The Wars of the Roses
13th June 2004

In this concert we present music from England in the fifteenth century, particularly that during the Wars of the Roses, which pitted the Houses of York and Lancaster against each other in the latter half. As well as dividing the country and then finally reuniting it in the emergent House of Tudor, the period saw the transformation of English society from mediæval to Renaissance. New trends and ideas from Europe blended with the somewhat insular, though profoundly accomplished, English musical culture, the most important influences being those from Burgundy and the Low Countries. This period traces a flowering of English musical genius, first in composers such as John Dunstable and Leonel Power, and then developing through a couple of equally unique generations, assimilating outside influence guardedly, and culminating in the immense works of the composers represented in the famous Eton Choirbook. However, by the time that collection was compiled around 1500 things were already changing and a more multinational taste was taking over with trends from Burgundy and the Low Countries being joined by powerful Italian artistic rumblings. Leonardo da Vinci was born in Italy in 1452, and Donatello had already died there by the end of 1466. The humanist philosophies and human-centric emotional approach to art and the world coming from there, meant that the days when mediæval man regarded God, the world, the Church and art as awesome, authoritative and essentially ineffable were numbered. Whereas the archetypal mediæval artist, Chaucer, died in 1400, the first avowedly Renaissance king, King Henry VIII, was born in 1491, and came to the throne in 1509 while Luther was fomenting his ideas in Germany. Within a handful of years things were utterly changed.

Salinas was a French composer who travelled extensively, being named as a canon in absencia at Lisbon cathedral, as well as serving for a period at the papal Council of Pisa (1409-1413 at the latest). This Salve Regina probably dates from his period in the papal chapel, where he would have come into contact with many international musicians. The text adds some extra trope verses (sung as duos by solo voices) which were only ever set for use in England. This piece gives a good feel for a style being imported from the continent, firmly medieval, based on French styles of the previous century. The very opening of the piece features the plainchant melody proper to this text, but thereafter the piece is freely composed.

Walter Frye (d. 1475) - Missa Flos regalis (c.1468) - Gloria

Walter Frye was the most important English composer of his generation. His music has been connected to the Burgundian court of Charles the Bold and his music is to be found in manuscripts hailing from one end of Europe to the other, although his style shows a tendency towards a full, sonorous English style. Frye was certainly one of the most famous composers of his day, and depictions of scores of his motet Ave regina appear in at least three paintings and one altarpiece from Low Countries in this period (an endorsement not afforded any other composer). It is not likely that he ever left England though. The title of this Mass ("Royal flower") is possibly in allusion to Margaret of York, the sister of King Edward IV, herself the flower of the Royal House of York, the white rose also being the emblem of York, who was wedded to Charles the Bold in 1468. It has been proposed that this Mass setting may have been the commissioned gift from Charles, or sung at the ceremony. This link is further strengthened by the fact that Frye, England's most famous living composer at the time, was employed by Anne's older sister, Anne of Exeter from around 1464 until at least 1472.

It would be too easy to characterise his music as merely transitional between the austerity of Dunstable and the richness of Eton, as his music has a great vitality and mastery of its own, and some startling originality (eg. listen to the careful rhythmic games and imitation in the duets in the second section of the Agnus Dei).

John Dunstable (c.1390-1453) - Veni Creator Spiritus (c.1420?)

Dunstable was probably one of the most important English composers in history. He was the most important musical name from our shores during the fifteenth century. His importance lies in his paving the way for the "new" English sound. It was referred to by continental sources as the "Contenance Angloise" (the "English countenance"), and was characterised by a full, rich sonority based upon free use of thirds and sixths, unheard-of in the medieval music of other countries. It is hard today to appreciate this, then striking feature, being, as we are, sated on a richer musical diet today. This motet is one of his earlier pieces, found in another important manuscript from the other end of the century to the Eton Choirbook: the Old Hall Manuscript, dating from around 1420. It is an isorhythmic motet with a set of twenty notes from tune from the plainchant Veni Creator Spiritus being sung in long notes. This twenty-note phrase is sung a total of three times, each time at three-times the speed of the previous. Above this the top voice sings the text of the sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus to a paraphrased version of the plainchant melody proper to it. The second voice sings a free text based on imagery from the others. The last voice sings a fuller section of text of the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus. The piece divided into three blocks. Each block internally is divided into two, each of which uses exactly the same rhythms for the upper three voices, but with different pitches. Remarkable, but nevertheless somewhat typical.

John Dunstable (c.1390-1453) - Chanson: O Rosa bella (c.1430?)

As well as religious music, the fifteenth century was a period of blossoming for the English song (or "chanson"). This movingly yearning song is Dunstable's most famous example, and is typical in its subject matter of courtly yearning for a beautiful lady. We perform it here with recorders and flute. Instrumental performance of songs was very common, although we do not know much about the approach that would have been taken. Some degree of improvised elaboration would have been undertaken, and here we use the keyboard manuscript known as the Buxheim Organ Book (dating from around 1470) to derive some idiomatic figurations for this song.

Walter Frye (d. 1475) - Missa Flos regalis (c.1468) - Credo

John Dunstable (c.1390-1453) - Ave maris stella (fauxbourdon)

A typical genre of the centuries from the earliest known music right up until the baroque period was the technique called fauxbourdon. This was a simple accompanying of a plainchant tune with other voices. Here, for every other verse, Dunstable uses a lightly ornamented version of the beautiful hymn tune Ave maris stella and adds to it two more parts (played on recorders in this performance) in the sonorous style of thirds and sixths that characterised the English sound of his day.

