Henry's Music  Ref: CD705

Henry's Music Motets from a Royal Choirbook Songs by Henry VIII 1 O Christe Jesu, pastor bone (John Taverner) 2 King's Pavan (Anonymous) 3 England be glad (Anonymous) 4 Consort XII (Henry VIII) 5 Madame d'amours (Anonymous) 6 Tandernaken (Henry VIII) Motets from a Royal Choirbook (British Library, MS Roy. 11.e.xi) 7 Salve radix (Sampson?) 8 Psallite felices (Sampson) 9 Sub tuum presidium (Benedictus de Opitiis) 10 Quam pulcra est (Sampson) 11 Hec est preclarum (Anonymous) 12 Beati omnes (Jacotin) 13 Consort XIII (Henry VIII) 14 O my heart (Henry VIII) 15 Helas madame (Henry VIII) 16 Though some saith (Henry VIII) 17 Nil majus superi vident (Philippe Verdelot?) 18 Consort VIII (Henry VIII) 19 Adieu madame (Henry VIII) 20 En vray amoure (Henry VIII) 21 Lauda vivi alpha et oo (Robert Fayrfax) ALAMIRE Grace Davidson, SOPRANO Julia Doyle, SOPRANO Clare Wilkinson, MEZZO SOPRANO Ruth Clegg, MEZZO SOPRANO Steven Harrold, TENOR (track 3 only) Mark Dobell, TENOR Christopher Watson, TENOR William Unwin, TENOR Simon Wall, TENOR Gregory Skidmore, BARITONE Timothy Scott Whiteley, BARITONE Oliver Hunt, BASS Robert Macdonald, BASS QUINTESSENTIAL ANDREW LAWRENCE-KING Directed by DAVID SKINNER OBSIDIAN CD705 & 2009 Classical Communications Ltd Made in Great Britain Cover image: Henry VIII in 1540 (oil on panel). Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8-1543). Palazzo Barberini. Rome/Bridgeman Art Library. Recorded in the chapel of Magdalen College, Oxford (track 3; 27th April 2006), St Michael's Church, Summertown, Oxford (tracks 1, 2, 6, 7-12, 15, 17, 18, 21; 15-17th September 2008), and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (tracks 4, 5, 13, 14, 16, 19, 29; 25-26th May 2008) Produced and Engineered by Martin Souter Performing editions by David Skinner Meta haec servitii est, haec libertatis origo, Tristitiae finis, laetitiaeque caput. This is an end to our servitude, his is the fount of freedom, The end of sadness and the summit of our joy. SIR THOMAS MORE In Inaugurationem Regis & Reginae Carmen Gratulatorium (1509) On 24 June 1509 Henry Tudor was crowned the eighth English king of that name. His early reign was seen by all as a new Golden Age, full of opulence, spendour, majesty and harmony. Thomas More wrote the adjacent lines as part of an extended poem celebrating the King's accession, ignorant of the knowledge that Henry's Reformation of the 1530s and '40s was to fundamentally change the religious landscape of England forever and claim More's own life. While Henry's reputation is today largely that of the tyrant, in the first 20 years of his reign he was perhaps one of the greatest royal patrons of the musical arts in all of Europe. Here we explore the other Henry: the musician, scholar, and happy prince. Henry, of course, was not originally destined to be king. As the second son of Henry VII he was raised in the manner of any European prince and received a sound education, with original hopes, it seems, for high places in the Church. Henry excelled at languages, literature, theology, sport and, most famously, music. It was the untimely death in 1502 of his older brother Arthur that thrust the young Duke of York into the limelight. When Henry VIII came to the throne just before his 18th birthday, he was a very different character to that most famously produced by Hans Holbein on the cover of this CD: before the iconic image of the obese and fearsome dictator came a youthful, tall, strikingly handsome and benevolent prince. The court during his early years on the throne must have abounded with cultural activity. Indeed, the number of full-time musicians employed in his household increased from around a half dozen to no less than 58. He also kept his own private household chapel choir in addition to his Chapel Royal, containing the finest musicians in the land, which was a regular and important part of his retinue. Later in life he would go on to found or re-found a number of England's greatest musical institutions that still exist today, including Christ Church, Oxford, and Trinity College, Cambridge, as well as finishing King's College Chapel, that grand project started in 1441 by the teenage Henry VI. There is much, therefore, to offer in a single recording of Henry's Music. The chosen works may be divided into two broad categories: music written for Henry and by Henry. Sub-categories might also include church and chamber music, vocal and instrumental, but