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Two Songs with Accompaniment for an Elizabethan Choirboy Play

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Andrew J. Sabol
Andrew J. Sabol*
Affiliation:
Brown University
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Extract

Sophisticated song in the private theaters during the reign of Elizabeth—in contrast to the popular music characteristic of the public stage—implies at once compositions written especially for the drama, trained voices and instrumentalists to perform them, and a cultivated audience capable of appreciating the art of both composer and performer. In an often quoted description of a dramatic performance of the Children of the Chapel in 1602, a foreign visitor to London in the suite of Philipp Julius, Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, admired the skill of the boys as vocalists and instrumentahsts and called attention to the intensity of their training.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 5 , 1958 , pp. 145 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1958

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References

1 See Chambers, E. K., The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford, 1923), II, 46–47 Google Scholar, for the account in German preserved in the journal of Frederic Gershow. The quoted excerpt is translated from it.

2 Chambers, II, 20-21.

3 The Plays of John Marston, ed. H. H. Wood (Edinburgh, 1934-1939), 1, 143.

4 For recent bibliographies of music in relation to Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, see Boyd, M. C., Elizabethan Music and Musical Criticism (Philadelphia, 1940), pp. 343–347 Google Scholar; Woodfill, W. L., Musicians in English Society (Princeton, 1953), pp. 347–361 Google Scholar; and Long, J. H., Shakespeare's Use of Music (Gainesville, Fla., 1955), pp. 197–210 Google Scholar.

5 For items which contain music or analysis of music for the choirboy plays in particular see Arkwright, G. E. P., ‘Elizabethan Choirboy Plays and Their Music’, Proceedings of the Musical Association (40th session, April 1914), pp. 117–138 Google Scholar; Bennet, John, Madrigals to Four Voices, ed. Fellowes, E. H. in The English Madrigal School, XXIII (London, 1922)Google Scholar; The Bugbears, ed. Grabau, C. with Friedlaender, M., Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen XCVIII (1896), pp. 301–322 Google Scholar, and XCIX (1897), pp. 25-58, 311-326; The Buggbears, ed. Bond, R. W. in Early Plays from the Italian (Oxford, 1911), pp. 75–157 Google Scholar; Bontoux, G., La Chanson en Angleterre au temps d'Élisabeth (Oxford, 1936), pp. 267–363 Google Scholar; ‘Early Elizabethan Stage Music', The Musical Antiquary 1 (October 1909-July 1910), pp. 30- 40; Evans, W. M., Benjonson and Elizabethan Music (Lancaster, Pa., 1929)Google Scholar; Gibbon, J. M., Melody and the Lyric (London, Toronto, and New York, 1930)Google Scholar; Lindsey, E. S., “The Music in Ben Jonson's Plays’, MLN XLIV (1929), pp. 86–92 Google Scholar; Selections from the Works of Thomas Ravenscroft (London, 1822, Roxburghe Club); Warlock, P. (pseud, for P. Heseltine), Elizabethan Songs, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1926).Google Scholar

6 These MSS., comprising six part-books, are dated ‘early 17th cent.’ by Hughes-Hughes, A. in A Catalogue of Manuscript Music in the British Museum (London, 1906-1909), III, 220 Google Scholar, and are described as containing instrumental fantasias, fancies, madrigals, anthems, and carols by English composers of the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century. See also 1, 5, 142-143; II, 137; III, 232. The MSS. contain several dramatic laments, some of which have been transcribed by Warlock in Elizabethan Songs.

7 Melody without accompaniment is given in Selections from … Ravenscroft, p. 24, and also in Gibbon, p. 132. In Gibbon the source is erroneously noted as Ravenscroft's Melismata (1611). For Ravenscroft's connection with St. Paul's see Lawrence, W. J., ‘Thomas Ravenscroft's Theatrical Associations', MLR XIX (1924), 418–423 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 For discussions of the omitted songs in the early editions of Lyly's plays, see Bond, R. W., ‘Lyly's Songs’, RES VI (1930), 295–299 Google Scholar; Feuillerat, A., John Lyly (Cambridge, 1910), pp. 402 Google Scholar ff.; Greg, W. W., ‘The Authorship of the Songs in Lyly's Plays', MLR 1 (1905), 43–52 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greg, W. W., ‘Lyly's Songs’, TLS (3 January 1924)Google Scholar; Lawrence, W. J., ‘The Problem of Lyly's Songs’, TLS (20 December 1923)Google Scholar; and Moore, J. R., ‘The Songs in Lyly's Plays’, PMLA XLII (1927), 623–640 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 The Works of Thomas Middleton, ed. A. H. Bullen (London, 1885), 1, 23-24. The abbreviations of the speakers’ names have been expanded. The authorship of the play, first attributed to Middleton in 1661, was not seriously questioned until a few decades ago. See Bald, R. C., “The Chronology of Middleton's Plays’, MLR XXXII (1937), 33–43 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 The Plays of John Marston, 1, 55. So Rossaline in Antonio and Mellida describes the vocal equipment ofa singer.

