TY - JOUR
AU - Oddie,, Jonathan
AB - Peter Philips (1560/61–1628) and Richard Dering (1580–1630) were English-born composers whose Catholicism forced them to spend most of their careers abroad, largely in the Spanish Netherlands. Philips travelled to Italy in 1582, settled in Antwerp in 1590, and in 1597 obtained a job as organist to the archducal court in Brussels, where he remained until his death. Dering followed a broadly similar trajectory 20 years later: he travelled to Italy in 1612, and by 1617 had obtained a job as organist at a convent of exiled English Benedictine nuns in Brussels, returning to England in 1625. Both composers therefore worked as organists in Brussels from 1617 to 1625, and they may well have known each other. Their careers also brought them into more direct contact with the stylistic innovations of the early Italian Baroque than most of their English contemporaries, and they adapted their own musical output to match, composing Italian-texted madrigals and Latin motets, some with basso continuo parts at a time when these were a rarity in England. Philips is well known to keyboard players due to the inclusion of several of his compositions and arrangements in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (his complete keyboard music, also edited by David J. Smith, appears in Musica Britannica vol.75). Dering is better known among viol players, though little of his consort music has been recorded. Some of his motets have entered the choral repertory, with Factum est silentium for six voices being particularly popular on record. Two recent volumes of Musica Britannica present sacred music by Dering (vol.98) and music for instrumental consort by both composers (vol.101), offering the opportunity to consider these expatriate musicians’ work in relation to each other and to their complex historical circumstances. Philips and Dering both composed instrumental music in the earlier parts of their careers, later devoting themselves to vocal music. David J. Smith’s edition of their collected consort music runs to over 200 pages in the handsome Musica Britannica hardback format, including a substantial introduction, facsimiles of selected pages from the sources, and extensive critical notes. Twenty-one pieces are attributed to Philips and 28 to Dering, but Dering’s pieces occupy almost twice as many pages as Philips’s due to their greater length. The music is transcribed in standard bass, alto and treble clefs, with original clefs and ranges indicated at the beginning of each piece. Original note values and mensuration signs have been retained. Most of the music is barred in semibreves, maintaining the barring found in the sources (pp.xxxvi–xxxviii); a few pieces in longer note values are barred in breves. Although most of these pieces were presumably intended for string consorts, the ranges of Philips’s consort pieces also make many of them suitable for performance by recorders or other wind instruments; the exception is the Passamezzo Pavan, in which the wide range of the bass part presents greater difficulties. The ranges in most of Dering’s music require stringed instruments, though some of the dances would be playable by winds. Performance parts corresponding to the edition are available via Stainer & Bell’s print-on-demand service, a welcome development which should make Musica Britannica as useful a practical performing edition as it is a scholarly one. Smith’s Introduction provides useful background on the composers’ biographies, sources of their music, viol playing in 17th-century England, and theoretical topics including mode and metre. The notes on the sources and the textual commentary are particularly fascinating for their insight into 17th-century practices of copying and editing, to which the principal sources of Philips’s dances and Dering’s fantasias are both witnesses. The main source of Philips’s consort music is a scorebook compiled by Francis Tregian, who ‘compiled his collection in order to study it, scoring most of it up from partbooks’ (p.xxv). Tregian’s study of these pieces evidently included examining their counterpoint, since he marked up places that represent technical errors or licences such as parallel perfect intervals; the locations of these marks are noted in the textual commentary. The partbooks which are the main source of Dering’s five-part fantasias bear traces of a different kind of close examination: they represent a 17th-century effort to compile a critical edition, whose scribes compared the contents of ‘at least 21 other sources’, six of which contained Dering’s fantasias (p.xxvii). Discrepancies between these manuscripts were recorded by the scribes in annotations so detailed that Smith has been able to include their variants in the textual commentary, even though none of these sources has itself survived. Some of Dering’s fantasias, which were evidently popular, are also transmitted in as many as nine other sources, with many variants. The bulk of the