Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 3.djvu/613

SONG. monk of Reading Abbey, and itself implying a long previous course of study and practice. And there is record of a company or brotherhood formed by the merchants of London at the end of the 13th century for the encouragement of musical and poetical compositions. With this purpose they assembled periodically at festive meetings; and their rules were very similar to those of the German 'Meistersingers,' though their influence on contemporary music was much less widely diffused. This however is, at least in part, explained by the reluctance of the London brotherhood to admit any but members to its periodical meetings. Of the abundance of popular tunes in the 14th century, evidence is supplied by the number of hymns written to them. For instance, 'Sweetest of all, sing,' 'Have good-day, my leman dear,' and six others, were secular stage-songs, to which Richard Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory (1318–1360) wrote Latin hymns. (Chappell, p. 765.)

While the Minstrels flourished, notation was difficult and uncertain, and they naturally trusted to memory or improvisation for the tunes to which their tales should be sung. But with the end of the 15th century they disappeared, their extinction accelerated by the invention of printing; for when the pedlar had begun to traverse the country with his penny books and his songs on broadsheets, the Minstrel's day was past: his work was being done by a better agency. To the time of the Minstrels belongs however the famous 'Battle of Agincourt' song, the tune of which is given by Mr. Chappell as follows, with the date of 1415.

In the period between 1485 and 1553, which covers the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., social and political ballads multiplied fast; and among the best-known productions of those reigns are 'The King's Ballad,' by Henry VIII. himself; 'Westron wynde,' 'The three ravens,' and 'John Dory.' It should be noticed here that many variations in the copies of old tunes indicate uncertainty in oral traditions. Of the leading note—which the Church Modes do not recognise, but which has been very popular in English music—frequent variations are met with. But the copies exhibit most uncertainty as to whether the interval of the seventh should be minor or major. The general opinion now is that the old popular music of European countries was based upon the same scale or mode as the modern major scale, i.e. the Ionian mode; but numerous examples of other tonalities are extant. Thus, among others, 'The King's Ballad' and 'Westron wynde,' agree in some of their many versions with the Latin or Greek Dorian mode. The easy Ionian mode—il modo lascivo as it was termed—was the favourite of strolling singers and ballad-mongers, but the scholar and musician of the 16th century disdained it. Even if he sometimes stooped to use it, he felt it to be derogatory to his art. The subsequent adoption of the modern system by cultivated musicians in the next century was attributable to the influence of Italian music.

Of secular music antecedent to the middle of the 16th century but little has come down to us. Its principal relics are the songs in the Fayrfax MS. This manuscript, which once belonged to Dr. Robert Fayrfax, an eminent composer of the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., consists of forty-nine songs by the best musicians of that time. They are all written in 2, 3 and 4 parts, in the contrapuntal style; some in the mixed measure—common time in one part, and triple time in another—which was common at the end of the I5th century. But owing to the want of bars the time is often difficult to discover, and there is, likewise, a great confusion of accents. During the latter half of the 16th century musicians of the first rank seldom composed airs of the short rhythmical kind required for ballads. They generally wrote in the church scales, and there was a clear line of demarcation between their works and the ballads of the common people. The best-known ballads of Queen Elizabeth's reign, from 1558 to 1603, were 'The carman's whistle,' 'The British Grenadiers,' 'Near Woodstock Town,' 'The bailiff's daughter of Islington,' 'A poor soul sat sighing,' 'Greensleeves,' 'The friars of Orders Gray,' and 'The Frog Galliard.' This last, by John Dowland, is almost the only instance to be found in the Elizabethan period of a popular ballad-tune known to be from the hand of a celebrated composer. Dowland originally wrote it as a partsong, to the words 'Now, O now, I needs must part,' but afterwards adapted it for one voice, with accompaniment for the lute. This practice