Outras fontes bibliográficas:

Lord’s Mayor Show :

The Lord Mayor's Show is one of the best-known annual events in London as well as one
of the longest-established, dating back to the 16th century.[1] The 'Lord Mayor' after whom
the show is named is the Lord Mayor of the City of London, a city and ceremonial county
within Greater London and the historic centre of the wider metropolis. The City is also
London's main modern financial district, widely known informally as 'the Square Mile'.
A new lord mayor is appointed every year and the public parade that takes place as his or
her inauguration ceremony reflects that this was once one of the most prominent offices in
England. The position of Lord Mayor has a role within the City and is entirely distinct from
the position of Mayor of London (a role which has existed only since 2000), namely the
elected head of the Greater London Authority, currently Sadiq Khan.

Lord Mayor David Wootton and some of his entourage emerging from the Royal Courts of Justice, at
the end of half-time during the 2011 Lord Mayor's Show
The Lord Mayor's Show is centred on a street parade which in its modern form is a light-
hearted combination of traditional British pageantry and elements of carnival. On the day
after being sworn in, the Lord Mayor and several others participate in a procession
from Guildhall, via Mansion House and St Paul's Cathedral, in the heart of the City of
London, to the Royal Courts of Justice on the edge of the City of Westminster, where the
new Lord Mayor swears allegiance to the Crown. Until 1882 the procession went
to Westminster Hall.[2]

Origin and date of the show[edit]

The Company of Pikemen and Musketeers Company of the Honourable Artillery Company leaving
the Royal Courts of Justice and heading south towards the River Thames, during the second half of
the 2011 Lord Mayor's Show.
The office of Lord Mayor dates from 1189 and it was a requirement of the charter establishing
it that the mayor travelled to the royal enclave at Westminster to present himself to the
monarch's representatives, the senior judges as Barons of the Exchequer to take an oath of
loyalty to the Sovereign upon beginning his term. The event is officially listed in the City's
Civic Calendar as 'The Procession to the Royal Courts of Justice and Presentation of the
Lord Mayor to the Chief Justices'; when the Royal Courts moved from Westminster to
the Strand location in 1882 the route was shortened. Originally this journey was mostly made
by barge on the River Thames, the usual method of transport for this route in those days.
Pageantry and display gradually grew around the trip, comparable to the far less
frequent Royal Entry parades that usually followed a coronation or royal wedding, and by the
16th century the "show" was firmly established as a major entertainment for Londoners. [3]
London, the show occurred annually on 29 October.[4] In 1751, Great Britain replaced the
Julian calendar with the Gregorian calendar; the Lord Mayor's Show was then moved to 9
November. In 1959, another change was made: the Lord Mayor's Show is now held on the
second Saturday in November. The Lord Mayor's Show has regularly been held on the
scheduled day; it has not been moved since 1852, when the show made way for Arthur
Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington's funeral. The show was not interrupted by the Second
World War. The Lord Mayor has been making that journey every year for 477 years, surviving
plague and fire and countless wars and insurrections. The modern Lord Mayor's procession
is a direct descendant of that first journey to Westminster.

Participants in the show[edit]

Great Twelve Livery Companies[edit]
The original Great Twelve Livery Companies—
the Mercers, Grocers, Drapers, Fishmongers, Goldsmiths, Merchant
Taylors, Skinners, Haberdashers, Salters, Ironmongers, Vintners and Clothworkers—
participate as of right; other livery companies participate by invitation, though the Lord
Mayor's own company is always among these.

Privileged regiments of the City of London and others[edit]

The Lord Mayor's Coach, housed in the Museum of London on London Wall
Other participants include bands and members of "privileged regiments" of the City of London
such as the Honourable Artillery Company and The Royal Fusiliers. Privileged regiments
have the right to march through the City with bayonets fixed, colours flying, and drums
beating.
The many other participants lend a unique flavour to the occasion which include
organisations that the Lord Mayor wishes to support or has belonged to, such as charities,
old schools and business associations before becoming Lord Mayor. St John
Ambulance participates, for instance, as do the Zurich Guilds.
Gog and Magog are two woven willow giant reproductions of a pair of statues in the Guildhall.
These popular icons reflect the pre-Roman legendary past of the City of London and they
too are paraded by volunteers from The Guild of Young Freemen each year. The most recent
representations were created by members of the Worshipful Company of Basketmakers.

