Early music of the British Isles

Early music of Britain and Ireland, from the earliest recorded times until the beginnings of the Baroque in the 17th century, was a diverse and rich culture, including sacred and secular music and

Medieval music to 1450#

Surviving sources indicate that there was a rich and varied musical soundscape in medieval Britain. Historians usually distinguish between ecclesiastical music, designed for use in church, or in religious ceremonies, and secular music for use from royal and baronial courts, celebrations of some religious events, to public and private entertainments of the people. Our understanding of this music is limited by a lack of written sources for much of what was an oral culture.

Church music#

In the early Middle Ages, ecclesiastical music was dominated by monophonic plainchant. Although no notations of this music survive, later sources suggest distinctive melodic patterns. The version of this chant linked to the liturgy as used in the Diocese of Salisbury, the Sarum Use, first recorded from the 13th century, became dominant in England. This Sarum Chant became the model for English composers until it was supplanted at the Reformation in the mid-16th century, influencing settings for masses, hymns and Magnificats. Scottish music was highly influenced by continental developments, with figures like thirteenth-century musical theorist Simon Tailler who studied in Paris, before returning to Scotland where he introduced several reforms of church music. Scottish collections of music like the thirteenth-century ‘Wolfenbüttel 677’, which is associated with St Andrews, contain mostly French compositions, but with some distinctive local styles.

Ars nova#

In the 14th century, the English Franciscan friar Simon Tunsted, usually credited with the authorship of Quatuor Principalia Musicae: a treatise on musical composition, is believed to have been one of the theorists who influenced the ‘ars nova’, a movement which developed in France and then Italy, replacing the restrictive styles of Gregorian plainchant with complex polyphony. The tradition was well established in England by the 15th century and was widely used in religious, and what became, purely educational establishments, including Eton College, and the colleges that became the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Included in the list is J. de Alto Bosco, who has been identified with the composer and theorist John Hanboys, author of Summa super musicam continuam et discretam, a work that discusses the origins of musical notation and mensuration from the 13th century and proposed several new methods for recording music.

Contenance Angloise#

From the mid-15th century we begin to have relatively large numbers of works that have survived from English composers in documents such as the early 15th century Old Hall Manuscript. Probably the first, and one of the best represented is Leonel Power (c. 1380–1445), who was probably the choir master of Christ Church, Canterbury and enjoyed noble patronage from Thomas of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Clarence and John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford (1389–1435). John Dunstaple (or Dunstable) was the most celebrated composer of the ‘Contenance Angloise’ (English manner), a distinctive style of polyphony that used full, rich harmonies based on the third and sixth, which was highly influential in the fashionable Burgundian court of Philip the Good. Nearly all his manuscript music in England was lost during the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536–1540), but some of his works have been reconstructed from copies found in continental Europe, particularly in Italy. The existence of these copies is testament to his widespread fame within Europe. He may have been the first composer to provide liturgical music with an instrumental accompaniment. Royal interest in music is suggested by the works attributed to Roy Henry in the Old Hall Manuscript, suspected to be Henry IV or Henry V. This tradition was continued by figures such as Walter Frye (c. 1420–1475), whose masses were recorded and highly influential in France and the Netherlands. Similarly, John Hothby (c. 1410–1487), an English Carmelite friar, who travelled widely and, although leaving little composed music, wrote several theoretical treatises, including La Calliopea legale, and is credited with introducing innovations to the medieval pitch system. The Scottish king James I was in captivity in England from 1406 to 1423, where he earned a reputation as a poet and composer and may have been responsible for taking English and continental styles and musicians back to the Scottish court on his release.

Secular music#

Ireland, Scotland, and Wales shared a tradition of bards, who acted as musicians, but also as poets, story tellers, historians, genealogists, and lawyers, relying on an oral tradition that stretched back generations. Often accompanying themselves on the harp, they can also be seen in records of the Scottish courts throughout the medieval period. We also know from the work of Gerald of Wales that at least from the 12th century, group singing was a major part of the social life of ordinary people in Wales. From the 11th century particularly important in English secular music were minstrels, sometimes attached to a wealthy household, noble, or royal court, but probably more often moving from place to place and occasion to occasion in pursuit of payment. Many appear to have composed their own works, and can be seen as the first secular composers, and some crossed international boundaries, transferring songs and styles of music. Because literacy, and musical notation in particular, were preserves of the clergy in this period the survival of secular music is much more limited than for church music. Nevertheless, some were noted, occasionally by clergymen who had an interest in secular music. England in particular produced three distinctive secular musical forms in this period: the rota, the polyphonic votive antiphon, and the carol.

