Robert Fayrfax: Music for Tudor Kings & Queens | Album Booklet

ROB E RT

FAYRFAX 1464 – 1521

MUSIC FOR TUDOR

KINGS & QUEENS

E N S E M B L E P RO V I C T O R I A TO B Y WA R D

ROBERT FAYRFAX (1464 – 1521)

MUSIC FOR TUDOR KINGS & QUEENS

Fiona Fraser 1, 6, 10, 12, Rachel Haworth sopranos

1

Magnificat Regale [12:37]

Elisabeth Paul 1-7, 9-12, Rebecca Leggett altos

2

Benedicite! What dremyd I

[2:02]

Oscar Golden-Lee 1-2, 5, 8, 10-12

3

Alas, for lak of her presens

[1:50]

4

Most clere of colour [1:34]

5

Missa Sponsus amat sponsum – Credo * [5:43]

ENSEMBLE PRO VICTORIA / TOBY WARD

Ruairi Bowen 3, 10, 12 James Micklethwaite 4, 8, 10, 12 tenors Humphrey Thompson 1, 3-8, 10, 12

Reconstructed by Roger Bray and Magnus Williamson

Gavin Cranmer-Moralee 2, 10-12 baritones

6

I love, loved, and loved wolde I be

Piers Kennedy 1, 5, 8, 10, 12, Stuart O’Hara basses

7

Sumwhat musyng

8

Ave lumen gratiae *

Toby Carr 5 lute

[8:00]

Reconstructed by Magnus Williamson

Track numbers denote solos

9

That was my woo

[2:18]

10

Salve Regina [11:25]

11

To complayne me, alas

12

Maria plena virtute [13:38]

Total playing time

Recorded on 8-10 March 2021 in St Brandon’s Church, Brancepeth, County Durham Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter 24-bit digital editing: James Waterhouse 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter Design: Drew Padrutt Booklet editor: Henry Howard

[1:53]

[2:57]

Cover: Michiel Sittow (c.1469–1525), Mary Rose Tudor or Catherine of Aragon, oil on wood, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna Session photography: foxbrushfilms.com Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.com

@ delphianrecords @ delphianrecords @ delphian_records

* premiere recordings, in reconstructions made specially for this recording Editions for all other tracks specially prepared for this recording by Humphrey Thompson

[3:02]

[67:07]

Notes on the music Robert Fayrfax’s biography has been fixed, in its essentials at least, since the 1950s. Born in 1464, he disappears from the historical record until 1497, when the 33-year -old composer is found among the Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal. He spends his remaining 24 years in royal service until his death in October 1521. This latter phase of his career is richly documented, with records of academic honours, royal favour, professional esteem, and social standing in his adoptive home town and burial place, St Albans.

Having a precisely recorded birthdate makes Fayrfax exceptional among Tudor musicians: a measure of his family background, more advantaged than usual for a church musician, and perhaps a clue to his whereabouts during those undocumented 33 years of education and career building. The sixth of twelve children, he was born to an armigerous family whose Fenland home still stands by the River Welland at Deeping, near Peterborough and Stamford.

In the 1950s Dom Anselm Hughes rediscovered this connection in the Fayrfax family prayer book, which was used to record births and deaths: Robert, son of William and Agnes, was born at Deeping Gate around 10 o’clock at night, on 23 April, that is to say the feast of St George in 1464, the fourth year of the reign of King Edward IV.

His godparents are listed, along with his ecclesiastical sponsor, William Witham, career

cleric and future dean of Wells Cathedral.

His siblings’ godparents and sponsors included abbots, merchants, and close relatives of the Fayrfaxes’ landlord, Margaret Beauchamp, duchess of Somerset (d. 1482), whose daughter and heir was none other than Margaret Beaufort (1441–1509), mother of King Henry VII. Although he would inherit no rolling acres, Robert’s ancestry bequeathed him an excellent contacts list.

We have no idea where he received his music education – a result of intermittent documentation, perhaps, but also a measure of the extent and diversity of choir singing in pre-Reformation England, particularly in the musically well-favoured East Midlands.

The area was rich in choral foundations such as St Mary Newarke College, Leicester (of which Witham was dean), and the decades either side of 1500 were a golden age of choral singing in Britain. However, Fayrfax’s privileged birth may have enabled him to sidestep an institutional training entirely.

