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Contents:
DDD 78.21 Recorded: The North Transept of The Priory Church of Our Lady and St. Cuthbert, Worksop, Nottinghamshire on 12-14 March 2001 by kind permission of the Vicar, the Reverend Fr. Andrew Wagstaff SSC. John Bull represents the nightingale on this recording: elegant, technically brilliant, learned, polished and haunting. The sparrow singing in the shadow of this great master is Giles Farnaby. His voice is cheerful, charming, instinctively clever, original and witty. The Tudor and early Stuart periods were a golden age of English music. A vigorous school of vocal composition culminated first in Thomas Tallis, then in his pupil William Byrd. Simultaneously, early keyboard intabulations of vocal music gradually gave way to music written specifically and idiomatically for keyboard instruments. Early masters were Thomas Preston and Bull’s teacher, William Blitheman. In the next generation, Byrd was central to the growth of a distinctively English keyboard style, followed by Bull and Tomkins. Their style of composition was complex and richly intricate. By the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, it was already old fashioned and in decline. Lamenting frivolous modern musical fashions, Thomas Mace in 1676 recalled that in his "Younger time, we had musick most Excellently Choice, and most Eminently Rare … We had for our Grave Musick, Fancies of 3, 4, 5 and 6 Parts … Interpos’d (now and then) with some Pavins, Allmaines, Solemn, and Sweet Delightful Ayres; all of which were (as it were) so many Pathettical Stories, Rhetorical, and Sublime Discourses; Subtil, and Accute Argumentations; so Suitable, and Agreeing to the Inward, Secret, and Intellectual Faculties of the Soul and Mind … That They have been to my self, (and many others) as Divine Raptures, Powerfully Captivating all our unruly Faculties, and Affections … making us capable of Heavenly, and Divine Influences." Born in Hereford about 1563, Bull was admitted to Hereford Cathedral as a choirboy in 1573. In the following year he was selected for Queen Elizabeth’s Chapel Royal. Here he received a thorough musical training. Appointed organist and choirmaster of Hereford cathedral in 1582, Bull continued in the post for some years despite frequent absences. He became a highly respected Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1586 and in 1592 received the degree of D.Mus. at Oxford on the same day that Giles Farnaby was admitted as a Bachelor of Music. The first holder of Sir Thomas Gresham’s newly founded Readership in Music, Bull at his inaugural lecture suggested that William Byrd (who seems to have been present) was his master. This distinguished career continued after Queen Elizabeth’s death in 1603. He was described as ‘Doctor of Musicke to the Kinge’ and employed in Henry, Prince of Wales’ household. It is then something of a mystery that in 1613, as a result of some serious misconduct, he fled without leave to Brussels to enter the service of the Archduke Albert. Pressure from James I caused the loss of this post and a fall into poverty, but in 1617 he was appointed organist of Antwerp Cathedral where he remained until his death in 1628. Giles Farnaby’s career differed greatly from Bull’s. He was not a professionally trained musician and had no court appointment. Born about 1566, his father was a joiner. Giles himself was admitted an apprentice of the Joiners’ Company about 1583. He must have developed his musical skills privately while following his trade, but we may speculate that the two were combined: it is possible he was a virginal or harpsichord maker. A link with John Bull certainly seems to have existed, and it is probable that Bull was his teacher. It can be no coincidence that Bull and Farnaby both received degrees at Oxford on the same day in 1592. In addition to a substantial quantity of keyboard music, Farnaby also wrote and published vocal psalm settings and madrigals. If Farnaby’s skill as a composer is limited, and his technical gifts slight when compared to Byrd and Bull, at his best he has a tuneful vitality, and a spontaneous charm setting him apart from them. The originality and wit of the settings of Mal Sims and Muscadin or Kempe’s Morris show a real talent for inventive keyboard writing, while variations on the tune Woody-cock are one of the best of all sets of English keyboard variations of the period. Perhaps his lack of formal training was turned to advantage when writing The King’s Hunt. A more academically ‘correct’ composer might have avoided such juxtapositions of harmonies that seem chosen primarily for their strikingly emotional effect. This piece is an unselfconscious, dramatic scena in miniature. We first see the horsemen mount and ride into the field; in the second section they pursue their quarry and (painted in augmented triads and rattling broken octaves) fire their weapons. In the third section, the deer falls and laments its death in harmonies of extraordinary pathos. Naïve perhaps, but touching, and with genuine humanity. Critics have claimed that ‘humanity’ is lacking in John Bull’s keyboard music – "music to look at rather than to hear, to admire rather than to love". Two of the greatest pieces of Bull’s music (In Nomine IX and the first Fantasy on ut re me fa sol la) certainly demonstrate his technical accomplishment, but also give insight into the deeply emotional character of Bull’s musical language. The melodic material from which the Fantasy is constructed could not be simpler: it is the major hexachord