Schedule[edit]
The procession begins at the Guildhall where the Lord Mayor receives with the new Sheriffs
personal gifts from a restricted group of relevant City institutions, usually including the Lord
Mayor's own Livery Company and Ward Club and then there is a breakfast. The Lord Mayor
is escorted to his or her coach in Guildhall Yard by the Court of Aldermen and sets off
to Mansion House, the official residence of the Lord Mayor. There the Lord Mayor awaits the
show to pass from the terrace. The Lord Mayor joins the rear of the show, after having
watched a flypast by the Royal Air Force.

A coachman waits for the resumption of the Lord Mayor's procession, 2011
The route of the outward parade in 2013 was from Guildhall, along Princes Street to Bank
junction and past Mansion House. From there the procession travelled
down Poultry, Cheapside, New Change, St Paul's Churchyard, Ludgate Hill, Fleet Street and
the Strand.
Along the route, the Lord Mayor stops at St Paul's Cathedral in order to receive a blessing
from the Dean on the Cathedral steps. Upon arrival at the Royal Courts of Justice on the
Strand, the Lord Mayor takes the oath of allegiance. The return procession then reassembles
on Aldwych and returns via Essex Street to Temple Place then along the Victoria
Embankment and Queen Victoria Street back to Mansion House where the Lord Mayor takes
review of the Pikemen and Musketeers of the Honorable Artillery Company. He or she then
re-enters Mansion House via the steps to the Terrace with the Aldermen and entertains
guests and volunteers who have co-ordinated the event.
The parade, which typically begins at about 11 am, concludes at about 3:30 pm. The
procession is over 3 miles (roughly 5 km) long but the route itself is much shorter; the head
of the procession reaches the end of the route before the Lord Mayor even leaves Mansion
House. In the evening, a fireworksdisplay is held subject to weather conditions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Mayor%27s_Show

The Madrigal, the Lute Song and Elizabethan Politics

Author(s): Lillian M. Ruff and D. Arnold Wilson
Source: Past & Present, No. 44 (Aug., 1969), pp. 3-51
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society Stable
URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/649731
Accessed: 27-03-2019 10:58 UTC

The Madrigal, The Lute and Elizabethan Politics

The Madrigal from 1588 to 1630

Nothing is more asthonishing in the whole history of music than the story of the English
School of madrigal composers. The long delay of its appearance, lagging behind the
Italian school by no less than half a century: the suddenness of its development: the
extent of the output: the variety and originality as well as the fine quality of the work:
the brevity of its endurance, and the completeness with which it finally collapsed: all
these features combine to distinguish the madrigal school as the strangest phenomenon
in the history of English Music.

There is an enigma surrounding the rise of the English madrigal, which, though
apprehended by Canon Fellowes half a century ago, has never been solved or even
thoroughly investigated. In the past forty years, factual historical details have been
unearthed, and much has been written about various aspects of its musical
development; but the madrigal has still to be seen in the wider cultural perspective of
the age, and in relation to the late-Elizabethan political scene. This essay seeks to show
the madrigal, with its literary associations, in relation to the political and religious
situation, and to indicate those historical events which were most strongly reflected in
the changing moods of the madrigal forms.

(…)
Three centuries of cultivating an analytical and specialist habit of mind have tended
towards a segregation of art and literature, science and politics; whereas in the
Elizabethan era different spheres of thought and action were in no way incompatible.
For instance, the great poets, Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser, and the composer
Thomas Morley, were deeply immersed in politics. If the history of the English madrigal,
in a broad sense, is seen in relation to the basic tensions and changes in the national
political scene around the end of the sixteenth century, a correlation that is surprisingly
sharp is disclosed. The question is: to what extent is this correlation coincidental, and to
what extent is there a more definite connection with particular persons, causes, and
events?

Following the threat from Spain in 1588, there swept the country that great wave of
national consciousness and unity, which did not subside until near the end of the
century. With this came a great flowering of the English language, so wonderfully
revealed by that inspired generation of poets and dramatists.

Amongst composers too, there was a fresh delight in the rhythms of the language for
vocal settings (a tendency which developed after the Reformation when English
replaced Latin in the Church); and this gradually ousted the fashion for French and Italian
vocal music.