Choir schools gave those of modest means access to the educational ladder, but music was also cultivated in aristocratic households, a position within which would have been a fitting situation for a young gentleman. The influential Beauchamp/Beaufort household at Maxey Castle provided just such a destination: it lay only three miles from the Fayrfax family home, and we know that the mature Robert Fayrfax would later provide musical services

for Margaret Beaufort several years after he joined the Chapel Royal (in 1504 and, for providing a new mass setting, in 1507). Fayrfax may also have moved further afield, with evidence of a network of gentry connections in Wiltshire, again with royal associations.

In other words, Fayrfax’s unusual social background shaped both his musical career and later generations’ understandings of it.

Either through Margaret Beaufort or through a possible, previously unnoticed Woodville affinity, Fayrfax came to write one of the finest English partsongs of its age, Sumwhat musyng.

The text is by Anthony Woodville, second Earl Rivers, who had been among the first victims of Richard III’s usurpation: celebrated for his piety, valour and learning, but tainted in Richard’s eyes by Woodville blood, Rivers had composed the fatalistic poem shortly before he was beheaded in Pontefract Castle on 25 June 1483.

Along with the other six partsongs presented here, Sumwhat musyng is found in the socalled ‘Fayrfax Manuscript’, now in the British Library, a collection of vernacular partsongs chiefly by Fayrfax and his Chapel Royal colleagues. The book’s name is a partial red herring: the Fayrfax MS was owned in 1618 by the Yorkshire antiquarian and genealogist Charles Fairfax (1597–1673), a descendant of the senior branch of the family. This manuscript had been finished around 1502, making it by

a narrow margin the first surviving source of Fayrfax’s music. It was probably Charles Fairfax who inked Robert Fayrfax’s arms into the initial Ms of Most clere of colour, after which follow two other Fayrfax songs, I love, loved, and loved wolde I be, and Alas, for lak of her presens. Another group of three songs occurs a little earlier in the manuscript: That was my woo, Benedicite! What dremyd I, and To complayne me, alas.

Some of Fayrfax’s songs are known to have circulated in other music manuscripts: the iconic Sumwhat musyng is found in at least two other sources, one of them a widely dispersed set of fragments copied around 1510, the other the so-called ‘Henry VIII Book’ (also in the British Library) which was copied in the 1510s. Thomas More probably knew Benedicite! What dremyd I, as he turned its text into a Latin epigram sometime in the 1510s, perhaps to exemplify amorous disappointment: ‘Heus tua iam pactam fregit amica fidem’ (‘Look, your mistress has broken the promise she made’).

At first sight, Fayrfax’s songs seem to follow a well-established stylistic groove: in his choices of texts for instance, five of which are in the common seven-line rhyme-royal (ababbcc); in his thematic gravitation towards courtly love; and in his general preference for traditional three-voice scoring. In Most clere of colour, Fayrfax shows the stylistic

Notes on the music legacy of the previous generation in his use of melodic imitation between voices, short triadic figures, and ornate melismata in triplet values.

Also inherited from earlier generations is the musical tail-rhyme, in which the same musical phrase concludes each verse, an analogue to tail-rhyming texts such as Sumwhat musyng (and myriad Latin anthem texts including Ave lumen gratiae). The same tail-rhyming cadences are found in the pared-down That was my woo where Fayrfax binds the two voices with contrapuntal devices found in his mature works: recurrent melodic patterning known as typus (‘allegiance’) and an episode of unflinching stretto fuga where B flat and then, venturing into musica ficta, E flat emphasize the voluptuousness of ‘plesaunce’. Similar word-painting can be found elsewhere (most overtly, perhaps, in Benedicite! What dremyd I at ‘upsodowne’).

Almost exactly coeval with the Fayrfax MS is the Eton Choirbook, the source of Fayrfax’s earliest surviving church music. Completed in 1504, the choirbook once contained six of his compositions from the 1490s and very early 1500s. Three anthems have been lost (Ave cuius conceptio, Quid cantemus innocentes and Stabat mater dolorosa); the Magnificat Regale has been lost from Eton but was widely circulated and can be found in other manuscripts; a fourth anthem is incomplete (Ave lumen gratiae), leaving intact only the fivevoice anthem Salve Regina.

Although its earliest (in fact, only) source was copied in his late thirties, Salve Regina is perhaps the closest we have to an apprentice work. Its text was a popular and well-trodden pathway for composers by the late fifteenth century; a prose liturgical antiphon followed by a series of rhyming metrical quatrains, it afforded abundant opportunities for textural contrast, which was a touchstone of English contrapuntal style in Fayrfax’s lifetime.

