The Court and the Countryside
Then came faire May, the fairest mayd on ground
Deckt all with dainties of her seasons pryde
And throwing flowers out of her lap around
—Edmund Spenser, The Fairy Queen, The Mutability Cantos, VII.34
Our concert will offer you a sampling of 16th-century music which extols springtime; you will also hear a selection of readings that will, we hope, give you a sense of the richness and complexity which lies beneath the surface of song lyrics, which are too often taken for granted. Beginning in the second half of the 16th century, English readers enjoyed access to a wealth of printed books on virtually every subject imaginable, from alchemy to astronomy, from epic poetry to gardening. The Tudor gardening craze was supported by no less than nineteen horticultural books published between 1558 and 1608. These included Thomas Hyll’s Profitable Arte of Gardening, 1558; Gervais Markham’s The English Husbandman, 1577; and Leonard Mascall’s Booke of the Art and Maner How to Plant and Graffe, 1574.
In this same era, between 1570 and 1610, there occurred a spectacular flowering of English music; it was a time of abundant diversity and richness, the like of which hasn’t been seen since. The great collections of Anglican Church music, English madrigals, and lute songs were published during this era. Additional oceans of music for lute, voices, and viols were copied by hand, then circulated amongst the musical communities that clustered around the universities and cathedrals, and in the stately homes of zealous amateurs.
William Byrd was the acknowledged musical genius of the Elizabethan period. Byrd may have begun his career as a choirboy with the Chapel Royal, where he was guided by Thomas Tallis. His first adult job was as the organist at Lincoln Cathedral; and while his many gifts were valued there, his Catholicism and the richness of his polyphony did not sit well with the Puritanical leanings of that institution. Byrd was ambitious, and politically savvy, and so was able to navigate the rough seas that roiled between himself and a coveted position in the Chapel Royal. He cultivated important friends and achieved his goal in 1572, immediately after the suspicious death by drowning of Robert Parsons, a very fine composer. Queen Elizabeth I was a music lover, and she chose to turn a blind eye to the Papist leanings of the musician whom she greatly admired. She even granted Byrd and the aged Tallis a monopoly over the publication of all music, and manuscript paper as well. However, as time passed, Byrd became a more radical Catholic; his wife sheltered Jesuits, as did his patron Edward Paston. Byrd was even suspected of having some acquaintance with the Throckmorton and Gunpowder Plot conspirators. By some miracle, Byrd was never tried for sedition. He retired to the country, where he died in 1623 of heart failure, at the age of 83.
Because we are celebrating the month of May, and the riot of flowers and greenery that so delighted the British, we’ve chosen some of Byrd’s more lighthearted consort songs. Though Amaryllis dance in green has been a perennial favorite throughout the 60-year period of the modern early music revival. In Christall Towres is a gorgeous, mysterious piece: The text is by Geoffrey Whitney, and comes from his Choice of Emblemes, published in 1586. One line requires a bit of clarification: “Content of mind not always likes to woon,” seems to mean that a contented mind doesn’t always like to dwell in a crystal tower.
My Mistresse had a little dog appeared only in manuscript copies that were produced by Edward Paston. Paston’s country estate, Appleton Hall, was a refuge for recusant Catholics, and was the setting for this wonderful, very edgy political song. To this day, the target of the satire is problematic. The two top candidates for the true identity of the spaniel “Pretty Royal” are Philip Sidney and Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex. The phrase “but his conditions were as rich” refers to Lady Penelope Rich, sister of Essex, who was a great court beauty. It’s quite possible that she visited Appleton Hall and was the owner of Pretty Royal.
Tudor politicians built an elaborate myth around their aging, childless Queen. Her sigil was the moon; she was celebrated as a chaste goddess, frequently compared to the huntress Diana, or to Cynthia, the Greek lunar goddess. At the same time, Elizabeth, aka the “Queen of Fairy,” laid claim to an ancient Celtic lineage. In her later years, the woman almost disappeared behind the facade of wigs, makeup, and elaborate costume. While we will never gain access to the secret heart of this enigmatic Queen, we do know a few things about her. She was brilliant, politically astute, possessed of an earthy sense of humor and a good ear for music, was on occasion lethally jealous, and was physically very active. She adored dancing, was a good horsewoman and a pitiless hunter, and, alas, a fan of bear-baiting.
