The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations

Theodor Dumitrescu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780754655428
• eBook ISBN: 9781351544955
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Since the days in the early twentieth century when the study of pre-Reformation English music first became a serious endeavour, a conceptual gap has separated the scholarship on English and continental music of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The teaching which has informed generations of students in influential textbooks and articles characterizes the musical life of England at this period through a language of separation and conservatism, asserting that English musicians were largely unaware of, and unaffected by, foreign practices after the mid-fifteenth century. The available historical evidence, nevertheless, contradicts a facile isolationist exposition of musical practice in early Tudor England. The increasing appearance of typically continental stylistic traits in mid-sixteenth-century English music represents not an arbitrary and unexpected shift of compositional approach, but rather a development prefaced by decades of documentable historical interactions. Theodor Dumitrescu treats the matter of musical relations between England and continental Europe during the first decades of the Tudor reign (c.1485-1530), by exploring a variety of historical, social, biographical, repertorial and intellectual links. In the first major study devoted to this topic, a wealth of documentary references scattered in primary and secondary sources receives a long-awaited collation and investigation, revealing the central role of the first Tudor monarchs in internationalizing the royal musical establishment and setting an example of considerable import for more widespread English artistic developments. By bringing together the evidence concerning Anglo-continental musical relations for the first time, along with new documents and interpretations concerning musicians, music manuscripts and theory sources, the investigation paves the way for a new evaluation of English musical styles in the first half of the sixteenth century.

Chapter 1

Foreign Cultural Models at the
English Royal Court

Englond, be glad! Pluk up thy lusty hart!

Help now thi kyng, thi kyng, and take his part!

Ageynst the Frenchmen in the feld to fyght

In the quarell of the church and in the ryght,

With spers and sheldys on goodly horsys lyght,

Bowys and arows to put them all to flyght:

Help now thi king [and take his part!]¹

The matter of foreign relations was at all points during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a touchy subject for the English. When the recently crowned King Henry VIII took to the field in 1513 and led what was to be his grandest expedition against the French on their own territory, he was fighting in the real (if unrealistic) hope of “reconquering” a kingdom which he saw as his own birthright. With the model of the warrior-king Henry V inspiring the young Tudor to dreams of victory and honor, a tremendous contingent of English courtiers, soldiers, household staff, and musicians was brought literally face-to-face to with its old foreign enemy. Nothing in the rhetoric surrounding the king’s short French “war” suggested that just a year later, the rulers of England and France would be calling each other allies, sealing their pact with the marriage of Henry VIII’s sister Mary to Louis XII of France. Holy War and Universal Peace: the two poles of Anglo-French relations under the first Tudor kings, the stormy love-hate relationship enacted as an extension of the rivalry, amity, emulation, and enmity of individual princes.

With such a conception of the basic state of affairs, deriving a sense of the extent to which foreign elements affected English court life would appear to be a paradoxical synthesizing task, which asks us to generalize from situations and evidences of wildly divergent characteristics and contexts. But the broad stories of treaties, alliances, and wars are not what tell us about the real and personal environments of household, city, and country, nor do they shed specific light on the gradual shifts of styles in art, music, literature, and every field of creative production. As suggested by the case of the English monarchs’ cherished idea of France as a rebellious vassal, even a war could reflect a sovereign’s genuine interest in maintaining or revitalizing an underlying traditional connection. More importantly, the sorts of political shifts which can seem wildly erratic to the modern observer point to the significance of the personal ideals and environments which informed the actions of individual rulers. One of the major shifts in modern historical scholarship, indeed, has been the recognition of the crucial role played by the personal aspects of princehood at this period, the realization that the political and diplomatic dealings of the time cannot be properly understood when divorced from the values which informed and reflected personal sovereignly:

Traditional diplomatic history of Anglo-French relations in this period has quite rightly focused on the evidence of wars, of treaties between the kingdoms and on questions of trade and strategic advantage. Histories of the period have highlighted the complex double-dealing between European princes in the early sixteenth century, in which the kings of England and France took an active part. However, such discussions have usually owed more to nineteenth-century conceptions of statecraft than sixteenth, and often strike a variety of bemused, critical, uncomprehending and even cynical notes at the conduct of relations between the two kingdoms. Until relatively recently the personal interactions between Henry VIII and Francis I tended to be dismissed as empty rhetorical gesturing or deceptive theatrics designed to mask the two princes’ ‘real’ aims which were to safeguard their own strategic advantages and undermine those of the other. That Henry and Francis were intent upon outdoing each other strategically is beyond question, but there is a wealth of evidence, much of it material rather than documentary in nature, which shows how remarkably competitive and politically significant their personal dealings were. These interactions were centred firmly on the values of personal honour enshrined in the chivalric code of the nobility which was a vital element of Renaissance kingship.²

