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The Drexel Fragments of Early Tudor Song

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

David Fallows
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Extract

As a last-minute postscript to his Music & Poetry in the Early Tudor Court, John Stevens gave what he called a ‘preliminary report’ on a group of nine fragmentary song leaves that Thurston Dart had found in the New York Public Library. They were binding pastedowns in the seventeenth-century English partbooks copied by John Merro, Drexel MSS 4180–5. Since then some of these leaves have been used in various editions, and they have had their place in discussions of the Shakespearean ‘Willow song’ and of John Taverner's music. But they have not received any further study either as a group or in the context of other early Tudor sources. This was perhaps to be expected: a major book often leaves the impression that further work on the topic will have little to contribute; and it must be a disappointment to John Stevens as much as to anyone else that so little has been written on early Tudor song since he published his brilliant study in 1961. Even so, if fragments often yield their secrets less easily than complete manuscripts they sometimes tell us rather more; and besides, we occasionally find that a fragment is not as isolated as it now looks.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle , Volume 26 , 1993 , pp. 5 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1993

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References

Notes

It gives me considerable pleasure to be able to acknowledge the help of various staff members of the six libraries drawn on for this study, particularly Susan T. Sommer, Music Librarian at the New York Public Library; L.S. Colchester, Honorary Archivist and Assistant Librarian at Wells Cathedral Library; Sue Hanson, Special Collections Librarian at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio; Paul Woudhuysen, Keeper of Manuscripts and Printed Books at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; and Bruce Barker-Benfield, Assistant Keeper of Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Further to that, I owe a debt to Richard Charteris, who drew my attention to the extent of the Cleveland fragments. A version of this paper was presented at the Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Music on 17 August 1986.Google Scholar

1 John Stevens, Music & Poetry in the Early Tudor Court (London, 1961; rev. 2nd edn., Cambridge, 1979), 426–8.Google Scholar

2 The partbooks themselves are described, with a list of their contents, in Craig Monson, Voices and Viols in England, 1600–1650: the Sources and the Music (Ann Arbor, 1982), 133–58. That they are in the hand of John Metro was first noted by Philip Brett in Consort Songs, Musica Britannica, 22 (London, 1967), 173. All writers have agreed that this must be the earliest of the three sets of partbooks surviving in Merro's hand. (The others are British Library, Add. 17792–6, and Bodleian Library, Mus. Sch. D. 245–7, as first noted in Pamela J. Willetts, ‘Music from the Circle of Anthony Wood at Oxford', The British Museum Quarterly, 24 (1961), 71–5.) Monson observes, p.137, that the Tomkins madrigals on ff. 124v—138 of the Drexel partbooks were copied directly from his Songs of 3.4.5, & 6. parts (London, 1622).Google Scholar

3 Music MS 1005. The call-number was assigned only in 1977 and therefore does not appear in earlier literature. On the other hand, all literature seems to have the sides of the leaf wrongly labelled: the end of Newark's Thus musyng in my mynd was originally the recto, and the beginning of Fayrfax's Sumwhat musyng the verso. The leaf is described by John Stevens (with a facsimile of the Fayrfax side) in Iain Fenlon, ed., Cambridge Music Manuscripts, 900–1700 (Cambridge, 1982), 122–3.Google Scholar

4 'Fayrfax fragment'. In modern literature, this was first described by Dom Anselm Hughes in Friends of Wells Cathedral: Report for the Year Ended March 31st, 1953, p. [9]; see also Edwin B. Warren, Life and Works of Robert Fayrfax, 1464–1521, Musicological Studies and Documents, 22 (1969), 157.Google Scholar

5 SpecCol 3/ Lge/ ML 431. D24. A typewritten inventory made by Manfred Bukofzer is filed with the book. The leaves are further discussed in Bukofzer, ‘A Notable Book on Music', The Broadside, 1 (1940), 1–2; John M. Ward, 'Joan qd John and other Fragments at Western Reserve University', in Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: a Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. Jan LaRue (New York, 1966), 832–55; and Richard Charteris, John Coprario: a Thematic Catalogue of his Music (New York, 1977), 36.Google Scholar