His setting is ambitious but not flawless.

Occasional contrapuntal roughness and some striking archaisms rub shoulders with classic Fayrfax traits: patterns of short, repeated melodic figures; condensed and syncopated stretto fuga (‘nos converte’), sequences (‘apud patrem’, ‘clemens’), pedal points (passing from one voice to another at ‘aeterna porta gloriae’), and a strategic tempering of the rhythmic regularity with syncopations and other irregularities.

Fayrfax’s incomplete anthem Ave lumen gratiae requires extensive editorial intervention.

Here, the loss of a leaf from the Eton Choirbook renders two of the four voiceparts incomplete. Typically for an early Tudor anthem, Ave lumen is in two halves: the first (complete) half is in triple time, and the second (incomplete) half is in duple or imperfect time; the first half enumerates the virtues and powers of the Virgin Mary, and the second half concludes with a plea for her intercession.

The text is also structurally typical: a series of

paired, tail-rhymed, three-line stanzas, eight pairs in all. Fayrfax divides the text in half, and then into quarters: the first and third quarters are for reduced scoring (‘counter -verses’ in Tudor parlance), and the second and fourth quarters are tutti. This provides a template for the reconstructed second half. Compact four-voice scoring with overlapping vocal ranges entail frequent part-crossing, each voice taking its turn to drive the counterpoint; the surviving Contratenor Primus and Tenor (voices I and III) suggest a bold, angular, incisive idiom that thwarts cautious reconstruction. This is a relatively early work, but it has classic Fayrfax traits: cellular rhythmic patterning, sequences, pedal-points, sly rhythmic displacement, and, if my reconstruction is correct, stretto fuga.

Although lost from Eton, the Magnificat Regale survives in numerous other sources, including another manuscript copied around 1500 (the fragmentary Bodleian Library MS Latin liturg. a. 9). The origins of its royal title are mysterious: the loosely related Missa Regali is based on the psalm antiphon Regali ex progenie, a Marian chant with royal associations, and was therefore probably written sometime after Fayrfax joined the Chapel Royal around 1497. A related anthem fragment, Gaude flore virginali also acquired the Regali sobriquet and may also have been based on the same cantus firmus as the mass.

The three pieces are modally congruent, while the mass and Magnificat share broadly the

same voice ranges (but not-quite-identical clef combinations) and are known to have been written by 1504.

Like most other early Tudor settings, Magnificat Regale is based on the square for Tone VIII. Squares were a legacy of the late medieval tradition of faburden through which plainsong melodies were harmonised at sight, most frequently as a series of first-inversion chords.

By 1500 the lowest, and melodically more complicated, voice-part was written out in mensural notation: around this ‘square’ the other singers generated stylised versions of the original plainsong tune as well as other, harmonising voice-parts. The Eton Magnificats show this tradition at its most elaborate, using the square as a foundation for composed polyphony with highly paraphrased and extended versions of the square being sung by the Tenor, as here. Like his English contemporaries, Fayrfax composed polyphony only for the even-numbered verses: the alternating odd-numbered verses would either have been sung to chant, played by the organist (who would need to be an adept improviser) or perhaps, as here, rendered as improvised vocal polyphony. The ‘squares’ used here are based on a sixteenth-century manuscript once in the Royal Collection (British Library, Roy. App. 56).

Unlike his other suites, Albanus and O bone Jesu, the inconsistently titled Regale/Regali looks like a post hoc yoking together of mass,

Notes on the music Magnificat and anthem. These three were the prime compositional forms of the age, and aspiring recipients of music degrees were typically required to submit just such a suite.

An inscription in the Lambeth Choirbook tells us that Fayrax composed his cryptic Missa O quam glorifica ‘for his forme in proceadinge to bee doctor’, almost certainly for his Cambridge DMus in 1504. He had gained his Cambridge MusB in 1500 or 1501 after the notional norm of ten years’ study in practical and speculative music: perhaps the Missa Regali and its associated anthem were added to the pre-existing Magnificat Regale to make up the threefold submission for this earlier degree.

Music degrees are politically out of favour in the UK, but they can trace their long pedigree back to Fayrfax’s era as responses to royal patronage.

