PRE-LECTURE RECITAL:
FESTIVAL OF FAITH AND LITERATURE

‘The music which was within was a marvellous thing to behold, .. for there was such a fine concert as might never be seen’.  Such is the report of Andrés Muñoz, a Spanish courtier, in his account of the marriage service and all the other festivities surrounding Philip II’s marriage to Mary Tudor, in Winchester 1554.  Index Cantorum is pleased to present a short recital of music from that time: compositions from the Spanish and Tudor courts, from composers that would have been known to Mary, her mother Katharine of Aragon, and grandmother Isabel of Castille.

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Continental music was undergoing rapid change, as composers pursued Renaissance ideals.  Political influences were important, especially in the links that the Spanish court had to the Holy Roman Empire, and their ownership of Flemish territory.  Musical ideas between nations could flourish as royal courts met and musicians played together.  Thus styles, developed in Flanders by composers such as Josquin, would translate naturally to courts in Spain, becoming integral to the works of composers such as Peñalosa, Ortiz, Morales, and Guerrero.  Music within England underwent considerable upheaval in the turbulent religious times of the Tudor age.  The Protestant reforms of Henry VIII were pursued further in Edward VI, requiring music to mirror the text ‘settyng thereunto a playn and distinte note, for every sillable one’. Composers such as John Taverner and Thomas Tallis rapidly changed styles of text setting, from long melismatic lines, single words lasting many pages, to simple chord setting, almost hymn-like.  In the brief, five year period of Mary Tudor’s reign, music returned to old ways; lengthy compositions from composers such Tye, Mundy, White having rich syrupy textures, where the text becomes almost secondary to the musical improvisation.  For these reasons, perhaps, these works remain less performed in church liturgy nowadays.

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So how might one best approach listening to this music?  As a general guide the music can be interpreted at several levels.  Taking an academic approach, one can marvel at the composer's ability to use the techniques and structures developed in the early renaissance, often mathematical in nature; the way that familiar tunes (at least to 1550's ears) such as plainsong melodies are woven in, or that parts imitate each other in strict canon.  For a liturgical perspective, it is always interesting to hear how composers of the age set familiar words of the liturgy, such Ave Maria, Ave verum; and also set religious texts that possibly stray from traditional orthodoxy, and were later banned for heresy or superstition.  For just meditation, one may just enjoy the simplicity of the opening pieces, or the the lavish scale and symphonic nature of the final item, as the eye takes in the architecture, the nose smells the incense, and the ear absorbs the interplay of voices, arching phrases, and soaring lines.  Or finally, almost at a sporting level for the English music, one can count all the frisson-inducing moments known as the ‘false relation’; caused by an adaptation of the musica ficta rules governing accidentals, clashes are created between parts, sounding almost as ‘wrong’ notes, but deliciously so.

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© Mark Williams