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 ranging from the popular to the elite. Each of the major nations of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales retained unique forms of music and of instrumentation, but British music was highly influenced by continental developments, while British composers made an important contribution to many of the major movements in early music in Europe, including the polyphony of the Ars Nova and laid some of the foundations of later national and international classical music. Musicians from the British Isles also developed some distinctive forms of music, including Celtic chant, the Contenance Angloise, the rota, polyphonic votive antiphons, and the carol in the medieval era and English madrigals, lute ayres, and masques in the Renaissance era, which would lead to the development of English language opera at the height of the Baroque in the 18th century.
Surviving sources indicate that there was a rich and varied musical soundscape in medieval Britain.[1] 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.[1] Our understanding of this music is limited by a lack of written sources for much of what was an oral culture.[1]
St Andrews Cathedral, associated with the important 13th century 'Wolfenbüttel 677' manuscript
In the early Middle Ages, ecclesiastical music was dominated by monophonicplainchant.[1] The separate development of British Christianity from the direct influence of Rome until the 8th century, with its flourishing monastic culture, led to the development of a distinct form of liturgicalCeltic chant.[2] Although no notations of this music survive, later sources suggest distinctive melodic patterns.[2] This was superseded, as elsewhere in Europe, from the 11th century by Gregorian chant.[3] The version of this chant linked to the liturgy as used in the Diocese of Salisbury, the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.[4] 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.[5] 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.[5] The first notations of Welsh music that survive are from the 14th century, including matins, lauds and vespers for St David's Day.[6]
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.[7] 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.[1] The motet 'Sub Arturo plebs' attributed to Johannes Alanus and dated to the mid or late 14th century, includes a list of Latinised names of musicians from the English court that shows the flourishing of court music, the importance of royal patronage in this era and the growing influence of the ars nova.[8] 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.[9]
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.[10] 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.[11] 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.[12] 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.[13] 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.[14] 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.[5]
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.[15] Often accompanying themselves on the harp, they can also be seen in records of the Scottish courts throughout the medieval period.[16] 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.[6] 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.[1] 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.[1] 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.[10]
A rota is a form of round, known to have been used from the 13th century in England.[10] The earliest surviving piece of composed music in the British Isles, and perhaps the oldest recorded folk song in Europe, is a rota: a setting of 'Sumer Is Icumen In' ('Summer is a-coming in') from the mid-13th century, possibly written by W. de Wycombe, precentor of the priory of Leominster in Herefordshire, and set for six parts.[17] 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.[10]
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.[10] Towards the end of the 15th century they began to be written by English composers as expanded settings for as many as nine parts with increasing complexity and vocal range.[10] The largest collection of such antiphons is in the late 15th century Eton choirbook.[18]
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.[19] From the 14th century they were used as processional songs, particularly at Advent, Easter, and Christmas, and to accompany religious mystery plays.[20] 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.[1]
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 1465–83 Master of the King's Music.[21]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.[22] 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.[14] His mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, was the major sponsor of music during his reign, commissioning several settings for new liturgical feasts and ordinary of the mass.[23] The result was a very elaborate style which balanced the many parts of the setting and prefigured Renaissance developments elsewhere.[24] 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.[25] 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.[26] 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.[6] In this period it seems that most Welsh composers tended to cross the border and seek employment in the English royal and noble households, including John Lloyd (c. 1475–1523) who was employed in the household of the Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham and became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal from 1509 and Robert Jones (fl.c.1520–35) who also became a gentleman of the Chapel Royal.[27]
