'Ancient' Music in Eighteenth-Century EnglandAuthor(s): Percy LovellReviewed work(s):Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 60, No. 4 (Oct., 1979), pp. 401-415Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/733505 .Accessed: 13/04/2012 12:35

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'ANCIENT' MUSIC IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

BY PERCY LOVELL

THE TRUE SIGNIFICANCE of the activities of music antiquarians in England from late Stuart times to the Gothic Revival has not been fully appreciated despite some findings which have appeared in print.' In at least two particulars, the work of this group of scholar-musicians was remarkable. First, in an age dominated musically by brisk Italian instru- mental styles, by the operas then the oratorios of Handel and, later in the century, by galant fashions, they represent a strong under-current of counter-taste. Burney, for all his historical researches, remained a man of his time in this matter of taste, certain that eighteenth-century music had improved on the past:

there is doubtless more nerve, more science, and fire, in the worst of Hlandel's choruses, than in the greatest efforts of these old rnadrigalists2.

Hawkins, much nearer in spirit and acquaintance to the revival of 'ancient' music could write:

in the compositions of Tye, Tallis, Bird, Farrant, Gibbons, and some others, all that variety of melody, harmony, and fine modulation are discoverable, which ignorant people conceive to be the effect of modern refinement. . .3

Secondly, unlike (it seems) the activities of music antiquarians elsewhere in Europe, the enthusiasm of the English researchers into early music led them to relish their discoveries in performance as well as on paper. So, for instance, the Academy of Ancient Music heard sung on 31 January 1733 Palestrina's 'Sicut cervus' and Marenzio's 'Dissi a l'amata', while in the 1740s members of the Madrigal Society were performing an astonishingly wide repertory of English and Italian madrigals, including pieces by Gesualdo and de Rore.

'Ancient' or 'Antient' was a vogue word in the period under review. It was used over and over again by antiquarians of all kinds and appears in many titles and sub-titles of books and collections of ballads

' Percy Young, A History of British Music, London, 1967, pp. 304 ff.; Thomas Day, 'A Renaissance Revival in Eighteenth-Century England', The Musical Quarterly, lvii (1971), 575-92.

2 Charles Burney, A General History of Music (1789), ed. Frank Mercer, London, 1935 (reprinted New York, 1957), ii.1 12.

a Sir John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (1776), new edn., London, 1853 (reprinted New York, 1963), ii.575.

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poetry, songs, and national airs.4 Pope likened Shakespeare to 'an ancient and majestick piece of Gothick architecture'. The difficulty about defining the word in terms of old music was that an appeal could hardly be made to Classical antiquity. Dr. Pepusch 'and a few of his disciples' did their best by praising the music of Ancient Greece and Rome to Hawkins, but Sir John replied with a legal snort:

where are those productions of the ancients that rnust decide the question? Lost, it will be said, in the general wreck of literature and the arts. If so, they cease to be evidence.5

In this matter, musical scholars were at a disadvantage. Their literary colleagues, Classicists to a man, had Greek and Roman texts at their elbows. Or, like Sir William Temple, Thomas Warton the elder (a noted medievalist) and Bishop Percy, they could make exciting discoveries of Icelandic sagas dating from 'heroic' times. Lord Burlington and his circle could reprint Palladio's Quattro Libri dell'architettura (1570) secure in the knowledge that the inspiration of that work came from Vitruvius and Classical Rome. But, in spite of researches into ancient Greek remnants by Pepusch,6 no corpus of Hellenic or Roman music existed comparable to the works of Classical antiquity studied and admired by literary men and connoisseurs of fine art. For past excellence of this order musicians had recourse to a much later era-the poly- phonic masterpieces of the Renaissance.

It is difficult to determine at what point music antiquarians began to think of sixteenth-century styles as 'Ancient'. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the English 'Golden Age' was still quite recent, especially when a composer like Tomkins continued to use the old idioms well into the 1650s and the string fantasias of Locke and Purcell clearly owe so much to the polyphonic tradition. Certainly, by the 1 720s a firm identification had been made of Renaissance music as 'Ancient'. In papers relating to the Academy of Vocal Music (later re-styled the Academy of Ancient Music) the aims were described to an early mem- ber, Viscount Perceval, as being 'an attempt to restore ancient Church musick', the 'Ancients' being defined in a memorandum of 26 May 1731 as 'such as lived before ye end of the Sixteenth [the word 'fifteenth' is crossed out] Century'.7 One suspects that the mystique surrounding the word 'ancient' increased as early eighteenth-century antiquarianissm merged into the Romantic revival and digging up the past became the cultural fashion. By the 1770s, Burney could pronounce majestically :S

'Examples from among many include Parry & Willians, Ancient British Music (1742), Macpherson, Fragments of Ancient Poetry (1760), Ritson, Ancient Songs (1790).