resulting textual commentary is imposing, yet it remains as straightforward to use as is reasonably possible. Peter Philips’s consort music consists predominantly of stylized dances, mostly in five parts, although the present edition also includes three four-part settings reconstructed by Smith. In addition, there is one six-part variation set (the Passamezzo Pavan), two six-part ‘Fantasias’ (actually textless madrigal transcriptions), and three ‘Pedagogical Trios’. Some of this repertory, though not the fantasias, has been recorded by Peter Holman and the Parley of Instruments (Hyperion cda66240, 1988); the fantasias and trios can be heard in a recording by the Rose Consort of Viols (Deux-Elles dxl1155, 2014). Much of Philips’s instrumental music is closely connected with the practice of rearranging or ‘setting’ existing music for different instrumental forces. Philips either arranged his consort pieces for keyboard, or made independent consort and keyboard settings of the same material. In either case, several of the better-known pieces amongst his collected consort music—including the ‘1580’ Pavan, the ‘Dolorosa’ and the ‘Paget’ pavan–galliard pairs—also exist in his own keyboard versions. Philips also made consort settings of music by others: the edition includes a simple setting of the Aria del Gran duca, as well as reworkings of dances by Thomas Morley, Augustine Bassano and Anthony Holborne. Finally, Philips’s own consort music was in turn rearranged by others, both for mixed consort and for consorts of different sizes or ranges. His ‘Dolorosa’ Pavan, for instance, is given here in two different versions: a five-part version in G, presumably the original, and a four-part arrangement from a different source in which the piece has been transposed down a 5th to C. Only the treble part of the latter setting survives, and Smith has provided a convincing reconstruction of the lower three parts based on the keyboard version. One of Philips’s best-known dances, the ‘1580’ Pavan, has a particularly complex textual history. In addition to Philips’s keyboard setting, the sources listed for this piece in the textual commentary include three versions for mixed consort, a five-part consort setting from a manuscript in Kassel, and two single bass parts. Only the keyboard version is directly connected to Philips: both the mixed-consort versions and the five-part version in the Kassel manuscript are thought to be adaptations. Smith has reconstructed a hypothetical original for four-part consort, in which the outer parts are taken from the treble and bass of the mixed consort and Kassel versions (which agree closely) and the inner voices reconstructed partly from the mixed-consort flute parts and partly from the inner voices of the Kassel version. This is paired with a four-part reconstruction of the Galliard which follows this Pavan in Morley’s 1599 First booke of consort lessons (a different piece from the galliard which follows the keyboard version). Both four-part reconstructions are musically convincing, but there is another possible original form of the Pavan which is not discussed: Warwick Edwards and Peter Holman have drawn attention to a fragmentary manuscript source of this piece, containing only a treble part (see P. Holman, Four and twenty fiddlers: the violin at the English court, 1540–1690 (Oxford, 1993), pp.144–6). Unlike the other surviving treble parts, this part begins with six minim rests, entering on the high D that occurs at bar 3 of the treble in the reconstructed four-part original; Philips’s keyboard setting also implies the entrance of a new voice at this point. This suggests that the surviving treble parts might be conflations of two independent lines from an original version for five-part consort, the same scoring as Philips’s other surviving dances. Both Holman’s book and his recording of a five-part reconstruction along these lines are cited in the introduction, so it is surprising that the additional fragmentary source and its possible significance are not mentioned. Although the Introduction to the volume notes that Philips’s generation preferred stylized dances over fantasias, it includes two six-part fantasias and three untexted ‘Pedagogical Trios’ by Philips. The textual commentary reveals that the six-part fantasias are in fact untexted transcriptions of the second and third parts of one of Philips’s Italian madrigals, Porta nel viso. Modern-day consort players who enjoy these two pieces might look for other potential ‘fantasias’ among Philips’s selected madrigals in Musica Britannica vol.29; there is, unfortunately, no complete modern edition of Philips’s two books of madrigals. The source of the three Pedagogical Trios is a 1615 text on music theory, written not by a professional musician but by an engineer and architect, Salamon de Caus, whom Philips may have advised (p.xxxiv). Smith’s introduction summarizes the relevant part of Caus’s text, in which the three trios serve as examples of the modes. Caus