind of flute) and the virginal, and he was the proud owner of a chest of viols. He always carried his little flageolet with him in his pocket, and he says that while he was waiting in a tavern for a dish of poached eggs, he played his flageolet, also that he remained in the garden late playing the flageolet in the moonlight. (Poetic Pepys!)
Thomas Morley, Byrd’s pupil, who was made a partner in the publishing house after Tallis’s death, wrote his madrigals for virginal, and a collection called First Book of Consort Lessons for Six Instruments, Lute, Pandora, Cittern (an old English form of guitar), Bass Viol, Flute, and Treble Viol, and much sacred music. He also wrote a Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practical Musick, a book of great value and interest to musicians for the last three centuries, for it is a mirror of his time and of his fellow composers.
He tells of a gentleman, who, after dinner, was asked by his hostess to sing from the music she gave him. It was the custom in England to bring out the music books after dinner and for the guests to play and sing, as we wind up our graphophones and switch on the radio. The gentleman stammeringly declared that he could not sing at sight and “everyone began to wonder; yea, some whispered to others, demanding how he was brought up.” He was so ashamed of his ignorance that he immediately took music lessons to remedy his woeful lack of culture. This proves that musical education was not looked upon as a luxury but a necessity in the 17th century.
Truly, it was a musical era, this time of Morley and Byrd! Fancy playing, while waiting for the barber, the viol, flute, lute, cittern, or virginal left for that purpose. Yet what would our dentist do today if he had to listen to a saxophone and jazz chorus from his waiting room? In those days, too, there was always a bass viol left in a drawing-room for the guest, to pass the time, waiting for the host to appear. Think of all the practising you could do waiting for the busy dentist or eternally late hostess!
The children of people who were poor, were taught music to make them fit to be “servants, apprentices or husbandmen.” Laneham, a groom who had been brought up in the royal stable, was advanced to the post of guarding the door of the council chamber and this is how he described his qualifications for the job: “Sometimes I foot it with dancing; now with my gittern, and else my cittern, then at the virginals (ye know nothing comes amiss to me); then carol I up a song withal; that by-and-by they come flocking about me like bees to honey; and ever they cry, ‘Another, good Laneham, another!’” (From The Story of Minstrelsy by Edmundstoune Duncan.)
This was the day in which Shakespeare lived, and from his plays we get a very good idea of the popular music of his time, for he used bits of folk songs and old ballads. It was a Lover and his Lass from As You Like It was set to music by Thomas Morley, and is one of the few songs written to Shakespeare’s words in his own day that has come down to us. In Twelfth Night there is O Mistress Mine, Hold thy Peace, Peg-a-Ramsey, O, London is a Fine Town, Three Merry Men be We, and the Clown’s song:
In the Winter’s Tale, As You Like It, The Tempest, Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Othello are folk songs that are very well known and loved. Two songs from The Tempest, Where the Bee Sucks and Full Fathoms Five, were set to music by a composer, Robert Johnson, who lived at the same time as Shakespeare, but was not as famous as Morley, who also lived then. O, Willow, Willow, sung by Desdemona in Othello is one of the most beautiful and saddest folk songs we know.
One Shakespeare song has been made famous by the beautiful music which the great German song writer, Schubert, wrote to it. It is from Two Gentlemen of Verona and is called Who is Sylvia?
Many of the English composers of the 17th and 18th centuries such as Henry Purcell and Dr. Arne made music for the Shakespeare songs because they were so lovely and so well written that they almost sang themselves; this we call lyric verse.
Thomas Weelkes (1575?–1623) whose madrigals were included in The Triumphs of Oriana, also wrote many Fancies for Strings which were the ancestors of the string quartets, the highest type of music.
Several composers of this period, Thomas Weelkes, Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625) and Richard Deering (1580?–1630) wrote pieces using the old “Cryes of London” as their themes. Each trade had its own song, and the street pedlars used these tunes just as the fruit vendors, old-clothes men, and flower vendors cry their wares in our streets today. There is this difference, however; the street cries of today are mere noise, while the old “Cryes of London” were interesting and usually beautiful songs. Cherry Ripe is one of them, and Campion used it in 1617 in his famous old song, There is a Garden in Her Face. Some of the composers made rounds and catches based on the “Cryes,” and Weelkes in his Humorous Fancy used the songs of the chimney-sweep, the bellows-mender, and the vendors of fruit, fish and vegetables. In telling about this “fancy,” Frederick Bridge, a British composer and professor of music in Gresham College, says: “The Fancy at one point leaves its regular course, and for a few bars a delightful dance tune is introduced, to the words, whatever they mean, ‘Twincledowne Tavye.’ It is as if the vendors of fish, fruit and vegetables met in the street and had a bit of a frolic together.” Bridge also says that he thinks all lovers of Shakespeare will be glad to make the acquaintance of the music of the “Cryes of London” which saluted the poet’s ears in his daily walk.