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'.[28] 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'.[24] Among the most eminent musicians of Henry VIII's reign was John Taverner (1490–1545), organist of the College founded at Oxford by Thomas Wolsey from 1526–1530. His principal works include masses, magnificats and motets, of which the most famous is 'Dum Transisset Sabbatum'.[18]Thomas Tallis (c. 1505–85) took polyphonic composition to new heights with works like his 'Spem in alium', a motet for forty independent voices.[29] 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?).[30]
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.[24] Many composers also responded to the liturgical changes brought about by the Reformation. From the 1540s during the Reformation in England sacred music was being set to English language texts along with Latin.[24] The legacy of Tallis includes the harmonised versions of the plainsong responses of the English church service that are still in use by the Church of England.[31] 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,[32] necessitated simplicity and most church compositions were confined to homophonic settings.[33] 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.[32]
William Byrd, one of the key English composers of the reign of Elizabeth I
During this period, music printing (technically more complex than the printing of written text) was adopted from continental practice.[24] Around 1520 John Rastell initiated the single-impression method for printing music, in which the staff lines, words, and notes were all part of a single piece of type, making it much easier to produce, although not necessarily clearer.[34]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.[35]
James V's daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, also played the lute, virginals and (unlike her father) was a fine singer.[36] 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.[37] 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.[36] In England her cousin Elizabeth I was also trained in music. She played the lute, virginals, sang, danced, and even claimed to have composed dance music. She was major patron for English musicians composers (particularly in the Chapel Royal) while in her royal household she employed numerous foreign musicians in her consorts of viols, flutes, recorders, and sackbuts and shawms.[38][39] 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.[40][41] The outstanding Scottish composer of the era was Robert Carver (c.1485–c.1570) whose works included the nineteen-part motet 'O Bone Jesu'.[26]
Title page of Morley'sPlaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597)
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.[42] 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.[35] The most influential composers of madrigals in England whose work has survived were Thomas Morley, Thomas Weelkes and John Wilbye.[35] One of the more notable compilations of English madrigals was The Triumphs of Oriana, a collection of madrigals compiled by Thomas Morley and devoted to Elizabeth I.[43] 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.[44]
Also emerging from the Elizabethan court were ayres, solo songs, occasionally with more (usually three) parts, accompanied on a lute.[44] Their popularity began with the publication of John Dowland's (1563–1626) First Booke of Songs or Ayres (1597). Dowland had travelled extensively in Europe and probably based his ayres on the Italian monody and French air de cour.[44] His most famous ayres include "Come again", "Flow, my tears", "I saw my Lady weepe" and "In darkness let me dwell".[44] The genre was further developed by Thomas Campion (1567–1620), whose Books of Airs (1601) (co-written with Philip Rosseter) containing over one hundred lute songs and which was reprinted four times in the 1610s.[45] Although this printing boom died out in the 1620s ayres continued to be written and performed and were often incorporated into court masques.[44]
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).[46] Major forms of music composed for consorts included: fantasias, In Nomines, variations, dances, and fantasia-suites.[47] 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.
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.[44] These developed out of the medieval tradition of guising in the early Tudor period and became increasingly complex under Elizabeth I, James VI and I and Charles I. Professional actors and musicians were hired for the speaking and singing parts. Shakespeare included masque like sections in many of his plays and Ben Jonson is known to have written them.[48] 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.[49] The masque largely ended with the closure of the theatres and the exile of the court under the Commonwealth.[44]
Performances of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays frequently included the use of music, with performances on organs, lutes, viols and pipes for up to an hour before the actual performance, and texts indicates that they were used during the plays.[43] Plays, perhaps particularly the heavier histories and tragedies, were frequently broken up with a short musical play, perhaps derived from the Italian intermezzo, with music, jokes and dancing, known as a 'jigg' and from which the jig dance derives its name.[43] After the closure of the London theatres in 1642 these tendencies developed into sung plays that are recognisable as English Opera's, the first usually being thought of as William Davenant's (1606–68) The Siege of Rhodes (1656), originally given in a private performance.[44] The development of native English opera had to wait for the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the patronage of Charles II.[44]
The Chapel Royal in Stirling Castle, the location of Scottish coronations and royal musical patronage until the ascension of James VI to the English throne