This atmosphere surrounded and pervaded an extraordinary complex of religious,

economic and political schisms. In religious doctrine and practice there was conflict
between Anglicans, Catholics and Calvinists. Rising financial powers in the city and the
country were steadily throwing up the "new men" who were destined to take over in
the next reign. Against these there was a defensive drawing together of that part of the
Tudor aristocracy upon which the commercial influence had made least encroachment,
and which still had deep roots in the country. These conflicts were voiced in the factions
contending against each other in the counties, in Parliament, and in the Privy Council,
each seeking the decisive favour of the Queen, whose experienced intelligence and
immense popularity had long enabled her to ride the turbulence by a balancing of
faction against faction which she had brought to a fine art.

Towards the end of the century, faction centred upon Sir Robert Cecil on the one hand,
and upon the second earl of Essex on the other. Essex was the patrician in excelsis:
honourable, courteous, and so open that it was said of him that he carried his every
feeling on his forehead. But he was also imperious, impetuous and intractable; and his
pre-eminence with the Queen gave place to periods of angry disfavour. Even so, after
his brilliant part in the war with Spain, he became the focus of the great patriotic wave,
and the darling of the people. It is with the meteoric rise and fall of the young earl of
Essex that the course taken by the Elizabethan madrigal displays such a remarkable
correlation.

Early in 1599, Essex accepted command of the great force that was sent to Ireland to
suppress the earl of Tyrone's rebellion, which then held all but a tiny part of that country
in its grip. Essex's best advisers thought that this action was unwise because of his
strained relations with the Queen, and because the Cecil faction had frequently
demonstrated their ability to influence her to his disadvantage during his previous
absences from the country. After some weeks in Ireland, Essex felt that his position was
being made more and more impossible by the limitations set upon his strategy and
tactics in peremptory instructions from England.
In the autumn, in desperation, he agreed to a temporary armistice with Tyrone, and, in
contravention of instructions, returned home to report to the Queen.

He was placed under house arrest in September 1599 and was kept under duress for
seventeen months. During this long restraint he abjectly admitted to disobedience, but
never to intentional disloyalty. He was twice subjected to political trials which would, in
our day "public relations" operations, aiming to undermine his continuing popularity. He
was stripped of all his revenues; he was degraded by having his servants arrested for his
debts; and his women-folk were banished from the Court. In the winter of 1600-1, ill in
mind and body, he gave ear to the younger, wilder spirits among and on 8 February
1601, supported by about one hundred younger aristocrats and gentry, he made a quite
futile to raise the city of London against the Queen's advisers. The majority of his
supporters were captured and imprisoned; within three weeks Essex and five of his
intimates were tried and executed, of his followers were punished by fines or
imprisonment.

The Essex faction was thus destroyed, and his wide popular following (which had always
been diffuse and without organization) was left frustrated and angry. Cecil, now without
opposition, was supreme at Court; and, as the Scottish king, James VI (later James I of
England), said of him. “he is king in all but name”. The Queen lived two more years,
sinking ever more deeply into depression, and conscious of an unwonted silence and
unpopularity whenever she went abroad. By the time of her death in March 1603, Cecil’s
astute diplomacy had discreetly paved the way for the peaceful accession of James I,
with himself as “guider”.

With this outline of Essex's career in mind, we can see the significance of the table below
which shows, year by year, the Essex, and the number of madrigals published. We use
the word "madrigal" as an omnibus term and include all the vocal music published in the
madrigal collections.
The gap in the year 1596 is probably connected with the fact that Byrd's monopoly was
due to expire in that year, and composers and print have been waiting to take advantage
of the temporary franchise which lasted until the patent was granted to Morley on 11
September 1598.

It will be seen that Byrd's first sets coincide with Essex's entry into royal favour; Morley's
most productive years were those of Essex’s rise in popular estimation; Weelkes, Wilbye
and other composers brought the madrigal to its acme in quality and quantity in 1598
when Essex was at the apex of his career.

This is followed five years which saw his downfall and ruin, the aftermath, and the death
of the Queen, paralleled by a deep trough in the publication of madrigals. Decisive
enough in the figures shown, most of the madrigals were composed before the year of
publication belong to the peak years which preceded them. We
example, that Morley was collecting and preparing his great symposium, The Triumphes
of Oriana, from 1597, though it was not published until I6oi.5 Also, the valedictory
madrigals referring to the death of Henry Noel, which occurred in 1597, were not
published until some time later. Another significant fact about the madrigal collections
published in those "slump" years from 1599 to 1601 is that none of them was registered
with the Stationers' Company in the year in which it was published (or printed). The fifty-
five madrigals by Bennet, Farmer and Carlton were never registered; and The Triumphes,
and the madrigals by Weelkes, were registered retrospectively two or three years later
in 1603, after the Queen's death. This suggests that all these madrigals were treated as
though in some way illicit; or were published under some restriction, which was indeed
the case. The present point is that Essex's ruin, and the two years which followed it,
brought the publication of madrigals to a temporary halt, just when they were at the
very height of their vogue.