The earliest Cambridge DMus, awarded two or three years before Fayrfax’s birth, had been bestowed upon the royal chaplain, Thomas St Just, shortly before he was made warden of King’s Hall, Cambridge. Soon after, in the year Fayrfax was born, Cambridge awarded its first recorded MusB to Henry Abyndon, Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal, whose death in 1497 created the vacancy filled by Fayrfax when he entered royal service. Wherever he had been beforehand, Fayrfax’s career demonstrably took off in 1497, with royal grants and commissions to compose for the queen and the king’s mother: his Cambridge music degrees reflect his arrival in royal service.

Maria plena virtute surely dates from Fayrfax’s years in royal service, probably the 1510s. It is in none of the early Tudor choirbooks, but is found in the Peterhouse Partbooks (c.1540), and various Elizabethan sources, most notably the complete set copied for the Norwich merchant, John Sadler. The earliest known source is the index of a lost Triplex partbook, now at Merton College, Oxford. The anthem text is of a type familiar to late medieval worshippers, a meditation on the sorrows of the Virgin, and the Last Words of Christ crucified. Unusually for an anthem text, Maria plena addresses both Jesus and the Virgin Mary: ‘Jesus, Son of God, at the hour of my death receive my soul ... Pray for me, Queen of heaven’. The text is partially rhyming, but avoids the sing-song regularity of most anthem texts. Fayrfax rose fully to the challenge: while the polyphony shows unmistakeable kinship with his earlier work, ornamentation is pared back in favour of clear textual declamation, dramaturgical variations in vocal scoring, a modality that sinks piteously into flats, and a careful retention of the highest note for the most important textual moments.

The Missa Sponsus amat sponsam is an enigma. It is seldom performed, and has never been recorded, mainly because it survives only as dismembered parts, exclusively in manuscripts belonging to East Anglian Catholic Elizabethan gentry. Unlike Fayrfax’s other masses, it was not widely circulated under Henry VIII, indeed it seems as if it went

underground. The Bassus is in a partbook copied for John, Lord Petre, around 1590; a lutebook made for Edward Paston contains intabulations, or lute arrangements, of voices II–IV (Contratenor, Tenor, Bassus); and a few short sections of four -voice tutti are found in other Paston vocal partbooks. So, the first task was to unscramble the lower voices from the lute intabulation, and to stitch these together with the surviving Bassus and the tutti sections. This was accomplished by Professor Roger Bray in his Early English Church Music edition of 2010. The next task was to reconstruct the missing sections of the Medius or top voice (or ‘singing part’, for which the late Elizabethan lute intabulations had been made). This has been done afresh for Ensemble Pro Victoria.

All this done, Missa Sponsus amat sponsam remains puzzling. The music itself is most unusual: atypical in its scoring and vocal ranges; breathlessly melismatic and rhythmically dense; and relatively inattentive to text, its prosody or declamation. It apparently eschews the expressive austerity and suave erudition of mature Fayrfax, and yet this is no apprentice composition: an experiment, perhaps, in filigree-style chamber music.

The cantus firmus is taken from the feast of St Catherine of Alexandria (feast day 25 November): ‘As the groom loves the bride, so the saviour visits her; a sweet fragrance wafts,

the hosts of heaven sing praises’ (Sponsus amat sponsam, salvator visitat illam. Fragrat odor dulcis, cantant caeli agmina laudes). The allusion to bride, groom and Catherine is highly suggestive: was the mass composed for the marriage of Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon in 1502? This has been the preferred theory, but is almost certainly wrong: the wedding of 1502 was a huge Tudor dynastic set piece at St Paul’s Cathedral – quite out of scale with the intimate busy-ness of Missa Sponsus amat sponsam. More plausible is the wedding of the young Henry VIII and Catherine in 1509, shortly after Henry’s accession and, like all the other weddings of this much-wed monarch, held in the relative privacy of a royal palace, away from public view.

In the Henrician context, this mass makes perfect sense as a response to the young king’s uxorious enthusiasm. A small-scale, Catherinethemed nuptial mass would have served the event itself (which took place in the queen’s holiday close at Greenwich Palace in 11 June 1509). Missa Sponsus amat sponsam would also have been highly appropriate for use during the summer months, when the king and queen went on progress, attended by the slimmeddown ‘riding chapel’ comprising six Gentlemen and six Children, hand-picked from the wider membership of the Chapel Royal. Fayrfax, by now the senior Gentleman of the Chapel, was almost certainly one of these touring singers: on 3 July 1511 he was given a riding gown of black

Notes on the music camlet, a fine cloth without fur lining, and suitable for the hot summer roads.

