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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2010
The visitor to the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford, the Parish Church of St. Botolph's in Boston, Lincolnshire, or the Collegiate Church of the Holy Trinity in nearby Tattershall, will find them in much the same condition as did John Taverner more than four hundred years ago. But he will find no trace in these noble piles of the man who served them so well. Nor is he likely to hear in their devotional services, or in any others in England, the music Taverner wrote for their choirs. Reasons for this neglect are not difficult to find. Very little church music composed by Taverner and his contemporaries was copied (and none printed) in score during their lifetime. Most of the part-books in which their music was inscribed were treated carelessly and later lost or destroyed. With the rapid religious and musical developments that followed the death of Henry VIII in 1547, the compositions of these men became liturgically irrelevant on the one hand and stylistically outdated on the other; compared with the melodic restraint and textural clarity of Elizabethan music, their writing sounded old-fashioned, extravagant and impenetrably thick, and it was far more difficult to sing. Therefore, from the beginning of the Elizabethan era to the end of the Victorian, the compositions of men such as Taverner, Robert Fayrfax and Nicholas Ludford remained unseen and unheard except by the occasional musical antiquarian.
1. Two of Taverner's Masses were adapted to English texts for a short-lived Protestant liturgy early in the reign of Edward VI (1547–53). The bulk of the extant music has come down to us From the isolated efforts of later Tudor and Stuart scribes who compiled part-books for use during the Catholic interregnum of Mary Tudor, for private Catholic devotional observances during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I, or occasionally for performance as vocal and instrumental chamber music.
The only music of Taverner's which circulated widely was the ‘in nomine’ section of his Mass Gloria tibi Trinitas. An instrumental transcription of this passage, along with several other composers' settings based on the same cantus firmus, appeared in the Mulliner Book not long after Taverner's death (a modern edition by Denis Stevens was published as the first volume of Musica Britannica 2nd rev. ed. [London: Stainer and Bell, 1966]Google Scholar). The printer John Day published it in 1560 (and again in 1565) as the anthem In trouble and adversity in his collection of Anglican music, Certaine notes set forthe in foure and three parts (British Museum, Royal Music Library K. 7. e. 7). See Denis Stevens' modern edition, In Nomine. Altenglische Kammermusik für vier und fünf Stimmen (Hortus Musicus, Vol. CXXXIV; Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1956).Google Scholar
2. ‘John Taverner,’ The Catholic Encyclopedia, 15 vols. (New York: The Encyclopedia Press, 1913), XIV, 466.Google Scholar
3. ‘John Taverner,’ Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Stephen, Leslie and Lee, Sidney. 21 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1917), XIX, 392–93.Google Scholar
4. ‘New Light on Early Tudor Composers, XII—John Taverner,’ The Musical Times, LXI (1920), 597–98.Google Scholar
5. Tudor Church Music, ed. Buck, P. C., Fellowes, E. H., Ramsbotham, A., Terry, R. R. and Warner, S. T., 10 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1923–1929)Google Scholar, I: John Taverner, c. 1495–1545, Part I.
6. Tudor Church Music, III: John Taverner, c. 1495–1545, Part II. An Appendix with Supplementary Notes edited by E. H. Fellowes was published by the Oxford University Press in 1948.
7. Hughes, Dom Anselm, ‘Sixteenth Century Service Music,’ Music and Letters, V (1924), 145–54, 335–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Warner, Sylvia Townsend, ‘Doubting Castle,’ Music and Letters, V (1924), 155–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collins, H. B., ‘John Taverner's Masses,’ Music and Letters, V (1924), 322–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘John Taverner—Part II,’ Music and Letters, VI (1925), 314–29.Google Scholar
8. In Tudor Church Composers (London: Oxford University Press, 1925).Google Scholar
9. ‘John Taverner’, Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 3rd ed., ed. Colles, H. C.. 5 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1927)Google Scholar. This article was reprinted in the 4th edition (1940) and again, with minor revisions, in the 5th edition (ed. Eric Blom, 1954).
10. ‘John Taverner,’ Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Blume, Friedrich. 14 vols. (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1949–1968), XIII, cols. 152–56Google Scholar; ‘John Taverner,’ Essays in Musicology in Honor of Dragan Plamenac, ed. Reese, Gustave and Snow, Robert J. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969), pp. 331–39Google Scholar. See also Stevens, ' Tudor Church Music (London: Faber and Faber, 1961; 2nd. ed., 1966).Google Scholar
11. Music in Medieval Britain (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958; 2nd ed., 1963).Google Scholar
12. Fellowes' interpretation, for instance, has led to a distortion of judgment in so fine a work as Dom David Knowles' Religious Orders in England (III, The Tudor Age, [Cambridge: University Press, 1959|,21Google Scholar), and wreaked havoc on Nigel Davison's attempt to date one of Taverner's major works (‘The Western Wind Masses’, The Musical Quarterly, LVII (1971), 427–43).Google Scholar
13. 9th ed. (3 vols.; London: Company of Stationers, 1684), II, 251.