It is this “material” evidence and its surrounding courtly context which offers our point of entry into the shifting ideals and values of the early Tudor royal household, the background against which we can make sense of the cultural contradictions of the court. The elements which form the focus of the following discussion have been gathered for the purpose of establishing the very fundamental importance of the international cultural aspects of Tudor court life. Far from representing an incidental and ultimately insignificant feature of England’s domestic and foreign relations, the many art objects, mechanical devices, artisans, scholars, armorers, creators and creations of every sort which found new homes at the royal court formed an integral part of Tudor representation at home and abroad. For understanding the nature and broader role of the musical shifts at the court during this period, a basic awareness of the character and extent of these other artistic and intellectual importations will be indispensable.

International Models Before the Tudors

The accession of Henry VII in 1485 has provided a convenient starting point for countless historical studies, bringing an end to the sudden reversals of power and contests for supremacy among the English nobility of the previous decades, and marking the establishment of a royal dynasty which remained in power for the entirety of the sixteenth century. It is generally accepted today, however, that for the English of the late fifteenth century, the situation was far less certain than would appear from the perspective of modern observers, or of early historians with a stake in lending unconditional support to the Tudors. Henry VII’s hold on the throne was confirmed only several years after he had first taken it, with the suppression of the last major uprising and the battle of Stoke; pretenders and numerous political enemies would continue to threaten the family’s position well into the reign of Henry VIII. The opening of the Tudor period, therefore, was little more stable in political terms than the years under preceding monarchs, and is usefully regarded as a continuation and gradual close of the Wars of the Roses. The situation in cultural terms is much the same: if the importance of international influences upon the court of Henry VIII is indisputable, these same influences can be traced back through the reign of Henry VII and in many cases to his predecessors. As the research of the past few decades into numerous fields of artistic endeavor has demonstrated, the reign of the second Tudor king is simply far too late a period to posit a reopening of cultural traffic beween England and continental Europe, particularly the Burgundian Low Countries. The view which associates the reign of Henry VII with a new international outlook at the English court has itself undergone numerous revisions and challenges, as scholars have demonstrated the existence of similar exchanges back through the reign of Edward IV.³

The specifically pro-Burgundian and anti-French policies of the earlier years of Edward’s rule, expressed most succinctly in the 1468 marriage of his sister Margaret of York to duke Charles the Bold (solidifying an important political alliance), found its reflection in the king’s artistic patronage and tastes in collecting. The best-known element of Edward’s inclination towards foreign production—”the more lavish and spectacular manifestations of Burgundian ceremonial and craftsmanship”⁴—is his penchant for acquiring illuminated manuscripts of Burgundian (and later French) origin.⁵ A move usually attributed to the influence of the Burgundian counsellor and chamberlain Louis of Gruthuyse, who hosted Edward IV during his forced exile of 1470–71, Edward’s foreign book-collecting may actually have begun before the king ever met Gruthuyse or lived on the Continent. Moreover, given the amount of Anglo-Burgundian diplomatic activity in the 1460s, there is no need to rely on an actual continental sojourn to explain the king’s exposure to foreign items, even if the period of exile surely affected his tastes—a note of caution which applies equally well to the collecting activities of the Tudor monarchs.⁶ Similar bibliophilic policies were picked up soon after not only by the later English kings, but likewise by the members of the wealthier and more powerful classes.⁷ In the fields of building and sculpture, Flemish styles had in some cases penetrated English projects for some time, as in the brickwork of Tattershall and other castles from the mid-fifteenth century; during Edward’s time, Flemish sculptors may have been used for St George’s Chapel, Windsor. The collecting of Flemish tapestry was another area in which the activities of Edward IV and various English nobles can be shown to have preceded the buying policies of Henry VII.⁸ These are all examples serving to sketch in the picture of that royal domestic policy which blurs the line between personal and public interests, the mode of cultural statecraft whose significance can hardly be overemphasized in reaction to traditional views of the Early Modern political landscape. Indeed, the process went as far as the wholesale adoption of external household models in the attempt to shape the cultural outlines of the court: it is and was well known that Edward IV’s household ordinances were influenced directly and heavily by the regulations of the Burgundian master of ceremonies, Olivier de la Marche, introducing European courtly patterns at the most detailed domestic level.⁹

With thi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• List of Music Examples
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Foreign Cultural Models at the English Royal Court
• 2 International Events and Musical Exchanges
• 3 Building a Foreign Musical Establishment at the Early Tudor Court
• 4 Anglo-Continental Relations in Music Manuscripts
• 5 English Music Theory and the International Traditions
• Conclusion
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• References
• Index