Philips's 1628 Paradisus and the triumph of the Eucharist

Abstract

Peter Philips (1560/61–1628) was among the first English composers to embrace the musical style of the Italianate Baroque. His Paradisus sacris cantionibus consitus, printed during his final year at the Brussels court of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella, is a large collection of accompanied monodies, duets and trios, a number of them lavishly ornamented. Some of the texts he sets in this book are drawn from the common stock of post‐Tridentine devotion, but others are lengthy eucharistic meditations, unusual and at times rather overwrought. Most of these latter texts can in fact be traced to a devotional book (Hebdomada eucharistica) published a decade earlier in Brussels by one of Philips's fellow English‐speaking exiles at the archducal court, the chaplain and theologian Richard Stanihurst. Philips's musical settings, dedicated to Albert and Isabella's almoner Francis de Rye, took shape in an intense atmosphere of Baroque eucharistic piety – in the company of works such as Rubens' formidable tapestries on the Triumph of the Eucharist, commissioned by Isabella herself, and other elaborate architectural and cultural projects. In this paper, I explore the context of the 1628 Paradisus, the court culture which incited a proudly English composer (as he identified himself on all his title pages) to identify so strongly with the European Counter‐Reformation. I also reconsider the place of Philips and his music in the community of English‐speaking Catholic expatriates.