Orlando Gibbons called his composition on the “cryes,” a Burlesque Madrigal, and beside the cries, he has used in one of the inner parts for viol, an old plain-song melody, a form used very often by the Italian madrigalists of the 16th century. Richard Deering’s Humorous Fancy, The Cryes of London, is the most elaborate of the three we have mentioned, having among many other tradesmen’s songs, those of the rat-catcher (this makes us think of Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamelin), the tooth-drawer, and the vendor of garlic.
Orlando Gibbons was one of the composers of Parthenia. But he is famous as a composer of sacred music, in fact, he is looked upon as the greatest composer of the English contrapuntal school. His anthems are still sung in the English Cathedrals, and one of them made for James I, was sung, in part, at the coronations of both Edward VII and George V, and is now called the Abbey Amen.
Gibbons, Byrd and Bull were very fine organists. Gibbons was organist of Westminster Abbey, and we are told by a writer of his own day that “the organ was touched by the best finger of that age, Mr. Orlando Gibbons.”
Dr. John Bull (1563–1628) was brought up, as were many of the young English musicians, as one of the “Children of the Chapel Royal Choir.” Later he became organist and player to King James I. Bull left England, entered the service of a Belgian archduke, was organist at the Antwerp Cathedral, and when he died in 1628, he was buried there. In the University of Oxford, where Bull took his degree as Doctor of Music, is his portrait around which is written:
John Milton, father of the great poet, was an important composer of this period. It is well known that his famous son was very fond of music, was a good musician himself, and had many friends among these composers and musicians.
The music for Milton’s famous Masque, Comus, was written by Henry Lawes (1595–1662) and was first produced in 1635. Lawes studied with an English composer named John Cooper who lived for so many years in Italy, that his name was translated into Giovanni Coperario. He turned the thoughts of his pupil to composing music for the stage, instead of church music. It looks as if Milton had been a pupil of Lawes, and had written Comus specially for him.
Lawes played a very amusing joke upon the concert-goers. At that time, as now, many thought that the music of other countries, and songs in foreign languages were better than their own. While Lawes himself knew the Italian music very well, he was eager to compose music that should be truly English. In the preface to his Book of Ayres he confessed: “This present generation is so sated with what’s native, that nothing takes their ears but what’s sung in a language which (commonly) they understand as little as they do the music. And to make them a little sensible of this ridiculous humor, I took a Table or Index of old Italian Songs and this Index (which read together made a strange medley of nonsense) I set to a varyed Ayre, and gave out that it came from Italy, whereby it has passed for a rare Italian song.” (Quoted from Bridge’s Twelve Good Musicians.)
Lawes helped to compose a work that is looked upon as the first English opera, The Siege of Rhodes. This was played during the time of Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth, and in this piece for the first time in England, women appeared upon the stage.
A year after the Commonwealth was overthrown, Henry Lawes died and was buried in Westminster Abbey, but the spot where his body lies is not known.
From 1641 to 1660, music must have had a hard time for this was the period of the Commonwealth, when the country was going through all the horrors of civil war, and Cromwell’s soldiers destroyed many things of great artistic value, that could never be replaced. Among them were the works of art found in the wonderful old English cathedrals, including organs and musical manuscripts. At Westminster Abbey, the Roundheads (the name given to Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers) “brake down the organs for pots of ale.”
Matthew Locke (1630?–1677) is looked upon as the “Father of English Opera.” He wrote the music for Psyche and The Tempest (1673). Another Shakespeare play to which Locke wrote the music was Macbeth.
Immediately after the Restoration, the Chapel Royal Choir was reorganized. For centuries it had been the great school of music for the sons of both rich and poor, and had produced nearly all the English musicians. Captain Henry Cooke, the first chapel master of the new choir, seems to have picked out unusually gifted children, some of whom wrote anthems while they were still in the Choir, and afterwards became very famous composers, among them John Blow, Pelham Humphrey and the great Henry Purcell. The Captain evidently knew how to train his boys!
