Tag Archives: John Playford

This year at King’s we have been marking the 400th anniversary of the death of the composer Orlando Gibbons. Gibbons was born in Oxford in 1583 to a musical family who moved to Cambridge when he was an infant. He was admitted to King’s College in 1598 at the age of fourteen, though had apparently been a chorister at King’s for some years before that, and received a Bachelor of Music degree from the university in 1606. His later life took him to London, where his reputation as a composer and organist was established, and finally to Canterbury, where he died in June 1625 after a sudden illness. He is buried in Canterbury Cathedral.

An inspection of Gibbons items held by King’s College Library has revealed some treasures that may not have seen the light of day for many a year.

My own introduction to Gibbons came when I was about fourteen, singing his sublime five-voice madrigal ‘The silver swan’ with my school chamber choir. We can trace this work through the centuries using various editions held in the Rowe Music Library.

Few of Gibbons’ compositions were published during his lifetime, one notable exception being The First Set of Madrigals and Mottets, printed in 1612 by Thomas Snodham. This is a collection of 20 secular songs, the first of which is ‘The silver swanne’. At King’s we have a copy of the cantus partbook only (containing the part for the highest voice), purchased in 1996 with a gift from the widow of Sir Henry Lintott (KC 1928).

‘The silver swan’ next appears in the Rowe’s collection as part of a 1673 edition of The Musical Companion, a collection by John Playford anthologising ‘dialogues, glees, ayres and songs’.

The madrigal here is arranged for three voices, sacrificing much of the richness of the inner parts. The three parts are presented as a double-page spread, the middle part printed upside down, presumably so that three singers could share a single book, the Cantus Primus and Bassus singers reading from one side, the Cantus Secundus from the other.

The rise of glee and catch clubs in late eighteenth-century Britain led to many publications like The Apollo, or Harmonist in Miniature, an 8-volume anthology probably dating from the early 1820s. The frontispiece features William Hawes, Master of Children at the Chapel Royal from 1817 and evidently the pin-up of catch club members at that time.

This arrangement of ‘The silver swan’, essentially the same as Playford’s, is presented in a small format (18 cm high), which suggests that each member of the catch club would have had his own copy.

The Rowe Library’s MS 111 is a manuscript dating from 1834-5 in the hand of Thomas Oliphant (1799-1873), best remembered today for writing the lyrics of ‘Deck the hall with boughs of holly’. Oliphant had recently been elected Honorary Secretary of The Madrigal Society (still going today, and now admitting women), and the book may have been intended as his neat conductor’s copy of the 83 motets, madrigals and glees it contains, of which no. 32 is ‘The silver swan’.

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Naturally it is Gibbons’ sacred music that is heard most in King’s College Chapel, in the form of hymns and anthems. Gibbons’ reputation as a composer of hymn tunes rests on his contributions to George Wither’s 1623 publication The Hymnes and Songs of the Church, for which he wrote 17 original tunes still known today by the ‘Song’ numbers accorded them in this volume. A patent of King James I ordained that the book should be bound with all copies of the metrical Psalms sold, which may account for the early adoption of Gibbons’ tunes by church choirs.

‘Song 1’, which in this book accompanies Wither’s text ‘Now shall the praises of the Lord be sung’, is today more commonly sung to ‘O Thou who at the Eucharist did pray’ or ‘Eternal ruler of the ceaseless round’.

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The Rowe Library’s MS 106 is an eighteenth-century manuscript containing anthems and services copied in several hands. A note on the flyleaf observes:

This Collection hath been carefully revis’d and corrected by an eminent Master of Musick, having had it under his care two years for that purpose. What he says of it is, ‘From the Beginning to the end of the Burial Service, page 40, is exceeding indifferent Musick, and not worth the trouble of copying. However, I have corrected several particulars, which were Copyists faults, but many more have been oblig’d to leave as incorrigible.’ J.W. 1758

A pencil addition notes:

The above snarling remark is by Dr John Worgan. J. Bartleman, 1817

The one Gibbons work present in this volume is his six-voice anthem ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, at the head of which is written a quotation from Sir John Hawkins’ A General History of the Science and Practice of Music of 1776 describing it as ‘one of the most perfect Models for Composition in the Church-Style of any now existing’.

‘Hosanna to the Son of David’ is one of several Gibbons anthems anthologised in the second volume of Cathedral Music, edited by William Boyce (1711-1779), Master of the King’s Musick, and published in 1768 after a long gestation.

Doubtless partly due to the royal imprimatur, this volume was a swanky undertaking all round, bearing a title page boasting of ‘the most valuable and useful compositions … of the last two hundred years’, a dedication to King George III involving every typeface under the sun, and even an anthem ostensibly composed by George’s predecessor Henry VIII (‘O Lord, the maker of all things’, now usually attributed to William Mundy).

The volume’s subscribers included not only the Provost and Fellows of King’s College, Cambridge (of course), but also such luminaries as:

The Rev. Mr. Heneage Dering, Chaplain to the Earl of Winchelsea.
The late Rev. Mr. Phocion Henley.
Bybie Lake, Esq.
Gervas Scrope, Esq. of Cockerington, in the County of Lincoln.
Messrs. Sharp, of Mincing-Lane, London. Two Sets.
The King.

Blank spaces at the end of anthems are filled with illustrations: usually flourishes and curlicues, but occasionally faces or, at the end of William Byrd’s ‘Bow thine ear, O Lord’, a complementary bird. Note also the snazzy manicules (pointy fingers) in the score to help the organist find his line. No such help for the choir, though the size of the book (42 cm high) suggests it may have been a publication meant primarily for the use of a choirmaster, from which choir parts could be copied in manuscript.

‘Hosanna to the Son of David’ also appears, albeit in short score, in the work known unpromisingly as ‘Crotch’s Specimens’, or more fully as Specimens of Various Styles of Music Referred to in a Course of Lectures Read at Oxford & London and Adapted to Keyed Instruments by Wm. Crotch, Mus.D., Professor of Music in the University of Oxford. The Specimens was a major work of scholarship, ‘encyclopaedic in scope and surprisingly forward-looking in its aim to combine academic example with practical purpose’, in the words of Grove. In a preface to this revised edition, Crotch writes:

The study of Orlando Gibbon’s [sic] works cannot be too strongly recommended. For choice of subjects, for skill in the management of them, and for the flow of melody in all the parts, this great master was inferior to none of his cotemporaries.

It’s no surprise that Gibbons’ music has been an attractive proposition to Kingsmen looking to produce performing editions over the years. Twentieth-century editions of choral works by Gibbons held by the Rowe Library include those prepared by David Willcocks (KC 1939), John Whitworth (KC 1946), Philip Brett (KC 1955) and John Morehen (KC 1964).

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Finally, a pair of mid-seventeenth-century music manuscripts given to the college by John Maynard Keynes. MSS 112 and 113 are two partbooks for viols of fantasias and dances primarily by John Coprario, but also containing works by John Jenkins, William White and others.

The works included by Gibbons are six fantasias for two treble viols, which are not preserved in manuscript elsewhere. These manuscripts were the property of John Browne (1608-91), Clerk of the Parliaments, and the Gibbons fantasias here are in Browne’s own hand.

These fantasias have been published in many editions: they appear in the Musica Britannica volume of Gibbons’ Consort Music, and if you fancy playing them yourself you can browse several public-domain versions here.

GB