James VI, king of Scotland from 1567, was a major patron of the arts in general. He made statutory provision to reform and promote the teaching of music.[50] He rebuilt the Chapel Royal at Stirling in 1594 and the choir was used for state occasions like the baptism of his son Henry.[51] He followed the tradition of employing lutenists for his private entertainment, as did other members of his family.[52] When he went south to take the throne of England in 1603 as James I, he removed one of the major sources of patronage in Scotland. The Scottish Chapel Royal was now used only for occasional state visits, beginning to fall into disrepair, and from now on the court in Westminster would be the only major source of royal musical patronage.[51] When Charles I returned in 1633 to be crowned he brought many musicians from the English Chapel Royal for the service.[51] Both James and his son Charles I, king from 1625, continued the Elizabethan patronage of church music, where the focus remained on settings of Anglican services and anthems, employing the long lived Bryd and then following in his footsteps composers such as Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625) and Thomas Tomkins (1572–1656).[52] The emphasis on the liturgical content of services under Charles I, associated with Archbishop William Laud, meant a need for fuller musical accompaniment.[53] In 1626 the musical establishment of the royal household was sufficient to necessitate the creation of a new office of 'Master of the King's Music' and probably the most important composer of the reign was William Lawes (1602–45), who produced fantasia suites, consort music for harp, viols and organ and music for individual instruments, including lutes.[35] This establishment was disrupted by the outbreak of English Civil War in 1642, but a smaller musical establishment was kept at the King's alternative capital at Oxford for the duration of the conflict.[54]
The period between the ascendancy of Parliament in London in 1642, to the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, radically changed the pattern of British music. The loss of the court removed the major source of patronage, the theatres were closed in London in 1642 and certain forms of music, particularly those associated with traditional events or the liturgical calendar (like morris dancing and carols), and certain forms of church music, including collegiate choirs and organs, were discouraged or abolished where parliament was able to enforce its authority.[55] There was, however, no Puritan ban on secular music and Cromwell had the organ from Magdalen College, Oxford set up at Hampton Court Palace and employed an organist and other musicians.[56] Musical entertainment was provided at official receptions, and at the wedding of Cromwell's daughter.[57] Since the opportunities for large scale composition and public performance were limited, music under the Protectorate became a largely private matter and flourished in domestic settings, particularly in the larger private houses.[55] The consort of viols enjoyed a resurgence in popularity and leading composers of new pieces were John Jenkins and Matthew Locke.[58]Christopher Simpson's work, The Division Violist, first published in 1659, was for many years the leading manual on playing the viol and on the art of extemporising "divisions to a ground", in Britain and continental Europe and is still used as a reference by early music revivalists.[13]
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 R. McKitterick, C. T. Allmand, T. Reuter, D. Abulafia, P. Fouracre, J. Simon, C. Riley-Smith, M. Jones, eds, The New Cambridge Medieval History: C. 1415- C. 1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 319–25.
1 2 D. O. Croinin, ed., Prehistoric and Early Ireland: Prehistoric and Early Ireland, vol I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 798.
↑ D. Hiley, Western Plainchant: a Handbook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 483.
↑ E. Foley, M. Paul Bangert, Worship Music: a Concise Dictionary (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), p. 273.
1 2 3 K. Elliott and F. Rimmer, A History of Scottish Music (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1973), pp. 8–12.
1 2 3 J. T. Koch, Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2006), p. 1765.
↑ W. Lovelock, A Concise History of Music (New York NY: Frederick Ungar, 1953), p. 57.
↑ M. Bent, Two Fourteenth-Century Motets in Praise of Music (Lustleigh: Antico, 1986).
↑ P. M. Lefferts, ed., Regule, by Johannes Hanboys (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), pp. 30–1.
1 2 3 4 5 6 R. H. Fritze and W. B. Robison, Historical Dictionary of Late Medieval England, 1272–1485 (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2002), p. 363.
↑ S. Sadie and A. Latham, The Cambridge Music Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 101–2.
↑ N. Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530 (London: Taylor and Francis, 1984), p. 169.
1 2 J. Caldwell, The Oxford History of English Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 151–2.
1 2 T. Dumitrescu, The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 63 and 197–9.
↑ M. J. Green, The Celtic World (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 428.
↑ W. McLeod, Divided Gaels: Gaelic Cultural Identities in Scotland and Ireland, C.1200-c.1650 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 102.
↑ H. Morley and W. H. Griffin, English Writers: An Attempt Towards a History of English Literature vol. 10 (1887, BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2008), p. 227.
1 2 H. Benham, John Taverner: His Life and Music (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 48–9.
↑ J. J. Walsh, Were They Wise Men Or Kings?: The Book of Christmas Questions (Westminster: John Knox Press, 2001), p. 60.
↑ W. J. Phillips, Carols; Their Origin, Music, and Connection with Mystery-Plays (Routledge, 1921, Read Books, 2008), p. 24.
↑ H. W. Hadow, English Music (Longmans, 1931, Read Books, 2006), pp. 27–8.
↑ A. L. Beier, Masterless men: the vagrancy problem in England 1560–1640 (London: Routledge, 1985), p. 98.
