MUSIC IN ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND:

1
CHAPTER 27

• MUSIC IN ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND
• INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC
• AND LATER VOCAL MUSIC

2
A painting believed to show Queen Elizabeth
dancing the volta with the Duke of Leicester

• In 1599 the Spanish ambassador reported that the
  66-year-old queen still danced three or four
  galliards a day. Elizabeth also sang, and played
  the lute and harpsichord.

3
ENGLISH KEYBOARD MUSIC

• Queen Elizabeth I played an instrumental called a
  virginala diminutive harpsichord possessing a
  single keyboard with the strings placed at right
  angles to the keys. The instrument was small
  enough to reset easily on a table. Because of
  its modest size, sound, and cost, it was the
  ideal beginning instrument for young girlshence
  the term virginal. Women, far more often than
  men, played the virginal.

4

• The title page of Parthenia (1612), a collection
  of keyboard music by Byrd, Gibbons, and Bull,
  showing a young performer seated at a virginal.
  Notice the prominent use of 2-3 fingeringthe
  second finger crosses over the third (or vice
  versa) rather than the thumb passing under.

5
THE FITZWILLIAM VIRGINAL BOOK

• The largest collection of English keyboard
  musicindeed of any Renaissance keyboard music
  from any countryis the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book
  (c1615), so-called because it is today housed in
  the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England.
  Among the 297 compositions in it are dances,
  descriptive pieces, intabulations of Italian
  madrigals and French chansons, and, most
  importantly, sets of variations on popular tunes
  and even ON religious melodies.

6
VARIATION TECHNIQUE

• Variation technique is a procedure in which
  successive statements of a theme are changed or
  presented in altered surroundings. This practice
  can also be witnessed in the variations composed
  throughout the history of musicin those of Bach,
  Beethoven, and Brahms, for example. Oddly, in
  the variation technique of the Renaissance, the
  melody is rarely given at the beginningthe
  composer simply assumed that the listener had the
  tune in his ear.

7
The popular Elizabethan ballad tune Goe from my
window
8
THOMAS MORLEYS SETTING OF GOE FROM MY WINDOW

• Thomas Morley (1557-1602) provided seven
  variations for the tune Goe from my window as it
  appears in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Some
  of these require great technical skill on the
  part of the performer if the tune is played up to
  tempo.

9
The beginning of Variation 5 of Thomas Morleys
setting of Goe from my window for virginal
10
THE ENGLISH MADRIGAL

• A sure sign of the arrival of the Renaissance in
  England was the vogue enjoyed by the Italian
  madrigal at the end of the sixteenth century.
  The first madrigals to be published in England
  appeared in 1588 in a collection called Musica
  transalpina (Music across the Alps). Here
  thirty-three madrigals by Italian composers were
  given with English, not Italian texts. Two years
  later a second publication of this sort appeared
  under the title Italian Madrigals Englished.
  Soon English composers began to issue collections
  of their own madrigals.

11
THE ENGLISH MADRIGAL SCHOOL

• Between 1588 and 1627 more than forty books of
  madrigals were published in London, each volume
  usually containing some twenty pieces or more.
  The composers who fashioned this great outpouring
  of English secular musicamong them Byrd, Morley,
  Weelkes, Wilbye, and Gibbonshave been dubbed the
  English Madrigal School.

12
THE TRIUMPHES OF ORIANA

• In 1601 Thomas Morley engaged twenty-three
  colleagues to join him in creating a collection
  of madrigals to honor Queen Elizabeth. It was
  called The Triumphes of OrianaOriana and
  Gloriana being two names the Elizabethans had
  adopted for their queen. Morley required that
  each madrigal end with the acclamation Thus sang
  the nymphs and shepherds of Diana/Long live fair
  Oriana.

13
THOMAS WEELKES

• Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623), a singer in the
  queens royal chapel, contributed the six-voice
  madrigal As Vesta Was from Latmos Hill Descending
  to Morleys The Triumphes of Oriana. Weelkess
  descriptive text provides many opportunities for
  madrigalisms (word painting). When Dianas
  attendants come running down, they do so to
  music that moves faster (in shorter note values)
  and descends. When the text says all alone, it
  is sung by a soloist. And so the word painting
  goes in this typically light, witty English
  madrigal.

14
THE ENGLISH LUTE AYRE

• The future of music (as practiced in the
  succeeding Baroque era) was to be found in the
  expressive solo song. At the end of the
  Elizabethan Renaissance, the solo art song
  existed in two forms. In one, called the consort
  song, the voice is accompanied by a consort of
  viols. In the other, called the lute ayre, the
  soloist is accompanied by a lute. Both consort
  song and lute ayre are strophicthe same music
  serves each of two, three, or four stanzas.

15
JOHN DOWLAND

• The finest composer of English lute songs was
  John Dowland (pronounced Doe-land 1563-1626).
  Between 1597 and 1612, Dowland published four
  collections of lute ayres. His Second Booke of
  Songs or Ayres (1600) contains Flow my tears,
  which became a sensation as well as Dowlands
  signature tune, for he began to sign himself
  John Dowland de Lacrimae (Lacrimae being the
  Latin for tears).

16
A portion of the John Dowlands Flow my tears

• Exhibiting a moment of expressive, indeed surging
  passion for solo voice and lute.