Tudor Music and the 2007 Christmas Revels

The Music of Henry VIII

While most of us are generally aware of Henry VIII’s reign as King of England (from 1509 until 1547), we do not know of him as a poet, musician, sportsman and scholar. In fact, Henry was an expert singer with a clear tenor voice; a player of lute, flute, recorder, cornett and virginals; and a composer of sacred and secular music. Originally destined for the church, Henry received the musical training necessary for an ecclesiastic. Not only did he himself compose church music and songs, he made his court a center of musical culture.

While most of Henry’s sacred music has been lost, his secular compositions are preserved in a manuscript that survives at the British Museum, known as Henry VIII’s Song Book. It contains thirty-three of his own compositions, as well as an assortment of music by composers of his court.

One of Henry’s most famous songs is “Pastime With Good Company”—both music and lyrics are his. This part song is a celebration of good times—of hunting, eating, drinking, and general merriment. Another song, “Blow Thy Horn, Hunter” by court musician William Cornysh, compares the chase to a game of courtship. As we know, Henry was a handsome and virile man in his youth.

Henry’s love of music must have surely been passed to his daughter Elizabeth, who became Queen of England in 1558.

Music from the Time of Queen Elizabeth I

Elizabeth was the only surviving child of Henry VIII by his second queen, Anne Boleyn. A skilled musician who played the virginals and the lute, Elizabeth enjoyed musical entertainments, encouraged musicians and composers, and was especially fond of dancing. She performed the particularly demanding dance called the galliard every morning to keep herself fit.

Elizabeth’s love of song, theater, and dance made her into a great patroness of the arts, inspiring a wealth of music and written word which survived into the twenty-first century. During her reign, music for the church took on a Protestant tone, with emphasis on psalm settings and the use of English as well as the more common Latin. Composers such as William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, and Christopher Tye were among the greatest of that era. Byrd held the title of chief organist and composer for the Queen; in fact Elizabeth granted him and Tallis exclusive license to publish music in England. Surely there is no better way to end a Christmas Revels than with Byrd’s “Haec Dies”—a jubilant Latin setting of the psalm text “this is the day that the Lord has made, rejoice and be glad in it.”

But even as church music flourished, one of the chief glories of the Elizabethan age was the development of a form of secular music meant for social singing—the madrigal. Thomas Morley was the guiding force of the English madrigal school, taking much from the Italians who perfected the form decades earlier. In honor of Queen Elizabeth, Morley orchestrated a compilation of madrigals by twenty-one of his contemporaries into a volume entitled The Triumphes of Oriana (“Oriana” or “Gloriana” referred to Elizabeth). The 2007 Revels production provides a tapestry of music by madrigalists such as Morley, Thomas Weelkes, Orlando Gibbons, and John Bennet.

A more simple setting of poetry from the era is found in the lute song. Among the most famous composers in this form is John Dowland. Dowland scored his songs for both solo singing with lute accompaniment, and four-part singing with melody in the soprano voice and alto, tenor and bass taking on the role of the lute. One of the most famous examples, “Come Again Sweet Love,” is a poignant expression of passion and pain.

Entertainments for the Queen always included dancing. Music for the volta, galliard, pavane, almand, and many others was in great demand, so that some composers wrote only music for instrumental ensembles. Described by John Dowland as a former “Gentleman Usher to Queen Elizabeth,” Anthony Holborne was a prolific composer of instrumental dances, publishing a book of sixty-five of these for four and five-part ensembles.

Popular Song in Renaissance England

Ballad singing was the “popular entertainment” of Renaissance England—providing both a glimpse of everyday life and cultural education for all levels of society. While the stories ballads told were sometimes greatly simplified and often exaggerated, they still provided a “common knowledge” to the less educated town folk, without the means to acquire it elsewhere.

In the 16th century, some ballads were written “professionals,” but many came from anonymous sources, often circulating orally prior to being printed. Beginning in 1557, ballads were required to be registered with the Stationer’s Company (a guild of printers, publishers and booksellers founded in 1403), but many were not—perhaps, in part, due to the expense and inconvenience of registration (fourpence per ballad). Ballads were printed on broadsides and sold for penny—a profitable business for the publishers.

While some collections of these early folk songs have been preserved, most were lost due to the fragility of the paper they were printed on. When a ballad’s words survive, the tune to which it was sung often is not known. However, many popular tunes do survive thanks to musicians and collectors who published them for dancing (such as John Playford with The Dancing Master) or who created instrumental arrangements from them (as with the consort music of William Byrd).

Thomas Ravenscroft: Collector of Popular Song

One important body of words with music has been preserved thanks to Thomas Ravenscroft (1590-1633), who compiled the largest collection of popular vocal music of the Renaissance into three printed published volumes: Pammelia (1609), Deuteromalia (1609), and Melismata (1611). (Today, facsimilies and modern editions of these works are available in libraries and online.) The volumes include folk music ranging from catches, rounds, and “freeman’s songs” to vendor songs and street cries—even tunes and rounds like Three Blind Mice and Hey Ho Nobody at Home that are still familiar today.

Music for the Stage: Shakespeare’s Songs

By Shakespeare’s time the music of the Church, the Court, and the stage had become varied and sophisticated, capable of communicating many feelings. Virtually all plays, whether tragedies or comedies, incorporated music. William Shakespeare, in fact, referred to and quoted from over 150 popular ballads and dance tunes in his plays.

In Shakespeare’s plays, songs were not incidental, but were consciously used as a device to heighten the drama. The Elizabethan audience was musically literate, so, in many cases, a simple reference to a known ballad was enough to invoking a sense of sadness or playing a joke. In creating the 2007 Christmas Revels, we owe a debt of gratitude to the recent research of Ross W. Duffin as published in his volume Shakespeare’s Songbook. Just as Shakespeare did, we use these simple ballads to portray young and passionate love, the chill of winter, a playful argument between a yeoman and his lady, action (and inaction), and, of course, the mystery of death.

And, as in all Revels, we acknowledge and embrace the power of music to express the deepest of feelings, act as a salve for the strongest of pains, and heighten our joy in human life, love, and friendship. To quote Shakespeare in his Henry VIII,

In sweet Music is such Art,
Killing care, & grief of heart.

—Elizabeth Fulford Miller
   Music Director, The Christmas Revels, 2007
   The Washington Revels