The Hilliard Ensemble / New London Consort
Music for Tudors Kings
Henry VII & Henry VIII / compilation

medieval.org
Alto ALC 1015
2008
grabaciones de 1977 y 1978





Songs from the time of Henry VII

Fayrfax Ms. (mainly)
01 - Robert FAYRFAX. I Love Unloved  [1:49]
soprano, tenor, baritone
02 - William CORNYSH. Woefully Arrayed  [8:23]
soprano, counter-tenor, tenor, baritone
03 - Robert FAYRFAX. That Was My Woe  [2:11]
counter-tenor, tenor
04 - SHERYNGHAM. Ah Gentle Jesu  [7:39]
counter-tenor, 2 tenors, baritone
05 - Robert FAYRFAX. Most Clear of Colour  [2:02]
counter-tenor, 2 tenors
06 - William CORNYSH. Hoyda Hoyda, Jolly Rutterkin  [4:09]
2 tenors, baritone


Songs and music from the time of Henry VIII

Scotland
07 - O Lusty May  [1:55]
counter-tenor, tenor, baritone, tenor shawm, tenor & bass sackbuts

Fayrfax Ms.
08 - This Day Daws  [4:37]
counter-tenor, tenor, baritone

Scotland
09 - Begone Sweit Night  [3:02]
tenor (PE), lute

Henry VIII's Book
10 - HENRY VIII. En Vray Amoure  [1:02]
soprano shawm, tenor & bass sackbuts
11 - HENRY VIII. O My Heart  [1:31]
counter-tenor, tenor, baritone
12 - Madame d amours  [3:55]
counter-tenor, tenor, baritone, bass
13 - Consort Piece XX  [1:00]
tenor recorder (PhP), lute

Scotland
14 - Absent I Am  [3:01]
counter-tenor, tenor, baritone, bass
15 - My Heartly Service  [5:41]
tenor, baritone, tenor shawm
16 - Hey Trolly Lolly Lo!  [5:01]
counter-tenor, tenor, baritone
17 - Jacques BARBIREAU. En Frolyk Weson  [2:07]
counter-tenor, tenor, tenor sackbut

Ritson ms
18 - Be Peace! Ye Make Me Spill My Ale! [1:46]
counter-tenor, tenor, baritone
19 - The Duke of Somersettes Dompe  [1:59]
lute

Henry VIII's Book
20 - William CORNYSH. Ah Robin  [2:32]
counter-tenor, tenor, baritone
21 - I Love Unloved  [4:52]
counter-tenor, tenor, baritone

Ritson ms
22 - Up I Arose in Verno Tempore  [1:34]
baritone, alto & bass cornamuses

Henry VIII's Book
23 - Puzzle Canon VI  [1:02]
soprano crumhorn, tenor sackbut
24 - And I Were a Maiden  [2:38]
counter-tenor, tenor, baritone, bass tenor recorder (PN), lute
25 - England Be Glad  [1:46]
tenor, baritone, bass



Las pistas #1-6 corresponden a las pistas #2-3, 9-12 del disco Songs for a Tudor King
Recorded Eltham College; Engineer: John Shuttleworth; Producer: Martin Compton

Las pistas #7-25 corresponden al disco Popular music from the time of Henry VIII (pistas #1-19)




The Hilliard Ensemble
David James, counter-tenor
Paul Elliot, tenor
Leigh Nixon, tenor (#4, 5, 6)
Paull Hillier, baritone
Judith Nelson, soprano
Errol Girdlestone, bass


The New London Consort
Phil Pickett, tenor & bass recorders, soprano crumhorn, tenor dulcian, soprano & tenor shawm, bass cornamuse
Paul Nieman, tenor recorder, tenor sackbut, alto cornamuse
Martin Nicholls, bass sackbut
Nigel North, lute

Music for Tudor Kings

When the future King Henry VII was born in 1457, the throne of England was occupied by Henry VI, son of Henry V and grandson of Henry IV. He, however, was not as closely related to these other Henrys as they were to each other. His parents were Edmund Tudor, whose mother was the second wife of Henry V, and Margaret Beaufort, whose great-great grandfather had been King Edward III. During his early life, the Wars of the Roses between the Houses of Lancaster and York were raging and, when he was just four years old, the Lancastrian King Henry VI was deposed by the Yorkist Edward IV who, apart from a brief return of Henry VI at the beginning of the next decade, was to reign until 1483. Thereupon his son became Edward V only to be murdered, along with his younger brother, three months later in the Tower of London, apparently on the orders of his uncle who promptly declared himself King Richard III. By then, after so many deaths in the family, Henry Tudor had become head of the House of Lancaster and had gone into voluntary exile in northern France. In 1485, however, he returned and, on 22 August together with his supporters, engaged in battle with Richard and his knights near Market Bosworth in Leicestershire. Before long Richard had been slain and Henry declared king. He was crowned Henry VII in Westminster Abbey on 31 October and, early the next year married the elder sister of the Princes in the Tower who was, by then, heiress to the House of York.

