CD 2: The English Madrigal School
The English Madrigal School
BG-553, original LP cover
The remarkably rapid growth and decline of the English madrigal school phenomenon – lasting less than a quarter of a century – is in many ways typical of a late, peripheral development of what was essentially an Italian product. The tendency, until recently, has been to regard the Elizabethan madrigalists as a group of composers whose work is isolate both geographically and historically, from the mainstream of European secular music. Fortunately, this erroneous view is being gradually corrected, and recent research has shown how greatly indebted the Elizabethans were to the contemporary school of madrigalists in Italy. The Italian influence was both musical and literary, for it gave to the Elizabethans not only the prevailing madrigalian texture and style, but also a sharply defined taste for lightness of declamation and complete freedom in the use of Italianate feminine cadences, irrespective of the ease with which the texts could accommodate such exotic characteristics. The full-fledged Elizabethan madrigal was, in essence, a grafting of local tradition and technique onto an Italian musical culture at one remove.
Influences such as these may be detected even in the restricted and comparatively unknown field of musical activity that preceded the establishment of the madrigal school proper. Not even the political and religious turbulence of the Reformation could sever completely the artistic growth of English secular song, whose roots went deep into the fifteenth century, and whose final flowering – as a purely polyphonic art form – came during the last decade of Queen Elizabeth's reign.
The court-songs of the early Tudor age may be fairly regarded as a peripheral aspect of the Burgundian chanson. There are, it is true, important differences; but there are also important similarities in texture, design, and sentiment. The Tudor court song which was cultivated during the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII; three voices remained the norm until the middle years of Henry VIII's reign, but thereafter groups of four and even five voices were catered for, perhaps after the manner of the French chanson and the Italian frottola. Technical, as well as musical ideas came to England, contributing a solitary but beautiful example of printing a set of part books containing twenty songs which has unfortunately been preserved for us in an imperfect state. For many years the composers of songs continued to write out their music by hand, even if the occasion were a New Year's gift to the sovereign, or a present for a bountiful patron.
The style was lightly imitative while yet retaining a tendency to favor stile famigliare or homophonic manner of writing. Something of the kind can still be seen in Thomas Morley's very popular book of four-part madrigals. Ho! who comes here? is taken from this collection, and its lively representation of a Morris dance offers a harmonious blend of suave homophony and witty counterpoint.
Many of the Italian madrigals destined to become the favorites of English singing groups arrived not from Italy, but from the Netherlands, where madrigals were reprinted and re-arranged in comparatively large collections for groups of four, five, and six voices. Further reprints with English texts were made by Nicholas Yonge, Thomas Watson, and Morley, and although there is every evidence that these publications were received with enthusiasm, they were musically about thirty years out of date. Nevertheless, they had the desired effect of creating a lively interest in singing madrigals, and consequently a lively market in the composing, printing, and selling of them. Evidence of the kind of social background against which the madrigal flourished may be seen in sources as widely different as a French grammar for English students (which devotes a page or so to a description of a singing-party) and a set of accounts from a noble family. This latter source lists not only the titles and authors of the madrigal books, but also the prices, which are mostly on the high side, although here and there one finds evidence of a good bargain. The high prices were enough to ensure that madrigal singing remained the privilege of well-to-do families.
Without the added strength of a parallel literary movement, the English madrigal would never have reached the heights that it did. The reason for this is not that the poetry used by the madrigal composers was of high caliber: far from it. It was poetry with a purpose, poetry to serve music, and thus on a completely different level from the texts chosen by Italian composers from Tasso, Petrarch, and Ariosto. One of the results of this English use of poesia per musica was the lighter, more transparent texture of the madrigal itself. All Creatures Now Are Merry-Minded, by John Bennet, displays just this quality of airy transparency, all the more effective when the birds hover in fanciful roulades above a held bass note. Thomas Vautor's Mother, I Will Have A Husband is another example of this light-hearted, loquacious vein of composition, where time-honored techniques of voice-exchange are to be heard at the words "To the town therefore will I gad." An atmosphere of liveliness and urgency is created by essentially simple and basically musical means.