↑ M. Williamson, 'Royal image-making and textual interplay in Gilbert Banaster's O Maria et Elizabeth, in I. Fenlon, ed., Early Music History: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 269.
1 2 3 4 5 R. Bray, 'England i, 1485–1600' in J. Haar, European Music, 1520–1640 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), pp. 490–502.
↑ J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), pp. 58 and 118.
1 2 M. Gosman, A. A. MacDonald, A. J. Vanderjagt and A. Vanderjagt, Princes and princely culture, 1450–1650 (Brill, 2003), p. 163.
↑ S. Harper, Music in Welsh culture before 1650: a study of the principal sources (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 282–3.
↑ G. Braden, Sixteenth-century poetry: an annotated anthology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2005), p. 40.
↑ W. Elders, Symbolic Scores: Studies in the Music of the Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 1994), p. 109.
↑ J. Patrick, Renaissance and Reformation (London: Marshall Cavendish, 2007), p. 1264.
↑ R. M. Wilson, Anglican Chant and Chanting in England, Scotland, and America, 1660 to 1820 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 146–7 and 196–7.
1 2 J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470-1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), ISBN0748602763, pp. 187-90.
↑ A. Thomas, The Renaissance, in T. M. Devine and J. Wormald, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), ISBN0191624330, p. 198.
↑ J. A. Bernstein, Music Printing in Renaissance Venice: The Scotto Press, 1539–1572 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 27.
1 2 3 4 J. P. Wainright, 'England ii, 1603–1642' in J. Haar, ed., European Music, 1520–1640 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), pp. 509–21.
1 2 A. Frazer, Mary Queen of Scots (London: Book Club Associates, 1969), pp. 206–7.
↑ M. Spring, The Lute in Britain: A History of the Instrument and Its Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 452.
↑ Butler, Katherine (2015). Music in Elizabethan Court Politics. Boydell and Brewer. p.chaps.1–3. ISBN9781843839811.
↑ D. M. Robin, A. R. Larsen and C. Levin, Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2007), p. 277.
↑ P. Brett, J. Kerman and D. Moroney, William Byrd and His Contemporaries: Essays and a Monograph (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006).
↑ J. L. Smith, Thomas East and Music Publishing in Renaissance England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 90–1.
1 2 3 S. Lord and D. Brinkman, Music from the Age of Shakespeare: a Cultural History (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2003), pp. 41–2 and 522.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 G. J. Buelow, History of Baroque Music: Music in the Seventeenth and First Half of the Eighteenth Centuries (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. 26, 306, 309 and 327–8.
↑ C. MacClintock, Readings in the history of music in performance (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982), p. 194.
↑ P. Holman. Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court, 1540–1690 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 275.
↑ J. H. Baron, Chamber Music: A Research and Information Guide (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 133.
↑ S. Orgel, ed., William Shakespeare, The Tempest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 44.
↑ K. Sharpe, ed., Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 179–264.
1 2 3 P. Le Huray, Music and the Reformation in England, 1549–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 83–5.
1 2 T. Carter and J. Butt, The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 280, 300, 433 and 541.
↑ G. Parry, The Arts of the Anglican Counter-Reformation: Glory, Laud and Honour (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), p. 157.
↑ A. Ashbee and P. Holman, John Jenkins and His Time: Studies in English Consort Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 197.
1 2 D. C. Price, Patrons and Musicians of the English Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 154.
↑ L. Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were (Grand Rapids MI: Zondervan, 1990), p. 4.
↑ N. Smith, ed., The Poems of Andrew Marvell (London: Pearson Education, 2007), p. 316.
↑ D. D. Boyden, The History of Violin Playing from Its Origins to 1761: and its Relationship to the Violin and Violin Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 233.
Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century ars nova, the Trecento music was treated by musicology as a coda to Medieval music and the new era dated from the rise of triadic harmony and the spread of the contenance angloise style from Britain to the Burgundian School. A convenient watershed for its end is the adoption of basso continuo at the beginning of the Baroque period.
Orlando Gibbons was an English composer and keyboard player who was one of the last masters of the English Virginalist School and English Madrigal School. The best known member of a musical family dynasty, by the 1610s he was the leading composer and organist in England, with a career cut short by his sudden death in 1625. As a result, Gibbons's oeuvre was not as large as that of his contemporaries, like the elder William Byrd, but he made considerable contributions to many genres of his time. He is often seen as a transitional figure from the Renaissance to the Baroque periods.