By choosing to marry Princess Elizabeth, Henry had managed to unite the two rival houses and, in effect, to put an end to the Wars of the Roses. There were still some Yorkist claimants to the throne to deal with - not to mention the two pretenders, Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck - but, by the end of the century, Henry VII had, to all intents and purposes, suppressed all opposition and had ushered in a stable dynasty of Tudors. In 1486, Elizabeth gave birth to their first child, Arthur, who was therefore created Prince of Wales. Five years later another son was born, Henry, Duke of York. The couple's other two surviving children were daughters - Margaret, who was to marry King James of Scotland, and Mary who eventually become the wife of King Louis XII of France. In order to secure a bond with Spain, Henry decreed that his first born son should many Catherine of Aragon, daughter of the King and Queen of that country, Ferdinand and Isabella. The marriage did take place but within weeks, and not far short of his 16th birthday, Arthur died of consumption. Wishing to preserve the alliance with Spain that he had so carefully set up, Henry advised his second son, the Duke of York, to marry Catherine when he acceded to the throne as Henry VIII. Thus it was that Catherine of Aragon was to become Queen after all as the first of Henry's six wives.

During the reign of Henry VII great progress had been made in many fields, notably navigation. In 1492 Christopher Columbus had discovered America and soon after that Henry had provided the finance for a trip to Labrador by the Italian navigator, John Cabot. Henry was reputed to be a lover of books, art, music and pageantry but, in the words of John Richard Green (taken from A Short History of the English People, 1907), his life 'gave him little leisure for dreams and culture'. However, his 'spare form, the sallow face, the quick eye, the shy solitary humour broken by outbursts of pleasant converse or genial sarcasm, told of an inner concentration and enthusiasm'.

Of the musicians employed at the court of Henry VII, perhaps the two best known are Robert Fayrfax and William Cornysh. Fayrfax was born in Lincolnshire on St George's Day, 23 April, 1464. By the mid-1490s he had become a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal and, in December 1497, he was granted the chaplaincy of Snodhill Castle in Herefordshire. As one of the first to graduate in music from Cambridge University, Fayrfax was awarded his Bachelor of Music in 1501 and his Doctorate three years later. He was obviously held in high esteem at court and, on 28 March 1502, he received from the Queen (Elizbeth of York) the sum of 20 shillings as payment for 'setting an anthem of oure lady and Saint Elizabeth'. His name was also to be at the top of the list of lay clerks of the Chapel Royal attending not only the funeral of Henry VII, which took place on 9 May 1509, but also the coronation of his son some six weeks later on 24 June.

Two years later, on 27 February 1511, Fayrfax found himself present at another royal funeral, that of the six-week-old Prince Henry, the only son Queen Catherine was to bear for her husband. (It was the lack of a male heir that eventually persuaded Henry VIII that he was being punished by God for marrying his dead brother's wife and set him on the course of having the marriage declared null and void. Catherine did provide him with a female heir - later to become Queen Mary I - as did his next wife, Ann Boleyn, whose daughter was to reign as Elizabeth I. It was not until he married Jane Seymour, following Ann Boleyn's execution, that he achieved his longed-for male heir. As it turned out, this son was only to reign for some six years as Edward VI for he died in 1553 at the age of only 15, leaving a vacant throne for his sisters to squabble over.)

Luckily for Fayrfax, he soon found favour with Henry VIII who, just before his coronation, had granted the composer an annuity for life of £9 2s. 6d. Later he was to be one of the Knights of the King's Alms which entitled him to a further 12 pence a day, also for life. In addition to this, the King paid him handsomely for various of his manuscripts. He died in 1521 and was buried in St Albans Abbey. As a composer, Fayrfax is mostly remembered for his church music which includes six masses, two settings of the Magnificat and several motets. Most of Fayrfax's part-songs are for three voices although That
was my woo (or woe), is for just two. The English organist Charles Burney, who wrote about Fayrfax in his History of Music in the late 1770s, claimed that this song may have been addressed to Henry VII following the Battle of Bosworth.

