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Abstract
The received view of the Tudor composer Thomas Caustun is of a minor and relatively uninteresting figure. That view is adjusted, however, by the discovery among his works of contrafacta of music by Nicolas Gombert, Philippe van Wilder, Rogier Pathie and Sebastiano Festa. This article considers the reasons why Caustun made these adaptations, and why they they were published under his name, rather than those of their true composers, in John Day's anthology of Protestant church music, Mornyng and Evenyng Prayer and Communion (London, 1565).
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References
1 Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance (2nd edn, London, 1954), 797.Google Scholar
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3 Full titles: Certaine notes set forth in foure and three parts to be song at the morning Communion, and evening praier, very necessarie for the Church of Christe to be frequented and used: and unto them added divers godly praiers and Psalmes in the like forme to the honor and praise of God (= RISM 156026), and Mornyng and Evenyng prayer and Communion, set forthe in foure partes, to be song in churches, both for men and children, and also to play on instruments[,] with divers other godly prayers and Anthems, of sundry mens doynges (= RISM 15654); ESTC 6418–19. For a discussion of the printing history of this publication, see Howard M. Nixon, ‘Day's Service Book, 1560–1565’, British Library Journal, 10 (1984), 1–31. An Edwardian date for its conception is proposed in John Aplin, ‘The Origins of John Day's “Certaine Notes”’, Music and Letters, 62 (1981), 295–9. There is a full transcription of its contents in Colin William Holman, ‘John Day's “Certaine Notes” (1560–1565)’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kansas, 1991).Google Scholar
4 Aplin, ‘The Origins’, 296.Google Scholar
5 David Wulstan, Tudor Music (London, 1985), 288.Google Scholar
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7 Modern edition of Caustun's adaptation in John Taverner, c.1495–1545, Part II, ed. P. C. Buck et al., Tudor Church Music, 3 (London, 1924), 199–200. For the original ‘In nomine’ section of the Mass ‘Gloria tibi trinitas’, see John Taverner, i: Six-Part Masses, ed. Hugh Benham, Early English Church Music, 20 (London, 1978), 56–8. The ‘In nomine’ section circulated widely as an independent textless piece; for an edition and list of sources, see Elizabethan Consort Music, i, ed. Paul Doe, Musica Britannica, 44 (London, 1979), no. 25. One Elizabethan copyist subsequently removed Caustun's name from the adapted Medius part; see the manuscript copy of In trouble and adversity in London, British Library, Add. MS 15166, fol. 88v, where the line has been reattributed to ‘Mr Taverner’.Google Scholar
8 That being said, little is known about the early history of the In nomine tradition, and the extent to which the genre circulated generally. To judge from a letter written by Edward Somerset, Lord Herbert, probably in 1573, In nomines were by that time available to and cultivated by aristocratic amateur musicians; see Harrison, Christopher, ‘William Byrd and the Pagets of Beaudesert: A Musical Connection’, Staffordshire Studies, 3 (1991), 51–63 (p. 55).Google Scholar
9 Spelling and punctuation modernized, as they are in all subsequent transcriptions of English texts. Sternhold's verse translation was in print by 1547; see Leaver, Robin, ‘Goostly psalmes and spirituall songes’: English and Dutch Metrical Psalms from Coverdale to Utenhove, 1535–1566 (Oxford, 1991), 120.Google Scholar
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12 Modern edition in Nicolas Gombert: Opera omnia, ed. Joseph Schmidt-Görg, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, 6/xi, Part I (American Institute of Musicology, 1975), 63–6. A different state of the same work, also apparently by Gombert, is given on pp. 60–2.Google Scholar
13 RISM 154412, which contains both states of the chanson (see preceding note). For details of this publication, see Meissner, Ute, Der Antwerper Notendrucker Tylman Susato (Berlin, 1967), ii, 31–2. It is unclear whether the copy of Le quatriesme livre now in the British Library (K.3.a.4) reached England during the sixteenth century.Google Scholar
14 Here and in all subsequent quotations of texts in languages other than English, spellings and punctuation derive from the cited modern edition.Google Scholar
15 Caustun's manner of ‘dittying’ Gombert's music here closely resembles text underlay in some of Thomas Morley's madrigals, where different voice-parts do not always declaim identical words, or may sing variant states of the same base text; see English Madrigal Verse 1588–1612, ed. Edmund H. Fellowes, rev. Frederick W. Sternfeld and David Greer (3rd edn, Oxford, 1967), 693–4.Google Scholar