Rotas#

A rota is a form of round, known to have been used from the 13th century in England. Although few are recorded, the use of rotas seems to have been widespread in England and it has been suggested that the English talent for polyphony may have its origins in this form of music.

Votive Antiphons#

Polyphonic votive antiphons emerged in England in the 14th century as a setting of a text honouring the Virgin Mary, but separate from the mass and office, often after compline.

Carols#

Carols developed in the 14th century as simple songs with a verse and refrain structure. Carols were usually connected with a religious festival, particularly Christmas. They were derived from a form of circle dance accompanied by singers, which was popular from the mid-12th century. From the 14th century they were used as processional songs, particularly at Advent, Easter, and Christmas, and to accompany religious mystery plays. Because the tradition of carols continued into the modern era, we know more of their structure and variety than most other secular forms of medieval music.

Renaissance c. 1450–c. 1660#

The impact of Renaissance humanism on music can be seen in England the late 15th century under Edward IV (r. 1461–1483) and Henry VII (r. 1485–1509). Although the influence of English music on the continent declined from the mid-15th century as the Burgundian School became the dominant force in the West, English music continued to flourish with the first composers being awarded doctorates at Oxford and Cambridge, including Thomas Santriste, who was provost of King’s College, Cambridge, and Henry Abyngdon, who was Master of Music at Worcester Cathedral and from 1465 to 1483 Master of the King’s Music. Edward IV chartered and patronised the first guild of musicians in London in 1472, a pattern copied in other major towns cities as musicians formed guilds or waites, creating local monopolies with greater organisation, but arguably ending the role of the itinerant minstrel. There were increasing numbers of foreign musicians, particularly those from France and the Netherlands, at the court, becoming a majority of those known to have been employed by the death of Henry VII. The result was a very elaborate style which balanced the many parts of the setting and prefigured Renaissance developments elsewhere. Similar developments can be seen in Scotland. In the late 15th century a series of Scottish musicians trained in the Netherlands before returning home, including John Broune, Thomas Inglis and John Fety, the last of whom became master of the song school in Aberdeen and then Edinburgh, introducing the new five-fingered organ playing technique. In 1501 James IV refounded the Chapel Royal within Stirling Castle, with a new and enlarged choir, it became the focus of Scottish liturgical music. Burgundian and English influences came north with Henry VII’s daughter Margaret Tudor, who married James IV in 1503. In Wales, as elsewhere, the local nobility were increasingly Anglicised and the bardic tradition started to decline, resulting in the first Eisteddfods being held from 1527, in an attempt to preserve the tradition.

Henry VIII and James V#

Henry VIII and James V were both enthusiastic patrons of music. Henry (1491–1547) played various instruments, of which he had a large collection, including, at his death, seventy eight recorders. He is sometimes credited with compositions, including the part-song ‘Pastime with Good Company’. In the early part of his reign and his marriage to Catherine of Aragon secular court music focused around an emphasis on courtly love, probably acquired from the Burgundian court, result in compositions like William Cornysh’s (1465–1515) ‘Yow and I and Amyas’. In Scotland James V (1512–42) had a similar interest in music. A talented lute player he introduced French chansons and consorts of viols to his court and was patron to composers such as David Peebles (c. 1510–1579?).