A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance and early Baroque (1600–1750) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the number of voices varies from two to eight, but usually features three to six voices, whilst the metre of the madrigal varies between two or three tercets, followed by one or two couplets. Unlike the verse-repeating strophic forms sung to the same music, most madrigals are through-composed, featuring different music for each stanza of lyrics, whereby the composer expresses the emotions contained in each line and in single words of the poem being sung.
The term lute song is given to a music style from the late 16th century to early 17th century, late Renaissance to early Baroque, that was predominantly in England and France. Lute songs were generally in strophic form or verse repeating with a homophonic texture. The composition was written for a solo voice with an accompaniment, usually the lute. It was not uncommon for other forms of accompaniments such as bass viol or other string instruments, and could also be written for more voices. The composition could be performed either solo or with a small group of instruments.
William Lawes was an English composer and musician.
The air de cour was a popular type of secular vocal music in France in the late Renaissance and early Baroque period, from about 1570 until around 1650. From approximately 1610 to 1635, during the reign of Louis XIII, this was the predominant form of secular vocal composition in France, especially in the royal court.
A consort of instruments was a phrase used in England during the 16th and 17th centuries to indicate an instrumental ensemble. These could consist of the same or a variety of instruments. Consort music enjoyed considerable popularity at court and in the households of the wealthy in the Elizabethan era, and many pieces were written for consorts by the major composers of the period. In the Baroque era, consort music was absorbed into chamber music.
Classical music of the United Kingdom is taken in this article to mean classical music in the sense elsewhere defined, of formally composed and written music of chamber, concert and church type as distinct from popular, traditional, or folk music. The term in this sense emerged in the early 19th century, not long after the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland came into existence in 1801. Composed music in these islands can be traced in musical notation back to the 13th century, with earlier origins. It has never existed in isolation from European music, but has often developed in distinctively insular ways within an international framework. Inheriting the European classical forms of the 18th century, patronage and the academy and university establishment of musical performance and training in the United Kingdom during the 19th century saw a great expansion. Similar developments occurred in the other expanding states of Europe and their empires. Within this international growth the traditions of composition and performance centred in the United Kingdom, including the various cultural strands drawn from its different provinces, have continued to evolve in distinctive ways through the work of many famous composers.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), English art and high culture reached a pinnacle known as the height of the English Renaissance. Elizabethan music experienced a shift in popularity from sacred to secular music and the rise of instrumental music. Professional musicians were employed by the Church of England, the nobility, and the rising middle-class.
The concerto delle donne was a group of professional female singers in the late Italian Renaissance, primarily in the court of Ferrara, Italy. Renowned for their technical and artistic virtuosity, the ensemble was founded by Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara, in 1580 and was active until the court was dissolved in 1597. Giacomo Vincenti, a music publisher, praised the women as "virtuose giovani", echoing the sentiments of contemporaneous diarists and commentators.
Martin Peerson was an English composer, organist and virginalist. Despite Roman Catholic leanings at a time when it was illegal not to subscribe to Church of England beliefs and practices, he was highly esteemed for his musical abilities and held posts at St Paul's Cathedral and, it is believed, Westminster Abbey. His output included both sacred and secular music in forms such as consort music, keyboard pieces, madrigals and motets.
Baroque music of the British Isles bridged the gap between the early music of the Medieval and Renaissance periods and the development of fully fledged and formalised orchestral classical music in the second half of the eighteenth century. It was characterised by more elaborate musical ornamentation, changes in musical notation, new instrumental playing techniques and the rise of new genres such as opera. Although the term Baroque is conventionally used for European music from about 1600, its full effects were not felt in Britain until after 1660, delayed by native trends and developments in music, religious and cultural differences from many European countries and the disruption to court music caused by the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and Interregnum. Under the restored Stuart monarchy the court became once again a centre of musical patronage, but royal interest in music tended to be less significant as the seventeenth century progressed, to be revived again under the House of Hanover. The Baroque era in British music can be seen as one of an interaction of national and international trends, sometimes absorbing continental fashions and practices and sometimes attempting, as in the creation of ballad opera, to produce an indigenous tradition. However, arguably the most significant British composer of the era, George Frideric Handel, was a naturalised German, who helped integrate British and continental music and define the future of music in the United Kingdom.