16 Le Huray, ‘Caustun [Causton], Thomas’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1981), iv, 17.Google Scholar
17 Modern edition in Philip van Wilder: Collected Works, ed. Jane Bernstein, Masters and Monuments of the Renaissance, 4 (New York, 1991), Part II: Secular Works, no. 8.Google Scholar
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19 The keyboard version occurs in Oxford, Christ Church, Mus. 371; see Tudor Keyboard Music c.1520–1580, ed. John Caldwell, Musica Britannica, 66 (1995), nos. 69 and 68. The partbooks are Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Music MS 278 (A–C); see Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music 1400–1550, ed. Charles Hamm and Herbert Kellman, Renaissance Manuscript Studies, 1 (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1979–88), iv, 310–11.Google Scholar
20 RISM [1552]9. It is unlikely that the copy in the British Library (K.8.i.4, tract 13; Bass partbook only) was in England in the sixteenth century.Google Scholar
21 The text used by Caustun is close to, but not identical with, the versions in the 1549 and 1552 prayer books. It omits one sentence that appears in both of them, after the word ‘pity’: ‘Thou sparest when we deserve punishment, and in thy wrath thinkest upon mercy.’ In the 1552 prayer book, the reference to singing this text is replaced by an instruction to ‘the people [to] say’ this text. For another setting of these words, see The Wanley Manuscripts, ed. James Wrightson, Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance, 99–101 (Madison, WI, 1995), no. 79.Google Scholar
22 Modern edition in Libro primo de la croce, ed. William F. Prizer, Collegium Musicum, 2nd ser., 8 (Madison, WI, 1978), no. 4. Caustun's adaptation uses the words of the 1552 prayer book.Google Scholar
23 For full listings of sources, see Haar, James, Chanson and Madrigal 1480–1530: Studies in Comparison and Contrast (Cambridge, MA, 1964), 69–70; and Iain Fenlon and James Haar, The Italian Madrigal in the Early Sixteenth Century: Sources and Interpretation (Cambridge, 1988), 214, no. [4]. For details of Attaingnant's editions, see Heartz, Daniel, Pierre Attaingnant, Royal Printer of Music (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969), catalogue no. 41. For a list of printed instrumental versions, see Brown, Howard Mayer, Instrumental Music Printed Before 1600: A Bibliography (Cambridge, MA, 1965).Google Scholar
24 British Library, K.4.f.5: Benedictus Appenzeller, Chansons a quattre parties (Antwerp: Loys and de Buus, 1542; RISM A 1291). For evidence of its English ownership in the sixteenth century, see Milsom, John, ‘English Polyphonic Style in Transition: A Study of the Sacred Music of Thomas Tallis’ (D.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 1983), i, 73, and ii, Appendix 3.8, no. 3 (‘Lbl “Li.” group‘), item 2. The manuscript additions, including O passi sparsi, are probably in an Italian hand.Google Scholar
25 The surviving Wode partbooks are now divided between four locations; see Edwards, Warwick, ‘Sources of Instrumental Ensemble Music to 1630, 7: The British Isles’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd edn, London, 2001), xxiv, 15–19 (p. 15), and Kenneth Elliott, ‘Wood [Wode], Thomas (i)’, ibid., xxvii, 551. Works of English origin copied by Wode include ‘In nomine’ settings by Tallis and White, Philippe van Wilder's Aspice Domine, Tallis's When shall my sorrowful sighing slake, and two psalm-motets by Robert Johnson reported by Wode to have been ‘set in Ingland’.Google Scholar
26 Very few sixteenth-century contrafacta are known to have borrowed only selectively from their models. For another example, see the setting of Tu es vas electionis in Treviso, Archivio musicale del Duomo, MS 29, which adapts most but not all of the music of Dominicus Phinot's Tua est potentia; the contrafactum is described in Bonnie J. Blackburn, Music for Treviso Cathedral in the Late Sixteenth Century: A Reconstruction of the Lost Manuscripts 29 and 30, Royal Musical Association Monographs, 3 (London, 1987), 46–50.Google Scholar
27 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce B. 248, Bassus partbook, sig. O1v. No systematic search for press variants and handwritten emendations in Mornyng and Evenyng Prayer has been carried out in the preparation of the present article, nor was the task undertaken by Nixon in ‘Day's Service Book’, or by Holman in ‘John Day's “Certaine Notes”‘.Google Scholar