The sorry afterlife of Missa Sponsus amat sponsam also suggests a Henrician date. In the years after Fayrfax’s death in October 1521, the royal marriage famously soured. Symbols of the Aragonese marriage, so enthusiastically welcomed in the 1510s, became toxic when Henry sought to annul it. To later generations of Catholics, however, the papally sanctioned union of 1509 had always been valid: Catherine had been Henry’s true queen. While the mass disappeared from the official record, it circulated covertly among those who knew

Texts and translations and appreciated its meaning. Its subsequent afterlife is therefore integral to the history of Missa Sponsus amat sponsam, indeed to its very survival. The performance here does not therefore attempt to restore a pristine ‘original’ of 1509, but instead presents the Elizabethan lute intabulation, warts and all, alongside the reconstructed Henrician voice-parts.

1

Magnificat anima mea Dominum et exultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo.

Quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae: ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generationes.

Quia fecit mihi magna qui potens est et sanctum nomen eius.

Et misericordia eius a progenie in progenies timentibus eum.

Fecit potentiam in brachio suo, dispersit superbos mente cordis sui.

Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles.

Esurientes implevit bonis et divites dimisit inanes.

Suscepit Israel puerum suum recordatus misericordiae suae, sicut locutus est ad patres nostros Abraham et semini eius in saecula.

Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto, Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

© 2021 Magnus Williamson Magnus Williamson is Professor of Early Music at Newcastle University, Chairman of the British Academy series Early English Church Music, and expert adviser to Ensemble Pro Victoria.

2

Ensemble Pro Victoria would like to thank the Friends of EPV, without whose support this recording would not be a reality. Particular thanks go to our patrons and benefactors: Rogers Covey Crump, David Hodges, Peter Moorhouse, Alison Wells, Richard and Jane Paul, David Ward, John Robinson, Gavin James, Jeremy Rhodes, Martin Woolley, David Marchese, Norman Sykes, Graham Kirk, Jonathan Bielby MBE and Jayne Bielby, Jane Adams, Charles Roy Stonell, George Dennis, Benjamin Thompson and Nancy-Jane Rucker.

Magnificat Regale

Benedicite! What dremyd I Benedicite! What dremyd I this nyʒt: Methought the worlde was turnyd upsodowne, The son the moone hade lost ther force and lyʒt; The see also drowned both towre and towne.

Yett more mervell how that I hard the sownde Of onys voice saying: Bere in thy mynd Thy lady hath forgoten to be kynd.

My soul gives glory to the Lord and my spirit has exulted in God my saviour, because he has had regard for his maidservant’s lowly state: for see, every generation hereafter will call me blessed, because the one who is mighty has done great things for me, and his name is holy, and his mercy will be there for those who fear him, from generation to generation.

He has put his arm to acts of strength; he has broken the spirit of the arrogant in their hearts, he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the wealthy on their way empty.

He has taken Israel for his son, remembering his mercy, as he promised to our ancestors, Abraham and his descendants for all time.

Glory be to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning, and is now, and shall be always and for all ages of ages. Amen.

Texts and translations 3

Alas, for lak of her presens Alas for lak of her presens, Whom I serve and shall as long, Tyll deth my lyff departe from hens!

Absens it is that wolde me wrong; And thus is the tyme of his song; To gett mystrust is his entent To send to her to make me shent.

4

Most clere of colour Most clere of colour and rote of stedfastness, With vertu connyng her maner is lede, Which that passyth my mynde for to express Of her bounte, beaute and womanhode; The bryghtest myrrour and floure of goodlyhed, Which that all men knowith, both more and less;

shent – confounded 5

Missa Sponsus amat sponsum – Credo * Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium. Et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum, filium Dei unigenitum, et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula, Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero.

Genitum non factum, consubstantialem Patri; per quem omnia facta sunt. Qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de caelis. Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto, ex Maria Virgine; et homo factus est. Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato passus et sepultus est.

Et resurrexit tertia die secundum scripturas, et ascendit in caelum, sedet ad dexteram Patris, et iterum venturus est cum gloria iudicare vivos et mortuos, cuius regni non erit finis. Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem, qui ex Patre Filioque procedit, qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur, qui locutus est per prophetas.

Et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam. Confiteor unum baptisma in

I believe in one God, the almighty Father, the maker of heaven and earth, of everything that can and that cannot be seen. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, born out of the Father before all ages: God from God, light from the light, true God from the true God; begotten, not made; of one and the same substance as the Father; by whom everything was created. And for us men, and for our salvation, he came down from heaven.