European royalty had been in the habit of making summer progresses since the Middle Ages. The Tudors followed suit. The ruler, accompanied by a supporting coterie of hundreds of retainers and a multitude of horses, would set out into the countryside to descend upon nobility at their ancestral castles or estates. These carefully choreographed stays were designed to reflect not only on the glory of the royal presence, but also on the power and magnificence of her hosts. Happily, we have detailed accounts of the festivities in her honor at Elvetham, the estate of Edward Seymour, and at Robert Dudley’s magnificently restored castle and remarkable gardens at Kenilworth.
In 1575, Dudley, the first Earl of Leicester, had been the Queen’s favorite for over a decade. At the time of her stay at Kenilworth, Dudley had given up all hope of becoming her consort and had entered into a liaison with Lettice Knolles, the widow of Walter Devereux, and mother of Robert Devereux and Penelope Rich. Knowledge of their love affair and secret marriage would throw Elizabeth into a jealous passion. While Dudley was certainly a “noble man who needeth naught” in the way of sustenance, he most certainly did need a harmonious relationship with Elizabeth. The Queen’s nineteen day’s stay at Kenilworth was a ruinously expensive attempt to calm these turbulent waters. Dudley’s wonderful garden was constructed on Italian Renaissance models like those at the Villa D’Este or Boboli. Robert Laneham, a wealthy mercer, wrote a lengthy letter to a friend, describing in detail the layout and magical qualities of the Kenilworth gardens, as well as the entertainments devised for Her Majesty; we will read to you part of his description of the castle and grounds, and we hope that you’ll enjoy his idiosyncratic prose.
In marked contrast to Laneham’s writing style, you will hear lines from the poet Edmund Spenser, a most devout Elizabethan; he wrote an exquisite paean to his queen, which he put in the voice of his alter ego, Colin Clout, the simple shepherd who is the hero of The Shepherd’s Calendar. Do note “Colin’s” gorgeous use of floral imagery. The extravagance of the conceit is typical of the figures of speech used by the singers and actors who entertained the queen on her visits to her aristocratic hosts.
To give you a sense of the lavishness of a royal arrival we’ll turn to Elizabeth’s entry into Elvetham in 1591. It was celebrated with a consort song, Eliza is the fairest queen, which was sung and played by a “Fairy Queen”, who greeted her, and then, with her maids, sang and danced a song with the music of “an exquisite consort…” This spectacle and music so delighted Her Majesty that she commanded it to be sung and danced three times over, and called for the lords and ladies “to behold it.” On her departure, as Her Majesty passed through the park gate, “there was a consort of Musicians hidden in a bower, to whose playing this ditty of Come again was sung, with excellent division, by two that were cunning…” The consort song ends with the couplet “Blessed be each day and hour/Where sweet Eliza builds her bower.”
Music, dance, and spectacle were central to all the royal progresses. Philip Sidney, who was nephew to Robert Dudley, created a musical scene in his Arcadia that mirrors Laneham’s description of a particularly noteworthy performance at Kenilworth. We’ll give you a bit of Sidney’s words, and present Laneham’s account in his own particular prose. Laneham’s letter was in print by 1580, and was widely read by the likes of William Shakespeare, who alluded to this remarkable scene in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
Oberon (to Puck): Thou rememb’rest
Since once I sat upon a promontory
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid’s music.