28 Modern edition in the appendix of Thomas Crecquillon: Opera omnia, ed. Barton Hudson, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, 63/i (1974), 101–3. For Caustun's adaptation, see Holman, ‘John Day's “Certaine Notes”‘, 285–92.Google Scholar
29 ‘Pathie [Patie, Patye], Rogier [Roger]‘, The New Grove Dictionary (2nd edn), xix, 234–5.Google Scholar
30 See Vanhulst, Henri, ‘Un succès de l'édition musicale: le Septiesme livre des chansons a quatre parties (1560–1661/3)’, Revue belge de musicologie, 32–3 (1978–9), 97–120, and Rudolf Rasch, ‘The “Livre septième”’, Atti del XIV congresso della Società Internazionale di Musicologia … 1987, Part I: Round Tables (Turin, 1990), 306–18.Google Scholar
31 See Griffiths, David, A Catalogue of the Music Manuscripts in York Minster Library, York Minster Library Sectional Catalogues, 2 (York, 1981), 131–4. For a fuller discussion and a more complete identification of contents, see Milsom, ‘English Polyphonic Style’, i, 64–5, and ii, Appendix 3.5.Google Scholar
32 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Music MS 278 (A–C); see note 19 above.Google Scholar
33 John Aplin, ‘A Group of English Magnificats “Upon the Faburden”’, Soundings, 7 (1978), 85–100. Aplin concludes that Caustun ‘took over an entire segment of Whitbroke's polyphony and repeated it throughout his work’ (p. 97).Google Scholar
34 Peter Phillips, English Sacred Music 1549–1649 (Oxford, 1991), 392–6. Tallis's Te deum survives incomplete but can largely be reconstructed; see Thomas Tallis: English Sacred Music, ii: Service Music, ed. Leonard Ellinwood, rev. Paul Doe, Early English Church Music, 13 (London, 1974), no. 3.Google Scholar
35 The Tallis score conflates the surviving sources: London, Royal College of Music, MSS 1046–7 and 1049–51 (5 vocal parts: Decani contratenor 1 and tenor; Cantoris contratenor 1, tenor and bass), and Oxford, Christ Church. Mus. 1001 (organ). Square brackets enclose material supplied editorially.Google Scholar
36 See Caldwell, John, The Oxford History of Music, i: From the Beginnings to c.1715 (Oxford, 1991), 276–8.Google Scholar
37 For two recent discussions of unintentional replication of thematic material in sixteenth-century polyphony, see Milsom, John, ‘“Imitatio”, “Intertextuality”, and Early Music’, Citation and Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Musical Culture: Learning from the Learned, ed. Suzannah Clark and Elizabeth Eva Leach (Woodbridge, 2005), 141–51, and Julian Roscoe Grimshaw, ‘Imitative Counterpoint in English Music, c.1500–1575‘ (D.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 2000). See also Phillips, English Sacred Music 1549–1649, 11–24 (Example 4), for a useful if necessarily selective sample of thematic subjects that regularly recur in works by English composers from Tallis to Tomkins.Google Scholar
38 Holman, ‘John Day's “Certaine Notes”‘, 262–3 (bars 86–92).Google Scholar
39 For an edition and discussion of D'ung nouveau dart, see Philip van Wilder: Collected Works, Part II: Secular Works, no. 16.Google Scholar
40 Unique source: New York, Public Library, MSS MNZ Chirk; see Peter le Huray, ‘The Chirk Castle Partbooks’, Early Music History, 2 (1982), 17–42, inventory, no. 30. This is the only known work by Caustun that was not printed during his lifetime.Google Scholar
41 There are two versions of Tye's anthem; they open almost identically. For editions, see Christopher Tye, i: English Sacred Music, ed. John Morehen, Early English Church Music, 19 (London, 1977), pp. 176 and 193. For the Caustun passage, which sets the words ‘Thy honorable, true and only Son’ (following an internal break in the polyphony), see Holman, ‘John Day's “Certaine Notes”‘, 242–3 (bars 57–61).Google Scholar
42 Modern edition in Claudin de Sermisy: Opera omnia, ed. Gaston Allaire and Isabelle Cazeaux, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, 52/iii (American Institute of Musicology, 1974), no. 43. For the Caustun passage, see Holman, ‘John Day's “Certaine Notes”‘, 254. Claudin's chanson circulated widely in manuscript in Tudor England, especially in instrumental versions; early sources include London, British Library, MSS Royal Appendix 56 and 58, both copied several decades before the death of Henry VIII. Caustun's allusion to the chanson – if it is that – is to the treble and bass voices only, suggesting that it was made from memory.Google Scholar
43 For an edition of Johnson's music set to its original Latin text (Psalm 67), see Music of Scotland 1500–1700, ed. Kenneth Elliott and Helena Mennie Shire, Musica Britannica, 15 (London, 1957; rev. 3rd edn, 1975), no. 7. For the English adaptation, see Holman, ‘John Day's “Certaine Notes”‘, 310–25.Google Scholar
