The Music of Heaven
The earliest English-language prayer books of the newly shaped Church of England in the 1540s said very little about music. A sung Eucharistic liturgy on Sundays and other days seemed to be assumed and the ‘offices’ of morning and evening prayer were often continued in a monastic practice, with the heart of daily prayer being the singing of the psalms. In the 1549 prayer book, the singing was the responsibility of the priest who was presiding and the “clerkes”, both in morning and evening prayer and for the eucharist. With regard to morning prayer, “then shall the Clerkes syng in Englishe for the office, or Introite, a Psalme appointed for that daie…”[1] At the communion service, the clerks were to sing the kyrie, the gloria, the creed, scripture sentences during the offertory, the sanctus, during communion (the agnus dei), and the postcommunion (more scripture sentences).
The prayer books provided no music, and the very limited instructions made it clear that the service could be said or sung. The primary motivation for singing was for the sake of understanding:
In such places where they doe syng, there shall the lessons be songe in a playne tune after the manner of distincte readyng; and lykewyse the Epistle and Gospel…[2]
But as one reads through the various liturgies, it is clear that there were ‘clerkes’, certainly at cathedrals and collegiate chapels, as well as larger parish churches, who at the least sang in plain chant, most likely in the same manner that the psalms and canticles were sung in Latin a few years earlier, with slight adaptations to the English-language translations, as well as continuing to sing in Latin in a number of cathedrals.
The importance of music becomes apparent in the royal documents surrounding the publication and promulgation of the 1549 prayer book, which was accompanied by a royal order from Queen Elizabeth I establishing a set of choral foundations to train lay clerks and boy choristers to sing the daily office, Sunday liturgies and feastday liturgies. Of these original 34 royal foundations, founded in association with universities and at cathedrals, 30 are still going, and have been joined by many others added in the 19th and 20th centuries in England and far beyond. The job of the lay clerks and choristers was to sing evening prayer every day, Sunday liturgies, and often other liturgies, in exchange for room, board, musical training, and education. Because many of these choirs were royal charters, they were legally the foundation of the chapel and college. In other words, without the choir there could be no chapel, and without the chapel there could be no college.
Shortly after the establishment of these choral foundations, we have the first extant compositions of what is known as “Anglican Chant”, which is “Gregorian Chant” or plainsong, adapted to the natural speech rhythm of the words in English, but in 4-part harmony. These 4-part chants were the primary choral vehicle for singing the biblical canticles (according to the translation of the “Great Bible” – primarily that of William Tyndale (1494-1536) before the King James Version) and for singing the psalms, using the Myles Coverdale (1488-1569) translation into English.
The most famous 16th century composer of these earliest Anglican chants is Thomas Tallis (1505-1585), who represented an amazing ability to simply stay alive while composing beautiful liturgical music during the tumultuous nature of the church in England during the 16th century. He was born Roman Catholic, began serving as a singer and organist in Benedictine monasteries, which were dissolved by Henry VIII around 1540. He then moved to Canterbury Cathedral where he served as a musician while the cathedral ceased to be Roman Catholic and became Anglican (and then Roman Catholic again). Tallis himself, by all accounts, remained an “unreformed Roman Catholic”[3] his whole life, but probably saved his own life and that of his family by easily shifting from Latin compositions while serving as a Roman Catholic composer to English language compositions and styles while serving under Anglican royalty and bishops.
Tallis’ fame as an English composer was matched by that of his student William Byrd (c. 1540-1622) who also wrote Anglican liturgical music and anthems. Byrd clearly moved from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in his later decades, and the majority of his choral music consists of Latin language motets and mass settings, along with a sizeable collection of instrumental music. As a Catholic, Byrd was a frequent target of accusations and fines, but he also managed to escape prison and execution in the various political shifts of the 16th century and continued to contribute to the English choral scene until his 80s. Many lesser known composers wrote liturgical music in the 16th century also, including John Merbecke (1510-1585) whose setting for communion was widely used after being rediscovered in 1843, and was adapted for use in other denominations, including the post-Vatican II English-language liturgy of Roman Catholicism.[4]
As the 18th century began, choral music benefitted from two traditions, one local and one national in England. The local tradition was the development of ‘West Gallery Choirs’[5] (singing from a balcony constructed for this purpose behind the nave) which began about 1700 and endured until the 1850s. These were mixed choirs of men and boys, and eventually women, who sang for liturgies where there were no clerks and choristers. The choirs were generally supported by a variety of instruments which doubled on the vocal lines. They learned the chants and liturgical music as well as developed a repertoire of choral music based on hymns and folk tunes used for anthems. The other tradition was the establishment in 1719 of the “Three Choirs Festival” (the cathedral choirs of Hereford, Gloucester, and Worcester)[6] which was widely imitated and led to a much higher profile of choirs coming together to both compete against each other and to sing together outside of the liturgy. Both of these popularizing trends broadened the knowledge of choral music and the direct engagement with choral singing throughout England. The tradition of ‘West Gallery Choirs’ had a tremendous influence on the rise of choirs in North America also.