describes a twelve-mode system with paired authentic and plagal modes, numbered beginning with the C modes; the implication on p.xxxv that this was an innovation on his part seems misleading, since Zarlino had used the same numbering more than 40 years earlier in his 1573 revision of the Istitutioni harmoniche (see G. Zarlino, trans. Vered Cohen, On the modes: part four of Le Istitutioni Harmoniche (New Haven, 1983), pp.xvi–xix). Philips’s three Trios have their finals on C, D and E, all with no key signature; Caus describes them as representatives of the authentic modes with these finals (the first, third and fifth in his numbering). The possibility that this collaboration between composer and theorist could provide hard evidence for how Philips understood mode and tonality is tantalizing, but also raises questions. Is there practical significance to the authentic–plagal distinction, for instance, given that all three pieces are assigned to an authentic mode? Moreover, would Philips have learned this Zarlinian approach to mode during his early training in England, or might his understanding of this topic have changed during his years on the Continent? Theoretical questions aside, all three Trios are finely constructed, and less dry than the ‘pedagogical’ designation might suggest. They inhabit a stylistic realm similar to Byrd’s three-part fantasias, with their abstract counterpoint leavened by the introduction of dance-like triple-time passages (no.1) and expressive homophony (no.3). The portion of the edition devoted to Dering’s consort music includes five-part dances, five- and six-part fantasias, and six-part In Nomines. Some of the six-part music is transmitted anonymously, but may be cautiously attributed to Dering on the basis of style and proximity in the sources to a more securely attributed six-part fantasia (p.xxix); there is also one four-part pavan of uncertain authorship. The In Nomines and some of the fantasias have previously been published in editions by the Viola da Gamba Society, and the new edition is cross-referenced with their VdGS catalogue numbers. Given the large number of variants between the sources of these pieces—the textual commentary for the five-part fantasias alone occupies nine dense pages—owners of the existing editions may want to check them against the new edition. Relatively few of these pieces have been recorded, though there is a recording by Fretwork of six-part Fantasia no.1, one of the most accomplished and pleasing pieces (Harmonia Mundi hmu907214, 2006). Dering’s five-part dances comprise three pavan–almaine pairs, a single pavan–galliard pair and four unpaired pavans. Of the two sources containing these pieces, one is missing its outer parts, while the other is missing its second treble; consequently, only the four pieces copied into both sources are complete. Smith has provided convincing and musical reconstructions of the missing parts, allowing these pieces to be considered as a complete set for the first time. This is especially interesting given the wide range of keys that they cover. Except for Pavan no.8, all of Dering’s five-part dances are included in the same source, an incomplete set of three partbooks compiled for Sir Nicholas Le Strange. The seven pavans in this source—three paired with an almain and one with a galliard—end on seven different finals, with one pavan on each of the notes of the diatonic scale (with By) from G up to F. Only Pavan no.7 in D falls outside this ascending sequence of keys in the ordering given in the new edition, which follows the VdGS numbering. Moving it between Almaine no.4 in C and Pavan no.5 in E would restore its position in this hypothetical ordering by key, and also result in the dances from the Le Strange manuscript concluding with the only galliard of the set (no.6, in F), providing a fitting conclusion. Whether or not this ordering was intended, the dances encompass most of the usual tonalities of Dering’s period and some less usual: Pavan no.3 is in By, Pavan and Galliard no.6 are in F with a two-flat signature, and Pavan no.5 is in E without key signature, the same ‘Phrygian’ tonality as the third of Philips’s Pedagogical Trios. These five-part dances by Dering are attractive works, at least as accomplished as his five-part fantasias and considerably more free in their harmonic trajectories, as far as can be judged from the reconstructions. Dering’s five-part fantasias were copied more widely than his dances. Most are scored for two trebles, two tenors and bass, with the exception of no.5, in which a second bass replaces one of the tenors. Accompanimental organ parts survive for nos.1 and 2 only, and these are included in the edition. Dering’s fantasias are stylistically comparable to the madrigalian fantasias of John Coprario, but even more strongly sectional. Longer polyphonic sections for the full consort alternate with brief homophonic interjections for three or four players alone, often with quasi-antiphonal