'Hawkins, History, i, p. xxx. 'John Wesley was impressed when Pepusch produced 'several large Greek

folios, which contained rnany of their musical compositions' (Erik Routley, The Musical Wesleys, London, 1968, p. 17).

'I am grateful to Dr. H. Diack Johnstone for information about the origins of the Academy of Ancient Music. Dr. Johnstone believes that the foundation date of 1710 given by Hawkins should read 1726. 8Burney, History, ii. 163.

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In a general History of Ancient Poetry, Homer would doubtless occupy the most ample and honourable place; and Palestrina, the Homer of the most Ancient Music that has been preserved, merits all the reverence and attention which it is in a musical historian's power to bestow.

There is an element in the antiquarian spirit (not entirely absent from present-day preservationist activity) that is glad to use the supposed perfection of a past epoch as a stick to beat the alleged shortcomings of its own time. The sentiments expressed by Colen Campbell in the preface to Book I of Vitruvius Britannicus (1715), based on Inigo Jones's Palladian works- that the Italians had lost their 'exquisite taste of building' and were now 'entirely employed in capricious ornaments, which, at last, must end in the Gothick . .'-are very close indeed to the reproaches levelled at church composers by the Rev. Arthur Bedford.9 Tudway, too, in the prefaces to the six-volume anthology of 'the most celebrated services and anthems' he made for Robert Harley, Lord Oxford, between 1714 and 1720, drew attention to the corrupting influence of the post-Restoration style of composition, which he des- cribed as 'light and Airy' and as using theatrical and instrumental effects quite unsuited to the 'peculiar gravity' of liturgical music. So, his choice of works by Tallis, Byrd, Gibbons, Tomkins, Morley and Palestrina (in Aldrich's English versions) was designed to show 'that solemn and grave style' which he considered proper for 'Divine Service'.

Before the work of eighteenth-century antiquaries in reviving and rediscovering Renaissance music is considered, some assessment must be made of the continuity of the old tradition, of elements that survived without interruption, particularly in the field of church music. It is relatively easy to compile a list of the various printed and manuscript collections in which Tudor and Jacobean works appear.10 Evidence for performance is harder to come by, but it can be assumed that in some cathedrals, at least, this earlier music was still sung. So much can be inferred from the preface to Boyce's Cathedral Music (1760-73) and from Burney's account of its compilation.11 Further evidence is found in Lichfield documents and in an inventory of music-books used in Chichester Cathedral in October 1767, 12 while Morley's Burial Service was used at the funeral of George II in 1760.

An illuminating way of seeing the process of transmission at work is to trace the fortunes of one of Tallis's most searchingly beautiful motets, 'O sacrum convivium', first published as such in the Cantiones

'The Great Abuse of Musick, London, 1711. 10 A working list contained about 25 eighteenth-century items-doubtless many

more could be added. " Burney, History, ii.492. See also H. Diack Johnstone, 'The Genesis of Boyce's "Cathedral Music" ', Music & Letters, lvi (1975), 26-40, for many points of interest in the study of Tudor survivals.

12 Don Franklin, 'Five Manuscripts of Church Music at Lichfield', R.M.A. Research Chronicle, iii (1963), 55-58; Christopher Dearnley, English Church Music 1650-1750, London, 1970, Appendix B.