Pelham Humphrey, having attracted the attention of the King, was sent to Paris to study with the famous opera composer, Lully. The effect of this study was felt in English music, as Humphrey was Purcell’s master at the Chapel Royal, after the death of the good Captain Cooke, and he introduced his new ideas to his talented little choir boys and musical friends. Samuel Pepys says that the visit to Paris made a snob of “little” Pelham Humphrey: “He is an absolute Monsieur, full of form and confidence and vanity, and disparages everything and everybody’s skill but his own. But to hear how he laughs at all the King’s Musick here, ... that they cannot keep time nor tune nor understand anything.”
Dr. John Blow (1648–1708) composed Anthems while still a choir boy, and at twenty-one was organist of Westminster Abbey. In 1674 he was Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal, and became its organist as well, without giving up his post at Westminster. During part of the time Purcell was at Westminster, and Blow was Almoner and Master of the choristers in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Think of filling three of the greatest positions in musical London at the same time! He wrote an Anthem, I was Glad, for the opening of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1697.
He wrote many church compositions, masques, and pieces for harpsichord.
Purcell called him “one of the greatest masters in the world.” Like Monteverde, he tried out new effects in harmony and made new combinations which have since been called “crude,” but were signs of a musical daring and understanding that belong only to very gifted musicians.
He died in 1708 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
The last of the great 17th century English composers, and the greatest of them all, is Henry Purcell (1658–1695). His father was a well-known musician, and the uncle, who brought him up, was also a musician, so the young boy heard much music in his own home, and no doubt knew many composers.
Sir Frederick Bridge in Twelve Good Musicians tells us that the Purcell family came from Tipperary in Ireland and that Henry’s father and uncle were Gentlemen in the Chapel Royal in London. Henry began his music studies at the age of six, for he, too, was one of “Captain Cooke’s boys,” and when he was twelve years old, “Maister Purcell” wrote a composition in honor of “His Majestie’s Birthday.”
The young Purcell, sometimes called the “English Mozart,” gained much from Pelham Humphrey who told him of Lully in France. After Humphrey’s early death (he was only twenty-seven), Purcell studied with Dr. Blow, and the two musicians were devoted comrades. Their tombs lie close together near the old entrance of the organ loft, where they must have spent many hours of their lives.
Matthew Locke was also a friend of Purcell’s, and probably did much to interest the young composer in the drama, for in spite of his early church training, Purcell’s greatest offering to English music was his opera writing. While Purcell’s are not operas in our sense of the word, they are the nearest thing to them that England had, before the Italians came with theirs in the 18th century. He wrote music to masques and plays, several of which were even called operas, yet only one really was an opera. Purcell’s music “was so far in advance of anything of the sort known in any part of Europe in his day, in point of dramatic and musical freedom and scenic quality, that one can only regret his early death’s preventing his taking to opera writing on a larger scale.” (W. F. Apthorp.) Among the things he put to music were the plays of Dryden and of Beaumont and Fletcher.
Purcell was one of the first English composers to use Italian musical terms, like adagio, presto, largo, etc. He was also one of the first composers to write compositions of three or four movements for two violins, ’cello and basso continuo, a part written for harpsichord or sometimes organ as an accompaniment to the other instruments. The name of this style of composition also came from the Italian, and was called Sonata. The first sonatas were composed by Italians. The word Sonata comes from an Italian word suonare which means to sound, and was first given to works for instruments. Another form of composition is the Cantata, from cantare which means to sing. It is a vocal composition with accompaniment of instruments, a direct descendant of the motet and madrigal, and of the early oratorios.
The Toccata, too, comes from the Italian toccare, meaning to touch, and was originally a work for instruments with keyboards. The Italian language gave us our musical names and terms, because Italian music was the model of what good music should be, and England, France and Germany copied Italian ways of composing. Everyone uses the Italian terms for musical expressions so that all nationalities can understand them.
When Purcell was only 17 years old, he composed an opera to be played by young ladies in a boarding school. This was Dido and Æneas, and it is so good that few writers on musical subjects believe that it was written in his youth.
In every branch of composition in which Purcell wrote, he excelled. His church music is the finest of his day, his chamber music and his operas are looked upon as works of genius. In fact, he is still considered the most gifted of all English composers.
He was only 37 when he died, and was a very great loss to the growth of English music.