What happened after this halt? and how was the madrigal affected in the new reign and
after? When composers and musicians have assimilated a new musical idiom (following
the prototype set by Morley), and when the form has been perfected, as Wilbye and
Weelkes perfected it, certain skills and techniques are acquired which are not suddenly
discarded. But a pronounced change in the surrounding psychological atmosphere will
affect composers (and the madrigal-singing strata of society), and this mood will
predomi-nate in the contemporary musical forms. From I604 the general trend of the
madrigal was downward; yet publication continued for twenty-six years, with a more
sombre mood in both verse and music.

(…)
The elegy which Morley set in his honour appears at the end of the 1597 set, which also
contains the two madrigals referring to "Bonny Boots". Dowland composed seven hymn-
tunes for his funeral, and, earlier, had composed a galliard for him. But after 1613, the
dominant mood is the elegiac one.

The pathos in so many of the poems set to music in 1600 and after, resulted in
compositions of great beauty and expressiveness: words like "death", "dying", "despair",
"kill" and "torment", were poignantly underlaid with emotive dissonances. The light-
hearted spontaneity of Morley's madrigals gave place to a higher, more considered art,
and (particularly in Peerson's music) to more complex forms which foreshadow the late
seventeenth-century school. Until 1600, madrigals had been expressly composed for
singers; but, in that year, Weelkes added to his titles: "Apt for the Viols and Voices"; he
used the term "Parts" instead of "Voices". East followed suit in 1604, and, thereafter, all
but four of the collections were for "Parts or "Viols and Voices". The introduction into a
madrigal of one or more viols, with their slow-speaking, sombre tones, would inevitably
dilute any colour in the music, and aptly accompany the words of the more mournful
poems.

It could be argued that the madrigal would have followed some such trajectory as it did,
irrespective of the rise and fall of the earl Essex. After all, a great reign was plainly
nearing its close, and once beloved Queen died in 1603; tragic melancholia is an
accepted fact of the Jacobean literary scene, and vocal music must needs affected in
some way or other. What evidence is there of a more particular and personal connection
with Essex? How did the madrigal come to be taken up? How did he stand as patron
with the composers and the authors of the verse? Was there any relevance between the
madrigal and Cecil-Essex politics? These questions must now be discussed.
The Italian madrigal had for a long time circulated in England, in the houses of the
nobility, and in such musical groupings around the London gentleman-lawyer, Nicholas
Yonge who, in 1588, edited Mvsica Transalpina, which contained fifty-seven Italian
madrigals with English words, including fourteen by Alfonso Ferrabosco the elder who
spent long periods in England in the Queen's service; and two by William Byrd. Byrd had
months earlier in the same year, published his Psalmes songs of sadnes and pietie; and
a few months later he was his Songs of sundrie natures, some of grauitie, and others
offor all companies and voyces. These sets contain a variety and sacred vocal music;
many of the items are musically akin to madrigals, though Byrd himself did not so
describe them. However, he did compose the first two English madrigals to be claim as
such, published in 1590.

The subject of the first published English madrigal is a greeting and glorification of the
Queen, suitable to be sung to her on one of her popular progresses. In this it set the gay
and popular spirit predominant throughout the rise of the madrigal; and it st note that
was to be voiced in The Triumphes of Oriana in 1601, with the concluding couplet which
gave unity to the whole

Thus, Byrd's two settings of "This sweet and merry month were germinal to the English
expression of the form, from its beginning to its climax. The idea was Watson's; he
prompted Byrd to set the model; Morley, with a lighter touch, propagated it, and pattern
for other composers to imitate and develop. This pioneering work, which gave the first
impetus to the English madrigal dedicated to the earl of Essex, and Watson, who was a
good scholar, wrote the dedicatory poem in Latin elegiacs.
Thomas Watson was no more than a minor poet, yet considerable importance to both
English literature and music. That he was an innovator may be seen in The
Hekatompathia, or Passionate Centurie of Love (published in 1582), a sequence of 100
eighteen-line poems which he called sonnets, which started that vogue for sonnet
sequences later to be taken up by Sidney, Drayton, Shakespeare, Daniel, Fulke Greville,
and others. Although he died only two years after his translations of Italian madrigals
were published, Joseph Kerman rightly devotes much space to him in The Elizabethan
Madrigal.

