The Fitzwilliam virginal book: historical background and performance practice issues

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in England in the late sixteenth-early seventeenth centuries, very repressive anti-Catholic laws were enacted by Parliament. Catholicism then became the illegal underground religion of the gentry, sustained primarily by a web of intricate family alliances. The aims of this paper include: (1) a discussion of how the anti-Catholic laws passed by Parliament during the 1570s and 1580s severely affected the Tregian family, specifically Francis Tregian Sr. and Francis Tregian Jr.; (2) an in-depth exploration of the Tregian family's relationships with other aristocratic Catholic recusant families and musicians within the larger context of late sixteenth-century Tudor England; and (3) a detailed examination of the facsimile of the manuscript of The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book as an aid in creating a more accurate modern performing edition of four pieces from this anthology that have not been reedited since the first printing by Breitkopf und Härtel in 1899.

The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND PERFORMANCE PRACTICE ISSUES by Pamela Palmer Jones A paper submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance School of Music The University of Utah May 2009 Copyright © Pamela Palmer Jones 2009 All Rights Reserved 1 THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE APPROVAL of a thesis submitted by Pamela Palmer Jones This thesis has been read by each member of the following supervisory committee and by majority vote has been found to be satisfactory. ____________________ __________________________________________ Chair: Susan H. Duehlmeier ____________________ __________________________________________ Margaret Rorke ____________________ __________________________________________ Susan Neiymoyer ____________________ __________________________________________ Ning Lu ____________________ __________________________________________ Eric Hinderaker 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS FINAL READING APPROVAL To the Graduate Council of the University of Utah: I have read the thesis of ____________Pamela Palmer Jones __________in its final form and have found that (1) its format, citations, and bibliographic style are consistent and acceptable; (2) its illustrative materials including figures, tables, and charts are in place; and (3) the final manuscript is satisfactory to the supervisory committee and is ready for submission to The Graduate School. _________________________ __________________________________________ Date Susan H. Duehlmeier Chair: Supervisory Committee Approved for the Major Department __________________________________ Robert Walzel Chair/Dean Approved for the Graduate Council __________________________________ Raymond Tymas-Jones Dean, College of Fine Arts ABSTRACT OF THE PAPER The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book: Historical Background and Performance Practice Issues by Pamela Palmer Jones Doctor of Musical Arts The University of Utah, 2009 Professor Susan H. Duehlmeier, Chair During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in England in the late sixteenth-early seventeenth centuries, very repressive anti-Catholic laws were enacted by Parliament. Catholicism then became the illegal underground religion of the gentry, sustained primarily by a web of intricate family alliances. The aims of this paper include: (1) a discussion of how the anti-Catholic laws passed by Parliament during the 1570s and 1580s severely affected the Tregian family, specifically Francis Tregian Sr. and Francis Tregian Jr.; (2) an in-depth exploration of the Tregian family's relationships with other aristocratic Catholic recusant families and musicians within the larger context of late sixteenth-century Tudor England; and (3) a detailed examination of the facsimile of the manuscript of The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book as an aid in creating a more accurate modern performing edition of four pieces from this anthology that have not been re-edited since the first printing by Breitkopf und Härtel in 1899. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 - The History of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book ................................................ 1 Description and Ownership ........................................................................................... 1 Political History of Tudor England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries ..................................................................................................................... 10 History of the Tregian Family: Francis Tregian Sr. and Francis Tregian Jr. ............. 14 Three Other "Tregian" Manuscripts ........................................................................... 28 Francis Tregian Jr. as Copyist - Legend or Fact? ....................................................... 29 Chapter 2 - A New Examination of the FVB Manuscript ............................................... 39 Chapter 3 - The Tregian Circle: Composers, Family, Friends, and Patrons .................... 51 Composers Represented in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book ......................................... 51 William Byrd (1539/43-1623) .............................................................................. 51 Dr. John Bull (ca. 1559-1628) .............................................................................. 53 Peter Philips (ca. 1560-1628) ................................................................................ 55 Giles Farnaby (ca. 1563-1640) ............................................................................. 56 Family, Friends, and Patrons ...................................................................................... 57 Chapter 4 - Performance Practice Issues .......................................................................... 63 The Edition of the FVB Published by Dover Publications ......................................... 63 Ornamentation ............................................................................................................. 64 Tempo ......................................................................................................................... 66 Fingering ..................................................................................................................... 