6 John Ward offered in passing the hypothesis that the Cleveland page might face the Wells page which he had not seen ('Joan qd John', 854). That nobody else should have noticed how they belong together is perhaps a function of the difficulty of obtaining copies of all the relevant material. In retrospect, though, some of this information arises almost inevitably from the commentaries to the modem editions of Fayrfax's Sumwhat musyng: John Stevens, ed., Music at the Court of Henry VIII, Musica Britannica, 18 (London, 1962; rev. 2nd edn, 1969), no. 107; Edwin B. Warren, ed., Robert Fayrfax (ca.1464–1521): Collected Works, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, 17, iii (1966), 12–17; John Stevens, ed., Early Tudor Songs and Carols, Musica Britannica, 36 (London, 1975), no. 44. It was perusal of Warren's detailed commentary that first made me realise how the fragments fit together. He writes, p. 55 (and also in Life and Works, 157): ‘Interestingly, Fitzwilliam picks up where Drexel leaves off. But he failed to notice that the script was obviously identical and that the same was the case on the other side of the leaf. Both Warren and Stevens, evidently working from photographs, had to deduce the clef of the Drexel fragment: the clefs are clearly visible on the fragment itself.Google Scholar

7 Stevens, ed., Early Tudor Songs, 161; Warren, Life and Works, 156.Google Scholar

8 Anselm Hughes ('An Introduction to Fayrfax', Musica Disciplina, 6 (1952), 83–104) describes it as ‘A fragment said to be at Ely Cathedral but not now to be traced’ (p. 96); Stevens (Music & Poetry, 464) writes ‘now untraceable'.Google Scholar

9 Dictionary of National Biography, vi (1888–9), 1001–2.Google Scholar

10 Stevens, Music & Poetry, 458. Warren, ed., Robert Fayrfax, prints the other poem as being one possibly set by Fayrfax.Google Scholar

11 J.A. Fuller-Maitland, A Door-Keeper of Music (London, 1929), 105.Google Scholar

12 I should add here that the discovery of Squire's letter resulted from my asking Mr Colchester for evidence that the fragments in fact came from the Mantica volume. The letter also confirmed that information.Google Scholar

13 Catalogue of the Valuable Library of the late Edward Francis Rimbault (London: Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 31 July 1877; reprint ed. A. Hyatt King, London, 1975), lot no. 1337, with manuscript annotation in the copy used for the 1975 reprint as having been sold to ‘Sabin’ for £20 10s.; this price also appears in Drexel's own copy of the catalogue (New York Public Library, Drexel 1012). It is likely that Rimbault acquired the volumes from John Stafford Smith, who was born in Gloucester, Merro's home town, where Smith's father, Martin Smith, had been cathedral organist. In 1888 Drexel's collection was donated to the Lenox Library, which was one of the libraries to be consolidated in the foundation of the New York Public Library in 1895. See also Susan T. Sommer, ‘Drexel Collection', Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, xv (1973), cols. 1846–9.Google Scholar

14 Information from the files in the Fitzwilliam Museum. It had been purchased from Ellis, 29 New Bond Street, for £2 10s.Google Scholar

15 Ward, 'Joan qd John', 832–3.Google Scholar

16 Ker, N.R., Fragments of Medieval Manuscripts use as Pastedowns in Oxford Bindings, with a Survey of Oxford Binding c. 1515–1620, Oxford Bibliographical Society Publications, New Series 5: 1951–2 (Oxford, 1954), xiv.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., xvi.Google Scholar

18 Stevens, ed., Early Tudor Songs, 167 (commentary to no. 69); this information also appears in Stevens, Music & Poetry (1979 edition), 426.Google Scholar

