CE Holy Trinity Church, Stratford upon Avon April 20th, 2016

[ardcarp]

Not relevant, but there's the well-known Anglican chant based on a simplified version of Purcell's 'And the voice of the turtle' from My Beloved Spake. Natural, I suppose not to waste a good tune...or in this case some unusual side-shifting harmony.

But to the matter of Anglican chant and its evolution. Phillips admits (The Singing Church, Chapter 33) "There are no certain means of knowing how the chanting of prose psalms was done. In many books the only pointing given was the Prayer Book colon halfway through each verse.. [.....] Wesley's psalter, produced for his choir at Leeds Parish Church, inserts marks to correspond with the bar-lines of the chant."

It may be that Anglican chant as we know it is an invention of the nineteenth century, championed by Wesley; and maybe Stainer's original Cathedral Psalter was the earliest to regularise it.

[Vox Humana]

Anglican chant certainly goes back further than that. The two earliest double chants are said to be those by Luke Flintoft (1680-1727) and William Morley (d.1721). I've no idea about the first single chant as we know them, but there's one by Christopher Gibbons which may (or may not) be original. There are plenty of chants by Baroque composers such as Henry Purcell, John Alcock, William Boyce, Benjamin Cooke, etc. I don't know when the first pointed psalter appeared, but SS. Wesley's psalter of 1843 has rudimentary pointing. Oakley's The Bible Psalter (1850) is better.

[Don Basilio]

Does anyone remember 'Merbecke' ?

[/I]

Sure do. Martin Shaw was the alternative when I was a teenager.

Merbecke is still sung at my Evensong church when the choir is on holiday. They like olde worlde language, unlike my regular Sunday morning shack, but the incense is stronger.

[ardcarp]

Thanks for the Alcock chants, Vox, written in crotchets rather than minims. I like the bit at the end:

"The two last may be accompanied by all sorts of instruments"

I wonder how they all kept together? It rather suggests a strict rhythmic approach to all but the reciting note. There used to be an organ in a Somerset village called Burrowbridge which could be played via a pinned barrel. In addition to hymn tunes, you could select a couple of psalm chants. How the operator of this mechanism managed to cope with psalms, I have no idea, but it conjures up very slow turns for the reciting note followed by furious cranking for the final syllables of each verse.

I wish I'd made a more detailed note of this village organ. I was only about 14 at the time and more intrigued by the mechanics of the thing than by its musicological significance.

I've no idea if this organ and its player mechanism still exists. Must pay a visit one day. Hope it wasn't all flooded along with the rest of The Somerset Levels a couple of years ago.

[Vox Humana]

Fascinating info about the barrel organ, Ardcarp. Yes, I wonder how they coped. Re Baroque chanting, several years ago the Rev Dr Peter Marr, who did his PhD on John Alcock, mounted an Alcock lecture/recital. He told me that he had considered getting a choir to do a psalm to one of Alcock's chants, but had decided against it because he couldn't see any hope of getting modern singers to cope with the eighteenth-century style of chanting. Sadly he didn't elaborate so I don't know exactly what the difficulties would have been, although obviously the trills would have been one. I'm sure all but the reciting notes must have been sung in strict rhythm as per the pre-twentieth-century style.

[mopsus]

These are all bogus. .... The Tudors did write through-composed psalm settings in a repetitive but free, chant-like form and some of these early settings use plainsong tones in the Tenor.

I've found some references to 'festal psalms' by Tallis, as distinct from the tunes for Parker's metrical psalter - are these what you are referring to? I wonder though whether they would have been in widespread use, or just in major choral foundations.

[Miles Coverdale]

I've found some references to 'festal psalms' by Tallis, as distinct from the tunes for Parker's metrical psalter - are these what you are referring to? I wonder though whether they would have been in widespread use, or just in major choral foundations.

Not much in the way of psalm settings by Tallis survives, as far as I can see. There's Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way, from Psalm 119, but I'm not sure that can really be described as festal. The bass part only also survives for Psalms 110, 132 and another portion of 119. The bass part also survives to O praise the Lord, all ye heathen, which is a contrafact of O salutaris hostia, but the English version may not be by Tallis. Have I missed anything?