or scale, first rising and then falling in regular note values. Around this simple motif, Bull weaves a rich contrapuntal texture. Following its first statement, all thought of simplicity is abandoned. Twelve repetitions follow, each repeat transposed up one degree of a whole tone scale until at the 13th repetition the hexachord once again begins on G. Four more repetitions complete the design. The main outcome of these transpositions is a range of intervals, chords and tonalities without parallel in English music. The sense of strangeness, the slow build-up in dramatic intensity is overwhelming. Having reached the even plain of the original tonality in repetition 13, Bull imposes an unexpected climax in which the basic pulse is divided into three, but set against cross rhythms which in repetition 15 consist of four completely independent, simultaneous rhythmic patterns moving between the four voices. In Nomine IX, (based like all such pieces on a plainchant fragment from a Mass by Tavener) is written throughout in 11/4 time in a repeating metre of 4 + 4 + 3 beats. This strange framework of melody and metre supports a dazzling superstructure of counterpoint. As the piece unfolds its continually melting and varied textures, new ideas and surprising harmonies arise out of the counterpoint with an authority and force that captures the ear and emotions of the listener. At the final chord of this "Rhetorical, and Sublime Discourse", the sense of a great voyage travelled is inescapable. Of all Tudor and early Stuart sets of variations, Bull’s on the melody As I went to Walsingham, is certainly the largest in scale. Designed to display the performer’s skill, it is an exemplar in the art of writing divisions, a basic compositional technique in early keyboard music. The increasing subdivision of musical material into shorter note values can be a display of merely mechanical accomplishment, but Bull’s 30 variations, grouped in complementary contrasting sections, build a large formal structure of exceptional grandeur and sense of purpose. THE INSTRUMENTS
Harpsichords by the famous Ruckers family of Antwerp were without doubt used in English court circles in the 16th and early 17th century. Their instruments are therefore appropriate to the music of Bull of Farnaby. The double manual harpsichord used for this recording was made in 1982 by Adlam Burnett. Based on a 1638 Ioannes Ruckers transposing double in the Russell Collection, Edinburgh University, the compass is GG/BB – d3. The lowest two accidentals are divided to provide C-sharp and D-sharp. Each keyboard has an independent 8 foot register, with a third 8 foot register available on both keyboards, and a 4 foot register on the lower manual.
The turbulence of the Reformation in England and the Civil War together led to the destruction of almost all English church organs during this period. Only fragments remain of a once great tradition. A fragment dating from about 1540 is the windchest (or soundboard) of an organ found at Wingfield in Suffolk where the instrument once stood. The soundboard provides information about the organ’s appearance including its overall size and the shape of the two pipe fronts. It also provides essential information on the size, range, pitch, pipe sizes and action of the instrument. The organ was built in 2001 by Martin Goetze and Dominic Gwynn as part of the Early English Organ Project. The compass is F – g2a2 at 5 foot pitch, eight semitones above today’s standard pitch. It has five stops: I. open wood principal 5 foot It is blown manually by two wedge bellows placed beside the instrument. Placed in the choir, an organ such as this would have accompanied the singing and provided alternating solo verses throughout the liturgy. Examples of the latter are Bull’s In Nomine IV and the Salvator Mundi II in which a plainchant cantus firmus is accompanied by two other voices whose decorative motifs become increasingly elaborate as the piece proceeds.
Built in 1972 by Adlam Burnett, this muselar is derived from a 1611 Ioannes Ruckers instrument in the Vleeshuis, Antwerp. Ruckers virginals were principally of two kinds. A spinet was made with its keyboard to the left in the rectangular case. Its jacks pluck the strings close to their ends, as in a harpsichord. Its tone is bright and clear. A muselar virginal has its keyboard towards the right of the case, the jacks plucking the strings at a point about one third of their length. The resulting tone is dark, round and fluty, and quite unlike any other contemporary keyboard instrument. An additional effect is provided by a harpichordum stop. Underneath the strings a row of metal hooks is placed in a wooden batten running along the straight, bass section of the small, right-hand bridge. The performer slides this batten to and fro to engage or disengage the stop. When turned on, the hooks barely touch the strings and generate a rattling and buzzing sound that seems more near-eastern than western. Acting on the bass strings, the harpichordum makes a strongly contrasting accompaniment to the fluty treble. This effect is heard in Farnaby’s Muscadin or Kempe’s Morris. The compass is C/E – c3 with the lowest two accidentals divided to give low F-sharp and G-sharp. TUNING Several unequal temperaments are used in this recording, ranging from the ‘Erlangen’ half-comma circulating system of the organ, to a sixth-comma temperament used in Bull’s Fantasy on Ut, re, me, fa, sol, la. Page revised 30.06.03 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
HARPSICHORD
THE ORGAN
THE MUSELAR (VIRGINAL)