alternation between lower and higher groups of instruments. Dering’s subjects are distinctive, often turning on an expressive semitone in semibreves in one part, which is answered by faster notes in another. His points of imitation are less ambitious in structure than those of other fantasia composers: he seldom recombines his subjects in different ways, being content to repeat a single contrapuntal combination several times with varying accompaniments in the other voices. Several fantasias feature later sections based on simple ascending or descending sequences enlivened with repeated notes or scales; if these appear simplistic on the page, one can easily imagine them to be much more striking in performance. Some of the five-part fantasias suffer from a certain harmonic monotony. All eight have finals on D or A with no key signature, and the great majority of the cadences also fall on D and A; occasional excursions to F are usually countered by an immediate return to one of these two degrees, as if the music is only briefly able to escape their gravitational pull. Other fantasias are more harmonically varied: no.1 and no.2 feature chromatic subjects, and several include sections in long notes with a searching harmonic quality derived from extensive use of evaded cadences—no.7 making the most extensive use of this technique. Dering is also taken with the possibility of switching between major and minor modes; sometimes this manifests itself as unpredictable modal mixture, particularly in no.2, but in other pieces the introduction of sharp inflections effects a more substantial ‘modulation’ to the parallel key. Five-part Fantasia no.5, the single piece with two bass viols, seems more contrapuntally and harmonically ambitious than most of the other five-part fantasias: its range of cadential degrees is wider, and the interludes for reduced forces are not homophonic but involve short canons for two or three viols. It also has a different textual history from its companions: it was not copied as widely, and survives in only two sources. Could it perhaps be a slightly later work than Dering’s other five-part fantasias, or did the use of an unusual scoring simply stimulate his imagination in a different direction? The six-part fantasias seem more accomplished on the whole than those in five parts, encompassing a wider range of tonalities and being more free and expressive harmonically. Dering makes excellent use of the sonority of the full consort, with the opening of Fantasia no.1 being particularly fine; Fantasias no.3 and no.4 are similarly successful in balancing expressive harmony with active polyphony. Fantasia no.2 is somewhat less varied than the others, and seems closer to the five-part fantasias in style. It also has a different source from the other six-part fantasias; as with five-part Fantasia no.5, these differences both in style and textual history raise the question of whether it might have been written at a slightly different point in Dering’s short English career. The six-part pieces conclude with two anonymously transmitted In Nomines. In Nomine no.1 has an unusual structure in which the cantus firmus migrates from part to part, with each of the six viols playing a segment in turn: beginning in one of the tenor viols, it later migrates into the treble, and spends much of its time in the bass. The transposition of the chant melody changes as it moves from part to part: it begins on E, but is transposed down a 5th when it moves into the bass, and back to its original pitch level when it migrates into the treble. The piece ends with the cantus firmus in the bass, and an extra A has to be tacked on in the last bar to effect a strong final close. These departures from the classic In Nomine form suggest a composer not entirely at ease with cantus firmus composition: in particular, when the cantus firmus is placed in the bass it tends to direct the course of the harmony more obviously than if it were in an inner voice. In Nomine no.2 is more typical of the genre in placing the cantus firmus in the second treble at the same pitch level throughout, and is perhaps a more fluent piece. Dering’s sacred music consists of a small number of English-texted pieces for the Anglican Church and a much larger body of Latin motets for varying numbers of voices with continuo. His five- and six-voice motets were published by Pierre Phàlese in 1617 and 1618 respectively; his ‘concertato’ motets for one, two or three voices with continuo circulated in manuscript during his lifetime, with some appearing in print well after his death, in Playford’s publications of 1662 and 1674 (see J. P. Wainwright, ‘Richard Dering’s few-voice “concertato” motets’, Music & Letters, lxxxix/2 (2008), pp.165–94, at p.166). A selection of the five- and six-voice motets appeared in print with adapted English texts in the early 20th century, edited by Sir Frederick Bridge; more recently, the complete six-voice motets were edited by Peter Platt in Early English