Reformation#

The Reformation naturally had a profound impact on the religious music of Britain. The loss of many abbeys, collegiate churches and religious orders intensified a process by which humanism had made careers writing church music decline in importance compared with employment in the royal and noble households. The Lutheranism that influenced the early Scottish Reformation attempted to accommodate Catholic musical traditions into worship, drawing on Latin hymns and vernacular songs. The most important product of this tradition in Scotland was The Gude and Godlie Ballatis, which were spiritual satires on popular ballads composed by the brothers James, John and Robert Wedderburn. Never adopted by the kirk, they nevertheless remained popular and were reprinted from the 1540s to the 1620s. Later the Calvinism that came to dominate the Scottish Reformation was much more hostile to Catholic musical tradition and popular music, placing an emphasis on what was biblical, which meant the Psalms. The Scottish psalter of 1564 was commissioned by the Assembly of the Church. It drew on the work of French musician Clément Marot, Calvin’s contributions to the Strasbourg psalter of 1539 and English writers, particularly the 1561 edition of the psalter produced by William Whittingham for the English congregation in Geneva. The intention was to produce individual tunes for each psalm, but of 150 psalms, 105 had proper tunes and in the seventeenth century, common tunes, which could be used for psalms with the same metre, became more common. The need for simplicity for whole congregations that would now all sing these psalms, unlike the trained choirs who had sung the many parts of polyphonic hymns, There is some evidence that polyphony survived and it was incorporated into editions of the psalter from 1625, but usually with the congregation singing the melody and trained singers the contra-tenor, treble and bass parts.

Music publication#

During this period, music printing (technically more complex than the printing of written text) was adopted from continental practice. Elizabeth I granted the monopoly of music publishing to Tallis and his pupil William Byrd which ensured that their works were widely distributed and have survived in various editions, but arguably limited the potential for music publishing in Britain.

Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I#

James V’s daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, also played the lute, virginals and (unlike her father) was a fine singer. She was brought up in the French court and brought many influences from there when she returned to rule Scotland from 1561, employing lutenists and viol players in her household. Mary’s position as a Catholic gave a new lease of life to the choir of the Scottish Chapel Royal in her reign, but the destruction of Scottish church organs meant that instrumentation to accompany the mass had to employ bands of musicians with trumpets, drums, fifes, bagpipes and tabors. Byrd emerged as the leading composer of the Elizabethan court, writing sacred and secular polyphony, viol, keyboard and consort music, reflecting the growth in the range of instruments and forms of music available in Tudor and Stuart Britain. The outstanding Scottish composer of the era was Robert Carver (c.1485–c.1570) whose works included the nineteen-part motet ‘O Bone Jesu’.

English Madrigal School#

The English Madrigal School was the brief but intense flowering of the musical madrigal in England, mostly from 1588 to 1627. Based on the Italian musical form and patronised by Elizabeth I after the highly popular Musica transalpina by Nicholas Yonge in 1588. English madrigals were a cappella, predominantly light in style, and generally began as either copies or direct translations of Italian models, mostly set for three to six verses. Madrigals continued to be composed in England through the 1620s, but stopped in the early 1630s as they began to seem obsolete as new forms of music began to emerge from the continent.

Lute ayres#

Also emerging from the Elizabethan court were ayres, solo songs, occasionally with more (usually three) parts, accompanied on a lute. Although this printing boom died out in the 1620s ayres continued to be written and performed and were often incorporated into court masques.

Consort music#

Consorts of instruments developed in the Tudor period in England as either ‘whole’ consorts, that is, all instruments of the same family (for example, a set of viols played together) and a ‘mixed’ or ‘broken’ consort, consisting of instruments from various families (for example viols and lute). Major forms of music composed for consorts included: fantasias, In Nomines, variations, dances, and fantasia-suites. Many of the major composers of the 16th and 17th centuries produced work for consorts, including William Byrd, Giovanni Coperario, Orlando Gibbons, John Jenkins and Henry Purcell.

Masques#

Campion was also a composer of court masques, an elaborate performance involving music and dancing, singing and acting, within a complex stage design, in which the architectural framing and costumes might be designed by a renowned architect, such as Inigo Jones, to present a deferential allegory flattering to a noble or royal patron. Often, the masquers who did not speak or sing were courtiers: James I’s Queen Consort, Anne of Denmark, frequently danced with her ladies in masques between 1603 and 1611, and Charles I performed in the masques at his court. The masque largely ended with the closure of the theatres and the exile of the court under the Commonwealth.

Genre family: Early music