(…)
There is an instance here of those extra-literary, extra-musical influences, which are
implicit in Elizabethan art to a far greater extent than is generally thought, and which
sometimes cause much vain searching for purely aesthetic criteria which are not there.

Watson had been in the service of Sir Francis Walsingham since c. 1581, and around
1590 the Walsingham family was in ill favour with the Sir Francis had once been
chancellor, but in his last years his policies were rejected by the Queen and Privy Council,
and he died under a cloud of disfavour. Walsingham's daughter, widow Philip Sidney,
was also involved, since the earl of Essex, by marrying her, had violently angered the
Queen. Watson's propagation madrigal on the concentrated note of glorification of the
Queen association of it with her popularity, and with the high reputation of Sir Philip
Sidney - expressed in a work most elaborately dedicated to the earl of Essex - was, at
that time, a normal labour service to the house he had served. To sing the praises of king
nobles and to further their ends was a tradition still very much alive; it was not yet
regarded as a degradation of aesthetic integrity.
That other poets served other patrons whose interests conflicted, or who held power of
censorship and suppression of open com in that non-democratic age, did not mean that
one ceased to function it meant that degrees of subtlety, and disguised allusion, might
be required. Contemporaries were habituated to expect this and were always ready to
look for significances and implications on more levels than one. Watson was known to
be specially in this, for William Cornwallis said of him that he "could devise twenty
fictions and knaveryes in a play was his daily practyse and his living". The deprecation in
the word "knaveryes" probably carried more than one significance: we know that
Cornwallis had quarrelled with Watson, but also it was a time when moral concepts were
changing rapidly. Watson's practice of topical allusion was that of many greater writers,
including Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Daniel and Drayton.

(…) – Falta o resto do texto

Sixteenth Century Service Music (Continued)

Author(s): Anselm Hughes
Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Oct., 1924), pp. 335-346 Published by: Oxford
University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/726924
Accessed: 27-03-2019 11:15 UTC

To estimate the amriount which must have perished, it is customary, and rightly so, to
call attention to the wholesale destruction of MSS. at three epochs: (1) The spoliation
of the monasteries under Henry VIII; (2) the flooding of the Church of England by the
Genevan or Puritan elements in the later years of Elizabeth; (3) the Civil War and the
triumnph of the Independents in Cromwell's day. There were also intermediate bonfires
at such dates as 1549-a very bad series- and perhaps in Queen Mary's reign. And there
was the slow neglect which destroyed many Cathedral treasures in the Hanoverian
period, borne out by the long list of anthems used in Charles II's chapel, of which the
words alone survive in many cases.

Another line of factual enquiry is worth pursuing. When we call to mind that Palestrina
composed 93 masses, over 200 motets, 45 hymns, 68 offertories, three books each of
litanies, lamentations, and settings of Magnificat, besides secular music; that Vittoria is
repre- sented by more than twenty masses, a similar number of Magnificats, 40 hymns
and psalms, four volumes of motets and 135 single motets beside; that of Obrecht there
are extant 24 masses, 21 motets, 29 organ and secular works, and a Passion; while the
exceptionally prolific Lassus is credited with the immense total of " 51 masses, about
1,200 sacred motets and cantiones, 370 chansons, and over 230 madrigals and more
than 500 other compositions; it is a matter of fact rather than of speculation to record
that the quantity of the work of the greater Tudor masters-even if it be admitted that
the bulk of Byrd's output has been preserved-in our hands to-day represents only a
fraction of their real achievements. Taverner, Fairfax, Shepherd, Tallis, Tye, Causton,
Mundy, were the equals of their great Continental contemporaries, and there is not the
least reason for sup- posing that their industry was any less. And what is true of them
applies equally mutatis mutandis to the lesser-known men, Haselton, Johnson, Knight,
Okeland, Packe, Parsley, Parsons the elder, Whit- broke, Heath, Merbecke, Stone.

The aversion at head- quarters to this feeling after English is shown by the fact that in
1543 Henry intended to reform, not end, the Latin service-books;
but in the following year appeared the English Litany.