Church Music vol.15 (1974), and the concertato motets by Jonathan P. Wainwright in Musica Britannica vol.87 (2008). Musica Britannica vol.98, also edited by Wainwright, completes the publication of Dering’s sacred music in modern editions. In addition to the 18 five-voice motets from the 1617 publication, it contains all of his extant English-texted music, comprising one full anthem or ‘sacred song’ and two verse anthems. Also included are two English-texted contrafacta, both based on the same five-voice motet, but almost certainly not made by Dering himself. Wainwright’s edition presents the music at its original notated pitch, in treble, octave-treble and bass clefs; original clefs, key signatures and mensuration signs are indicated before each staff, but there are no indications of the parts’ exact ranges, as there are in the consort music volume. Several of Dering’s motets were originally notated in chiavette clefs, with correspondingly higher written ranges, and may require transposition down a 4th or 5th in performance (pp.xxviii–xxix). These pieces are presented at their notated pitch in the volume itself, but offprints are also available from Stainer & Bell in which they are transposed down. Original note values are retained, with the music barred editorially at the breve. Editorial text underlay is clearly indicated with italics throughout. A fully written-out editorial organ part is provided for the two contrafacta, but the continuo part for the motets has been left unrealized. Dering’s continuo figuring in the motets is fairly sparse, in typical early 17th-century style: a figured 6 occasionally requires a 6/4 rather than a 6/3 chord, or in a cadential context may imply an ‘augmented triad’ with a minor 6th against a major 3rd. Wainwright has added accidentals to the figures where they are otherwise inconsistent with the vocal parts, but has not otherwise supplied missing figures. Although it may make the edition less immediately usable for performance, this is the right choice for a scholarly edition: too many editorial figures can be almost as distracting as a full realization for those who want to approach the music from a perspective approximating that of a 17th-century musician. In addition to biographical information and descriptions of the sources, the introductory material includes commentary on the music’s widely varying performance contexts and practices; the notes on pitch, organs, and choir size are especially useful. An appendix provides not only texts and translations, but also useful commentary on their sources and liturgical associations. As in the consort music volume, the sources are extensively described with copious references to the musicological literature. One minor drawback of the textual commentary is that each partbook is listed as a separate source, making it harder to identify which ones come from the same set without consulting the list of sources. Dering’s small corpus of English-texted pieces for the Anglican Church presumably dates from early in his career. Wainwright describes the two verse anthems as early and not entirely successful attempts at the genre. Almighty God, which through Thy only-begotten Son has an excellent first half, but becomes a little routine in its use of stretto sequences from the third verse section onwards. These passages recall the sequences in the later sections of Dering’s five-part fantasias, and their text-setting is awkward, perhaps suggesting an early foray into vocal music by a composer then more familiar with writing for instruments. The other verse anthem, Unto thee, O Lord (also attributed to Thomas Wilkinson) is particularly interesting due to the existence of two substantially different organ parts, one from the ‘Batten organ book’ and one from an organ book in Durham Cathedral (pp.xxvii, 118, 120). Rather than promoting one version over the other, Wainwright includes both in the score, making for a fascinating opportunity to compare two differing treatments of the same piece. Inevitably, the most substantial differences are in the verse sections, the organ’s role in the full sections being largely determined by the vocal parts. In most respects, the Batten organ book version seems superior: it includes pre-imitations of many vocal entrances in the verse sections, adding interest and giving the singers secure entrance pitches, and it provides strong cadences with suspensions in many places which are left bare in the other version. On the other hand, the Durham version has a more interesting opening phrase preceding the first vocal entrance, fuller accompaniments in the full sections, and some interesting alternative harmonizations and contrapuntal details. Organists may wish to make their own conflation of the two texts, choosing the best elements from each. Dering’s five-voice Latin motets make up the bulk of the volume. They are thoroughly Italianate in style, and inhabit an entirely different stylistic world from his English music; Wainwright’s