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of 1575 but circulating already in the late sixteenth century as an English anthem, 'I call and cry'. Thomas Myriell gave the piece two English texts in Tristitiae Remedium (1616)-'I call and cry' and 'O sacred and holy banket'. About the same time it made an unlikely appearance as a treble song with lute tablature.Y" The Barnard manu- script books of 1625 (London, Royal College of Music, MSS 1045-51) present the work substantially in its 1575 guise, but when Barnard printed his First Book of Selected Church Music on the eve of the Civil War he used a modified text with many fewer accidentals. This latter version seems to have been the basis of a number of later copies, of which those made by Henry Purcell in 1673 and another thought to be written by John Blow are of particular significance. Tudway's wish to conserve examples of the 'solemn and grave' style of church music led him to include 'I call and cry' in the first volume of his anthology. Various other appearances can be traced in the early eighteenth century-for instance, it was printed in William Pearson's Divine Com- panion c.1730-before its elevation in 1768 to the second volume of Boyce's Cathedral Music. By then, however, the antiquarians Henry Needler and John Alcock had rescored the 1575 Latin version, and this 'admirable composition of Tallis' was praised by Hawkins in 1776'4 and stood at the head of Burney's manuscript collection.

The question might well be asked, to what extent the rhythmic and harmonic virility of the Tudor church music vernacular was transmitted unscathed to Georgian eyes and ears. A close examination of the final bars of 'O sacrum convivium'/'I call and cry' in versions widely sep- arated in time is revealing. Ex. la shows the passage as printed in 1575, with its characteristic mid-Tudor 'English' cadence (bar 4) and its harmonically complex elongated coda; this is substantially unchanged in 1625, only the f'# in the top part in bar 4 being replaced by f't . By 1641 Barnard appears to have simplified the coda harmonically and texturally, and his version (Ex. lb) is found in Purcell's autograph (1673)."' Ex. lc presents Pearson's version of c.1730, also based on Barnard but attempting a more compact suspension ending. Barnard's simplification had created a thirdless chord in bar 7 which Boyce in 1768 tided up with a first inversion (Ex. 1 d), and he also added a figured bass. Elsewhere Boyce often uses a flattened sixth, as against the sharp specifically given in the 1575 part-books to correct the key-signature, but it must be stressed that the flat sixth readings had been in circula- tion in seventeenth-century sources.'6 Perhaps surprisingly, the Georgian printed versions preserve the 'English cadence' formations castigated

"STen other manuscript sources are listed in Mary Joiner, 'British Museum Add. MS. 15117: a Commentary, Index and Bibliography', R.M.A. Research Chronicle, vii (1969), 105.

1 Hawkins, History, i.456. '5Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 23 H 13. ' See Paul Doe's comments on this point and others in his Novello edition of 'I

call and cry to thee' (1972).

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by Burney,'7 and elsewhere in his text Boyce transmits intact other searing false relations.

Georgian editors were well aware of the difficulties confronting them in establishing a reliable text from cathedral part-books. In his preface to Musica Sacra (1724) William Croft wrote:

at this Day it is very difficult to find in the Cathedrals, any one Antient valuable Piece of Musick, that does not abound with Faults arid Imperfections ... "I

-and Boyce declared that he was amending 'many gross errors. .. as much as my ability would admit of' when he set himself the task of preserving old church music 'in its original purity'.'9 Compared with the flood of Tudor and Jacobean church music transcribed by nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars, the amount transmitted into Georgian times was a mere trickle. But it was not negligible; about half the Services in Boyce and a quarter of his selected anthems are fine examples of the earlier styles. Perhaps the significance of this point has been overlooked, especially since most major cathedrals subscribed to Cathedral Music and it was re-issued in 1788.20 Moreover, when the influential Anglican choral revival began in 1840, Boyce provided a ready source of Gibbons's service in F, one of its most prized Services.2"

Conservation of sixteenth-century idioms can also be found in the metrical psalters that poured off the printing presses from the Reforma- tion until well into the eighteenth century. Since these were probably used more in domestic music-making than in churches, they must have had some effect on artisan taste. As we shall see, the first members of the Madrigal Society were artisans who 'had spent their lives in the practice of psalmody' and were able to move on to madrigals without too much trouble.22 Over 150 books appeared in the first half of the eighteenth century containing metrical psalm settings, and although new tunes were introduced, a large body of 'proper' tunes with sturdy root- position, semi-modal harmonies derived from Elizabethan and Jacobean collections still circulated. Many settings from Ravenscroft's 1621 collection, for instance, were printed in Pearson's Whole Book of Psalms (171 2). T'he tune 'Abbey' (Scottish Psalter, 1615, harmonised Ravens- croft, 1621) reappeared in Bremner's Rudiments of Music (Edinburgh, 1756) with distinctly sixteenth-century harmony.