[Vox Humana]

Yes, Mopsus, those were the sort of thing I had in mind and here's an example by Orlando Gibbons (which I think I've probably posted before).

Tallis's settings of Ps 119, vv. 9-32 survive, so that's Wherewithal shall a young man, O do well unto thy servant and My soul cleaveth to the dust. I have not seen it and so far as I know it's unpublished, but it appears that his setting of Ps 110 survives, possibly completely, in the manuscript additions to the copy of Barnard's First Book of Selected Church Musick at Christ Church, Oxford (Mus. 544-553).

I don't know how many choirs would have had the capability to sing Tallis's psalms in his lifetime, but i wouldn't have thought there were that many.

[Miles Coverdale]

I have not seen it and so far as I know it's unpublished, but it appears that his setting of Ps 110 survives, possibly completely, in the manuscript additions to the copy of Barnard's First Book of Selected Church Musick at Christ Church, Oxford (Mus. 544-553).

Le Huray and Daniel does not list the Christ Church MSS under the entry for Tallis's setting of Psalm 110. I know that John Milsom spent many, many hours cataloguing the Christ Church music manuscripts, and I'd be surprised if he made a mistake and mis-catalogued that piece, but it's not in the EECM edition of Tallis's English works, which I would have thought it would be if it was genuinely a work by him. Curious.

[Vox Humana]

The EECM volume of sources does have an entry for Ps 110 (and the bass line is printed the EECM volume of Tallis's English music), but misses the Ch Ch source. I think it's likely that Daniel & Le Huray simply didn't know about it. Had they known they would have listed it, unless the music was obviously bogus, in which case they would presumably have excluded the entry altogether as they did for Aldrich's (?) confection All people that on earth do dwell. As you say, curious.

[Miles Coverdale]

The EECM volume of sources does have an entry for Ps 110 (and the bass line is printed the EECM volume of Tallis's English music), but misses the Ch Ch source. I think it's likely that Daniel & Le Huray simply didn't know about it. Had they known they would have listed it, unless the music was obviously bogus, in which case they would presumably have excluded the entry altogether as they did for Aldrich's (?) confection All people that on earth do dwell. As you say, curious.

Except that some of the other pieces on the Christ Church web page are listed in Le Huray and Daniel (e.g. Gibbons' Glorious and powerful God), so they did know about the source. Next time I'm in the Bodleian, I shall look it up.

I'd be slightly surprised if there's a genuine piece of Tallis that's still unedited or unpublished.

[W.Kearns]

Apropos contributions concerning Anglican chant, earlier today quite by chance I came upon an advertisement which appeared in the Leeds Intelligencer of 1767. It is for the Rev Mr John Chetham's 'Book of Psalmody' and includes not only tunes for the psalms 'in the Old and New Versions' but also 'CHANTING TUNES' (advertiser's emphasis) 'for Venite Exultemus, Te Deum, Benedicite &c' together with 'set tunes for Jubilate and Nunc Dimittis'. The volume includes also some 15 anthems 'all set in FOUR PARTS within such a compass as will most naturally suit the Voices in Country Churches, yet may be sung in Three or Two without any Disallowances.'

I'm not entirely sure what Mr Chetham means by 'Disallowances' although I can guess, but what a remarkable catch-all choir book it sounds - has anyone ever come across it?

[Vox Humana]

Indeed.

https://archive.org/details/abookpsalmody00chetgoog

[W.Kearns]

Thanks so much, Vox Humana. Your link shows the 1741 edition of the work, so it was clearly doing the rounds long before my 1767 advertisement came out! Having had a quick browse, it strikes me that Mr Chetham's 'chanting tunes' given around p.93 et seq. are probably not so very far removed from Anglican chant as we know it. This view, I hasten to say, is a bit of a guess; I wouldn't claim any expertise in the matter!

[mopsus]

I love some of the chants attributed to Michael Wise and Henry Purcell, but I don't know whether they are authentic or bogus. (I'm not thinking of the one Turle adapted from My beloved Spake, but of the single chants.) Is there any standard view on this? Sorry, moving off the repertoire of this evensong broadcast a little, but it's so rare to have a chance to discuss this sort of topic with people who might know.