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Ravenscroft's ‘Melismata’ and the Children of Paul's

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

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

The theatrical activities of Thomas Ravenscroft (ca. 1590- ca. 1633), a chorister at St. Paul's under Edward Pearce, have from time to time been commented upon, particularly with respect to some Paul's boys’ plays performed at the turn of the century for which a few stage songs survive in three of his music publications: Pammelia (1609), Deuteromelia (1609), and A Brief Discourse (1614). A songbook heretofore overlooked by stage historians is his Melismata (1611), which includes still another stage song for a Paul's play, and this—hitherto apparently neither identified nor reproduced—is for Thomas Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One (Q 1608; S. R. October 7, 1607).

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance News , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , Spring 1959 , pp. 3 - 9
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1959

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References

1 Chiefly by Lawrence, W. J., in ‘Thomas Ravenscroft's Theatrical Associations', MLR XIX (1924), 418–423.Google Scholar See also Fellowes, E. H., English Madrigal Verse (Oxford, 1920), pp. 273–274 Google Scholar, and Boyd, M. C., Elizabethan Music and Musical Criticism (Philadelphia, 1940)Google Scholar, Chap, vn and App. E. For others see bibliography in A.J. Sabol, ‘Two Songs with Accompaniment for an Elizabethan Choirboy Play', Studies in the Renaissance v (1958), 145-159. A fact frequently overlooked is that Ravenscroft's name appears in a 1598 list of Paul's choristers (Bishop Bancroft's Visitation Report) transcribed by H. N. Hillebrand in The Child Actors, Univ. of III. Stud, in Lang, and Lit. XI, Nos. 1-2 (1926), i n . Lawrence plausibly suggests that since he took his Cambridge degree in 1605, he must have left the Paul's troupe at least in 1604.

2 Two part-songs for the anonymous Maid's Metamorphosis (Q 1600) and also an accompanied solo song for the anonymous Blurt, Master-Constable (Q 1602) appear in A Brief Discourse. A song fragment sung in The Maid's Metamorphosis is reproduced as a catch in Pammelia, and a song sung in the anonymous Jack Drum's Entertainment (Q 1601) is included in Deuteromelia.

3 Seven items (including four catches) are transcribed from Melismata by the anonymous editor of Selections from the Works of Thomas Ravenscroft (Roxeburgh Club, London, 1822), pp. 10-16. Ravenscroft's music has recently been discussed by Reese, G., Music in the Renaissance (New York, 1954), pp. 832–835.Google Scholar

4 This setting is reproduced below in compressed score; its accompaniment is for three instruments (and four if the voice part is dupUcated by an instrument). In the original edition the first note of the solo appears as a D. The setting is reproduced with the kind permission of the authorities of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose copy of Melismata has been consulted by microfilm.

5 The Works of Thomas Middleton, ed. A. H. Bullen (London, 1885), n, 334

6 Given in Selections.. .from Ravenscroft, p. 10. In the section for solo voice the editor has incorrectly fitted the words to the treble instrumental part, omitting solo and other parts.

7 The Maid's Metamorphosis, ed. J. S. Farmer in The Tudor Facsimile Texts (1912), sigs. B3randB2T.

8 Given in Selections...from Ravenscrqft, p. 13. The lyric here is incorrectly fitted to the treble instrumental part.

9 Westward Hoe, ed. J. S. Farmer in TFT (1914), sig. H2r.

10 Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and P. Simpson (Oxford, 1925-52) IV, 36.