Leonel Power (d. 1445) - Quam pulchra es (c.1445)

Power was one of the two most important composers of the generation before Frye. His output included much sacred music, although this is possibly his most famous piece, a motet on text taken from the Song of Songs. This text is a semi-erotic song, interpreted as a metaphor for both the Virgin Mary and the Church. A somewhat lyrical style of great subtlety, gravity and tenderness is clear here.

Walter Frye (d. 1475) - Chanson: Tout a par moy (c.1460?)

Frye, like most composers, also created a body of secular songs. This was his most famous, being used as a basis for a Mass setting by Josquin (his Missa faisant regretz). The three-part song is further distinguished in that a contemporary performance of it was described by the theoretician, Tinctoris, who tells us that a certain Gerardus of Brabant sang two of the parts simultaneously - perhaps Tinctoris had hit the mead a little too hard the night he wrote that. Like the Dunstable song, we perform it on recorders and flute with figurations taken from the Buxheim Organ Book.

Walter Frye (d. 1475) - Missa Flos regalis (c.1468) - Sanctus

Anon. (Ritson MS - c.1460-1510) - Ave Regina cœlorum, Mater Regis (c.1470?)

The Ritson Manuscript contains an important body of work from the period between Frye and the Eton Choirbook. It is smaller scale than Eton, but this anonymous, interesting and sometimes not a little awkward work displays many of the characteristics that would come to be associated with that great collection, while also showing many influences of the style of Ockeghem from the Continent.

Anon. (Ritson MS - c.1460-1510) - Chanson: My woeful heart (c.1490?)

An anonymous and uncomplicated chanson from the Ritson Manuscript. We perform this on recorders, unadorned, in keeping with its apparent simplicity.

Walter Frye (d. 1475) - Missa Flos regalis (c.1468) - Agnus Dei

Two anonymous instrumental pieces (c.1510)

Taken from the manuscript known as "Henry VIII's Songbook", which comes from the court during the first years of Henry VIII's reign, these pieces are amongst the first known purely instrumental works from our shores. A sense of four-squareness in the writing implies that they may have been intended as dance pieces.

William Cornysh jr. (d. 1523) - Ah the sighs (c.1510)

This William Cornysh was probably not the same as the composer in the Eton Choirbook, as the musical style used here and in other pieces credited to him in the so-called "Henry VIII's Songbook" is very different from that of the Eton Choirbook from a decade or two before. It is still possible, however, that they are the same man. This brief song displays a sense of balanced phrase, possibly deriving from folksong. This kind of music obviously has a very different audience in mind from the complex abstractions of Dunstable's motet earlier, although remains firmly and insularly English.

Antoine de Févin (c.1470-c.1512) - Fors solement (after Ockeghem [1410-1497]) (c.1510)

This is inspired by a famous, and emotionally intense, song by Ockeghem, and also comes from the "Henry VIII's Songbook". Antoine de Févin was a French composer, and his music owes much to Josquin. By this time the Burgundian and Flemish Continental styles were well-known across all Europe, and an important collection of songs arranged for viols (or other consorts) was published by Petrucci in Venice in 1501. No text is supplied in the manuscript, and this was likely included as an instrumental item, and we perform this version on recorders. Incidentally, Henry was a fine recorder player and amassed a collection of nearly eighty recorders by the end of his reign. This piece is of a strikingly high emotional intensity. The eponymous text inspiring the piece is below.

William Cornysh jr. (d. 1523) - Fa la sol (c.1510)

This is an early instrumental fantasia, the last piece we perform from the "Henry VIII's Songbook", indeed possibly the earliest of the sort known, of the kind that was to be found increasingly over the hundred years to follow. Medieval and Renaissance music did not use modern scales, but based music in one of eight modes, where the mode governed the relative intervals in it. The pitches called fa, la and sol are therefore different dependent on what modal interpretation one gives them. In modern absolute notation they could be things like F, A, G or B flat, A, G or F, E, D or C, A, G etc. according to what modal basis one uses. This decidedly renaissance, three-sectioned fantasia is eruditely constructed of motives spawned from these shapes.

Robert Fayrfax (1464-1521) - Maria plena virtute (c.1510)

This work by the great composer Fayrfax has been claimed to be of a level at the pinnacle of European art of its time. The text is remarkably direct and lacking in platitudes found more commonly. It quotes the first six of the seven last words of Jesus on the cross, surrounding each with an invocation to Him. The first and last verses are invocations to Mary to intercede for us, remembering her torment as she watched her son, and our peril for our sins which she saw Him expiate. The musical language is basically that of the Eton Choirbook of a little earlier (Fayrfax's music is also found in that collection), but where that collection abounds in ecstatic proliferation as an expression of devotion and mystery, no matter what the text is in most cases, Fayrfax's more humanist response to the gravity of this text is a world away. This is not text set with phlegmatic or stoical passivity, as a holy liturgical object, but text set with dignity, restraint and sombreness, and speaking to the experiential part of each of us. While there is no attempt to marry the music with the specific word being sung at any point, the work is drawn in dark tones, extended sparse passages contrasting with great blocks of granitic sound, even the final "Amen" being drawn with satisfied and sober achievement rather than exuberant display.

See a large version of the poster (caution - 1.1MB)

© Rob Howe, 2004