14. The accounts are found in the County Records Office in Maidstone, Kent. For printed extracts, see Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of Lord De L'lsle and Dudley Preserved at Penshurst Place, Vol. I (H. M. C., Reports on Collections of Manuscripts, Vol. LXXVII, Part I; London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1925).Google Scholar
15. One such piece is Richard Davy's O Domine caeli terraque.
16. This setting is presumably the one by Guillaume Dufay.
17. Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln 1517–1531, ed. A. H. Thompson, III (Lincoln Record Society, Vol. XXXVII; Hereford: Lincoln Record Society, 1947), III.
18. London, Guildhall Library, MS 4889. See also Baillie, Hugh, ‘A London Guild of Musicians, 1460–1530,’ Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, LXXXIII (1956–1957), 15–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Some Biographical Notes on English Church Musicians, Chiefly Working in London (1485–1569),’ Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, II (1962), 18–57.Google Scholar
19. Ave Dei patris filia and Gaude plurimum are found in manuscripts dating from the second decade of the sixteenth century (Cambridge, University Library MS Dd. 13. 27 and St. John's College MS K. 31) apparently intended for the Chapel Royal or a similarly impressive church.
20. A setting of the prose text inserted into the ninth responsory at Matins (Ex eius tumba) on the Feast of St. Nicholas.
21. Love wyll I and lere, Mi hart my mynde, and The bella the bella, printed in the book of XX songes (London, 1530: British Museum, Royal Music Library K.l.e.l), and In women is rest peas and pacience no season, found in John Baldwin's commonplace book of c. 1600 (British Museum, Royal Music Library MS 24 d. 2, ff, 99v–100).
22. Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln 1517–1531, III, 11–13.Google Scholar
23. London, Public Record Office, MS. S. P. 1/39, f. 139; abstracted in the Letters and Papers … of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. Brewer, J. S., Gairdner, James and Brodie, R. H.. 21 vols. & addenda (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1862–1932), Vol. IV, no. 2564.Google Scholar
24. Often referred to as Small Devotion.
25. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Mus. Sch. e. 376–81, six part-books containing eighteen Masses. See Bergsagel, John, ‘The Date and Provenance of the Forrest-Heyther Collection of Tudor Masses,’ Music and Letters, XLIV (1963), 240–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26. London, P.R.O. MS S. P. 1/47, f. III; abstracted in Letters and Papers …, Vol. IV. no, 4704. Clerke was a scholar at Cardinal College who had bought Lutheran books from Thomas Garret, a brilliant and volatile young man whose activities had precipitated the crisis.
27. Original Papers, Illustrative of English History, ed. Ellis, Henry, 3rd series (4 vols.; London: Bentley, 1846), II, 139Google Scholar; abstracted in Letters and Papers …, Vol. IV, no. 4135.
28. The Victoria History of the County of Suffolk, ed. Page, William (2 vols.; London: Archibald Constable, 1907–1911), II, 142–44.Google Scholar
29. London, P.R.O. MS S. P. Henry VIII 235, f. 290; abstracted in Letters and Papers…, Addenda, no. 599.
30. London, P.R.O. MS. E. 36/104, f. 7v.
31. British Museum Harleian MS 4795, Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi, Boston.
32. The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the Years 1534–1543, ed. Smith, Lucy Toulmin, 4 parts in 5 vols. (London: Centaur Press, 1964). V, 33.Google Scholar
33. The Victoria History of the County of Lincoln, II, ed. Page, William (London: James Street, 1906), 452.Google Scholar
34. Letters and Papers …, Vol. XIV, Part 2, nos. 23–24.
35. Tudor Church Music, I, liv–lv.
36. Tudor Church Music, I, lv.
37. Tudor Church Music, I, lv.–lvi.
38. Letters and Papers…, Vol. XX no. 846, grant 38.
39. No will has survived. The Inquisition post mortem (London, P. R. O. MSS C. 142/74/130 and E. 150/580/18) from which this information is taken also documents the friendship between Taverner and Gillmyn. Rose Taverner's will, drawn up on 1 May 1553 (Tudor Church Music, I, lvi–lvii) indicates the place of the composer's grave, with its stipulation that her body ‘be buried in the parish church of St. Botolph in the said Boston in the bell house next my husband.’ Taverner's brother was undoubtedly the William Taverner who died at Tattershall in 1557 (Calendars of Lincoln Wills, I, 1320–1600, ed. Foster, C. W. [London: British Record Society, 1902], 304).Google Scholar
40. In the second section of the Agnus Dei the cantus firmus does not appear, but this section still maintains the principle; it is preceded and ended by full cadences and stops, and it observes the mensural shift from triple to duple.
41. The title of the Mass refers not to a chant, but to the pulse of the music, whose note-values are restricted to the breve, semibreve and occasional minim.