67 Creating a New Performing Edition of Four Pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book ............................................................................................................................ 69 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 84 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 85 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank my DMA committee members for their guidance and support, especially Dr. Susan Duehlmeier and Dr. Margaret Rorke. I am extremely grateful for the unwavering love of my dear husband Alan and my three sons Andrus, Adam and Richard, all of whom had to put up with having a partially-absentee wife and mother for the past two years. I am also very thankful for my wonderful parents, Richard and Carolyn M. Palmer, who provided emotional and financial help throughout this endeavor. And finally, I give thanks to my best friend Jean Varney who so kindly offered invaluable help with the research for and editing of this D.M.A. document. CHAPTER 1 THE HISTORY OF THE FITZWILLIAM VIRGINAL BOOK Sometime between 1614 and 1617, a man from a very prominent English Catholic recusant family named Francis Tregian Jr. was imprisoned in London's Fleet Prison. During his confinement, he transcribed nearly 300 keyboard pieces into an anthology that today bears the name of Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Several other collections of music have subsequently been attributed to him as well, including a mammoth collection of over 1,200 madrigals and instrumental works known today as the Egerton 3665 manuscript. This chapter traces the history and ownership of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book from its present-day location in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge back through time to Francis Tregian Jr. and the Fleet Prison. The political and social climate of Elizabethan England will also be discussed, as well as the severe persecutions inflicted upon Tregian's devoutly Catholic family trying to survive in an extremely anti-Catholic atmosphere. Description and Ownership The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book is by far the largest of several manuscripts of harpsichord music that were compiled in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, during the late Tudor and early Stuart eras in England. For a time, it was thought that the collection had once belonged to Queen Elizabeth I, as it was formerly known as "Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book." Further research has proven, however, that the manuscript never belonged to Elizabeth I, and subsequently this collection was 2 named after its final owner, Viscount Fitzwilliam. Currently, it is housed in the Fitzwilliam Museum located in Cambridge, England. The manuscript is contained in a small volume, which consists of 220 leaves, with music filling 209 pages. The music is written on six-line staves with inner lines of each stave ruled by hand. The manuscript measures 33 9/10 centimeters by 22 centimeters (approximately 13 inches high and 9 inches wide).1 The red morocco gilt leather cover is enriched with gold tooling, the sides being sprinkled with fleurs-de-lis. 2 The paper most likely came from Basel, as the crozier-case watermark also appears in the arms of that town.3 The manuscript had been cut in places by the binder, but the style of the work shows that the binding dates from approximately the same time period as the handwriting. The book was compiled by Francis Tregian Jr., the oldest son of a wealthy Catholic family from Truro in Cornwall. Tradition has it that Tregian copied the manuscript sometime between 1611 and 1619, while he was serving time in the Fleet Prison in London for violation of English recusancy laws and failure to pay his debts.4 More recent scholarship from the 1990s has revised the dates of Francis Tregian Jr.'s 1 J.A. Fuller Maitland and W. Barclay Squire, eds., The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, vol. I, rev. ed. Blanche Winogron (New York: Dover Publications, 1979), iii. 2 Morocco leather, usually made from goatskin, is dyed red on the grain side to produce a bird's-eye effect. It is valued especially for bookbindings and purses. Definition from The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, s.v. "Morocco leather," http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0834070.html (accessed July 28, 2008). 3 Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: iii. 4 Anne Cuneo, "Francis Tregian the Younger: Musician, Collector and Humanist?" trans. Adrienne Burrows, Music and Letters 76 (1995): 401. 3 imprisonment to 1614-1617, and his death to 1617.5 It is also possible that Tregian began the process of compiling his keyboard anthology, along with his huge collection of vocal music, even earlier, during the late 1590s, while he was living on the Continent. After his death in 1617, the warden of the Fleet Prison claimed that Tregian owed him £200 for room and board. It appears that the warden recognized that Tregian's numerous books and manuscripts were valuable, particularly the "one book of gilt," as he attempted to claim possession of them in payment of the debt. Tregian's sisters also recognized the importance of the virginal book and had a difficult time obtaining possession of it from the warden.6 It is likely that Tregian's vast collection of music stayed within the protection of the extended Tregian family over the next century, although there are no surviving records of this. By 1740, the keyboard anthology had fallen into the possession of Dr. John Christopher Pepusch, a German composer and theorist living in London. Pepusch came to England in 1711 to work for the first Duke of Chandos, who was a direct descendent of the Tregian family.7 Pepusch worked extensively in operatic/theatrical circles in London and wrote the overture and several airs for John Gay's immensely popular The Beggars Opera. Pepusch was also a founding member of the Academy of Ancient Music (1726) and was known as one of the most learned antiquarians of his day.8 5 Raymond Francis Trudgian, Francis Tregian - 1548-1608 - Elizabethan recusant - A Truly Catholic Cornishman (Brighton: The Alpha Press, 1998), 41. 6 Ibid. 7 Elizabeth Cole, "Seven Problems of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. An Interim Report," Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 79 (1952-53): 64, http://jstor.org/journals (accessed December 30, 2007). 