And he became flesh by the Holy Ghost out of the Virgin Mary, and he became man. And he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried. And on the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven. He sits at the right hand of the Father, and is to come again with glory to judge the living and the dead; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son; who spoke through the prophets.

remissionem peccatorum, et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.

6

I love, loved, and loved wolde I be I love, loved, and loved wolde I be In stedfast fayth and trouth with assuraunce; Then bownden were I such one faythfully To love, thowe I do fere to trace that dawnce, Lest that mysadventure myght fall by chaunce; Yet will I me trust to fortune applye; Hough that evyr it will happ I wote neer I. on – one; me – my; wote – know

And in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

I profess one baptism for the remission of sins, and I await the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Texts and translations 7

Sumwhat musyng Sumwhat musyng And more morenyng, In remembrying The unstedfastness, This wordle beyng Of such welying, Me contraryyng; What may I gess?

I fear, doubtless, Remediless Is now to seize My woeful chance; For unkindness, Withoutenless, And no redress, Me doth advance.

With displeasure, To my grievance, And no surance Of remedy;

Lo, in this trance, Now in substance, Such is my dance, Willing to die.

Methinks truly Bounden am I, And that greatly, To be content; Seeing plainly Fortune doth wry All contrary From mine intent.

My life was lent Me to one intent.

It is nigh spent.

Welcome Fortune!

But I ne went Thus to be shent But she it meant: Such is her wont.

Anthony Woodville, second Earl Rivers (c.1440–1483)

8

Ave lumen gratiae Ave, lumen gratiae, Fons misericordiae Virgo fecundata, Radix pudicitiae, Spes aeterne gloriae, Regina beata.

Hail, light of grace, fount of mercy, child-bearing virgin, root of chastity, hope of everlasting glory, blessed Queen.

9

Ave venerabilis, Mater admirabilis Per quam lux est orta; Flos incomparabilis, Splendor ineffabilis, Felix caeli porta.

Hail, worthy of worship, wondrous mother through whom our light is risen; flower without peer, splendour beyond words, blessed gate of heaven.

Ave novum gaudium, Salutis exordium, Lumen veritatis; Caeli luminarium, Languoris remedium, Forma sanctitatis.

Hail, new joy, beginning of salvation, light of truth; lamp of heaven, cure for sickness, pattern of sanctity.

Ave, lucis speculum, Christi tabernaculum, Virgo benedicta, Que salvasti populum Pariendo parvulum Per quem mors est victa.

Hail, mirror of light, Christ’s sanctuary, blessed virgin, who has saved your people by bearing the little child by whom death has been vanquished.

That was my woo That was my woo is nowe my most gladness; That was my payne is nowe my joyus chaunce; That was my ffere is now my sykyrness; That was my grefe is now my allegaunce.

Thus hath nowe grace enrychyd my plesaunce, Wherfor I am and shal be tyll I dye your trew servaunt with thought, hart and body. woo – woe

Texts and translations 10

Salve Regina Salve Regina mater misericordiae, Vita dulcedo et spes nostra salve.

Ad te clamamus exsules filii Hevae.

Ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle.

Eia ergo advocata nostra illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte.

Et Jesum benedictum fructum ventris tui nobis post hoc exilium ostende.

Virgo mater ecclesiae, Aeterna porta gloriae, Esto nobis refugium Apud Patrem et Filium.

O clemens!

Virgo clemens, virgo pia, Virgo dulcis, O Maria!

Exaudi preces omnium Ad te pie clamantium.

O pia!

Funde preces tuo nato Crucifixo, vulnerato Et pro nobis flagellato, Spinis puncto, felle potato.

O dulcis Maria salve.

11

12

Hail, Queen, mother of mercy, our life, sweetness and hope, hail.

To you we cry, exiled children of Eve. To you we sigh, groaning and weeping, in this valley of tears.

Come then, our advocate, turn your merciful eyes towards us.

And after this exile show us Jesus, the blest fruit of your womb.

Virgin mother of the church, gate of everlasting glory, be protection for us with the Father and the Son. Merciful one!

Merciful virgin, loving virgin, sweet virgin, Mary!

Hear the prayers of all who piously cry to you.

Loving one!

Pour out prayers to your son who was crucified, wounded, and beaten for us, pierced with thorns and made to drink vinegar.