The Renaissance in Scotland was a cultural, intellectual and artistic movement in Scotland, from the late fifteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late fourteenth century and reaching northern Europe as a Northern Renaissance in the fifteenth century. It involved an attempt to revive the principles of the classical era, including humanism, a spirit of scholarly enquiry, scepticism, and concepts of balance and proportion. Since the twentieth century, the uniqueness and unity of the Renaissance has been challenged by historians, but significant changes in Scotland can be seen to have taken place in education, intellectual life, literature, art, architecture, music, science and politics.
Music in early modern Scotland includes all forms of musical production in Scotland between the early sixteenth century and the mid-eighteenth century. In this period the court followed the European trend for instrumental accompaniment and playing. Scottish monarchs of the sixteenth century were patrons of religious and secular music, and some were accomplished musicians. In the sixteenth century the playing of a musical instrument and singing became an expected accomplishment of noble men and women. The departure of James VI to rule in London at the Union of Crowns in 1603, meant that the Chapel Royal, Stirling Castle largely fell into disrepair and the major source of patronage was removed from the country. Important composers of the early sixteenth century included Robert Carver and David Peebles. The Lutheranism of the early Reformation was sympathetic to the incorporation of Catholic musical traditions and vernacular songs into worship, exemplified by The Gude and Godlie Ballatis (1567). However, the Calvinism that came to dominate Scottish Protestantism led to the closure of song schools, disbanding of choirs, removal of organs and the destruction of music books and manuscripts. An emphasis was placed on the Psalms, resulting in the production of a series of Psalters and the creation of a tradition of unaccompanied singing.
Music in Medieval Scotland includes all forms of musical production in what is now Scotland between the fifth century and the adoption of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. The sources for Scottish Medieval music are extremely limited. There are no major musical manuscripts for Scotland from before the twelfth century. There are occasional indications that there was a flourishing musical culture. Instruments included the cithara, tympanum, and chorus. Visual representations and written sources demonstrate the existence of harps in the Early Middle Ages and bagpipes and pipe organs in the Late Middle Ages. As in Ireland, there were probably filidh in Scotland, who acted as poets, musicians and historians. After this "de-gallicisation" of the Scottish court in the twelfth century, a less highly regarded order of bards took over the functions of the filidh and they would continue to act in a similar role in the Scottish Highlands and Islands into the eighteenth century.
The Royal Court of Scotland was the administrative, political and artistic centre of the Kingdom of Scotland. It emerged in the tenth century and continued until it ceased to function when James VI inherited the throne of England in 1603. For most of the medieval era, the king had no "capital" as such. The Pictish centre of Forteviot was the chief royal seat of the early Gaelic Kingdom of Alba that became the Kingdom of Scotland. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Scone was a centre for royal business. Edinburgh only began to emerge as the capital in the reign of James III but his successors undertook occasional royal progress to a part of the kingdom. Little is known about the structure of the Scottish royal court in the period before the reign of David I when it began to take on a distinctly feudal character, with the major offices of the Steward, Chamberlain, Constable, Marischal and Lord Chancellor. By the early modern era the court consisted of leading nobles, office holders, ambassadors and supplicants who surrounded the king or queen. The Chancellor was now effectively the first minister of the kingdom and from the mid-sixteenth century he was the leading figure of the Privy Council.
Court music in Scotland is all music associated with the Royal Court of Scotland, between its origins in the tenth century, until its effective dissolution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with the Union of Crowns 1603 and Acts of Union 1707.
Music in Medieval England, from the end of Roman rule in the fifth century until the Reformation in the sixteenth century, was a diverse and rich culture, including sacred and secular music and ranging from the popular to the elite.
Osbert Parsley was an English Renaissance composer and chorister. Few details of his life are known, but he evidently married in 1558, and lived for a period in the parish of St Saviour's Church, Norwich. A boy chorister at Norwich Cathedral, Parsley worked there throughout his musical career. He was first mentioned as a lay clerk, was appointed a "singing man" in c. 1534, and was probably the cathedral's unofficial organist for half a century. His career spanned the reigns of Henry VIII and all three of his children. After the Reformation of 1534, the lives of English church musicians changed according to the official policy of each monarch.
Thomas Cardell or Cardall was a musician and dancing master specialising in playing the lute who served Elizabeth I and Anne of Denmark.
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