8 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, s.v. "Pepusch, Johann Christoph" (by Malcolm Boyd, Graydon Beeks and D.F. Cook), http://www.grovemusic.com/ (accessed October 19, 2008). 4 The particulars of how Pepusch came into possession of this collection are unknown. It seems that the knowledge or tradition of Francis Tregian Jr. as compiler of these manuscripts seems to have been lost at this point in time. Apparently Pepusch had shown his music collection to a man named John Ward, author of a book written in 1740 entitled Lives of the Gresham Professors. In his book, Ward made reference to Dr. John Bull's compositions that were found in Pepusch's keyboard collection, and also gave a physical description of the keyboard anthology, stating that it was "a large folio neatly written, bound in red Turkey leather and gilt." 9 Other contemporary books also mention this keyboard anthology, which was now associated with Tudor England and Queen Elizabeth I. In his History of Music (1776), Sir John Hawkins relates a story of Pepusch's wife, the opera star and amateur harpsichordist Margherita de l'Epine, who was unable to master the difficulties of the first piece in this keyboard collection, John Bull's variations on Walsingham. The erroneous connection between Tregian's keyboard anthology and Queen Elizabeth seems to have originated in Hawkins's book, where he stated that it once belonged to her.10 This same idea was also alluded to in Charles Burney's History of Music, which was also published in 1776. In it, he relates an account from Sir James Melvil's Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth's performance on the virginals, adding that "if Her Majesty was ever able to execute any of the pieces that are preserved in a MS. which goes under the name of Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book, she must have been a very great player."11 9 Edwin Naylor, An Elizabethan Virginal Book, rev.ed (1905; repr., New York: Da Capo Press, 1970), 9. 10 Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: iii. 11 Ibid, v. 5 By 1762, the keyboard collection had been purchased from the estate of Pepusch by a man named Robert Bremmer, and in 1783 it passed into the possession of Richard Fitzwilliam, seventh Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion and Thorncastle. Over the course of his lifetime, Fitzwilliam amassed a spectacular collection of works of art, antiquities, books, and music. His collection of music included Tregian's keyboard manuscript (which would be known as the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book after his death), Lord Herbert of Cherbury's Lutebook, fifteen volumes of G.F. Handel music manuscripts, and large quantities of prints and manuscripts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.12 At his death in February of 1816, Fitzwilliam bequeathed his entire collection to the University of Cambridge, together with the dividends from £100,000 of South Sea Islands annuities to pay for the construction of a museum to house the collection.13 The bulk of Fitzwilliam's collection was housed in the family mansion in Richmond. It was there in Richmond that Mr. James Bartleman prepared an index of the music of Fitzwilliam's collection.14 Known as an "incomparable bass singer,"15 12 Philip Olleson and Fiona M. Palmer, "Publishing Music from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge: The Work of Vincent Novello and Samuel Wesley in the 1820s," Journal of the Royal Musical Association 130 (2005): 40, http://www.jstor.org (accessed June 30, 2008). 13 Ibid. 14 Charles Cudworth, "A Cambridge Anniversary: 2," The Musical Times 107 (1966): 209, http://www.jstor.org (accessed June 30, 2008). 15The Georgian Era: Memoires of the Most Eminent Persons, who have Flourished in Great Britain, from the Accession of George the First to the Demise of George the Fourth (London: Vizetelly, Branston & Co., 1834), 4: 537. 6 Bartleman "owed much of the grandeur of his style to his profound knowledge of the most sublime compositions of every age and country."16 The index was compiled in March of 1816, only a month after Fitzwilliam's death and before the entire collection was permanently moved to Cambridge. An account of the contents of the collection reads: A catalogue of [Fitzwilliam's] music was prepared by the well-known bass singer James Bartleman . . . . From it we can derive a very good estimate of the richness and range of his Lordship's music collection. The greater part was by Italian composers, ranging from Palestrina and Marenzio via Stradella and the Scarlattis to Steffani and Clari, Leo and Pergolesi and Paradies, and the other eminent Italians of Fitzwilliam's own day. But there were Frenchmen there as well; Lully and Rameau, of course, and others such as Lalande and Couperin, Colasse, Charpentier, and even Mlle. Jacquet de la Guerre. And there were many English composers, too, ranging from the great names of the Golden Age, Morley and Byrd in particular, and of course the famous Virginal Book composers, through the eminent men of the 17th century, Blow and Purcell, to the Georgian composers of the mid-18th. Not many German names, though, unless you count Pepusch and Handel and Hasse, who were less German than English or Italian. There was a great deal of harpsichord music, for it seems that his Lordship had been no mean keyboard player, and indeed even left some books which according to Bartleman were filled with Fitzwilliam's own compositions for harpsichord and organ.17 A copy of Bartleman's index, which listed the contents of the "Virginal Book," was written down by Mr. Henry Smith in the back of the manuscript. At the end of the index is the following postscript: "Henry Smith, Richmond, Scripsit / from a M.S. Index in the Possession of Mr. Bartleman / 24 March 1816." 18 When Fitzwilliam's massive collection arrived in Cambridge in the spring of 1816, a supervisory committee was set up to oversee the task of cataloguing and 16 George Hogarth, Musical History, Biography, and Criticism: Being a General Survey of Music from the Earliest Period to the Present Time (London: John W. Parker, 1835), 423, http://books.google.com/books (accessed 26 June 2008). 17 Cudworth, "Cambridge Anniversary," 209. 