Henry VIII, Composer

[richardfinegold]

On the drive to work today heard the Phillip Jones Brass Ensemble performing an arrangement of a Suite written by Henry VIII. Isn't he also supposed to have penned Greensleeves? It's nice to know that while not trashing Abbeys and offing unsatisfactory spouses he penned some fine tunes.
My question is: How reliable are the attributions of His Royal Highness. One can imagine all kinds of temptations on the parts of Musicians of the day to allow the Sovereign to claim attribution for something that would have been written by someone else.

[Lat-Literal]

On the drive to work today heard the Phillip Jones Brass Ensemble performing an arrangement of a Suite written by Henry VIII. Isn't he also supposed to have penned Greensleeves? It's nice to know that while not trashing Abbeys and offing unsatisfactory spouses he penned some fine tunes.
My question is: How reliable are the attributions of His Royal Highness. One can imagine all kinds of temptations on the parts of Musicians of the day to allow the Sovereign to claim attribution for something that would have been written by someone else.

Can I add a supplementary question along the lines of some thoughts I have had recently?

To what extent, please, was Anne Boleyn a musician and a composer?

[LeMartinPecheur]

My question is: How reliable are the attributions of His Royal Highness. One can imagine all kinds of temptations on the parts of Musicians of the day to allow the Sovereign to claim attribution for something that would have been written by someone else.

Alas, it's pretty certain that he didn't write Greensleeves! (so the royalties really shouldn't go to royalty, pace Flanders & Swann). In the first known mention of it c.1580 it is described as a New Northern Dittye, which doesn't fit the royal attribution.

He's believed to have written church music but no attribution is at all certain. More likely his are some 20 songs and consort pieces. 'Pastime with good company' is probably the best-known.

As you say, there is always the suspicion that a decent court composer could have been pressured into allowing one of his own compositions to be passed off as the king's unaided work (he was very keen to be seen as outstanding in feats of arms, sports and all the brainy stuff as well!).

This disc describes itself as "The complete music of Henry VIII" https://www.amazon.co.uk/All-Goodly-...rds=Henry+VIII

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

VIII wasn't the first English King to have been credited as a composer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Henry

[jayne lee wilson]

I love this dialogue from Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons..
.
(Thomas More and Henry VIII are conversing outside More's house as a small ensemble plays music from within....)


HENRY VIII: How'd you like our music? That air they played, it had a certain....
Well, tell me what you thought of it.

THOMAS MORE: Could it have been Your Grace's own?


HENRY: Discovered! Now I'll never know your true opinion, and that's irksome.
For we artists, though we love praise,
yet we love truth better.

MORE: Then I will tell my true opinion.

-HENRY: Well?

MORE: To me it seemed delightful.

HENRY: Thomas, I chose the right man for chancellor!

MORE: I should in fairness add that my taste in music is reputedly deplorable.

HENRY: Your taste in music is excellent!
It exactly coincides with my own!

[richardfinegold]

I love this dialogue from Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons..
.
(Thomas More and Henry VIII are conversing outside More's house as a small ensemble plays music from within....)


HENRY VIII: How'd you like our music? That air they played, it had a certain....
Well, tell me what you thought of it.

THOMAS MORE: Could it have been Your Grace's own?


HENRY: Discovered! Now I'll never know your true opinion, and that's irksome.
For we artists, though we love praise,
yet we love truth better.

MORE: Then I will tell my true opinion.

-HENRY: Well?

MORE: To me it seemed delightful.

HENRY: Thomas, I chose the right man for chancellor!

MORE: I should in fairness add that my taste in music is reputedly deplorable.

HENRY: Your taste in music is excellent!
It exactly coincides with my own!

[Vox Humana]

As explained above, there is no evidence that Henry wrote Greensleeves and good reasons to suppose he didn't. All his surviving compositions bar one survive in one court manuscript - http://http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/...f=Add_MS_31922 -and the attributions are accepted as reliable. The other is his motet Quam paul hrs es, which survives in a MS from the 1590s. It's a curious piece and seems rather old-fashioned if the attribution is correct. I think there's a score of it on CPDL.

[jean]

...his motet Quam paul hrs es, which survives in a MS from the 1590s. It's a curious piece...

A curious text indeed!

[Vox Humana]

A curious text indeed!

I'm currently in New Zealand and using Mrs Humana's delinquent iPad which will be ceremonially executed with an axe when we get home. There is a special place in Hull reserved for the inventor of the auto-correct.

[BBMmk2]

Henry VIII composed some rather good music. That suite played by PJBE is a favourite of mine.

[Vox Humana]

The problem with H8's music is that the most attractive pieces mostly turn out to be cribs of other people's. Sometimes all Henry did was to add a rather crude pars ad placitum. Even the popular Pastime was originally a French piece. (Can't give precise details just now: my library is the other side of the world.) It goes without saying that the notion of a suite is modern; Henry had no such concept.