Two quotations of less value, but bearing on the subject, may be added here:
1. Music in Henry VIII's reign was " applied in some parts of the service to the
English instead of the Latin language." -(Burney, History of Music, Vol. iii., p. 2.)
2. " Towards the end of the second quarter of the sixteenth cen- tury . . . the use of
Latin in public worship was being gradually discontinued and the English
language substituted." -(J. M. Duncan,
in The Musical Times, August, 1920, p. 5

Livros musicais, com partituras do período:

British Museum Add. 5665

B.M. Roy. App. 74-76

B.M. Add. 34191

A rough computation from the catalogues of the British Museum, Christ Church, Oxford,
and the Royal College of Music alone reveals the following number of items from four
representative composers of the Edwardine and early Elizabethan period, which we
might almost term the " bilingual " era:

Johnson. -11 Latin motets, 5 English anthems, 1 Service. Mtundy (W.). -27 Latin motets,
24 English anthems, 2 Services, 2 or 3 Magnificats in Latin, with 2 Masses, English Te
Deum. Parsons. -10 Latin Motets, 10 English anthems, 2 or 3 Services. Shepherd. -53
Latin motets, 13 English anthems, 48 English hymns, 2 or 3 Latin Magnificats, 4 Masses,
2 Services, and portions of 2 or 3 others.

The Elizabethan Madrigal and 'Musica Transalpina'

Author(s): Alfred Einstein
Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Apr., 1944), pp. 66-77 Published by: Oxford
University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/728868
Accessed: 27-03-2019 10:41 UTC
To attempt an investigation of the textual relationships between the Elizabethan and
the Italian madrigal is to follow a path that has long been trodden by Dr. Edmund H. Fell

My justification is, perhaps, that I have possibly been occupied longer than anyone else
with the Italian madrigal in all its forms and all its elements, both cultural and poetical.

The result of my observations will not by any means be a notion of the English madrigal
as being more thoroughly indebted to its southern model than has been recognized so
far. That would be true only in a quite superficial sense. On the contrary: the inherent
independence of the Elizabethan madrigalists, and particularly of the greatest among
them, William Byrd, will show itself all the more plainly, even if it should be found-as
indeed it will-that several of his texts are based on Italian words

However, we shall have to confine ourselves to textual and literary questions. If there
are relationships between the forms of Italian poetry, they must certainly apply to the
sonnet, English sonnet may resemble its Petrarchan model.

(…)

This study has confined itself mainly to an attempt at investigating the direct relations
of Elizabethan madrigal texts to Italian models. Examples could no doubt be multiplied
by an examination based on a more intimate knowledge of Italian literature than I
happen to possess. The dependence of the Elizabethan texts appears to be even greater
if one considers the indirect influences, the similarities and the resemblances of subjects
found in the common literary bases: the poetry of antiquity and the fashionable literary
complaint of the time-the pastoral. Neither Tasso's nor Shakespeare's compatriots could
in the long run manage without Venus and Cupid, Thyrsis and Mopsa or Mirtillo and
Amarillis.

Yet-and this brings us back to the beginning of this essay-the Elizabethan madrigal
composers were no mere imitators, even when they set to music naked and unashamed
translations. They are national musicians; with the possible exception of Morley as a
composer of balletts, they are by no means wholly Italianized, in the sense that in the
eighteenth-century Handel and Hasse and MysliweCek were, for instance. They only
took up into their style what suited them. Quite apart from Byrd, who had an ideal of
secular music entirely different from the Italian in his mind and in his blood-a more "
constructive" one, to put it briefly, and one less excited and less concerned with intimate
connections between words and music-Wilbye and Weelkes and Farmer too borrowed
only a few traits from their influential models: grace, melancholy, pastoral mirth. There
is nothing in their work of Marenzio's subtle chiaroscuro, nothing of his daring
counterpoint and harmony, nothing of his artistic playfulness and extravagance that
could be undeestood only in the " academies " of Roman, Mantuan or Ferrarese aristo-
cratic circles. It is characteristic that the English madrigal has remained without those
large, cyclic compositions of whole canzoni and sestine, in which the Italian madrigal-art
culminates; characteristic, too, that Gesualdo, a personality of European interest since
the sensational affair of his wife- murder, did not, in my opinion, make the least
impression on English musicians with his art (since 1594). They are far too healthy for
that, even when they are very sensitive. Their art is nearer to nature, even where they
toy with pastoral motives. They do not think only of their aristocratic patrons and
therefore do not cultivate the exclusiveness of so many Italian exemplars. They
renounce all species with a “literary” flavouring, such as that type of canzonetta which
from the beginning in Italy, and still at the end of the century, lived on its relationship
with the madrigal, which is to say, partook of parody. Such a thing was incomprehensible
in England, where there was no canzon villanesca alla napoletana, no greghesca, no
giustiniana, no vocale moresca. Even the pastoral does not mean in England what it
means in Italy. It is not a poetic category or formula. Shakespeare was doubtless no
admirer of “Il pastor fido” and its anti-pastoral masquerade. He did write the enchanting
dramatic arabesque of “As you like it”, nut clothed human beings in shepherd’s dress,
not costumed and perfumed puppets. Unfortunately there was no Shakespeare among
the purveyors of words for the Elizabethan madrigal; yet in their poems there lives
something, all the same, of that unfettered relationship to Italian models which we
admire in Shakespeare’s comedy.