Sweet Virgin Mary, hail!

To complayne me, alas To complayne me, alas, why shulde I so?

For my complaynts it did me nevir good; But be constraynt, now must I shew my woo To her only which is myn yës fode, Trustyng sum thyme that she will chaunge her mode And lett me not allway be guerdonless, Suth for my trouth she needith no wittness. yës – eyes; guerdonless – without reward; syth – since; mode – mood

Maria plena virtute Maria plena virtute pietatis gratiae, mater misericordiae, tu nos ab hoste protege.

Clementissimae Maria vitae per merita compassionis tuae pro nobis preces effunde, et de peccatis meis erue.

Mary, full of the power of the grace of holiness, mother of mercy, may you defend us from the enemy.

Mary, by the merits of your most kindly life of compassion pour out prayers for our sake and save me from my sins.

Sicut tuus filius petiit pro crucifigentibus, Pater dimitte ignorantibus, magna pietate pendens in latronibus, dixit uni ex hominibus In Paradiso cum patribus mecum eris hodie.

Just as your son prayed for his crucifiers, Father forgive them for they know not what they do, and when hanging among robbers, with huge love he said to one of the men: Today you will be with me with your fathers in paradise.

Mater dolorosa plena lacrimosa videns ruinosa filium in cruce, cum voce raucosa dixit speciosa Mulier clamorosa filium tuum ecce.

The beautiful, sorrowful mother, full of tears at the sight of your son on the fatal cross, spoke in a loud cry.

Woman, crying aloud, see: your son.

Vertens ad discipulum sic fuit mandatum matrem fuisse per spatium et ipsam consolare; et sicut decebat filium servum paratissimum custodivit preceptum omnino servire.

Turning to the disciple, this was his command, that she be his mother for the time left her, and he console her; and as befitted a son and most willing servant, he kept his command, to obey it in all respects.

Texts and translations Dixit Jesus dilectionis Sitio salutem gentium.

Audi orationibus nostris tuae misericordiae, O Jesu rex amabilis: quid sustulisti pro nobis?

Per merita tuae passionis peto veniam a te.

Jesus, King of Love, spoke: I thirst for the salvation of the peoples.

Hear our prayers addressed to your mercy, Jesus, beloved king: what have you suffered for our sake?

By the merits of your passion I beseech forgiveness from you.

Jesu, dicens clamasti, Deus meus, num quid dereliquisti?

Per acetum quod gustasti ne derelinquas me.

Consummatum dixisti.

Jesus, you cried out saying: My God, why have you forsaken me?

By the vinegar you tasted do not abandon me.

It is finished, you said.

O Jesu fili Dei, in hora exitus mei, animam meam suscipe.

Tunc spiritum emisit, et matrem gladius pertransivit: aqua et sanguis exivit ex delicato corpore: post ab Arimathia rogavit et Jesum sepelivit, et Nicodemus venit ferens mixturam myrrhae.

Jesus, Son of God, at the hour of my death receive my soul.

Then he gave up the ghost, and a sword pierced his mother: water and blood came out of that fragile body: afterward the one from Arimathea asked for him and buried Jesus, and Nicodemus came bearing a tincture of myrrh.

O dolorosa mater Christi, quales paenas eo vidisti, cordetenus habuisti fidem totius ecclesiae.

Ora pro me, regina caeli, filium tuum dicens Fili, in hora mortis peccatis suis indulge.

Amen.

Sorrowful mother of Christ, what suffering you saw there; you have held in your heart the faith of the whole church.

Pray for me, Queen of heaven, saying to your son, My son, in the hour of death grant forgiveness of his sins. Amen.

Translations © 2021 Henry Howard

Biographies Formed in 2015 at Cambridge University

by Humphrey Thompson and Toby Ward, Ensemble Pro Victoria is a young awardwinning vocal ensemble of early music specialists based in London. Named after a favourite Spanish Renaissance mass by Victoria, Missa Pro Victoria, the group put down roots in the rich tradition of combined historical research and performance. With a growing reputation around the UK, the ensemble was awarded joint-First Prize at the London International Festival of Early Music competition 2020, and made their Radio 3, Cambridge Early Music Festival and Opera North (Howard Assembly Rooms) debuts in the 2020–21 season.

Ensemble Pro Victoria collaborates extensively with musicologist Magnus Williamson and other academics/editors to fulfil its vision of presenting stimulating programmes grounded in current research, combined with a solovoice approach to consort singing. Particular effort has been put in to recreating choirbook performance and researching the effects of this lost performance practice. The ensemble also runs workshops and joint concerts with young choirs to construct a legacy for its projects and further the choral tradition.

