The English Madrigalists
Edmund H. Fellowes (1870–1951) began his 36 volumes
of The English Madrigal School in 1913 with the Canzonets
of Thomas Morley and – with the exception of 1919 in the harsh
economic aftermath of the First World War – the books were
published by Stainer & Bell in twos and threes, both in England
and the USA, until the 'final' volume appeared in 1923.
Five years after Fellowes died, Thurston Dart began
a complete revision of the edition as The English Madrigalists,
checking the enormous amount of material that Fellowes had used,
correcting some inevitable errors in copying, and adding information
in the light of further discoveries by Elizabethan and Jacobean
historians. In this task he was assisted by several of his research
students, notably, in 1961, by Philip Brett, whose work on what
were then two books of madrigals by Byrd
in the the series led firstly to a revision of Fellowes’ Collected
Works of William Byrd, and subsequently to the preparation
of The Byrd Edition
under his General Editorship. Other scholars who have been
involved in the revision and updating of The English Madrigalists
include Davitt Moroney, John Morehen, David Scott and Sarah Dunkley.
Dart's imaginative view of 'four seasons', in which
the English madrigal flowered and decayed, is intended as an introduction
for students, singers and teachers who are unfamiliar with this
corpus of enchanting music.
Although William
Byrd's own madrigals were essentially English, during his years
as owner of the patent for printing and marketing Elizabethan music,
only Morley’s four sets of madrigals and Mundy’s Songs
appeared in the lists of music published by Thomas East.
John Mundy
Songs and Psalms (1594) [Ref EM35]
Organist of St. George's, Windsor, and successor to the famous Marbecke,
Mundy was amongst the earliest of the English madrigalists. There
are 12 madrigals in this collection, ranging from Of all the
birds, a tribute to William Byrd, to
In deep distress and the tragic setting of words written
by Chideock Tichborne on the eve of his execution in the Tower of
London, My prime of youth. The volume also contains 25 psalms
in three, four, and five parts.
Orlando Gibbons
Madrigals and Motets (1612) [Ref EM5]
Gibbons seems to have been outside the process 'by which', wrote
Joseph Kerman in The Elizabethan Madrigal, 'England first
became sophisticated in the ways of Continental music.' These 20
pieces certainly, if differently, follow the pure line of William
Byrd and are still of the old 'English' school. They include
The Silver Swan and Dainty Fine Bird.
Richard Carlton
Madrigals (1601) [Ref EM27]
A minor canon of Norwich Cathedral, Carlton belonged also to
the older generation of madrigal composers, particularly fond of
the 'Byrd' or English cadence of flat versus
sharp leading-notes. Although he claims to have laboured 'somewhat
to imitate the Italian style', he admitted in his preface, 'I cannot
forget that I am an English man.'
Many madrigal composers are
only shadows in history; they were cathedral organists, members
of the Chapel Royal, lutenists, house musicians and gentlemen's
tutors; they lived mostly in the City of London or near those cities
which received Queen Elizabeth on one of her progresses. The only
outpost seems to have been at Chester. At their centre in the last
decade of the 16th century were:
Thomas Morley
Canzonets, Madrigals and Balletts (1593–97) [Refs
EM1, EM2, EM3 & EM4]
A great collector, transcriber, composer and knowledgeable Londoner,
Morley was undeniably the model for his friends, colleagues and
pupils in the writing of madrigals for the next 30 years. These
four books illustrate the most musical Elizabethan counterpoint
for the pedagogue, the subtle Italian influence for the scholar
and the utmost delight for the singer.
John Wilbye
Two Sets of Madrigals (1598 and 1609) [Refs EM6 & EM7]
These pieces were written by the house musician to a Suffolk family
who became a well-to-do gentleman in his own right. Through visiting
his original master's London house, Wilbye would have met all the
fashionable City musicians and – after Byrd
had lost the copyright – had his compositions published there
by Thomas East and, later, Snodham. Joseph Kerman describes Book
2 as'‘the richest single publication in all Elizabethan music'.
It includes Draw on sweet night, used for so many years as
the final madrigal on Cambridge May Week evenings by that university's
Madrigal Society.
George Kirbye
Madrigals (1597) and Madrigals from Manuscript Sources [Refs
EM24 & EM39]
A neighbour of Wilbye at Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk, Kirbye left
24 madrigals for 4, 5 and 6 voices, including the only known madrigal
setting of words by England’s finest poet since Chaucer, Edmund
Spencer, author of The Faerie Queene. In addition, 18 items,
all but one being incomplete, survive in 2 sets of early 17th-century
part books.
Giles Farnaby
Canzonets (1598) [Ref EM20]
Remembered chiefly for his virginal music, this always fresh and
charming composer – who was probably an instrument maker by
trade – may well have penned these pieces simply for the enjoyment
of his London friends living in the wards of Bishopsgate and Cripplegate.
His experience as a keyboard player may have led him to some chromatic
vocal writing, particularly in the admirable Construe my meaning,
rivalling strangenesses in the work of his Italian contemporary,
Gesualdo.
Among those who wrote commendations for Farnaby’s
Canzonets were Richard Alison and Anthony Holborne:
Richard Alison
An Hour’s Recreation in Music (1606) [Ref EM33]
This interesting collection looks back to the 'Winter' of Byrd
and Mundy in the conservative settings of such verse as My prime
of youth (see EM35B); but it is also a contemporary record,
with two madrigals celebrating the failure of Guy Fawkes' Gunpowder
Plot against James I.
William Holborne
Canzonets (1597) [Ref EM36]
Printed by his brother Anthony at the end of The Cittern School
(a teach-yourself instrumental tutor), these six pieces for three
voices are among the earlier madrigal publications copying the Italian
canzonetti.