11 For alto voice is an anonymous setting with bass viol accompaniment of ‘If I freely may discover', the lyric to be sung in Jonson's The Poetaster (acted by the Children of the Chapel in 1601). The setting survives in Br. Mus. Add. MS. 24665, ff. 59b-60, which is dated ‘c. 1615-30’ by Hughes-Hughes, II, 468-469. A facsimile appears in Evans. In Ravenscroft's Melismata (1611), a collection of solos, trios, and four-part choruses with accompaniment, most of the solos are also for alto voice (medius). A few are for tenor. Two of the items—No. 6, for three voices, and No. 7, for four voices—are settings of lyrics typical of those assigned to pages in several choirboy plays.

12 The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, ed. A. H. Bullen (London, 1904-1912), IV, 510-511.

18 See Long, pp. 16-43, for an extended discussion of instrumental music in Elizabethan drama.

14 See Arkwright for a discussion of several dramatic laments with accompaniment for viols by Robert Parsons, Richard Farrant, Nathaniel Patrick, etc. appearing in Christ Church MSS. 984-988 (the Dowe MS, which bears a fly-leaf date of 1581) and also in Br. Mus. Add. MSS. 17786-91. Many of these have been transcribed by Warlock in Elizabethan Songs.

15 The text of the song (spelling modernized) as it appears in Pammelia:

Jolly shepherd, and upon a hill as he sat

So loud he blew his little horn, and kept right well his gate:

Early in a morning, late in an evening,

And ever blew this little boy, so merrily piping

Terliterlo, terliterlo, terliterlo, terli,

Terliterlo, terliterlo, terliterlo, terli.

Though printed later, the words of this catch are probably the earliest available source of Mopso's song fragment (cf. Cutts, J. P., ‘The Second Coventry Carol and a Note on The MaydesMetamorphosis', RNX (1957), 6–7 Google Scholar.)

16 See Chappell, W., Popular Music of the Olden Time (London, 1859), 1, 162 Google Scholar.

17 The Works of Middleton, VI, 314, Il. 152-156.

18 For the anonymous The Bugbears, acted by an unknown boys’ company about 1563-1565, there survive in the MS. of the play text two items of music in fragmentary state. The first item has a verse solo for alto and a duet refrain for soprano and alto; the second item is a concluding chorus for three (and possibly four) treble voices. Accompaniments for both, presumably for viols, are wanting. See editions of play with music by Grabau with Friedlaender and by Bond. The three-part setting of ‘Slow, slow, fresh fount’ (the lyric from Jonson's Cynthia's Revels) in Henry Youll's Canzonets to Three Voices (1608) is very likely not a stage song, for the play text makes clear that the lyric is to be sung as a solo by Echo. For this setting in the Canzonets see The English Madrigal School, ed. Fellowes, XXVIII (1923), 35-41.

19 Two four-part choruses for the anonymous The Maid's Metamorphosis—John Bennet's The Elves’ Dance, beginning ‘Round about', and the anonymous The Urchins’ Dance, beginning ‘By the moon'—appear in Ravenscroft's A Brief Discourse (1614). For modern transcriptions see, for the first, Bennet, , Madrigals to Four Voices, ed. Fellowes, pp. 97–99 Google Scholar; for the second, see Bontoux, pp. 276-277. In Gibbon, p. 132, ‘By the moon', incompletely transcribed, is erroneously noted as appearing in Ravenscroft's Melismata (1611). In Long, p. 101, ‘By the moon', here also incompletely given, is incorrectly ascribed to Pearce, and its lyric is mistakenly identified with Blurt, Master-Constable.