But preservation is one thing: digging out unknown polyphonic masterpieces is quite another matter, and one can sense the excitement with which the antinuaries nuarried among the old sets of nqrt-bookq_

17 Burney, History, ii.69, where he declares that these Tallis dissonances 'must offend every cultivated and well-organised-ear'.

18 Quoted in Johnstone, 'Boyce's "Cathedral Music" ', p. 28. 19 Preface to Cathedral Music, vol. I. 20 Day, 'A Renaissance Revival', p. 577; Johnstone, op. cit., p. 40. 21 Bernarr Rainbow, The Choral Revival in the Anglican Church, London, 1970,

p. 61. 2 Hawkins, History, ii.887.

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Since so very little Renaissance music was printed in score, they had the further stimulus of watching motets, Masses and madrigals coming to life under their pens. Such transcriptions into score were acts of artistic reconstruction, revealing for them the fine gold of a past perfection.23

It seems that Dr. Henry Aldrich (1647-1710) was the leader of the movement in England. He was appointed Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, after the 'Glorious Revolution' and became well known in such fields as Classics, logic and architecture. Boyce thought well enough of one of Aldrich's compositions to include it in Cathedral Music, but the Dean's devotion to collecting and transcribing old music is of greater interest. Aldrich scored extensively from sixteenth-century part-books including sets by Marenzio, Palestrina, Victoria and Byrd. He also had a taste for Gesualdo-a link with John Immyns (see below) who copied from Aldrich's four manuscript volumes of this composer-and Carissimi.

In London the vigorous cultivation of 'Ancient' music in the early eighteenth century almost certainly owed most of its impetus to John Christopher Pepusch (1667-1752), the prototype of the many erudite central-Europeans who in later times settled firmly in England, astonish- ing one and all with their learning and versatility. Reference has been made already to Pepusch's knowledge of and enthusiasm for ancient Greek music. The severity of his opinion that 'the art of music is lost; that the ancients only understood it in its perfection',24 must be read in the light of Burney's touching sketch of the widowed and childless old man becoming more and more preoccupied with 'the genera and systems of ancient Greek Music'.25

Soon after he arrived from Berlin c. 1700, Pepusch established him- self as a composer, performer, teacher and collector of amazing energy, giving an enormous fillip to the rediscovery of old music. In his house in Boswell Court a visitor could hear Mrs. Pepusch, formerly the opera singer Margarita de l'Epine, playing from 'Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book' (later to be designated the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book) and hear Pepusch pronounce his preference for John Bull's 'Lessons' rather than those of Couperin or Scarlatti for 'harmony and contrivance . . . air and modulation'.26 Here also a visitor could inspect a remarkable library which appears to have acted as a power-house for the antiquarian move- ment in music. Pepusch's dealings with Padre Martini,28 asking for and

23 See, for instance, Padre Martini's Roman contact, Don Girolamo Chiti, as an Italian example. Chiti 'had a lifelong project of putting into score the music of Palestrina and his followers' (Anne Schnoebelen, 'The Growth of Padre Martini's Library', Music & Letters, lvii (1976), 379).

24 Quoted in John Wesley's Journal, 13 June 1748 (Routley, op. cit., p. 7). ' History, ii.987. Hawkins, History, i.481.

27 See A. Hyatt King, Some British Collectors of Music c.1600-1960, Cam-

bridge, 1963, p. 31: 'there seems little doubt that the primum mobile, the great impetus to collecting on a large scale and to the related growth of musical scholar- ship, came from Pepusch'.

28 Schnoebelen, op. cit., p. 381.

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sending various music books, is evidence of his far-reaching activities, made possible by his wife's considerable private fortune.29

Pepusch seems to have provided the inspiration behind the founda- tion of the Academy of Ancient Music and to have remained its guiding star until his death in 1752. His successor as moving spirit in the affairs of the Academy was John Travers (c. 1703-1758) a pupil and fellow antiquary who transcribed early Tudor music including Cornyshe and pages from the Eton Choir Book. Also prominent was the figure of Maurice Greene, who played a vital role in the preservation of old music. Reference has already been made to the disputed date of foundation of the Academy, that it was originally known as the Academy of Vocal Musick, and that it had introduced the telling word "ancient' into its aims by 1731. Hawkins reports that one of 'the prin- cipal ends of the institution was a retrospect to those excellent com- positions of former ages . . .' and to bring to public notice the namcs of composers that 'had else been consigned to oblivion'.30 He also makes it clear that the Academy was an attraction to a number of persons ready to take part in the study and practice of vocal and instrumental music of more recent vintage than the sixteenth century. Three surviv- ing programmes of music given by the Academy in 1733, 1734 and 173931 confirm Hawkins's points. Fourteen sixteenth-century works were included in the earlier concerts including five Palestrina motets; but the programme for 10 May 1739 was made up of Handel pieces. Music written in Baroque continuo style is labelled 'for voices and instruments', while madrigals and motets are simply described by the number of voice parts in use.