In the same book are two small collections
which lead the listener into:
Michael Cavendish
Madrigals (1598 and 1601) [Ref EM36]
Coming from what is still one of the most beautiful villages in
England, 'Michaell', gentleman of Cavendish, Suffolk, dedicated
his eight joyful madrigals to his cousin Lady Arabella Stuart.
They are really a set of musical love letters.
Thomas Greaves
Madrigals and Songs (1604) [Ref EM36]
A lutenist serving a distant cousin of Cavendish, Greaves included
four madrigals in his Songs of Sundrie Kindes and four
Songs of Sadness, which Philip Brett edited to add to this
book – Fellowes’ last. It also contains the famous madrigal
by Richard Edwards, In going to my naked bed.
Wilbye, Cavendish and Greaves served, if
distantly, the same family. The next two composers served the
same church at the same time, Chester Cathedral.
Thomas Bateson
Madrigals (1604 and 1618) [Refs EM21 & EM22]
59 pieces in the two books include a fine 'Oriana' madrigal which
arrived too late for Morley's collection (EM32), and such favourites
as Cupid in a bed of roses and Merrily my love and I.
A mixture of pieces for 3, 4, 5 and 6 parts, they are all 'apt
for voices or viols', the publisher’s phrase that meant they
could be performed by any combination of singers and players.
Francis Pilkington
Madrigals and Pastorals (1613 and 1624) [Refs EM25
& EM26]
These 45 settings employ many lute-song texts, making for interesting
comparison with music collected in Stainer & Bell’s The
English Lute Song series. Two examples, O softly singing
lute and Care for thy soul, are amongst the very best
of English madrigals.
A third madrigalist of Chester, to judge
from the dedication of his only collection to 'a gentleman of
the Countie Palatine of Chester', was:
John Bennet
Madrigals (1599) [Ref EM23]
Like many other madrigalists, Bennet often chose his texts either
from translations of the first Italian pieces to be brought to
England in Yonge's Musica Transalpina, or from those already
used by Morley. Two direct comparisons may be made between Morley
and Bennet in O sleep, fond fancy (to identical words)
and the effect of the former’s Come, lovers, follow me
on the latter’s Come, shepherd, follow me.
Back in London, the home of Shakespeare
at the time, two books of madrigals had links with theatre companies
through their composers:
John Farmer
Madrigals (1599) [Ref EM8]
Well-known in his day as one of the most important contributors
to East's Whole Book of Psalms (1592), Farmer was in the
service of the Earl of Oxford who, more than any other nobleman,
established the professional Elizabethan theatre. In the year
that Burbidge opened the Globe Theatre, these 18 madrigals (the
most famous is probably Fair Phyllis) gave the composer
an attractive place in the history of English music.
Robert Jones
Madrigals (1607) [Ref EM35A]
Jones was a famous lutenist and one of the musicians responsible
for training the ‘children of St Paul’s’, who acted
and sang in Elizabethan and Jacobean court plays. His 27 madrigals
are mostly to texts about birds – birds merry, sweet, shrill,
crowing or melancholic.
By 1610, young composers were more concerned
with the consort song for voices and viols than with the purely
vocal madrigal. Four collections by little-known composers precede
the last riches:
Richard Nicolson
Collected Madrigals (c.1600) [Ref EM37]
Henry Youll
Canzonets (1608) [Ref EM28]
Henry Lichfild
Madrigals (1613) [Ref EM17]
John Ward
Madrigals (1613), and Madrigals and Elegies from Manuscript Sources
[Refs EM19 & EM38]
Lichfild and Youll's collections are copies of Morley’s
canzonet style, useful more to students of three and five-part
counterpoint than to choirs looking for concert items; but Nicolson
provides a rare comic sequence for a programme in his eleven connected
madrigals called Joan, quoth John; and Ward, particularly in his
six-part pieces, is to be heard as an English harmonist almost
to rival Monteverdi.
Thomas Weelkes
Madrigals, Balletts and Airs (1597–1608) [Refs EM9, EM10,
EM11 & EM13]
These eleven years saw Weelkes developing Morley’s original
ideas for a properly 'English' madrigal and ballet, to become
himself the most original of the English madrigalists, using ever
more brilliant virtuosity. Among the 94 pieces in these books,
the singer or student will find examples of the early 'Byrd'
cadences, the dramatic effects of a Marenzio or Gesualdo, and
the more instrumental use of the voice suggestive of the consort
song; in short, every apsect of the Elizabethan madrigal is here.
Michael East
Madrigals (1604–1618) [Refs EM29, EM30, EM31A
& EM31B]
Michael East had more music published in his lifetime than any
of his contemporaries. Though his style owed much to the example
of Morley and Wilbye, he remained essentially Italianate in all
his madrigals, affording an interesting contrast in the 90 pieces
of these books with those of Weelkes and the last of the 'Suffolk'
madrigalists.
Thomas Vautor
Songs of Divers Airs and Natures (1619) [Ref EM34]
Chiefly remembered in performance nowadays for his beautiful Sweet
Suffolk Owl, Vautor represented the conventional, anonymous
polyphony of the successors to Gibbons and Weelkes – but
there are still trouvailles in these 22 pieces.
Thomas Tomkins
Songs of Three, Four, Five and Six Parts (1622) [Ref EM18]
So to the last in date of the English Madrigal School. Though
better known as a composer of church and keyboard music, Tomkins
wrote secular vocal music that offers a compendium of all the
various styles: canzonets, balletts, madrigals and 'sacred songs'.
Each was dedicated to one of his relatives, a friend or a colleague.
The names of these 28 dedicatees form a fascinating list at the
end of the book.
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