Tallis's 'Spem in Alium' and the Elizabethan Respond-Motet

Author(s): Paul Doe

Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Jan., 1970), pp. 1-14 Published by: Oxford
University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/733191 Accessed: 27-03-2019 10:42 UTC

ONE OF the most frustrating obstacles to a study of Renaissance music is the difficulty
of dating compositions. Without a reliable chronology of representative works it is
difficult to perceive patterns of individual development or of mutual influence among
composers. Yet church music, in particular, may sometimes offer the researcher hardly
any clue to its date. Biographical evidence may be unhelpful or lacking; to construct
theories based on style is often to argue in circles; and the accurate dating of sources,
whether printed or manuscript, does no more than set a later limit on a composition
that may have been written several decades earlier. Even where a Mass or motet seems
to have been composed for a special ceremony, the occasion can seldom be identified
unless there is some allusion to it in the music or its text. Contemporary accounts of
such events are notoriously vague in their references to music: they customarily
describe the forces present and leave it at that.

English church music of the Tudor era presents a particularly formidable challenge. For
the first half-century of Tudor rule the country enjoyed one of the most flourishing
musical epochs it has ever known. Yet England as a whole was monastic and isolated,
and although Taverner's output is sufficiently varied to permit certain cautious
conjectures to be made, in general the force of tradition was so strong that innovation
is hard to perceive or define, and even harder to assign to this or that decade. Moreover,
the adornment of worship by polyphony was so completely restricted to a few ritual or
votive situations that scarcely any composition betrays a hint of ceremonial or even of
'occasional' significance. One may note with interest that Cardinal Wolsey sang a Mass
of the Trinity at the Field of the Cloth of Gold and wonder whether Taverner's splendid
'Gloria tibi Trinitas' Mass might have any connection with the event. But even the
elaborate and taxing polyphony of that work could probably have been sung well by a
dozen or more English chapel or collegiate choirs of the 1520's, and in the absence of
any internal evidence in the music itself there the matter must rest.

The disruption of traditional forms and methods in the middle years of the century, first
by Puritan ideals and the resultant liturgical changes, and later by a strong new interest
in Continental techniques between 1550 and 1570, produced a period of rapid
experimental development which, if bewildering, at least offers more scope for cautious
surmise. The strong cross-currents of liturgical form and musical style, the emergence
of the forceful personality of Byrd, and the datable publications of the last quarter of
the century, all combine to make possible the sort of conjectural chronology that Joseph
Kerman has proposed for the music of Byrd himself. In addition, the dispersal or
contraction of choral foundations, coinciding as it did with a strong reaction against pre-
Reformation prolixity, brought about a relative economy in the average scale of church
compositions, which makes it slightly easier to single out large works that might have
been designed for special occasions. The surviving music of Tallis includes three such
items whose grandeur and degree of elaboration seem to rule out any sort of routine
liturgical performance, and which one is almost compelled to try to link with some
national or court ceremony.

By this date Tallis had been a gentleman of the Chapel Royal for fifteen years or more.
Since the country was now in the process of adopting a Protestant religious settlement,
the queen may have felt uneasy about the position of Catholics in her household; but it
is difficult to see any reason why she should have thought it necessary to buy the loyalty
of one who had already served in the uncompromisingly Protestant chapel of Edward
VI. The emoluments of her singers were generous enough by national standards: fees
and other benefits totaled nearly £30 a year, which was about three times the average
paid by cathedrals. Moreover her predecessor, in 1557, had granted to Tallis and Richard
Bowyer jointly a 21- year lease of the manor of Minster in Kent. In view of the state of
the exchequer on her accession it is most unlikely that Elizabeth would have further
rewarded Tallis so munificently for merely carrying out his duty.