Some idea of the transcriptions used in the early programmes of the Academy of Ancient Music can be formed from a group of manu- script volumes now in the Fitzwilliam Museum.32 The distribution of composers is instructive. Victoria appears more frequently than Pales- trina, but each is represented by a complete Mass. There are five madri- gals by Marenzio, three by Gesualdo, several Byrd motets and madrigals and a scattering of other (and earlier) sixteenth-century pieces. Seven- teenth-century works are mainly by the more recent continuo-madrigal composers such as Colonna, Petti, Steffani and Stradella.

A close look at the Byrd transcriptions shows a group of accurate, unmodified copies of pieces from Psalmes, Sonnets and Songs (1611), including the composer's most chromatic madrigal 'Come, woeful Orpheus' and the string fantasia in four parts. Elsewhere there were equally precise copies of three motets from Gradualia Book I, full of the most strenuous and complicated Byrd rhythms, given in the original clefs and notation and at the original pitch. Bar-lines added every four minims and some slight adjustment of verbal underlay are the only

'Burney, History, ii.986: '[Pepusch] had always been a diligent collector of ancient Music and musical tracts, and he was now enabled to gratify this passion without imprudence'. ' History, ii.886.

S Now in Leeds Public Library. ' MS 24 F 1; 24 F 3; 24 F 18; 30 F 22.

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modifications of the 1611 print. If these scores can be taken as typical of the material prepared for concerts given by the Academy of Ancient Music from the 1720s onwards, one can report that men like Pepusch and Greene were obviously careful to use genuine texts from the 'Golden Age'.

A further powerful stimulus to the revival movement was provided by John Immyns (d. 1764), especially by his foundation in 1741 of the Madrigal Society33-an act of individual initiative destined to have far- reaching results. Immyns seems to have infused fellow members and visitors with a burning zeal for the madrigalian style which has been handed down to generations of later members in an unbroken tradition.34 Moreover his Society and his many transcriptions set a six- teenth-century light glowing in many Glee and Catch Clubs operating in the late eighteenth century, and they had a direct bearing on the formation of influential Madrigal Societies at Bristol, Exeter and else- where in the early Victorian period.

Immyns was an attorney by profession but, owing to unspecified indiscretions as a young man, was reduced to the post of a clerk. He earned extra money by copying for the Academy of Ancient Music and acting as amanuensis to Pepusch. More remarkably he taught him- self to play the lute from Mace's Musick's AlIonument. The close contact with Pepusch must have been a turning point in his life since he developed a passion for 'Ancient' music. Immyns shared Pepusch's views about the sad decline in the art of music: Hawkins reports that 'he looked upon Mr. Handel and Bononcini as the great corrupters of the science'.

With these prejudices, it is no wonder that he entertained a relish for madrigals, and music of the driest style: Vincentio Ruffo, Orlando de Lasso, Luca Marenzio, Horatio Vecchi, and, above all, the prince of Venosa, were his great favourites. He was very diligent in collecting their works, and studied them with incredible assiduity ... 35

Hawkins, who was a member himself from 1752 to 1766, paints an attractive picture of John Immyns as the presiding spirit of the infant Madrigal Society acting as mentor to a group of humble craftsmen, 'mostly mechanics; some, weavers from Spitalfields, others of various trades and occupations', who were soon able to sing, 'almost at sight, a part in an English, or even an Italian madrigal'. One gets the impression from the first minute book, begun in July 1744, that a small group of

" A full account of the origins of the Madrigal Society has still to be written. Apart from Hawkins's account (History, ii.886-7) information can be found in Reginald Nettel, 'The Oldest Surviving English Music Club', The Musical Quarterly, xxxiv (1948), 97-108; J. G. Craufurd, 'The Madrigal Society', Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, lxxxii (1955-6), 34-46. I am greatly indebted to Patrick Finn, Librarian of the Madrigal Society, for sustained help and interest during my work on the records and music belonging to the Society and for making available various transcripts from the earliest minute-books and part-books.