Madrigals in satirical mood succeed in large measure through their aerated, witty part-writing, where contrast is an important part of the plot. Two of Thomas Weelkes's madrigals show these features to perfection: The Ape, The Monkey and The Baboon with its veiled references to well-known habitues of the Mermaid Tavern, and Strike It Up, Tabor which is once again concerned with the vigor and abandon of the Morris dancers.
In its emotional and expressive aspect, the English madrigal reached its zenith at the hands of John Wilbye, Weelkes, and John Ward. The frequent and often dramatic changes of texture in Ward's Hope Of My Heart, the expressive use of extended pedal-points in Wilbye's Oft Have I Vowed, and the firmly-controlled chromaticism that pervades Ward's madrigal as well as Weelkes's Cease Sorrows Now – all these are used with legitimate effect to heighten the emotional content of the texts. Chromatic clashes are employed with equal sureness and sensitivity by Weelkes in the madrigal just mentioned and in O Care Thou Wilt Despatch Me, perhaps the most beautiful of his secular vocal compositions.
The English Madrigal School, Volume 2
BG-554, original LP cover
If it is true that the Elizabethan madrigal reached its height in the work of these three composers, and that they were partially influenced by transalpine styles and ideas, it is also true that they knew, from their youth up, a number of compositions closely approximating the small group of Tudor part-songs that has come down to us. Of the songs that were written, only a minute portion has survived, and that portion appears at first to be incomplete, though not unusable. A few years before the accession of Queen Elizabeth, an Oxford organist began the compilation of an anthology of keyboard music now known as the Mulliner Book. A number of the pieces in this manuscript are obviously keyboard reductions of part-books, the songs concerned being popular compositions of the time. Many of them are settings of lyrics by well-known Tudor poets, whilst others may well be the work of the composer or one of his close friends. Poet and musician, when they were not one and the same person, worked hand in hand throughout sixteenth century England, for there was constant demand at court for the production of pageants and plays. It is even possible that some of these Tudor part-songs (for they are not-yet fully-fledged madrigals) originally belonged to dramatic productions.
They vary in style between straightforward but expressive homophony – the songs by Richard Edwards and Thomas Tallis, and the anonymous I Smile To See How You Devise – to a lightly contrived polyphony making discreet use of imitation. The song by John Shepherd and the two anonymous compositions (My Friends and The Bitter Sweet) belong to this latter category, from which Robert Johnson may well be excluded on account of the extended nature of his contributions. Both Benedicam Domino and Defiled Is My Name are works of unusual design. The first is in three clearly defined sections: imitative, homophonic, and final tripla. The second enjoys no change in texture when the second part is reached, though there is a slight lessening of tension and a warmer vein or lyricism before the dramatic opening returns once again. Contrast and comparison between these mid-sixteenth-century songs and the vocal riches of madrigals by Weelkes and Wilbye is inevitable and instructive. Tradition and temerity were blended as well in the works of Weelkes and Wilbye as in the plays of Shakespeare and the exploits of Drake. Elizabethan England found room for this blend, and even though it was confined in the first instance to those who could afford to buy the music, it represented the continuation of a worthy and long-established line of secular song composers whose artistry has been admired the world over.
Contrast and comparison between these midsixteenth-century songs and the vocal riches of madrigals by Weelkes and Wilbye is inevitable and instructive. Tradition and temerity were blended as well in the works of these two prominent composers as in the plays of their contemporary Shakespeare and the exploits of Drake. Elizabethan England found room for this blend, and even though it was confined in the first instance to those who could afford to buy the music (which was by no means inexpensive) it represented the continuation of a worthy and long-established line of secular song composers whose artistry has been admired the world over.
– Denis Stevens
Originally released as Vanguard/The Bach Guild BG-553 (tracks 1-14) and BG-554