In this situation the responds, psalms and other texts would have provided the queen
with an artistic adornment of her services, and her musicians with a welcome outlet for
their growing fascination with Flemish contrapuntal techniques and expressive text-
setting.

Unfortunately this simple solution leaves too many questions unanswered. For example,
a relatively large number of Elizabethan responds are from the Office of the Dead: three
by Parsons, and four each by Ferrabosco and Byrd. It is difficult to see how so many such
pieces, with their strongly funereal associations, could have been accommodated as
'anthems' at ordinary services.
The stories of the Apocrypha were well known in Elizabethan England and increasingly
used as a basis for plays, as the biblical drama steadily declined. The Book of Judith, in
particular, held a quite strong fascination for poets and dramatists, because they saw in
their queen a personification of the Israelite heroine who saved her people from
Nebuchadnezzar's armies by deliberately captivating his general, Holofemes, and then
cutting off his head. The references to Judith in the broadside ballads, for example, are
sufficiently clear to suggest a fairly persistent identification of Elizabeth with Judith, of
Philip of Spain with Holofernes, and, by implication, of England with Israel,
Nebuchadnezzar perhaps with the Pope, and Catholic Europe with the Assyrian
oppressor.

The problem still remains that a work of such splendour cannot have been designed for
a mere routine enactment of an apocryphal story, but must have been associated with
some special occasion as well. Given that the musical style is quite uncharacteristic of
the first decade of the reign, and the probability that such a task would have been
beyond the aged Tallis in the years approaching his death in 1585, a date in the I570's
seems clearly indicated. By far the most likely is that of Elizabeth's fortieth birthday,
which fell on 7 September I573. By this time both the queen's natural birthday and (as
has been mentioned) the anniversary of her accession were widely celebrated as
national festivals, to help replace the many saints' days and holy days lost at the
Reformation. Moreover the number-symbolism in the use of 40 voices is fully in accord
with the spirit of the age. In 1584, for example, there were instituted at St. Andrew,
Holborn, two annual ceremonies to mark the "two memorable feasts of our gracious
sovereign lady, Queen Elizabeth", which in I585 took the form of charitable distributions
to the 52 oldest women of the parish on the queen's birthday, and to 27 other women
on the anniversary of her accession. 3 8 In a musical connection Denis Stevens has
pointed out that the 1575 'Cantiones Sacrae', published in the seventeenth year of the
reign, contain seventeen compositions each by Byrd and Tallis.39 There was, too, every
reason why the Judith story might have seemed conspicuously appropriate for
enactment at a birthday celebration in 1573.

Elizabeth had taunted Philip II almost beyond endurance: she had seized his treasure-
ships and the property of his subjects in Evgland, thwarted the Ridolphi plot, expelled
his ambassador de Spes, flouted his Netherlands viceroy Alva, and given open assistance
to the Dutch rebels. Yet early in I572 Sir Francis Walqirgham was telling the Spanish
ambassador in Paris of his queen's personal likirg for Philip and suggesting further
negotiations; and almost simultaneously she began to respond openly to the courtship
of the Duc d'Alengon. In the English court, at least, Elizabeth's brazen duplicity with her
foreign suitors must have been obvious for what it was: she had little or no real interest
in any such marriage, but so long as she (like Judith) could hold out the possibility, the
risk of invasion was lessened.

By I570 Elizabeth's musicians may justifiably have felt that their capabilities were the
equal of any in Europe; but their lack of scope and consequent lack of recognition must
have engendered the most intense frustration.
It was in that year that William Byrd joined the Chapel Royal from Lincoln Cathedral,
whose chapter was one of the very few that still showed much concern about its service
music. He continued to be paid as master of the choristers until 1572; then the payments
apparently ceased until 2 November 1573, when a Chapter meeting agreed to reinstate
a small annuity as a direct result of representations from the court

Byrd evidently had the ear of the Lord Chamberlain or some other influential person,
and had begun to indulge his business inclinations and campaign for better conditions.
He could well have been dismayed at the low morale of the chapel and the high cost of
living in London, and have begun to look for ways of obtaining royal favours. The queen's
patronage, aside from direct paid employment, took the form of the grant of various
sources of income, such as offices in her gift, the lease of lands, or various forms of
charters and licences. To elicit such favours normally involved direct bribery of an 'inner
ring' of court officials who acted as intermediaries between suitors and the queen43-a
method probably beyond the means of the chapel sing.