The English Part-Song around 1500

Abstract

WE POSSESS roughly 200 English songs from the period i480-1530, in which great variety prevails, our certainty of the order of the five sources in which they occur-British Museum: the Fayrfax Book of c.1503 (Add.Ms.5465), containing songs chivalric, spiritual, dramatic, and for state occasions; Add.Ms.5665; Add.Ms.31 922; Royal Appendix 58; the Twenty Songs published by Wynkyn de Worde in 1530-making clear the changes that took place in European secular music around I5oo. Three distinct style-periods appear. The preTudor years, when Abyngdon was Master at the Chapel Royal, have left only a few anonymous songs. The reign of Henry VII, when Banaster was the leading chapel musician, shows songs by Newark, Sheryngham and Fayrfax. A distinct change occurs soon after the accession of Henry VIII in 50o9, after which the characteristic songs come from Cornysh and Pygott. The three-voice My wofull heart is typical of the pre-Tudor love lyric; it shows the same unbroken late-Gothic polyphony that char,acterizes the contemporary chansons of Ockeghem and Hayne. With Newark appears a marked predilection for two-part writing, each line of the text generally beginning in imitation and ending in a fairly elaborate melismatic cadence, the style of these songs being comparable with no contemporary writing on the Continent, at most recalling the earlier songs of the trecento composers. With Cornysh and Henry VIII the preference swings to four-part writing in definitely homophonic style and dance-like rhythmic pulsation. A similar trend is discernible in the spiritual songs or carols which until 1460 were written in unbroken counterpoint and in lively 3/4 dance rhythm. About 1480 appear attempts to break up the texture by alternating twoand three-voice phrases. With Banaster and other composers of the Eton manuscript, the humanist carol is fully achieved: a smooth 4/4 rhythmic flow, dramatic pairing of the voices, similar in style to the antiphons of the Virgin Mary in the Eton book. With Pygott, about 1515, the carol written in imitative polyphony comes in and persists until the motet carols of Byrd. The songs from 1480 to 1530 show a growing preference for the spectacular in court entertainment, a tendency which involved among other things the increased participation of the gentlemen of the Chapel Royal.