34 Later members influential in preserving Tudor music include E. T. Warren, R. J. S. Stevens, J. Turle, T. Oliphant, Otto Goldschmidt, Sir John Stainer and E. H. Fellowes. 3 History, ii.887.

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members meeting weekly in the Twelve Bells alehouse (near St. Paul's) were held together by Immyns with a kind of Ancient Mariner-like magnetism. Only three madrigalians were present on the first recorded occasion: Immyns himself who possessed, according to Hawkins, a strong but not very flexible counter-tenor voice (described less flatteringly elsewhere as 'cracked') which 'served well enough for the performance of madrigals'; Mr. Sells; and Mr. Samuel Jeacocke, a Clerkenwell baker who 'usually sang the bass part'.36 By 1746 average attendance had increased to twelve although on 7 January 1745 the minute reads 'Mr. Randall solus from 8 to 10'. No mention is made of the madrigals sung by Mr. Randall at this meeting (liquid accompani- ments were, no doubt, provided), but it is known that he did not come again for nearly three months. Choirboys were brought in to sing treble parts some time before 1750 (and paid for their services), and the membership limit was raised a few years later to 25, reaching 32 in 1766. Strangers were allowed to attend meetings on payment of a suit- able entry fee, and no doubt there were many like William Jackson, organist of Exeter, who considered the sixpence so spent to be well worth-while.3

Immyns clearly governed the affairs of the Madrigal Society meti- culously, often with a legal turn of phrase,38 building up a library of madrigal and motet transcriptions and making sure that these were practised and sung regularly. Members could be 'cheerfully incited to sing catches' after the official closure of the two 'Acts' of madrigals at 10.30 p.m.; but all surviving documents, scores and part-books"9 make it plain that the business of the Society was essentially taken up with singing and studying 'Ancient' music. Three highly interesting but enigmatic pages at the end of the earliest minute book (in Immyns's handwriting) are headed 'A List of Scores'. The pages are dated succes- sively 1745, 1746, 1747 and seem to show a calendar of meetings, some actual, some projected, with a roster of members' names and the scores and parts they presented (or were due to present) on their night in office as 'President'. In return for providing a freshly made transcription, each President-for-the-night had the privilege of choosing the pro- gramme of madrigals. The frailty of madrigal singers in preferring well-

so Jeacocke took a strong line with a string instrument that displeased him: he would, 'to mend the tone of it, bake it for a week in a bed of saw-dust'.

"'Mr. Jackson-a stranger, Mr. Randall's trienac was present at the meetings held on 28 July and 4 August 1756. In 1776 the Society bought a copy of Jackson's Canzonets for lOs. 6d.

8 A rule covering the duties of the rotating Presidents and the practice of madrigals, dated 8 December 1757, reads: 'It is ordered that every night such Member whose turn it is to serve President that night four weeks shall appoint the pieces to be performed for the said last mentioned night just after the 2nd Act is over That every member may have timely notice of what Pieces are to be performed and write out or practice their parts and in case of such member (so to appoint) being absent such night of appointment the next member in turn upon the list that shall then be present shall appoint for him and in case of his refusal or neglect the next member in course and so on round the list'.

The Society's library was deposited in the British Museum in 1954.

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tried favourites to the unknown must have been spotted early. By a rule passed in or before August 1747, the President was required to include in his programme 'scores out of the box [i.e. the portable library] . . . one in each act and to be taken in turn that all of them be heard'.

In a minute of 22 December 1763 members of the Madrigal Society showed their affection for their ageing founder by desiring Peter Noialle to write to him . . .

to assure you how sincerely they are concerned that your present state of health will not permit you to favour them so often with your company as they are persuaded your inclination would lead you to do . . . they still desire that you would suffer your name to continue at the head of the List and beg you would accept of being exempted for the Time from all offices, Fines and Expences ...

Immyns's reply to this graceful letter was equally gracious, promising 'to do myself the Pleasure of walting on you as oft as my health shall permit and I can be any wise usefull'. He died in the following year.