The emergence of a new type of liturgical music was also linked to both the ‘West Gallery Choir’ tradition and the ‘Three Choirs Festival’, namely the English language hymn. While many hymntexts come down to us from the early church (particularly seasonal as well as texts for the daily office), the development of metrical non-scriptural texts (hymns) in English begins in the 17th century (most famously with the poetic texts of George Herbert, 1593-1632) and continues to develop in spite of the Puritan dislike of the non-scriptural text elements. Ironically, the first major English language hymn writer was a Congregationalist Dissenter, Isaac Watts, whose prolific outpouring gained him the title “the liberator of the English hymn” by musicologist Erik Routley.[7] In spite of objections from within his own denominational affiliation, Watts started a movement that continued through John and Charles Wesley (who started as Anglicans, but really wrote most of their hymns as the founders of the new movement of Methodism).
The growing corpus of English language hymns remained primarily in the Protestant churches until 1819, when a dispute over the introduction of hymns into Anglican liturgy was overturned and hymn singing made its way into the daily office and the Eucharistic celebrations. This eventually resulted in the publication of the first Anglican hymnal, Hymns Ancient and Modern, in 1861. A profoundly influential figure in Anglican hymnody was John Mason Neale (1818-1865), who was part of the Oxford Movement and the founder of the Anglican and Eastern Churches Association (1864). Neale translated many early church hymns as well as liturgies and hymn texts from Eastern Christianity, introducing Anglicans to an accessible ecumenical engagement as well as expanding the repertoire of hymns. His work was well-represented in Anglican hymnals after his death, including The English Hymnal (1906), which set the pattern for later hymnals in many denominations.[8]
The English Hymnal was arranged by the liturgical year (inclusive of the sanctoral) with additional sections for morning and evening prayer, popular festivals, “liturgies for sacraments and other rites”, mission hymnals, national hymns, catechetical hymns, and a section of litanies, introits and anthems. This approach was borrowed by Anglicans in other parts of the world, especially in the United States, where, omitting national British hymns and adding some “thematic” groupings, the English hymnals crossed the Atlantic. This hymnal allowed those who could purchase one the possibility of linking music in the church to music in the home and at other gatherings and changed the focus of music in the liturgy for Anglicanism. Until the embracing of hymns the liturgical music was primarily ritual music (the ordinary of the mass chanted and later sung by choirs to settings composed for that purpose), along with metrical psalm settings, most not accessible to the congregation. Strophic hymns were far more accessible – bridging home and parish church, but their addition to the liturgy changed the daily office and communion services from liturgies sung by a choir and priest to one sung by a choir, priest, and congregation. In addition, hymns changed the liturgy itself because the ritual often had to wait for the hymn, rather than the music serving the liturgy.
[1] All quotes from historical prayer books are from the full online versions found at justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/
[2] 1549 prayer book, Justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1549/BCP_1549
[3] Peter Ackroyd, Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination. (NY: Anchor Books, 2004) 184. In addition I highly recommend a documentary produced by BBC 4: “Tallis, Byrd, and the Tudors” in 2012 for those interested in these influential musicians.
[4] Robin A. Leaver, “Merbeck, John” Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy. http://www.grovemusic.com.
[5] Nicholas Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
[6] Anthony Boden, Three Choirs: A History of the Festival. Stroud: Alan Sutton Pub., 1992.
[7] Robin A. Leaver, “The Hymn Explosion” Christian History 10 (no 3:14)
[8] The hymnal was edited by Percy Dearmer and Ralph Vaughn Williams, which gave the hymnal oversight by one of the foremost composers in England at the time and contributed to its popularity.
This post is Part II of a three-part series. See Part I here.
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