18 Francis Tregian Jr., Fitzwilliam Virginal Book [manuscript], i. 7 managing this enormous bequest. William Shield was put in charge of cataloguing the music in the collection, and the task was completed by August 16, 1816, only six months after the death of Fitzwilliam. At this point, nothing further was done with Fitzwilliam's music collection for eight years, until 1824, when the Senate of Cambridge University decided that parts of the collection should be made available for editing or publication. This decision resulted in the issuing of Vincent Novello's five-volume set, The Fitzwilliam Music (1825-27), which contained Roman Catholic church music by Italian composers of the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. There was also an edition by Samuel Wesley of three hymn tunes by Handel set to words by his father, Charles Wesley. An edition of motets from William Byrd's Gradualia was also planned, but, because of financial difficulties, this project never materialized.19 None of the keyboard works from Fitzwilliam's collection were published at this time, although it was known that these works existed and were housed at Cambridge. For example, William Chappell makes reference to the "Elizabethan" virginal manuscripts in a book he wrote in 1859. In spite of the knowledge of its existence, the manuscript remained in obscurity until 1887, when it was rediscovered in the archives during the continuing process of cataloguing Fitzwilliam's collection. In 1894, a huge transcription and editing project was undertaken by J.A. Fuller Maitland, the distinguished music critic of the London Times, and his brother-in-law William Barclay Squire, editor and music librarian of the British Museum in London.20 The task was finished in 1899 and was soon afterwards published as The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (FVB) by Breitkopf und Hӓrtel. 19 Olleson and Palmer, "Publishing Music," 73. 20 Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: iii. 8 The 297 compositions in the FVB were mostly written by native Englishmen. Those composers featured most prominently in the collection are William Byrd, John Bull, Giles Farnaby, and Peter Philips. The amount of music written by these four men represents about two thirds of the total music in the entire collection. In fact, the FVB contains all of the known keyboard music written by Giles Farnaby except for two pieces. Other English keyboard composers represented are William Blithman, Richard Farnaby, Orlando Gibbons, James Harding, William Inglot, Edward Johnson, Robert Johnson, Thomas Morley, John Munday, Robert Persons, Martin Peerson, Ferdinando Richardson, Nicholas Strogers, Thomas Tallis, William Tisdall, Thomas Tomkins, Francis Tregian Jr., and Thomas Warrock. A few of these composers, such as Tallis and Gibbons, are well-known, but most of the others remain obscure even today. In spite of the preponderance of English works, the FVB also contains a number of Italian compositions, with an occasional German and French piece and intabulations of Italian madrigals thrown into the mix. Names such as Caccini, Galeazzo, Lasso, Marenzio, Pichi, Striggio are found in the collection along with Marchant and Oystermayre. Several pieces by the great Netherlandish organist and composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck also appear in the FVB. From the multi-national flavor of the compositions represented in the FVB, it seems that the original collector was someone who was quite familiar with both English and continental European musical styles. This description perfectly fits Francis Tregian Jr., as he had spent many years of his life on the Continent, receiving his education in France, and working in Rome and the Spanish Netherlands. The FVB also contains a wide variety of genres: • 134 dances (pavans, galliards, almans, corantos, gigges, maskes, toyes, lavoltas, rounds, spagniolettas, brauls, moriscos, and muscadins) 9 • 17 organ pieces, such as settings of plainchants, In nomines, etc. • 46 arrangements of 40 different popular songs • 9 arrangements of madrigals • 22 fantasias and ricercares • 7 fancies • 19 preludes • 6 compositions based on the hexachord In his book entitled An Elizabethan Virginal Book (1905), Edwin Naylor says: The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book can tell us more about the state of music in Elizabeth's days than many of us have ever known about our own times. . . . It is not going too far to say that if all other remains of the period were destroyed, it would be possible to rewrite the History of Music from 1550 to 1620 on the material which we have in the Fitzwilliam Book alone.21 The important historical position of the FVB in relation to other Elizabethan keyboard repertoire is significant. The most important of these anthologies include: • My Ladye Nevells Booke (1590) contains 40 pieces by William Byrd. This magnificent book was copied by a professional scribe named John Baldwin, under the supervision of Byrd himself. It is currently housed at Eridge Castle as the personal property of the Abergavenny family. First published in 1926 by J. Curwen and Sons, London, it is now available through a Dover reprint. • Benjamin Cosyn's Virginal Book (1600), housed in Buckingham Palace, contains 98 virginal pieces. Composers represented include Orlando Gibbons, John Bull, William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, Nicholas Strogers, Thomas Weelkes, and Elway Bevin. • Will Foster's Virginal Book, also located in Buckingham Palace, contains 70 pieces by the above-named composers, plus Thomas Morley and John Ward. • Parthenia (1611) has the distinction of being the first music for the virginals ever to be printed. It contains 21 works by Bull, Byrd, and Gibbons. 22 21 Naylor, Elizabethan Virginal Book, 4. 22 Ibid., 1-3. 10 Although all of these anthologies are very important, they are eclipsed by the sheer size of the FVB. With 297 compositions in all, it is much larger than the other Elizabethan compilations and contains the greater part of the repertoire of the English virginal school. Political History of Tudor England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries In order to fully understand the significance of the music that was chosen by Francis Tregian Jr. for inclusion in his keyboard anthology, it is necessary to know something of the tumultuous religious and political history of England throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In 1485, the War of the Roses between the Houses of York and Lancaster finally came to an end. Henry Tudor of the House of Lancaster claimed victory over Richard III and thus became Henry VII, King of England by "right of conquest." His tenuous claim to the throne was strengthened through the bloodline of his mother, Margaret Beaufort, a descendant of Edward III. Henry later