introduction compares them to motets by Giovanni Gabrieli, Peter Philips and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, among others. Dering seems to have chosen texts for their expressive potential (p.xxiii): six motets set stanzas of the hymn ‘Jesu dulcis memoria’, three are on Marian texts, three are on texts from the Song of Songs, and two are laments. Dering mostly sets these texts syllabically in expressive homophony, using sudden contrasts of harmony, texture and rhythm to create a highly charged rhetorical delivery of the words. The continuo part mainly duplicates the lowest-sounding vocal part in basso seguente style, though two pieces include sections where solo vocal lines are supported by an independent continuo. Dering’s word-painting is often sensitive and occasionally extreme, as in the diminished octaves and 7ths which illustrate ‘Inter vulnera tua’ in no.8, Anima Christi sanctifica me. There are few extensive points of imitation; instead, Dering employs flexible imitation as a textural contrast to the surrounding homophony, as in the setting of ‘pulchra es amica mea’ in no.15, Quae est ista, or as a culminating gesture, as in the final phrases of no.1, O bone Jesu, and no.11, Ave virgo gratiosa. A highlight of the collection is the setting of David’s lament for Absalom, Contristatus est Rex David (no.16). This piece also provides an example of Dering setting the same biblical passage twice in radically different manners: he also composed an English setting in the form of the full anthem or sacred song And the King was moved (no.22), whose relationship to the English tradition of Absalom settings is discussed in the introduction (pp.xxiv–xxv). The two pieces can be compared in a recording by Gallicantus under the direction of Gabriel Crouch (Signum Classics sigcd210, 2010). While both are sensitive settings, it is hard to deny the greater immediacy of the motet, in which not only dissonance and cross-relations, but also the slightly difficult melodic contours which Dering supplies for the words ‘fili mi’ and ‘Absalon’, serve as a vivid portrayal of the dislocations of grief. Dering’s Latin motets represent such a radically different genre from his English fantasias that they cast doubt on any notion of a consistent, personal musical style. Nevertheless, a few common threads can be perceived when these two repertories are considered together. The wayward modal mixture displayed in some of the fantasias finds a more purposeful outlet in the final phrase of one of the Song of Songs settings, In lectulo meo, lending an unexpected sweetness to the setting of ‘quem diligit anima mea’. The same passage is extremely free, almost Monteverdian, in its use of accented dissonant passing tones: perhaps Dering found it easier than some of his English contemporaries to embrace such features of the seconda pratica, given the slightly cavalier attitude towards contrapuntal propriety demonstrated in some of his earlier compositions. More generally, it seems likely that the style of Dering’s five-voice motets allowed him to make use of musical qualities less easily accommodated in consort music. Consort fantasias are often judged largely by the composer’s skill in imitative polyphony: according to Christopher Simpson, the fantasia composer should ‘imploy all his Art and Invention solely about the bringing in and carrying on of … Fuges’ (Christopher Simpson, A compendium of practical musick in five parts (London, 3/1677), pp.141–2). Dering’s five-part fantasias feature striking opening ideas, but he seems less at ease when developing them at length into points of imitation; the best of these pieces place less weight on extended polyphonic passages than on the expressive potential of harmony. In the terse, rhetorical style of the five-voice motets, by contrast, striking ideas and harmonic shifts count for everything, while imitative development at length is a rarity. It is not difficult to imagine that a composer with Dering’s particular musical gifts might have adapted eagerly to the musical opportunities afforded by his changed circumstances and new faith. As English-born composers who produced much of their music in exile, Philips and Dering have been given somewhat marginal placement both in histories of British music and in histories of 16th- and 17th-century music more broadly. Smith and Wainwright deserve particular thanks for bringing the music of these expatriate musicians to wider attention in the form of these beautifully produced, scholarly, and practical editions. Their work should inspire further scholarship on these two complex figures as well as performances and recordings of their music. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/about_us/legal/notices)
TI - Sacred and secular
JF - Early Music
DO - 10.1093/em/cay011
DA - 2018-05-04
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/sacred-and-secular-0acjVeCPB0
SP - 177
VL - 46
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -