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The Revision Process in William Turner's Anthem O Praise the Lord
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
Evidence of reworkings by Restoration composers of their own pieces is not difficult to find, but inevitably such material has survived in a haphazard fashion. Only rarely does one come across examples like Matthew Locke's scorebook of consort music, London, British Library (GB-Lbl), Add. MS 17801, where alterations have been made systematically. Even where such examples do exist, the common contemporary practices of cutting out rejected leaves or of scraping away the original notes on a page often make it impossible to analyse the revisions made: of course the composers themselves could never have imagined that anyone would be interested in their cast-offs and made no attempt to preserve them. It is something of a stroke of luck, then, that three distinct and almost complete versions of an anthem by William Turner should be extant: they allow an unusually detailed study of the revision processes of a successful Restoration composer. What emerges as most important from such a study is the fact that Turner's reworkings of each section of the piece appear to show a consistency of purpose that one simply cannot search for in the odd revised phrases and bars which survive for most other composers of the period.
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References
1 Several are listed, for example, in Ian Spink, Restoration Cathedral Music, 1660-1714, Oxford Studies in British Church Music (Oxford, 1995), 77.Google Scholar
2 These copyists are also mentioned ibid., 77-88.Google Scholar
3 For information on Tucker's manuscripts, see Shaw, Harold Watkins, ‘A Cambridge Manuscript from the English Chapel Royal’, Music and Letters, 42 (1961), 263–7; idem, ‘A Contemporary Source of English Music of the Purcellian Period’, Acta musicologica, 31 (1959), 38-44 (pp. 39-40); and Margaret Laurie, ‘The Chapel Royal Part-Books’, Music and Bibliography: Essays in Honour of Alec Hyatt King, ed. Oliver Neighbour (New York, London and Munich, 1980), 28-50 (pp. 29-32).Google Scholar
4 Details of Bing's most important set of parts, York, Minster Library (GB-Y), MS M.I.S, are given in Harold Watkins Shaw, The Bing–Gostling Part-books at York Minster (Croydon, 1986), and David Griffiths, A Catalogue of the Music Manuscripts in York Minster Library (n.p., 1981).Google Scholar
5 See Wood, Bruce, ‘A Note on Two Cambridge Manuscripts and their Copyists’, Music and Letters, 56 (1975), 308–12; and Peter Holman, ‘Bartholomew Isaack and “Mr Isaack” of Eton’, The Musical Times, 128 (1987), 381-5.Google Scholar
6 Gostling's most famous product, now simply known as the ‘Gostling Manuscript’, is held in the University of Texas, Austin, and reprinted in facsimile as The Gostling Manuscript, ed. Franklin B. Zimmerman (Austin, 1977). See also idem, ‘Anthems of Purcell and Contemporaries in a Newly Rediscovered “Gostling Manuscript”’, Acta musicologica, 41 (1969), 55–70.Google Scholar
7 Hawkins apparently incurred the wrath of his employers at Ely cathedral for his prolific - and therefore rather expensive - copying activities: in October 1693 the dean and chapter issued a command that ‘the Organist shall not be allowd any bill for pricking books … unless his design shall be first allowd, before he performs it'; quoted in Spink, Restoration Cathedral Music, 84, and Watkins Shaw, ‘Hawkins, James’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), viii, 322-3.Google Scholar
8 See Laurie, , ‘The Chapel Royal Part-Books’, 34-41.Google Scholar
9 For discussion of this extensive collection, see Turnbull, Edward, ‘Thomas Tudway and the Harleian Collection’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 8 (1955), 203–7 (pp. 203-4); William Weber, ‘Thomas Tudway and the Harleian Collection of “Ancient” Church Music’, British Library Journal, 15 (1989), 187-205; and Christopher Hogwood, ‘Thomas Tudway's History of Music’, Music in Eighteenth-Century England: Essays in Memory of Charles Cudworth, ed. Christopher Hogwood and Richard Luckett (Cambridge, 1983), 19-47.Google Scholar
10 There is another anthem by Turner which begins with the same text, but which is unrelated musically to the piece being considered here, and in fact uses largely different verses from the same psalm (147). Its only known source is the Bing–Gostling partbooks at York Minster (GB-Y MS M.I.S.), where it was copied into the medius decani, contratenor decani and tenor decani books by Stephen Bing. In the medius decani book the anthem is the first to have been copied under Bing's heading ‘A Collection of such Anthems for verses as have bin made at Lincoln in ye years 68, 69 & 70'. Turner was Master of the Choristers at Lincoln from 1667 to 1669, so the date of composition of the anthem can fairly certainly be pinned down to 1668-9. Franklin suggests that, because this setting is unrelated to that being considered in this article, it may be misattributed to Turner; see Franklin, Don, ‘The Anthems of William Turner (1652-1740): An Historical and Stylistic Study’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1967), 202.Google Scholar
11 The revisions to this anthem do not seem to have been comprehensively assessed until now. Although Franklin does mention that there was more than one version of the anthem, he does so principally in the context of the added vocal ornamentation in GB-Lbl Harleian MS 7339, and he does not seem to have considered the possibility that Turner himself might have revised the work. See ibid., 165-75.Google Scholar
12 In GB-Lbl Add. MS 31444, Hawkins's companion book to MS 31445, Thomas Tudway is entitled ‘Mr’ throughout (his doctorate was conferred in 1705), and the final piece is an anthem by Blow which can be dated to December 1698; in GB-Lbl Add. MS 31445 Turner is referred to at first as ‘Mr’, but later as ‘Dr’ (he received his doctorate in 1696), and an anthem by Blow copied towards the end of the volume dates from December 1697. See Spink, Restoration Cathedral Musk, 86-7.Google Scholar
13 Ibid., 86.Google Scholar
14 I am grateful to Dr Robert Thompson for pointing out to me that these alterations are in Turner's own hand. When Franklin wrote his dissertation, this manuscript was in its former home, the Pendlebury Library of Music in Cambridge; see Franklin, ‘The Anthems of William Turner’, 278.Google Scholar
15 See Laurie, ‘The Chapel Royal Part-Books’, 31.Google Scholar
16 See also Shaw, ‘A Contemporary Source’, 39.Google Scholar
17 The hand was first identified in connection with GB-Cfm Mu MS 152 in Shaw, ‘A Cambridge Manuscript’, 264.Google Scholar
18 See Shaw, ‘A Contemporary Source’, 39-40, and Laurie, ‘The Chapel Royal Part-Books’, 29-31, who summarizes Shaw's conclusions as follows: ‘the relationship between the contents of this section and the list of items given in the Lord Chamberlain's records as “transcribed into the books of his Majesty's Chapell Royall since anno 1670 to Midsummer, 1676” is sufficiently close to suggest that most of it was copied towards the end of the period covered by the list. It must, in any case, have been copied before Tucker's death on February 28 1678/9, and probably before Blow received his doctorate on December 19 1677, since he is designated “Mr” throughout [in fact Shaw notes one reference to ‘Dr’ Blow]. Thus the section was probably copied in the years 1675-77'.Google Scholar
19 Laurie notes that a lutenist (who would have been a continuo player) was officially first employed in the Chapel Royal in August 1715, but the repertory of this lute-book makes it clear that lutes must have been used in the chapel for some years before that time; see Laurie, ‘The Chapel Royal Part-Books’, 38.Google Scholar
20 Unfortunately, Turner's piece must belong to the group of 30 items mentioned by Laurie that occur only in the lute partbook, since it is not included in any of the other books in the set; see ibid., 37.Google Scholar
21 Spink, Restoration Cathedral Music, 97.Google Scholar
22 Ibid., 78, 139.Google Scholar
23 For the bass chorus part in J-Tn N-5/10 Tucker apparently did not think it important to notate exactly where the ritornellos and verse sections occur: he only indicated the most important signposts - the opening symphony and its repeat, the solo verse and the verse immediately preceding the chorus - and presumably relied upon a clear cue being given to the singers for the chorus entry.Google Scholar
24 See Spink, Restoration Cathedral Music, 97.Google Scholar
25 There is, nevertheless, one alteration that Turner made himself in GB-Lbl Add. MS 50860: as described below, he deleted the marking ‘Symphony’ at the beginning of the bass verse part. Since he left all the ritornello indications in the part and, in particular, did not cross through the marking ‘Symphony againe’ at the end of the second verse, this deletion might be interpreted as a mistake. However, there are no complete sources of the second version of the piece against which to compare this part, so one cannot be certain that Turner meant the instrumental sections in the piece to be unchanged.Google Scholar
26 Such differences - use of dotted rhythms instead of even notes or vice versa, increased or decreased melodic decoration, and use of higher or lower octaves in the bass - were extremely common in Restoration manuscripts, and almost certainly demonstrate areas where it was considered normal for there to be flexibility in performance; see Herissone, Rebecca, ‘The Theory and Practice of Composition in the English Restoration Period’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1996), 159–62.Google Scholar
27 I am grateful to Dr Robert Thompson for suggesting this possibility to me.Google Scholar
28 GB-EL MS 12, though in score, has no separate continuo part where the bass voice sings (except in the verse ‘The Lord setteth up the meek’, where the two lines differ substantially). The lack of a continuo part may have led Hawkins to make an alteration in the final chorus: an entry of ‘and bringeth the ungodly down’ is moved from the tenor to the bass, the tenor filling in higher harmonies, and the bass's text and its subsequent entry being adjusted accordingly.Google Scholar
29 Tucker did make a minor copying error at the third repetition of ‘and bringeth the ungodly down’ in the chorus part (he repeated the music for the second repetition), but this mistake is rectified in the score.Google Scholar
30 See note 10 above.Google Scholar
31 This list is reproduced in Henry Cart de la Fontaine, The King's Musick: A Transcript of Records Relating to Music and Musicians (London, 1909), 305–7; and in Andrew Ashbee, Records of English Court Music, i: 1660-1685 (Snodland, 1986), 162-4.Google Scholar
32 The other is Hold not thy Tongue, O God, which also survives in the partbook J-Tn N-5/10. Turner wrote three anthems included in the 1676 list, one full and two verse, and eight anthems while in Lincoln. See Franklin, Don, ‘Turner, William (ii)’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), xix, 281-2, and Spink, Restoration Cathedral Music, 138-9.Google Scholar
33 Peter Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court 1540-1690 (Oxford, 1993), 413–14. It is, of course, always possible that in Tudway's copy of the third version of the piece the ritornellos were not scored for strings and that, by chance, he was able to get hold of a version of the piece with the original string ritornellos, which he then reinstated (meaning that the second set of revisions could date from after 1691). It seems rather far-fetched that he would have gone to such trouble, but there is at least some evidence to suggest that the string parts he had were not complete (see below).Google Scholar
34 In his list of works from 1980, Franklin gives only one date for this setting of O Praise the Lord, c.1686, and does not mention the revisions; see Franklin, ‘Turner’, 281. In his thesis, Franklin dated the work ‘before 1685'. It falls into the category of pieces which include elaborate solos and instrumental parts which he takes to have been written between about 1680 and 1685. However, he gives no clear reason for using these dates as termini. See Franklin, ‘The Anthems of William Turner’, 106-7 and 278.Google Scholar
35 See Thompson, Robert, ‘Purcell's Great Autographs’, Purcell Studies, ed. Curtis Price (Cambridge, 1995), 6–34 (pp. 15-16), where this possibility is discussed with respect to Purcell's Sonatas of Four Parts.Google Scholar
36 See Spink, Restoration Cathedral Music, 27. Franklin also notes the oddness of Tudway's and Hawkins's versions of this anthem not corresponding; see Franklin, ‘The Anthems of William Turner’, 165, 175.Google Scholar
37 The barring of the examples takes account of the extra material added in the third version of the piece.Google Scholar
38 The rhythm in the GB-Ob Ten MS 1180 part is also undotted here.Google Scholar
39 Although this new phrase appears to have been necessitated by the approaching cadence in bar 19, which would have made a cadence preparation in the bass difficult, in the third version of this verse it allows for a new solo entry of the bass.Google Scholar
40 In fact there are two changes of octave in the bass voice part (in bars 25 and 28), which make the part easier to sing. GB-Ob Ten MS 1180 and GB-Lbl R.M. MS 27.a.12 show that the latter alteration necessitated a small reworking of the continuo itself at this point.Google Scholar
41 There is another added inflexion created in the continuo part in GB-Ob Ten MS 1180 and GB-Lbl R.M. MS 27.a.12 at bar 25, where both parts have B♯ in place of the B♭ in GB-Lbl Add. MS 31445. Although it is tempting to think of these minor changes as compositional alterations made by Turner, it is equally possible that they are no more than variant readings.Google Scholar
42 Where the phrase is repeated in the latter half of bar 29, Turner seems to have allowed the original version of ‘pleasant’ to stand in the countertenor part, resulting in temporary part-crossing between the tenor and bass/continuo.Google Scholar
43 The harmonic implications of this decoration are such that a further change to the continuo part had to be made in bar 17 in order to prevent the bass from moving in parallel fourths with the continuo.Google Scholar
44 See, for example, bar 93 in the countertenor part, and bars 100-1 in the tenor part, though, as has been seen, this alteration seems to have been made for Turner's second version of the piece, since it occurs in Gostling's organ score, GB-Ob Ten MS 1180. Turner also extended the hemiola in the countertenor in the final bar to all three parts, leaving only the continuo to articulate the middle downbeat in the bar; nevertheless he retained one feature of the tenor line (a pair of quavers descending a third by step), setting it slightly earlier in the cadential phrase for both tenor and bass.Google Scholar
45 Hawkins does appear, however, to have made a copying mistake in the chorus: in turning the page at the end of p. 202 he accidentally added in an extra repetition of the chord on ‘down’ which he had just written in bar 155; this chord does not ocur in any of the other sources for the anthem, including those copied by Hawkins himself.Google Scholar
46 Franklin nevertheless refers to the ritornellos in Tudway's version as having a ‘quasirondo character'; see Franklin, ‘The Anthems of William Turner’, 109.Google Scholar
47 Although the part is referred to here as being for violin, it is possible that the scoring was for a single violin, two violas and bass, which Peter Holman has shown was the standard scoring for the Twenty-Four Violins from the 1660s to the early 1670s. In both GB-Lbl Add. MS 31445 and GB-Lbl Harley MS 7339 the second part does not ascend above f“ - which Holman says was ‘the normal cop note for viola parts at the time’ - but it would be unusual for a viola part in that it occasionally crosses the top part. See Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, 316-18. I am grateful to Peter Holman for pointing out this possibility to me.Google Scholar
48 Spink, , Restoration Cathedral Music, 35.Google Scholar