solidified his claim by marrying Elizabeth of York, the eldest child of the late King Edward IV, thereby uniting the two factions. Henry VII was a successful king in restoring faith and strength in the monarchy. He managed to establish a new dynasty after thirty years of struggle, strengthened the judicial system, built up the treasury, and successfully denied all other claimants to the throne. At his death, he left a fairly secure and wealthy monarchy. His oldest son, Arthur, was expected to become the next king. Arthur and Catherine of Aragon (daughter of famed Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella) were betrothed as young children as part of an alliance between England and Spain. Unfortunately, Arthur died of tuberculosis after only a few months of marriage to Catherine. It was then arranged that the next son, Henry, should marry Catherine when he became of age. According to the 11 book of Leviticus, marriage to a dead brother's wife was prohibited, although Catherine insisted throughout her life that her marriage to Arthur had not been consummated. It was for this reason that a papal dispensation was sought and obtained, so that the legitimacy of the new marriage between Henry and Catherine would be recognized by all parties. At the death of his father, Henry VIII became king in 1509 and soon thereafter married Catherine of Aragon. Catherine bore him several children, but only Mary would survive. In pursuit of a male heir, Henry later sought a divorce from Catherine. After failing to obtain papal approval for this divorce, Henry broke all ties with Rome and with Catholicism, and set out to create a state church. The Church of England now became the official religion of the country, and anti-Catholic or "recusancy" laws were then enacted and put into practice. Henry went on to marry five more wives, divorcing several and executing two. When he died in 1547, Henry VIII had only three surviving legitimate children: Edward VI (son of third wife, Jane Seymour), Mary (daughter of first wife, Catherine of Aragon), and Elizabeth (daughter of second wife, Anne Boleyn). At the age of nine, Prince Edward was too young to rule. Instead, he would be "guided" through a council of regency. The first leader of the council was Edward's maternal uncle, Edward Seymour, First Duke of Somerset, who was appointed to serve as Lord Protector of the Realm and Governor of the King's Person from 1547-49. A series of internal rebellions coupled with steep inflation caused great social unrest in England during this time, and, when France formally declared war on England in 1549, Somerset was soon deposed by the council. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he was later executed in the early 1550s. 12 The council was then led by John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, 1st Duke of Northumberland, from 1549 to Edward's death in 1553. The rise to power of the Duke of Northumberland also led to an increase in the persecution of Catholics in England. Under his leadership all official editions of the Bible were replaced with those with anti- Catholic annotations. Mobs were encouraged to desecrate Catholic symbols in churches. The Ordinal of 1550 replaced the divine ordination of priests with a system in which the government appointed priests instead. Parliament also passed the Act of Uniformity of 1552, which replaced the Book of Common Prayer (1549) with a newer and more Protestant version. This book was the only authorized one for church services, and anyone who did not attend a service where this liturgy was used faced imprisonment ranging from six months to life. Edward became ill with tuberculosis in early 1553, and it soon became clear that he was dying. According to Henry VIII's will, his daughters Mary and Elizabeth were next in line for the throne, followed by his niece, Lady Frances Brandon, daughter of his younger sister Mary, the Duchess of Suffolk. The Duke of Northumberland did not find any of these three women to his liking, so he devised a plan to retain his power by altering the line of succession. Part of his plan included marrying his son, Guilford Dudley, to Lady Jane Grey, the daughter of Lady Frances Brandon, who was a first cousin to Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth. After the marriage took place, two different versions of Edward's will that contained the Device to Alter the Succession were written in Edward's own hand. The first excluded Mary, Elizabeth, the Duchess of Suffolk, and Lady Jane Grey from the line of succession, with the crown being left only to Lady Jane Grey's male heirs. When it became clear that Edward would die before Lady Jane Grey could produce a male heir, Edward's second draft of the Device to Alter the Succession stipulated that the crown would be left to Lady Jane and her male heirs. Edward finally 13 died on July 6, 1553 at the age of fifteen, and a power struggle immediately ensued. Although some supported Lady Jane's claim to the throne, most people maintained that Mary was the rightful heir, based on Henry VIII's Act of Succession (1543), which stipulated that Mary, then Elizabeth, would follow Edward in the line of succession. Lady Jane's reign was brief, lasting only nine days, after which Mary Tudor was proclaimed the rightful queen. The Duke of Northumberland was executed soon afterwards. Lady Jane, her husband, and her father would eventually share that same fate. As the fourth crowned monarch of the Tudor dynasty, Mary was devoutly loyal to the memory of her mother, Catherine, to her half-Spanish heritage, and to Catholicism. Mary and her cousin, papal legate Cardinal Pole, promptly set out to restore Catholicism in England. Although her reign of five years proved to be a brief respite from persecution for her Catholic subjects, Mary's unwise decision to marry Phillip II of Spain cost her most of the initial popularity that she had enjoyed with the English public. Eventually, she became known as "Bloody Mary" because of the persecution and killing of hundreds of Protestant dissenters during her five-year reign. After her death in 1558, Mary's younger half-sister, Elizabeth Tudor, became queen. Although it has been said that Elizabeth was personally ambivalent towards religion, as the monarch she chose to continue with the process that her father, Henry VIII, had begun many years before: nationalizing England's state religion.23 In Elizabeth's realm, to be a Catholic was to be an "unnatural" Englishman. This attitude stemmed from a perceived threat of enemies from within (the English Catholic seminary 23 Alice Hogge, God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005), 9. 