Eton Choirbook with the BBC Singers

[ardcarp]

Thanks for that amazing post, Vox! It's made my afternoon.

As for

He [Morley] does, however, complain that most "churchmen" were interested only in their ability to "crie louder in the quier then their fellowes"

....

[Vox Humana]

My pleasure, ardcarp. Glad to be of service!

[DracoM]

Yes, vox, many thanks.

My question came out of genuine puzzle. The music of the period, as Vox so eloquently points out, has always struck me as requiring a very steady nerve, total concentration on what your part is doing, keen awareness of what is going on round you, and counting like your life depended on it. Virtuoso music that surely would have to be sung by highly skilled ensembles, and, given what Vox suggests about rehearsal or lack of it etc, sung more or less at sight. The notion of picking up the complex Browne's O Maria Salvatoris Mater or Ave Maria, mater Dei by Cornysh or the fabulous Wylkinson Salve Regina and singing it at sight.....crikey!

OTOH, Morley's lament seems to note striving, competitive singing which he felt defaced performances. I wonder if he ever said that to the ensembles performing his stuff! And what would have been their response if he had!

What practical role did DoMs have in late 15th/early 16th cents? Were they powerful in shaping performance and thus encouraging the kind of performance that would make composers feel good about writing more, or were they merely there to beat time and hope to keep the show together? Are there any more sources to indicate actual performing / rehearsing practice?

[jean]

One thing we need to remember is that for these early C16 musicians, the prevailing style was the only one they had to be familiar with, and its rhythmic quirks and melodic patterns would be second nature to them after a while.

(A marvellous anecdote, VH! Shows that the singers respected the meaning of the text, even if the composers who set it weren't that bothered!)

[Vox Humana]

Virtuoso music that surely would have to be sung by highly skilled ensembles, and, given what Vox suggests about rehearsal or lack of it etc, sung more or less at sight.

Well... um... I wasn't so much suggesting as asking. I really don't know the answer to this. Since I seem to have forgotten more than I ever knew about this music I thought I better have a rummage through my archives and I did in fact dig up one reference that suggests full choir rehearsals. When in 1513 Thomas Ashewell was appointed choirmaster at the Benedictine monastery at Durham, his indenture required (in Latin) that he "shall teach and instruct those monks of Durham and eight lay boys whom the prior of Durham or his deputy shall assign to him, freely, assiduously, diligently and to the best of his ability, as well in playing the organs as in plainsong and polyphony, by singing plainsong, pricknote [i.e. notated polyphony], faburden, descant, squarenote and counter. And he shall carefully and adequately teach the afore-mentioned monks and eight boys, as is aforesaid, four times on each ferial day, that is twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon, hiding from them nothing of his knowledge in these matters." Durham was, however, unusual in requiring its monks to sing polyphony. In most monasteries the polyphonic choir was a "secular" body consisting initially of just boys and, in some places by the Reformation, lay clerks.

Otherwise the musician in charge of a choir was usually referred to by one of several titles, most of which translate as "Instructor of the Choristers" or "Master of the Choristers". Their job was to teach the boys their musical skills - usually encompassing plainsong, sung polyphony (both improvised and notated) and keyboard playing - and if they failed to teach the boys adequately they might be disciplined. I cannot recall a case where an instructor was disciplined for failing to teach the men. The instructor/master was also commonly required to attend with his choir those services at which polyphony was to be sung. Typically these would be the daily Lady Mass, the daily votive antiphon(s), plus, on feast days, the procession and high mass and the greater hours services on feast days.

One thing we need to remember is that for these early C16 musicians, the prevailing style was the only one they had to be familiar with, and its rhythmic quirks and melodic patterns would be second nature to them after a while.

(A marvellous anecdote, VH! Shows that the singers respected the meaning of the text, even if the composers who set it weren't that bothered!)

That's a very good point, Jean, about only having one prevailing style to cope with. I think singers understood Latin more than we might think, though that understanding might be superficial (more than one composer divided the Creed "qui ex Patre Filio, que procedit"). Regarding the texts of motets, I think Morley's point was that singers all too often didn't sing with sensitivity to the text. By Morley's time it had become the norm for sacred and secular vocal music to seek to express the mood of the words, even to the extent of word painting. Before the Reformation this simply hadn't been an issue, although one can find isolated examples, Cornysh's Woefully arrayed being the best known.

[ardcarp]

Prior to the 1560s, or perhaps a bit earlier, British music did not attempt to express the meaning of the words.

When I read that in your earlier and excellent post, I did wonder if it was a slight over-generalistion; and strangely enough it was the Cornysh Woefully Arrayed that immediately sprang to mind. 'His bodye blo and wan' seems rather well-described musically to me. Mind you, that is a truly exceptional and almost uncannily forward-looking piece. One thinks also of how other pre-Ref composers single out 'Jesu' for special treatment...with often a 'halo' of block chords in an otherwise polyphonic texture.

But I'm sure the point is well-made, Vox, and thanks again for the scholarship.

[Vox Humana]

strangely enough it was the Cornysh Woefully Arrayed that immediately sprang to mind. 'His bodye blo and wan' seems rather well-described musically to me. Mind you, that is a truly exceptional and almost uncannily forward-looking piece.