Another of the regal events attended by Fayrfax was the so-called Field of the Cloth of Gold, a kind of summit meeting at which Henry VIII and Francis I of France met in June 1520, near Calais, to discuss a potential alliance between their two countries. It was a lavish affair consisting of jousting, banquets and music provided by Fayrfax and the other 'singing men' of the Chapel Royal. Another member of Henry VIII's court to travel to France for this occasion was William Cornysh whose main role was to supervise the pageants that took place on Sunday nights. This was not the first visit Cornysh had made to France in the wake of Henry VIII for, in 1513, he had taken the Chapel Royal to perform - to great acclaim as it turned out - in Théouranne, Lille and Tournai. (The song England be glad was, apparently, written for this occasion.)

It seems that no record has been kept of Cornysh's date of birth but it is known that from 1480 to 1491 he was Master of the Singing-Boys at Westminster Abbey. The first reference to his association with the court of Henry VII is to be found in in an entry in the Household Book for 12 November 1493 reporting a payment of 13s 4d 'to one Cornyshe for a prophecy [or poem] in rewarde'. By 1496 he had become a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal and, in 1501, he played an important role in the celebrations surrounding the wedding of Arthur, Prince of Wales, and Catherine of Aragon. (It seems that he devised pageants and 'disguysings' which involved the children of the Chapel Royal dressing up as mermaids.)

Cornysh received another payment of 13s 4d in December 1502, this time on behalf of Elizabeth of York, for the 'setting of a carralle [carol] upon Christmas day'. As well as being a musician, Cornysh was also a poet, playwright and actor, and it would appear that it was one of his satirical poems that landed him in the Fleet Prison for a while in 1504. However this did not affect his standing at court for, in September 1509, only three months after Henry VIII's accession, he was appointed Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal. He was obviously a favourite with the new king for not only did he entertain the court with his plays and poems but there is also a collection of part-songs, mainly for three voices, in which over 30 compositions by the king himself are bound together with about 10 by Cornysh. One of Cornysh's partsongs - Hoyda, hoyda, jolly Rutterkin - is a setting of a poem by John Skelton (1460-1529) and, according to the Fifth Edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 'is supposed to be a satire on the drunking Flemings who came to England with Anne of Cleves on the occasion of her marriage to Henry VIII'. This is more than strange since by the time Henry's fourth wife came to England in 1540, both Cornysh and Skelton had been dead for 10 years and more.

Of the other named composer on this recording, very little indeed is known. Neither his date of birth nor death has been recorded - he is just said to have been flourishing around 1500 - and he is remembered only by his surname, Sheryngham. Two of his pieces appear in the Fayrfax Manuscript and one of these A gentill Jhesu (Ah gentle Jesu) is thought to have words by the poet John Lydgate (?1370-1449) who spent most of his life in a monastery at Bury St Edmunds.

From the evidence of the songs contained in it, the Fayrfax Manuscript, so named because it was in the possession of the Fayrfax family during the 18th century, must date from about 1500. Of the songs it contains some are courtly love-songs, some are religious (mostly relating to the Passion of Christ), and some are more 'popular', sometimes humorous, sometimes ironic and satirical. As well as the songs by Cornysh, Fayrfax and Sheryngham, the Fayrfax Manuscript also contains This day daws, another carol thought to have been written in honour of Elizabeth of York.

The songs Be peace! ye make me spill my ale and Up I arose in verno tempore, with its mixture of English and Latin words, both come from the Ritson Manuscript which is thought to have originated in a monastery in Devon. Apart from four songs from Scotland - O lusty may, Begone, sweit night, Absent I am and My Heartly Service (also known as The Pleugh Song), - and the The Duke of Somersettes Dompe all the others pieces, including the purely instrumental compositions - the Consort Piece XX and the Puzzle Canon VI - come from yet another collection, this one called Henry VIII's Manuscript, or Book. Included in this are all but one of Henry's surviving 34 compositions as well as music by other English composers, notably Fayrfax and Cornysh, and some from mainland Europe. Those attributed to the king himself include En vray amoure and O my heart, while Cornysh is credited with Ah Robin and the Flemish composer, Jacques Barbireau (c1408-1491), with En frolyk weson. All other pieces are listed anonymous.

© September 2007 Peter Avis