14 priests and Jesuits who were illegally reentering the country after receiving their training on the Continent) and without (France, the Pope, and Spain). During Elizabeth's reign, severe persecutions against English Catholics would reach an all-time high, especially from the early 1570s until the mid 1590s, as numerous pieces of legislation were passed aimed directly against Catholics. Much of the legislation involved exorbitant fines, but the most severe of the laws included death by drawing and quartering of any Catholic priest or Jesuit who was caught on English soil, and for those who harbored any such priests, praemunire, the complete loss of lands and wealth coupled with imprisonment for life. It is this volatile political society and intolerant religious climate of Elizabethan England which provides the backdrop and context to both the Tregian family saga and the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. History of the Tregian Family: Francis Tregian Sr. and Francis Tregian Jr. In his book entitled Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Time (1859), William Chappell proposed the idea that the "Elizabethan manuscript" might have been made for or by an English resident of the Netherlands and that Dr. Pepusch probably obtained it in that country. This conjecture was based on the fact that the name "Tregian" was the only name that occurred frequently in abbreviated form throughout the manuscript. Additionally, a sonnet signed "Fr. Tregian" prefaced Richard Verstegan's Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, which was published in 1605 in Antwerp.24 Verstegan was an expatriate Catholic Englishman living in the Netherlands. His 24 Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: vii. 15 occupation was publisher of Catholic devotional books and anti-Elizabethan political tracts, but he was also the corresponding agent for Cardinal Allen in Rome and for the Jesuits.25 Maitland and Squire also noticed that references to the name "Tregian" were found in several places scattered throughout the FVB: • No. 60, Treg Ground by William Byrd (vol. I, p. 226 of Dover Edition) • No. 80, Pavana Doloros. Treg by Peter Philips (vol. I, p. 321) • No. 93, Pavana Ph. Tr. by William Byrd (vol. I, p. 367) • No. 181, A Gigg. by William Byrd (vol. II, p. 237) In the margin of this piece are the letters "F. Tr." • No. 214, Pavana Chromatica. Mrs Katherin Tregians Paven by William Tisdall (vol. II, p. 278) • No. 105, Heaven and Earth by Fre [thought to be an abbreviation for Francis Tregian] • No. 160, Rowland by William Byrd (vol. II, p. 190). There is a marginal note which reads "300 to S.T. by Tom." This is probably a reference to Sybil Tregian, sister of Francis Tregian Jr.26 Maitland and Squire continued to research the name "Tregian" and found that the Tregians had been a rich and powerful Catholic family living in Truro in Cornwall. For a time, John Tregian, the grandfather of Francis Tregian Sr., served as an officer in the royal court, as Esquire of the Body to Henry VIII, Steward of the Chamber, and Gentleman Sewer of the King's Chamber.27 In recognition of a job well done, in 1514 he 25 The Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. "Richard Verstegan" (by J. H. Pollen), http://www.catholicity.com/encyclopedia/v/ verstegan,richard.html (accessed 7/13/08). 26 Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: vi. 27 P.A. Boyan and G.R. Lamb, Francis Tregian: Cornish Recusant (London: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 20. 16 was granted a lifetime monopoly in the exporting of cowhides out of Cornwall.28 He became very wealthy and accumulated much property. The wealth and prestige of the Tregian family increased even further when his son, John Tregian Jr., married Katherin Arundell, thus creating an alliance between two of the most powerful families in Cornwall. This marriage greatly chagrined another powerful Cornish family, the Protestant Greenville's, led by Sir Richard Grenville. Sir Richard had attempted to marry his daughter to John Tregian Jr., but his efforts went unrewarded. As a future sheriff of Cornwall, Grenville's grandson, Richard, would later be one of the prime instigators against the Tregian family. Like the Tregian family, the Arundell family was staunchly Catholic. In 1549, during King Edward's reign, an Arundell was one of the leaders in the ill-fated "Rebellion of the West," in which an army of Cornish Catholic insurgents had planned to march on London in an effort to restore the "old religion." John Tregian Jr.'s father-in-law, Sir John Arundell, and his brother, Thomas Arundell, were arrested as part of this uprising, and both were imprisoned in the Tower of London. Thomas Arundell was later beheaded for conspiring against the Duke of Northumberland, the de facto ruler of England during this time. Sir John was luckier than his brother; when Mary came to the throne in 1553, he was released from prison and returned to Cornwall as the newly appointed sheriff.29 John Tregian Jr. and Katherin Arundell were the parents of Francis Tregian Sr., who was born around the time of the Cornish Rebellion (1549). At the age of twenty- 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid., 23 17 one, Francis married Mary Stourton, also linked to the Arundell family.30 The exact date of the marriage is unknown, although it was probably around 1570. During the 1560s, the policies toward Catholic citizens in England were those of deprivation rather than of persecution. Many former Catholic priests (including the so-called "Marian" priests who were ordained during Mary's reign) now chose to serve as priests in the English Church. It was common during this time for a bishop to turn a blind eye to the superficial conformity of these ex-Marian clergy, allowing them great freedom in officiating the services.31 Many of the gentry in England during this decade were still Catholic, and it was common for a Catholic aristocratic family to have its own priest on the estate, living in disguise. It was also common for these aristocrats to send their sons over to the Continent to further their religious education. There was a tremendous shortage of qualified Catholic clergy and teachers and no Catholic schools or universities in England during this time, since these were all illegal. Soon after his marriage, Francis Tregian Sr. went abroad, presumably to further his religious studies. This would have been sometime between 1570 and 1572.32 Many of his fellow Catholics had also been leaving the country for the same reason, so in 1571 Parliament passed an act which made it an offence for any of the Queen's subjects to leave the country without an official license and not return within six months. The penalty for disobeying this law was the loss of lands and material goods for life. Francis came back to England before his six months were up, returning to his wife and family. 