44 The neutral term ‘British’ is used here in preference to ‘English’ or ‘Scottish’ while the issue of Johnson's nationality and biography – currently under review – remains in the balance. Whichever the country of his birth, however, it seems likely that most or all of Johnson's surviving music, including Deus misereatur, was composed in England. The date of Johnson's death is not known; some sources of his macaronic carol Benedicam Domino end with a stanza in praise of Queen Elizabeth I, but this may have been an addition, or the words may be adapted from earlier ones.Google Scholar
45 This conclusion is supported by the printed partbooks themselves: the Medius, Contratenor and Bassus books attribute the piece to ‘Johnson’, but the Tenor book has the initials ‘T.C.‘ placed at the end of the music.Google Scholar
46 Virtually nothing is known about the purchase and use of copies of Mornyng and Evenyng Prayer. A set was probably acquired for Ludlow parish church, if (as seems likely) this publication can be matched with the ‘4 pricksong books in print’ for which a payment of eight shillings was recorded in the 1569 churchwarden accounts; see Smith, Alan, ‘Elizabethan Church Music at Ludlow’, Music and Letters, 49 (1968), 108–21 (p. 112).Google Scholar
47 Howard Nixon has questioned Day's role in planning and promoting Mornyng and Evenyng Prayer, and suggested that he may have served only as the book's printer (Nixon, ‘Day's Service Book’, 3–5). However, Day's busy involvement with the publication of another repertory of Protestant music – English-texted metrical psalms – and the absence of any dedication or acknowledged patronage in Mornyng and Evenyng Prayer may point to the collection having been published speculatively by him. For overviews of Day's biography and Protestant outlook, see Oastler, C. L., John Day, the Elizabethan Printer (Oxford, 1975), and Leaver, ‘Goostly psalmes and spirituall songes’, 241–55.Google Scholar
48 For example, the contrafacta in Treviso, Archivio musicale del Duomo, MS 29, retain their attributions to their original composers, notwithstanding the substitution of new texts; see Blackburn, Music for Treviso Cathedral. The same is true of the various Protestant contrafacta of Lassus's chansons made by Huguenot editors; see Freedman, Richard, The Chansons of Orlando di Lasso and their Protestant Listeners: Music, Piety, and Print in Sixteenth-Century France (Rochester, NY, 2001). By comparison, it is unusual for a contrafactum to bear the name of its adapter, rather than that of the music's original composer. An example is Haec dicit Dominus, a contrafactum of the six-voice chanson Nimphes, nappés by Josquin Desprez, which is attributed to its adapter, Conrad Rupsch, in its earliest source (RISM 15371).Google Scholar
49 For details, see the worklist for ‘Morley, Thomas’ in The New Grove Dictionary (2nd edn), xvii, 126–33 (pp. 130–3), and Joseph Kerman, The Elizabethan Madrigal: A Comparative Study (New York, 1962), passim, and especially Chapter 5 (‘Thomas Morley‘).Google Scholar
50 Lionel Pike, ‘Gaude Maria virgo: Morley or Phillips?’, Music and Letters, 50 (1969), 127–35; and Peter Phillips, ‘“Laboravi in gemitu meo”: Morley or Rogier?’, Music and Letters, 63 (1982), 85–90.Google Scholar
51 The Elizabethan Madrigal, 161.Google Scholar
52 ‘Morley, Thomas’, The New Grove Dictionary (2nd edn), 129.Google Scholar
53 Thomas Morley, A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music, ed. R. Alec Harman (London, 1952), 152.Google Scholar
54 O Lord our Lord, how marvellous is based on Cornysh's Blow thy horn, hunter, a song in which sexual connotations are barely concealed below the references to hunting. The relationship between these two pieces is discussed in The Tudor Church Music of the Lumley Books, ed. Judith Blezzard, Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance, 65 (Madison, WI, 1985), p. ix. How long, O Lord, wilt me forget derives from Cornysh's My love she mourneth; see Humphreys, David, ‘Secular Melodies in the Lumley Partbooks’, Early Music, 22 (1994), 191. For editions of the two Cornysh songs, see Music at the Court of Henry VIII, ed. John Stevens, Musica Britannica, 18 (2nd edn, London, 1973), nos. 25 and 35. For editions of the contrafacta, see The Tudor Church Music of the Lumley Books, nos. 17 and 18.Google Scholar
55 See Marsh, Christopher, ‘Psalms Versus Ballads? Melodic Interaction in England, c.1560–1700‘ (forthcoming).Google Scholar
56 Various performing editions of sections of Caustun's Service ‘for Children’ were published during the period 1915–63, and must have entered the repertories of many modern cathedral and church choirs. For details of these editions, see Ralph T. Daniel and Peter le Huray, The Sources of English Church Music 1549–1660, Early English Church Music, supplementary vol. i, Part 2, 90.Google Scholar