—A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2.1.153-159
The Queen’s many pastimes at Kenilworth included hunting, bear-baiting, dancing, enjoying music, and spectacular fireworks displays. Those are the “stars shot madly from their spheres.” One of the most spectacular episodes in Spenser’s The Fairy Queen (1590) is the violent destruction of the Bower of Bliss by Sir Guyon, the elfin Knight of Temperence, which is the climax of Book ll. What did Elizabethans mean by a “bower”? In the late medieval period, a bower could mean the secluded private apartment of a noble lady. Today we tend to think of bowers as outdoor places of rest. Kenilworth’s bowers were shaded by trellises, from which trailed vines, dripping with grapes and roses; birdsong, and the sights and smells of ripe fruit and flowers could fill such a shelter with erotic potential.
Scholars have made note of the debt Spenser owed to Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata (1573), and in particular to the scenes concerning the island of Armida the enchantress. However, it’s recently been observed that the sorceress Acrasia’s garden and bower bear an uncanny resemblance to Kenilworth. Spenser’s depiction of Acrasia’s bower is gorgeously, almost overwhelmingly sensual. Guyon, however, is almost immune to its attractions. As a young courtier, Spenser worked for Leicester and greatly admired him. He certainly would have visited Kenilworth.
Once the visitors to Kenilworth left the formal gardens and began to wander into the carefully manicured deer park, they could imagine that they were entering an Arcadian woods, populated by nymphs and swains who played pipes and composed odes to their beloved queen. These “simple folk” sang ballads and popular songs. All in a garden green had lyrics, but was also a country dance that’s still popular today. The wonderfully creepy tune we know as Woodycock was also known as The Whirlygig, or The Green Man. The woods so wild was another ballad frequently arranged for keyboard and lute.
The dance music relished by Elizabeth and her courtiers was probably more straightforward than the intricate, witty tunes composed by Anthony Holborne. Holborne travelled in the upper spheres of Elizabethan society, taking on diplomatic missions for Robert Cecil and working as a gentleman usher to the Queen. Among his mentors was the revered Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, Philip Sidney’s sister. Holborne’s collection of Pavans, Galliards, Almains and other short aeirs…for viols, violins or other Musicall wind instruments, published in 1599, was both the earliest and largest anthology of these dance forms to be printed. Their evocative titles—“Paradiso,” “The Honie Suckle,” “Hermosa,” “The tears of the muses”—have inspired much speculation. Two titles (“As it fell upon a holie eve” and “Heigh ho holiday”) are quotes from Spenser’s The Shepherd’s Calendar (‘August’), while others are perhaps autobiographical.
Elizabethan composers frequently expressed a yearning for the simple life of rural introspection, eager to abandon the care-worn world of court intrigue. Byrd’s Christall and John Dowland’s O sweet woods argue for the virtues of solitude and contemplation. Dowland’s lovely song seems to refer to a period in the life of Philip Sidney, when he fell from grace for his opposition to Elizabeth’s proposed marriage to the Duke of Alençon. He was forced to retire to the country, disgraced and short of funds. The song’s refrain came from the 1593 version of his Arcadia. Dowland’s verses were newly composed, but the final stanza cites Wanstead, Sidney’s country estate. Like his friend Spenser, Sidney had cherished hopes for a successful career at court. Both men saw their ambitions destroyed because of honest opinions which displeased their powerful patrons.
In their great Renaissance epics, Spenser and Sidney created a myth of the pastoral, an idealized English countryside which of course never existed. Sidney has given us the perfect description of the perfect Arcadian landscape, as you will hear. No Elizabethan seriously believed that a shepherd would compose an eclogue in honor of his Queen. Nor would they buy into the dramas that were presented to Elizabeth on her visits to aristocratic country estates. Actors, singers, and dancers, and the aristocrats themselves played at being nymphs and shepherds, elves and fairies. Actual English country dwellers suffered from extreme poverty, even homelessness. Enclosures limited their grazing opportunities, and the seizure of hundreds of acres of valuable woodland by the nobility for sport-hunting further impoverished farmers and shepherds. Natural disasters like crop failures added to their misery. Titania’s speech in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act II, Sc.I) aptly summons up a vision of a countryside gone wrong.
None of the great Elizabethan gardens have survived in their original state. The English woods are shrinking, ever more endangered by development. Elizabethan music and poetry, however, have not lost their power to charm and amaze us.
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