30 Francis Plunkett, Heroum speculum de vita D.D. Francisci Tregeon (Lisbon, 1655), repr. with English translation, no city, date), 12. 31 Adrian Morey, The Catholic Subjects of Elizabeth I (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978), 40. 32 Boyan and Lamb, Cornish Recusant, 24. 18 He then decided to go to London and live at Elizabeth's court for a time. His primary motivation for doing this was to plead the Catholic cause before the Queen. From all accounts it seems that Francis was a very charming and successful courtier, and eventually he did get the attention of the Queen, although certainly not in a way that he had intended. It seems that Elizabeth was enamored of Francis Tregian, and she proposed to make him a viscount, an offer which Tregian quickly refused. He explained to the Queen that the main purpose behind his appearance at court was to plead for the rights of Catholics in England.33 Rather than having him arrested and imprisoned for this seemingly treasonous behavior, Elizabeth allowed him to remain at court. An account of what happened next was written by Francis's grandson, Father Francis Plunkett: The friendship of Elizabeth for Francis developed into passion, and she desired to keep him as near to her person as she felt him near to her heart. As the attraction waxed stronger, Elizabeth offered to make Francis a Viscount, but he, in his modesty, shrank from the burden and courteously declined the honour, lest, as he said, this premature mark of royal favour should detract from his merits by being attributed solely to affection. "To me," he added, "it would be quite enough, if the Faith, for the sake of which I came to Court, should breathe more freely and recover strength." But because violent passion exceeds all bounds and knows no law, it came to pass shortly afterwards that the Queen, late at night, sent . . . one of those ladies who are called Maids of Honour. She earnestly begged him to go and see the Queen without delay . . . . She added that he had captivated the Queen, that nothing more agreeable could be imagined than that their intercourse, with increasing familiarity, should ripen into intimate friendship, and that Francis ought to realize what immense advantages would accrue to him from the favours of royalty.34 Francis was greatly upset by this royal proposition, as he wished to honor his marriage vows, yet he also saw that he and his family would be in danger if he refused the Queen. He told the lady-in-waiting that he was very ill and that he must be excused for not complying with Her Majesty's wishes. A short time later Queen Elizabeth herself 33 Ibid., 27. 34 Plunkett, Heroum speculum, 12. 19 came to Tregian's room to assess the situation. She again offered to make him a viscount. Again, Tregian refused her offer, expressing his great unworthiness at such a high honor, but this time he offered the Queen his entire fortune and all of his possessions. She could have everything that was his except for his conscience. His refusal of her amorous advances greatly enraged Elizabeth, and she was deeply offended and insulted. After she stormed out of the room, Francis Tregian packed his bags in a hurry and left in the middle of the night for Cornwall. The account by Plunkett continues: When Elizabeth heard of Tregian's departure, thinking herself deceived by him, she flew into a most unroyal rage. With an oath she asserted that the traitor had left to plot some crime against her royal person; called him a perfidious criminal, and declared that being a Catholic, nothing but evil could be expected of him. She ordered the laws enacted against Catholics to be published without delay, and further commanded the Knight Marshal to proceed against the said Francis, his family, and dependents with all rigour, and promised their property and goods to him for his pains. 35 The Knight Marshal was Sir George Carey, a cousin to Queen Elizabeth. He was the grandson son of Henry VIII and Mary Boleyn, Anne Boleyn's sister. As Knight Marshal, Carey was in charge of one of the most notorious prisons in England, the Marshalsea. Carey immediately got in touch with Richard Grenville, who was by then the appointed sheriff in Cornwall, to enlist his help in framing Francis Tregian. Grenville, who had no love for the Tregian or Arundell families, was more than happy to assist with this task. A plan was hatched with the intent of ruining the Tregian family by enforcing the anti-Catholic recusancy laws. In June of 1577, Richard Grenville appeared at the door of 35 Ibid., 15. Because Francis Plunkett is the only source for this account, its authenticity has been questioned by historians. On the other hand, he heard it directly from his mother, Philippa Tregian, and it might only be family members who knew the true story. 20 the Tregian mansion, accompanied by eight or nine justices of the peace and one hundred armed men, and demanded to search the premises under the false pretense of looking for an escaped prisoner. Grenville had no search warrant, so, when Tregian refused him entrance, he and his armed men barged in and ransacked the house, looking for evidence. Grenville and his men found Cuthbert Mayne, the Catholic seminary priest for the Tregian household, who lived on the Tregian estate disguised as the steward. Francis Tregian and Cuthbert Mayne would be the first nobleman and priest to be prosecuted under the full penalty of recusancy laws. For two years, Francis Tregian was confined illegally without a hearing or fair trial in some of the worst prisons in England and under the vilest of conditions. Eventually, he was convicted of recusancy in 1579 and was then deprived of all of his property, money, and possessions and sentenced to life in prison. Soon afterwards his wife and three little children were thrown out of their house in the dead of winter with only the clothes on their back, when Carey took over the Tregian estate. Mary Tregian was eight months pregnant at the time. As for the priest, Cuthbert Mayne (who had studied for the priesthood at Dr. William Allen's English College in Douai and had then come back to England illegally as an ordained Catholic priest), his fate was even more horrific than Tregian's. Mayne was convicted of high treason and sentenced to death. His sentence read as follows: That you be taken to the place from whence you came, and from thence be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, where you shall be hanged by the neck, not till you are dead; that you be taken down, while yet alive, and your bowels be taken out and burnt before your face. That your head be then cut off and your body cut in four quarters to be at the [Queen's] disposal. And God Almighty have mercy on your soul.36 36 Boyan and Lamb, Cornish Recusant, 56. 