Toby Ward was born in Otley, Wharfedale, in 1993. He was one of the last choristers of Leeds Parish Church, studying organ with David Houlder and Simon Lindley before joining the choir of Gloucester Cathedral under Adrian Partington. He read music at King’s College Cambridge under Sir Stephen Cleobury as a tenor choral scholar in King’s College Choir, followed by postgraduate studies in singing at the Royal College of Music studying with Alison Wells.

A versatile conductor, singer and organist, he is the Tenor Associate Artist of Tenebrae Choir, organist of the National Musician’s Church, an Associate of the Royal College of Organists (ARCO) and is mentored by conductor Paul Brough as part of his involvement in the great liturgical music tradition of St Mary’s, Bourne St. Future projects with Ensemble Pro Victoria expand on his research interests: the combined liturgical and musical traditions of Catholic worship and the use of instruments in Renaissance polyphony.

An Emerald in a Work of Gold: Music from the Dow Partbooks The Marian Consort, Rose Consort of Viols

William Mundy (c.1529–1591): Sacred Choral Music Choir of St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh / Duncan Ferguson

DCD34115

DCD34204

For their second Delphian recording, The Marian Consort have leafed through the beautifully calligraphed pages of the partbooks compiled in Oxford between 1581 and 1588 by the Elizabethan scholar Robert Dow. Sumptuous motets, melancholy consort songs and intricate, harmonically daring viol fantasies are seamlessly interwoven – all brought to life by seven voices and the robust plangency of the Rose Consort of Viols in the chapel of All Souls College, Oxford, where Dow himself was once a Fellow.

William Mundy’s music was at the heart of the Marian Catholic revival and then, just a few years later, made a vital contribution to the development of the Elizabethan motet. The present programme centres on Mundy’s two most extended festal compositions, possibly sung to Queen Mary on the eve of her coronation in 1553 – the celebrated Vox patris caelestis and, newly reconstructed, the little-known Maria virgo sanctissima. Two further premiere recordings feature alongside the remarkable collaboration of Mundy, Sheppard and a young William Byrd on music for the Easter procession to the font, In exitu Israel. Combining powerful music on a ceremonial scale with shorter liturgical works, this recording conveys the choir’s sheer joy as ambassadors of sixteenth-century polyphony.

‘cleanly and calmly delivered … the concluding Ave Maria by Robert Parsons is superb, the final “Amen” attaining to genuine emotion but without the saccharine reverence that this much-recorded piece can attract’ — Gramophone, February 2013

Music for Milan Cathedral Werrecore – Josquin – Gaffurius – Weerbeke Siglo de Oro / Patrick Allies DCD34224

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Milan Cathedral acted as a magnet to many of the finest composers of the time. Yet the Cathedral’s maestro di cappella for almost thirty years, Hermann Matthias Werrecore, is almost completely unknown to us today. In this first recording of any of his sacred music, six motets are presented alongside works that Werrecore knew, drawn mostly from the holdings of the Milan library during his tenure there. Siglo de Oro’s act of rediscovery – hot on the heels of their premiere recording of a mass by Hieronymus Praetorius – reveals the exceptional quality of the music, and Patrick Allies directs them in performances of extraordinary flair.

‘To portray effectively such ranges of polyphonic textures is really exciting: this is a hugely impressive disc in both programming and performance’ — Gramophone, February 2020

‘Ferguson secures a rich, purposeful tone … All-Mundy recitals are a considerable rarity, and this one can be confidently recommended’ — BBC Music Magazine, October 2018 Singing in Secret: clandestine Catholic music by William Byrd The Marian Consort / Rory McCleery DCD34230

In the turbulent religious climate of Elizabethan England William Byrd wrote – and, more audaciously, published – a huge amount of music for the Catholic rite, for services which he and his fellow Catholics had to celebrate clandestinely, in the private houses and chapels of sympathetic noblemen. The cloistered intimacy of those occasions is re-enacted in The Marian Consort’s performances here, and their programme also explores the more coded ways in which Byrd was able to express his faith and his commitment to the recusant cause.

‘Perhaps the ideal consort for this repertoire, the Marians bring an intimate, individually passionate flavour to Byrd’s Latin works’ — Choir & Organ, May 2020

DCD34265