the main point to demonstrate is the wealth of creativity that flowered at this time and the sheer beauty and emotional impact of the music itself. The centrepiece is the complete contents - six motets - from British Library, MS Royal 11.e.xi, a royal choirbook gifted to Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon in around 1518. A number of scholars have tackled the historical and musical nature of this beautifully illustrated book, though still relatively little concrete information is known of its origin and function. It may have come from the workshop of Petrus Alamire who is known to have produced at least two other lavish choirbooks destined for the court of Henry VIII; certainly the supposed date of the manuscript neatly coincides with Alamire's known visits to England (Dumitrescu and others, however, argue that the book is likely not to be an Alamire production).1 1The most recent account of this manuscript has been written by Dr Nicolas Bell in The Henry VIII Motet Book: A Facsimile of British Library, Royal MS 11 E XI (The Folio Society, 2009). Nevertheless, the book is remarkable on many counts. The frontispiece contains an extended tribute to Henry VIII which is set among Tudor roses and a fortified island representing England. The text Psallite felices (track 8) is set by the German composer 'Sampson' about whom very little is known, though a number of his works appear in Continental printed sources. He is probably also the composer of the 'Rose Canon' Salve radix (track 7) (see illustration on the back of this booklet) which curiously takes the singers via the application of musica ficta through two 'pitch spirals' so that the piece ends a tone lower than notated. Sub tuum presidium (track 9) by Benedictus de Opitiis, one of Henry's musicians, ends with a prayer to the king, while the anonymous Hec est preclarum (track 11) is a beautiful setting extolling the virtues of the Virgin Mary. The five-part Quam pulcra es (track 10), also by Sampson, with its erotic overtones (the text adapted from the Song of Solomon) seems an odd inclusion in this royal gift, but it is perhaps the most musically successful in the collection. The book ends with a three-part setting of Psalm 127 (128 in English) Beati omnes qui timent dominum (track 12), a text set by a number of composers. For the Royal Choirbook, its inclusion may have been intended, owing to the theme of 'children's children', as a prayer willing on the perpetuation of the Tudor dynasty. The work has recently been identified by Patrice Nicolas as being by a certain 'Jacotin'; in one of the several printed editions of this work it has the heading 'ad pares' ('to equal voices'), signifying, it is understood, that the work should be sung with lower voices than other works in the collection, as is the practice for this recording. It is well known that the King himself was an accomplished musician, and that he was a competent player of a variety of keyboard, string, and wind instruments. It is, in fact, the image of Henry playing his harp in the so-called Henry VIII Psalter (right) that inspired the use of gothic harp on this recording. According to Sir Peter Carew, a Gentleman of Henry's Privy Chamber, the king was also 'much delighted to sing'; additionally he was somewhat of an accomplished composer having set at least two masses in five parts, which, in the words of the the chronicler Edward Halle, 'were song oftentimes in hys chapel, and afterwardes in diverse other places'. The main testament to his compositional skill, however, is the so-called Henry VIII Manuscript (British Library, Add. MS 31922), which contains 109 songs and instrumental pieces by composers attached to the court as well as a handful of works by foreign musicians. No fewer than 33 of the compositions, a third of the entire collection, are ascribed to 'the kyng h.viii'. The nine works by Henry recorded here are among his most successful, Tandernaken (track 6) being, arguably, his most accomplished. Most famous in the collection Pastime with good company, has been recorded many times and therefore passed over here; Though some saith (track 16), however, is a perfect substitute having a similar structure but a message more relevant to Henry's youthful character (and a character that he was to revise quite radically in the coming decades). Adieu madame (track 19) and O my heart (track 14) in particular seem to have been conjured from the very depths of Henry's