19 Stevens, Music & Poetry (1961 edition), 385.Google Scholar

20 Stevens, ed., Early Tudor Songs, 167.Google Scholar

21 The knowledge and generosity of Dr Bruce Barker-Benfield, Assistant Keeper of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, considerably speeded and assisted my studies of this source. In addition, Adrian Bassett generously shared his thoughts about the binding; and Dr John Milsom kindly answered a last-minute query for me.Google Scholar

22 See the inventory of the Oxford fragments below.Google Scholar

23 Information from the archives of the New York Public Library.Google Scholar

24 Thomas James, Catalogus universalis librorum in Bibliotheca Bodleiana (Oxford, 1620), 47, where the book is dated 1515 for 1615 and has the call-number B.16.17, changed in the Duke Humphrey shelf copy to 8.15. Inside the cover of the Babington volume there is also the earlier call-number T B.8.15. alongside the current call-number, B.9.12.Th.Google Scholar

25 Bodleian Library, Records 16.2, f. 68, listed as ‘Babington's Workes, folio'. This manuscript is described and extracted in Strickland Gibson, Early Oxford Bindings (Oxford, 1903), 51–8; and on p. 59 he lists B.9.12.Th. as an example of Adams's work in 1615. On biographical matters concerning John Adams, see Gibson, Strickland, Abstracts from the Wills and Testamentary Documents (London, 1907), 40.Google Scholar

26 Ker, Fragments, 216: ‘Elias and Francis Peerse were using it in 1613–14 and John Adams in 1615', citing Gibson, Early Oxford Bindings, 52, 59–60.Google Scholar

27 Oldham, J.B., letter to the Cathedral Library dated 8 October 1931, referring to the book by its earlier, uncancelled, seventeenth-century shelf mark, C2.18. In Oldham, English Blind-Stamped Bindings (Cambridge, 1952), it is MWd (10) (see p. 55). In Ker, Fragments, it is Roll XIX, which was used by Peerse during those years.Google Scholar

28 See note 2 above.Google Scholar

29 As established by Andrew Ashbee's letter to the editor, entitled ‘Lowe, Jenkins and Merro', in Music & Letters, 48 (1967), 310–11.Google Scholar

30 Ker, Fragments, vii.Google Scholar

31 Stevens, Music & Poetry, 427. William Dunbar's poem “The Thrissil and the Rose’ commemorates the same occasion.Google Scholar

32 Roger Bowers, ‘Taverner, John: (1) Life', The New Grove Dictionary (London, 1980), xviii, 598–600; this should be read alongside, and as a modification of, the much fuller account in David S. Josephson, John Taverner: Tudor Composer (Ann Arbor, 1979).Google Scholar

33 Josephson, John Taverner, 181–93, discusses the song in some detail, offering alternatives to his reconstruction and in some respects approaching the solution offered here. That attempt fuelled the rather better edition in Hugh Benham, ed., John Taverner: III: Ritual Music and Secular Songs, Early English Church Music, 30 (London, 1984), 162–71.Google Scholar

34 Josephson, John Taverner, 191, reaches a similar conclusion, though suggesting that the repeat was an octave higher—which would be incompatible with my reading of the source.Google Scholar

35 Ward, 'Joan qd John', 845–6.Google Scholar

36 One further new English fragment of that generation may be mentioned here, if only so that others can be aware of it. Among the fragments collected in Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1240, there is a slip of paper, 10×5 cm, from the edge of a songbook. On the recto (presumably) are the ends of three staves, containing alas only four notes, but with the ends of two lines from the text residuum, reading ‘an was slay’ and ‘both nyght & day'. On the verso are the beginnings of two staves, in C2 and C3 clef (the latter on a six-line stave), with a key-signature of one flat and again only four visible notes but without any text. The staves are 12–15 mm deep. Dr Oliver S. Pickering of Leeds discovered the fragment and kindly allowed me to mention it here; I am also grateful to Dr Richard Rastall for having drawn my attention to its existence.Google Scholar