As to the repertoire of sixteenth-century music collected and sung by the Madrigal Society in its first years, the 'List of Scores' shows fifteen Italian madrigals, thirteen English, eight French psalms (mostly by Claude le Jeune), a few motets and a handful of compositions by members in madrigalian style. The regular recording of programmes in the minutes began on 21 August 1745; from these entries one can see that among the English madrigalists Wilbye topped the popularity poll with John Bennet a close second. Morley, rather surprisingly, was less sung or less well known at this date, but later favourites like East's 'How merrily we live' and Farmer's 'Fair Phyllis' were already charming singers. Gibbons's 'The silver swan' had not yet begun its popular progress, although Immyns made an accurate copy of it in 1740.40

An index in Immyns's handwriting at the end of one of the earliest sets of part-books (Madrigal Society, A 14) is called 'A Table of the Madrigals in this Book showing their Connexion as to their keys by the last note of ye bass & the Order they should be sung in, (as to those of ye same pitch) to make them appear to Advantage'. Besides the un- expected feature of listing by tonality, the entries are surprisingly biased towards Italian compositions. Of 79 titles given, 49 have Italian words, and others are copied from Musica Transalpina I. Fourteen numbers from Bennet's Madrigals to Four Voices (1599) are included, indicating the high esteem in which these 'finely studied' pieces 'abounding in all the graces and elegancies of vocal harmony'-Hawkins's description- were held. Immyns's particular relish for Italian madrigals is proved by an examination of his autograph manuscripts in the British Library, the Fitzwilliam Museum and in the archives of the Madrigal Society. He transcribed from 35 or more Italian madrigalists and about ten of

40 Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 30 G 6.

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their English counterparts. In addition well over twenty Continental motet composers of the sixteenth century were used. His delight in the works of Gesualdo and the transmission of this delight into practice is shown by the fact that uip to the end of 1750 thirteen Gesualdo madri- gals had received 91 performances in meetings of the Madrigal Society.

The question already asked in the section on church music may now be put again in relation to Immyns and his associates: what modifica- tions of 'wayward modal harmony' were thought necessary by eighteenth-century antiquarians and enthusiasts in their transcriptions and performance? And was the music's rhythmic flexibility preserved? To attempt an answer, a close examination was made of some 50 pages selected from the earliest part-books belonging to the Madrigal Society (as representing performing material), a number of examples drawn from Immyns's autograph manuscript volumes now housed in the Fitz- william Museum, and three manuscript copies of Byrd's Three-Part MIass, one of which is certainly by Immyns.4' In almost every detail an exact copy of the musical text has been drawn from the Elizabethan and Jacobean sets, including original clefs, pitch, time-signatures and note-values-even where the latter preserve archaic forms such as black triplas and ligatures. Regular bar-lines are added, but since these are made to slice cleanly through the middle of note heads to avoid the use of ties, the feeling of an unbarred part-book is maintained. The reten- tion of redundant accidentals reinforces this impression. Immyns's auto- graph score of the Byrd MIass42 is a fine example of his calligraphy and scholarship; in the one instance where the second edition of c.1600 prints a wrong note, he corrected it (presumably from the first edition).

Figures are sometimes added to the bass parts of the transcriptions and sparing use is made of dynamic marks, usually a 'piano' or a 'forte'. One can often detect insertions in a later hand, perhaps a sharp added or a reaction like 'good' inscribed against a favourite number. No directions as to tempo are found. More freedom was exercised in dealing with words and underlay. Substitutions are often found such as 'Clarinda's face' for 'sweet lady's face', or 'Whenas I look'd' instead of 'Whenas I glance'. Underlay is occasionally adjusted particularly in melismatic passages.

Any account of the 'Ancient' music movement up to 1760 must investigate the considerable figure of Henry Needler (1685-1760), a 'zealous friend' of the Academy of Ancient MNusic and a true 'amateur' of music. He was Accountant-General to the Excise and a 'very fine and delicate performer on the violin' who, on one occasion, was 'transported with the sight' of Corelli's Op. 6, newly arrived in printed books from Amsterdam. He settled dowrn with other string players to perform all

l I am grateful to my colleague Dr. F. Hudson for making available material relating to the Byrd Mass.

42Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 30 G 5.