emotions and aptly reveal a young king in love. Apart from the motets in 11.e.xi, three 'tribute' motets to Henry VIII have also come down to us. O Christe Jesu, pastor bone (track 1) by John Taverner, was originally composed in honour of Cardinal Wolsey, founder of Cardinal College, Oxford, but shortly after Taverner's death in 1545 it was adapted for Henry VIII's re-foundation of the college as Christ Church (1546) (it seems unlikely that the work would have been adapted for 'King's College' Oxford, Henry's first re-foundation of Wolsey's Oxford college). The work was further adapted later in the 16th century with a prayer in honour of Henry's second daughter Elizabeth. Earlier still is Fayrfax's setting of Lauda vivi alpha et oo (track 21), probably composed soon after Henry came to the throne in 1509. The work is typical of the great pre-Reformation votive antiphon in its confidence, grandeur, and vast musical architecture. It was to be the great musical art forms such as this, forged from a long, unbroken tradition, that would be swept away by Henry's Reformation. As it happens, Foxe, in his Book of Martyrs, relays an incident at St George's Chapel, Windsor, regarding a setting of this text (most probably Fayrfax's) in which two singing-men, Robert Testwood, on the staff at St George's, and Robert Phillips, a Gentleman of the King's Chapel, clashed over doctrinal matters. When singing one of the 'counteruerses' (one of the sections with reduced scoring, normally reserved for soloists as on the current recording), the two singers began vocal sparring: The matter was this. Robert Phillips was so notable a singing man (wherein he gloryed) that wheresoeuer he came, the best and longest song, with most counteruerses in it, shuld be set vp at his commyng. And so his chaunce beyng now to be at Windsore, agaynst hys comming to the Antheme, a long song was set vp, called Lauda viui. In which song there was one counteruerse toward the end, that began on this wise, O redemptrix & saluatrix. Which verse of all other, Robert Phillips woulde sing, because he knew that Testwood could not abide that dittie. Now Testwood knowing his mynd well enough, ioyned with him at the other part and when he heard Robert Phillips begin to fetch his flourish with O redemptrix & saluatrix: repeating the same one in anothers neck. Testwood was as quicke on the other side to answer hym agayne with Non redemptrix, nec saluatrix, and so striuyng there with O and Non, who should haue the maistrie, they made an ende of the verse. Whereat was good laughyng in sleeues of some, but Robert Phillips with other of Testwoods enimies were sore offended. In Fayrfax's work this very likely took place after the prayer for Henry 'pro rege nostro ora Henrico octavo inclito . . . nosque tuos pios famulos adiuta/ salvifica', when a final homage to the Virgin is paid: 'O precatrix et adjutrix benedicta' (the source for this work dates from the 1540s and the text, it seems, had been mildly corrupted). During Henry's reign Marian texts were often censored and even altered to more general themes of Jesus or the Holy Trinity. Lauda vivi is a good musical example of such adaptation in what regularly appeared in prayer books of the time. Outside of England, Henry was lavishly praised in a setting of Nil majus superi vident (track 17) very likely composed by the French composer Philippe Verdelot who was active in Florence in the 1520s. The motet forms part of a collection of 30 motets and 30 madrigals compiled, it would seem, under Verdelot's direction and delivered as a diplomatic gift to Henry VIII in around 1526.2 The motet is constructed using a technique known as 'soggetto cavato', in which the vowels of the text 'Henricus dei gratia anglie rex' (Henry, by the grace of God, the English King) are set as solmization syllables 're-mi-ut-re-mi-fami- fa-fa-mi-re-re' and deployed as a structural cantus firmus for the entire work. The text shows that Henry was well recognized in foreign lands as a king with force and integrity, though equally a man of sentiment and understanding: 'knowledgeable in military matters, even more desirous of peace'. Henry's second incarnation as king - the Reforming King - would tell a different story. David Skinner Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge 2 The complete madrigals from this collection are available on Obsidian Records: Alamire/Lynda Sayce, Madrigals for a Tudor King (CD703), directed by David Skinner