Indeed. It's a shame that his surviving corpus of works isn't larger because, to my mind, he is one of the great British composers. So far as I know he was the first British composer to shape his melodic lines expressively. This is obvious in the beautifully shaped contours of Ave Maria, mater Dei, but it is true of all his compositions to a greater or lesser extent.

[Historian]

I teach this period at A-Level and have occasionally played music from the period during lessons. Thank you for this fascinating discussion which has been of great interest to me as both an historian and a present-day choral singer. The knowledge shared by so many members is one of the great joys of this forum.

[ardcarp]

Nothing sinister about above deletion. Just made a pig's ear of it! Glad you enjoy The Forum, Historian. You and/or your students may be interested in:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/691b2e05-334b-42c9-b121-defae8f84cb3

[Historian]

Nothing sinister about above deletion. Just made a pig's ear of it! Glad you enjoy The Forum, Historian. You and/or your students may be interested in:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/6...1-defae8f84cb3

Ah, didn't know about there being two Williams Cornish, as it were; many thanks. I have to say that at least one of my students found early Tudor church music rather off-putting. However, I will keep trying. Thank you again.

[DracoM]

Maybe - and this is terribly and embarrassingly basic but it worked for me - get the student to think of it as several interconnected relay races. in which the music is sort of like a baton being handed on from voice to voice in whole or in part.
In some of the longer pieces, maybe listen just to the first three or four minutes only several times and think what you've heard.
And above all, try to SING / HUM along with the parts individually and keep going back and re-listening to the same passage but from different angles.

[Vox Humana]

You and/or your students may be interested in:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/6...1-defae8f84cb3

I have to say that, although I have read the article on which this page is based (it appeared years ago in The Musical Times and goes into a lot more detail) I still have reservations about the church music being by William the father. Suffice it to say that, while we don't know when either William was born, it is clear that the son was already adult by 1495 at the latest and was thus old enough to contribute to the Eton Choirbook. In fact he died only two years after Fayrfax (b.1464) so he might easily have been as much as 40 years old when the choirbook was compiled. Contrary to the implication at the end of the linked page (and in the article), William's church music seems to me more progressive than anything else in Eton. I can easily imagine it being by the son. One does stop to wonder whether it is significant that Fayrfax was rewarded by the King several times for his compositions, whereas no church composition by William Cornysh junior (of the royal chapel) was so recognised, but there are other possible explanations for that. Anyway, I had better shut up before those who really know about these things come and blast me out of the water. (Actually, I would be delighted if they would; I would love to get to the bottom of it.)

[ardcarp]

I must say I'm with you on this, Vox. Scholarship aside (and David Skinner is much respected in the field) the 'progressive' nature of Woefully Arrayed would seem to fit in with the poet/actor side of William Jnr's persona.

A personal note: I first sang WA at Buckfast Abbeyin a small pro consort (must have been 30 years ago) and I was completely blown away by it. I'd go so far as to say that, for me, it's one of the most beautiful and original pieces ever written.

[jean]

Maybe - and this is terribly and embarrassingly basic but it worked for me - get the student to think of it as several interconnected relay races. in which the music is sort of like a baton being handed on from voice to voice in whole or in part.
In some of the longer pieces, maybe listen just to the first three or four minutes only several times and think what you've heard.
And above all, try to SING / HUM along with the parts individually and keep going back and re-listening to the same passage but from different angles.

And find the tunes for them - the section Stabat mater rubens rosa from Browne's Stabat mater, parts of Fayrfax's Magnificat Regale. And the Western Wind itself, of course.

I agree with everything that's been said about Woefully arrayed, but I do hate the word progressive in this contest - perhaps it even harks back to an earlier, simpler style?

I've only just been able to listen to the concert, and I would urge anyone who's avoided doing so for fear of being horrified by the soprano tone to catch it before it disappears - I think AC gives very intelligent readings of the pieces, and always keeps up the momentum. And there aren't sops on top in every piece.

(I like to remember that the first broadcasts of this repertoire were given by the BBC Singers under John Poole in the 1960s, when the only versions anyone had heard were those All Saints Margaret Street recordings.)

[Vox Humana]

I agree with everything that's been said about Woefully arrayed, but I do hate the word progressive in this contest - perhaps it even harks back to an earlier, simpler style?

That is certainly an interesting point worth considering for the secular music (which, incidentally, ardcarp, Dr Skinner agrees is all by the son). However, I don't really see much connection between the expressiveness in the contrapuntal lines of William's church music and the motets and masses of people like Dunstable, Power and Bedyngham. It's a personal view and no doubt debatable, but, while I could hold up, say, Browne and Lambe as the culmination of the medieval style, Cornysh goes that little bit further. Is it fair to say that he introduced the first hint of Renaissance humanism into the British church?

(I like to remember that the first broadcasts of this repertoire were given by the BBC Singers under John Poole in the 1960s, when the only versions anyone had heard were those All Saints Margaret Street recordings.)

I have an LP that the Coimbra label issued featuring some of those performances: three Eton pieces (including the ubiquitous Wylkynson Salve regina a 9) plus a Taverner Magnificat.