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twelve concertos 'without rising from their seats'. In the field of antiquarian studies, Needler put into score 'the works

of the most celebrated Italian masters, with a view to improve himself, and enrich the stores of the Academy'.43 Of the 28 volumes in his auto- graph now in the British Library, well over a half are filled with six- teenth- and seventeenth-century compositions including Josquin's Stabat Mater, much Lassus, eight Masses by Victoria, sets by Byrd and his Portuguese contemporary Lopez and, most impressively, complete transcriptions of a number of books of motets and Masses by Palestrina."

Needler seems to have been a Palestrina addict. It is probable that the inclusion of so many Palestrina motets in the Academy's programmes stemmed from his industry. Six volumes are almost entirely devoted to Palestrina-representing over 200 works. There is plenty of evidence of a lively mid-eighteenth-century appreciation of Palestrina in England which may have been sparked-oft by Dean Aldrich's adaptations of many of his motets as English anthems. Certainly these latter obtained wider currency in collections such as Tudway's and William Flackton's of Canterbury.4" A resolution in the Madrigal Society minutes of 2 May 1764 gives a glimpse of the copying and re-copying of these 'Models of harmonical perfection', to use Hawkins's apt phrase.

Mr. Hawkins having offered the use of his Motets of Prenestensis to the Society for copying of them, a Motion was made by Mr. Dan'l Richards, and unanimously agreed to, that the same should be done and the expense thereof be paid out of the Stock of the Society.

Burney's comparison of Palestrina with Homer has already been men- tioned. This reverential tone is repeated in a note inscribed on one of Immyns's manuscripts: 'The following seven motets are reckon'd some of the best of the works of the Immortal Palestrina being published in his lifetime'.46 Whether such veneration was akin to that which led Fux, in Vienna in 1725 to enthrone his idol as the perfectionist model of contrapuntal technique in Gradus ad Parnassum can only be hazarded. Perhaps these English admirers appreciated even more the artistic and aesthetic merits of the Palestrina works by singing them.

The progress of the 'Ancient' music movement after 1760 requires further investigation and charting. Some landmarks may be mentioned briefly. One of the most important of these arises from the activity of Edmund Thomas Warren, who played a public relations role in intro- ducing madrigals and motets into the publications and programmes of the influential Noblemen's and Gentlemen's Catch Club between 1761 and 1794. He also prepared versions of sixteenth-century pieces for

4 Hawkins, History, ii.806 " British Library, Add. MSS 504536-62 "'Anthems Ancient and Modern .. . collected by William Flackton', British

Library, Add. MSS 30931-2. " Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 30 G 6.

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performance in that very elitist subscription society, The Antient Concerts, which flourished from 1776 to 1848. Warren's editions are very much more doctored than those considered in this article, but it would be a mistake to underestimate his enthusiastic championing of early music or its effect on later developments.

The influence of the Gothic Revival in music can be studied first in the transcriptions of John Stafford Smith (1750-1836), who pushed back the time frontier of 'Ancient' music to the twelfth century and in whose papers one can detect the earliest stirrings of interest in the English lute-song composers; and, second, in the music of Robert Lucas Pearsall whose madrigal compositions in revived polyphonic style com- pare favourably with the historic movement in early nineteenth-century architecture.

Many transcribers were at work in the late eighteenth century, and there seems to have arisen a cult of the 'collected works'.47 In 1815 William Hawes, first musical director (by name) of the Madrigal Society, published The Triumphs of Oriana in score-the first reprint, it seems, of a complete set of madrigals.48 Another and bigger landmark was reached in the 1830s and 1840s with Vincent Novello's publications of Palestrina for the Catholic Church and, on the Anglican side, the vigorous crusade of William Crotch in 1831 for the revival of old church music together with the foundation of the Motett Society in the 1840s. With the nineteen large volumes published by the Musical Antiquarian Society between 1840 and 1848 the revival movement was well and truly launched and now extended beyond complete madrigal sets to Parthenia and Gibbons's three-part fantastias for viols. It seems a comparatively short voyage to the era of G. E. P. Arkwright, Barclay Squire, R. R. Terry and E. H. Fellowes.

4 Dr. Thomas Bever, a friend of Burney's, had a copyist transcribe seventeen volumes of Marenzio and the complete madrigals of both Morley and Wilbye in the 1780s. 48Percy M. Young, 'The Madrigal in the Romantic Era', American Choral Review, 4 October 1977, gives further information on madrigal singing and madrigal societies.

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