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The National School of Virginal Music in Elizabethan Times
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
From the earliest times England had been a nest of singing birds, and music was the common heritage of all. In Elizabethan days there were not one or two fine virginal composers, but a whole school of them, as is evident from the MSS. that have survived. They may be named as follows: the earlier were Parsons, Tallis, Blitheman, Byrd, Bull, Giles Farnaby, Munday, Hooper, Morley, Robert Johnson, Phillips, Weelkes, Warrock, Inglott, Richardson; the later were Gibbons, Cosyn, Tomkins, Peerson, Edward Johnson, Richard Farnaby, Strogers, Bevin, Facy, while of four others—Tisdall, Marchant, Oldfield, and Crofurd—nothing is known.
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- Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1916
References
∗ Six-lined staves are used with G, C, and F clefs, which are moved about according to the pitch required in order to avoid leger lines. The time-signatures are obsolete, barring is uncertain, notes are bound together quite irregularly, and treble and bass are seldom placed correctly with regard to the notes to be sounded together.Google Scholar
∗ Playford's “Dancing Master” of 1650 contains hardly more than one. third of major tunes; out of 105, only forty are in the customary major scale. These tunes must be considerably older than their publication, some of them being used by composers of the late 16th century, and it is probable that they have not far departed from Elizabethan usage. A few tunes of earlier date to be found published in Holland, or in 16th-century MS. lute tablature, show much the same characteristics. Any change that did take place was the increase of major tunes, and their proportion before 1600 may well have been less than a third. The great change took place after 1650, as is proved by subsequent editions of the “Dancing Master.” A large number of tunes are inflectional as printed, and were probably more so in actual performance.Google Scholar
† In rare cases the fourth and second are also inflected.Google Scholar
‡ “English Folk-Song.” C. J. Sharp. pp. 67–72.Google Scholar
∗ This, however, was not unaffected by harmony. When the major tonic chord, or sometimes the bare fifth only, were held in one hand against the scale in the other, then the seventh, whether rising or falling, was flattened and possibly the sixth also. The falling seventh was sometimes sharpened to synchronise with the dominant chord. The inflection of the sixth depended to some extent upon that of the seventh, but the augmented second of the modem minor scale was not unknown. It is used occasionally by Byrd and Farnaby. The major sixth was used freely with the minor third, and it was generally, but not invariably, flattened when falling to the fifth. With the later composers the inflectional use becomes much modified and is less apparent.Google Scholar
∗ The actual word chromatic was known in its Italian or French form, and was understood to mean a semitonal part-movement in at least some portion of the piece. Thus we find a “Pavana Chromatica,” and a “Courante Cromatique” which seems to be by Gibbons. The keys of E and B major are found, in some of the fugal work actual enharmonic modulation occurs, and it is quite clear that some practical, though perhaps unrecognized, system of equal temperament was used, else these advanced keys could not possibly have been employed. Notation, however, coming from the Church, had not yet adapted itself to secular requirements. Hence the absence of all signatures except of one or two flats, which, of course, meant originally a transposed mode.Google Scholar
∗ The late Dr. Cummings possessed some MS. organ voluntaries by Cosyn.Google Scholar
∗ No. 1113.Google Scholar
† Add. MS. No. 29996, British Museum.Google Scholar