Album insights
In August 1350, the view from several towns in Sussex was more impressive than usual. King Edward III of England had assembled a fleet to challenge the Spaniards, and now his galleons swayed in the summer haze off the Winchelsea coast. Edward, sporting a beaver fur hat that "suited him excellently," enjoyed the company of various Knights of the Garter, a new knightly order based in Windsor, where King Arthur had once held court in grandeur (or so it was believed). This order's founding added a special allure to Edward's wars, and as the king strode the deck under the sun in the sky and a battle sparkling on the sea before him, he found himself in high spirits. He even desired music, commanding his minstrels to play a certain "German dance" recently brought by Sir John Chandos. To further the entertainment, Edward requested Sir John to sing the dance song, "which greatly amused him."
Edward and Chandos weren't the only Knights of the Garter with a penchant for music. Henry of Lancaster, as reported in 1354, often sang "many amorous chansons" and savored delightful "song made by man or woman... or instruments." What happened to these charming songs? They have vanished, leaving a music scene at English kings' and magnates' courts cloaked in mystery like a forbidden chamber. Music adorned meals with raucous trumpets or accompanied a noble to his chambers, yet this minstrel music was never transcribed and now rests with the men who performed it. Perhaps secular music was occasionally assigned to the clerics of the royal chapel. However, there is (as of now) no concrete evidence that men like John Chandos or Henry of Lancaster developed a taste for refined polyphony before the style created by Guillaume de Machaut in France. Most often, the chapel clerics sang Gregorian chants during Mass, adding polyphonic sections when liturgical context required. A wealth of music from the reign of Edward III has been handed down to us. Unfortunately, this music mostly resembles a pile of copper rather than silver coins, with only a few pieces carrying the hallmark one would expect from a royal or aristocratic chapel.
Nevertheless, a fair number of fine musical pieces can tentatively be linked to some English kings or their lords. A few of these tracks have been recorded on the CD in question, some of which are premier recordings. For example, conflicts during the Hundred Years' War inspired the composition of various pieces praising English monarchs and their campaigns in France. Singularis laudis digna begins with a praise to the Virgin Mary but concludes trumpeting the name of King Edward, reinforcing his claim to the French throne by combining the English leopard with the French lily on his quartered arms. Our second piece honoring an English king, The Agincourt Carol requires no introduction.
Around 1400, Knights of the Garter occasionally indulged in the most sophisticated polyphony while following their chaplains during Mass liturgy. These knights were not consciously or systematically "patrons" of music. They sporadically funded very good music as their courts maintained a chapel where good music was occasionally performed. However, these knights should not be envisioned as Renaissance art connoisseurs who wielded their aesthetic tastes with will and power to satisfy them. Yet, some works created for them were of very high quality. Notably, the famous Old Hall manuscript, now housed in the British Library as Additional MS 57950, reveals a handful of truly exceptional composers. One of the best, the Frenchman Pycard, served as a cleric in John of Gaunt's chapel around 1390, possibly until 1399. Pycard was likely familiar with the court routines so affectionately described in a poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - possibly linked to Gaunt's court.
The gradual transition to Henry V brings us to French pieces associated with the English monarch. Records show that both Henry and his French wife Catherine of Valois owned harps. They likely played these harps themselves, as the harp was the leading instrument of courtly amateurs. What did the royal couple play? Henry might have sung adapted French chansons that appealed to English tastes. Le grant pleyser comes close to fitting this description; an English-adapted version of the French chanson, Le gay playsir. The episode of Richard Loqueville, a French composer who taught harp to the Duke of Bar's son, hints that polyphonic chansons sometimes supplied the repertoire for aristocratic harpists. Loqueville likely played - and taught - music similar to what he composed.
Then there are the Christmas carols. Lullay, lullay maybe associates with the courtly customs described in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight during Christmas and New Year. As for the other Christmas carol (Ther is no rose of swych virtu), one of the finest, I humbly attribute it to Thomas, Duke of Clarence.
The resulting array of works is remarkably coherent, showcasing English pieces of great distinction. Listen, for instance, to Singularis laudis digna, an exceptionally intriguing piece that stands out from the mass of 14th-century music created in these lands. It demonstrates that English composers of rank were on par with those from other countries. In France, to honor a king, one would've had to compose a motet or perhaps (later in the century) a complex ballad. In both cases, the significant occasion demanded intellectual sophistication: a complex rhythmic scheme with intricate, colliding texts (at least two) for the motet; syncopated rhythms and enormous musical phrases for the ballad. In contrast, Singularis laudis digna offers a direct and approachable style for the royal occasion. The poem lacks complexity, and the setting calls for the same word to be sung by all three voices simultaneously, emphasizing harmonic movement syllable by syllable, allowing the text to be declaimed clearly. Like many English works from the 13th and 14th centuries, the rhythms in Singularis laudis digna are unwaveringly trochaic, and the harmonic vocabulary is precocious. The piece starts with a V-I progression (both chords include a third), treating thirds and sixths as consonances throughout, contrary to French practice. Another departure from the French motet and ballad is the voice leading. The musical lines in Singularis laudis digna are highly melodic, mainly progressing step by step, with clear contours easily followed by the singer.
These qualities recur in English pieces. Pycard's Gloria, a double canon and one of the finest musical achievements of the Middle Ages, blends five singable voices in a lush texture full of triads with a keen sense of V-I chord progressions. The piece's structure is wonderfully clear. In the first section, the singers declaim the text voice against voice, creating a wave of vocal sounds. Then, a "bridging passage" of hocket rhythms leads to the concluding amen. Here, the singers converge on the vowel "a," enhancing the sound of the final section significantly. In this part, a sequence of three chords, each decorated differently each time, is repeated four times.
Power's Sanctus merges the strong, panmelodic quality of the English style with the rhythmic inventiveness of the French, resulting in an exciting style often found in the most interesting compositions of the Old Hall manuscript: highly refined yet still imbued with open, almost boyish energy. This Sanctus surpasses any composition from the continent of the same era (perhaps around 1410). The Christmas carols showcase the propriety of voice leading, for which English composers of the early 15th century were renowned. Furthermore, Ther is no rose of swych virtu exhibits a clear preference for chord progressions with sixths and thirds, becoming characteristic of the English music style in the late Middle Ages.
The simple instrumental pieces were recorded here on a harp recreated to resemble a 15th-century instrument with gut strings. The tablature for P des Molins' De ce que fol pense is from the Faenza codex. As usual in the pieces from this manuscript, the tenor voice of the original is mostly retained as it appears in vocal settings, while the upper voice is adorned with continuous embellishments. In the remaining pieces, the harpist performs the three-part chansons as in the vocal setting, except in few instances (as it turns out) where the instrument's idiom necessitates a compromise.
Here is our collection of music for the Knights of the Garter. Honi soit qui mal y pense!
Christopher Page © 1987
Translated by Elke Hockings