21 Mayne was the first seminary priest from the English College in Douai to be executed for high treason; about one third of the graduates of this seminary would eventually suffer the same fate. Nearly four centuries later, in 1970, Cuthbert Mayne was canonized as a martyr in the Catholic faith, and Francis Tregian as a confessor.37 It was thought that punishing both Francis Tregian and Cuthbert Mayne to the full extent of the law would discourage other Catholic aristocrats from having their own priests on their estates. In reality, however, it did little to stop the English aristocrats from practicing Catholicism. It seems that many times the degree of punishment of recusants depended on the whims of the monarch. For example, Francis Tregian's father-in- law, Sir John Arundell, did not suffer the loss of all his money and property, as did his son-in-law, even though he also spent time in prison and was fined repeatedly for recusancy. It seems likely that the severity of Tregian's punishment was based on the fact that he had personally offended the Queen in a very embarrassing way. Prison life was nearly fatal for Francis Tregian, and he suffered terribly. He was confined in two of the most horrendous prisons in England, the Marshalsea Prison and later in Launceston Prison. He was almost murdered several times by other inmates, and finally he became very ill due to unsanitary living conditions. His captors also tried starving him to death in an effort to break his spirits. Amazingly enough, Mary Tregian chose to join her husband in captivity in the Launceston Prison. She also suffered terribly. She gave birth to two children in these filthy conditions, and neither child survived. She was finally forced to leave her husband for a time and stay with her mother in an effort to regain her health. 37 The Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. "Blessed Cuthbert Maine" (by John Wainewright), http://www.newadvent.org/ (accessed 28 July 2008). 22 The Tregian and Arundell families still had some royal connections, and so in 1580 Francis Tregian was transferred from the Launceston Prison to the Fleet Prison, where his living conditions greatly improved. Francis and Mary Tregian were the parents of twelve children, eight of which were born while he was a prisoner at the Fleet.38 The fact that Francis Tregian Sr. was able to father so many children while confined to prison or that later his son, Francis Tregian Jr., would be able to amass such a large and valuable collection of books while he was also a prisoner in the Fleet requires some explanation. Unlike the Marshalsea and Launceston Prisons, which existed for the sole purposes of torturing inmates or holding hardened criminals, the Fleet Prison was a money-making enterprise, which was populated primarily by upper-class debtors and political dissidents. It seems that Francis Tregian and later his son, Francis Tregian Jr., lived in relative comfort in a private room in the Fleet because they had been wealthy and still had rich relatives who could help pay for their room and board. According to Annika Jokinen: All prisoners had to pay fees for their lodgings and for favorable treatment. The wardens of the Fleet were notorious for charging exorbitantly high sums and abusing their posts. Prisoners, for a certain sum, could reside within the Liberties of the Fleet, or mansion houses near the prison. Here too, money could buy a certain amount of freedom; alas, for the debtors, such possibilities were few.39 Soon after he arrived at the Fleet, Francis Tregian Sr. was moved from the Common Ward into a private suite, which included a study. Here he was able to write poetry, study foreign languages, and conduct a busy social life in the prison, along with other intellectual recusants. It was also widely known that for a certain price a prisoner 38 Trudgeon, Francis Tregian, 42-43. 39 Luminarium, s.v. "Fleet Prison" (by Anniina Jokinen), www.luminarium.org/ encyclopedia/fleetprison.htm (accessed February 14, 2008). 23 could leave under surveillance, and unaccompanied for an even higher price. This would explain how his son, Francis Tregian Jr., would later have the chance to travel, continue to collect music, and attend to the copying of the manuscripts that he had presumably accumulated on his travels.40 Mary Tregian was again allowed to live with her husband. She was free to move about as she pleased and was even allowed to attend court, where she unsuccessfully attempted many times to entreat Queen Elizabeth to release Francis from prison. Apparently Mary Tregian was well-acquainted with William Byrd's brother, John, and so it is likely that William Byrd also knew the Tregian family, especially since the surname "Tregian" appears in titles of several of his keyboard works found in the FVB.41 After spending twenty-four years in confinement, Francis Tregian was granted parole in 1601.42 Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, and in 1605 the new monarch, James I, banished him. Tregian left England in July of 1606 and subsequently immigrated to Spain, visiting the colleges of Douai and Brussels en route. There is no record of his wife accompanying him. In Spain he was given a hero's welcome by King Philip III, who also granted him a pension. Tregian eventually retired to Lisbon, where he died on September 25, 1608 at the age of sixty. Seventeen years later he was re-buried standing up, facing England, an honor which signified that he had stood up to the Queen for his beliefs. Over time his burial place has become a pilgrimage site for Catholics. 40 Cuneo, "Francis Tregian the Younger," 402. 40 Naylor, Elizabethan Virginal Book, 9. 41 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, s.v. "Tregian, Francis" (by O.W. Neighbour), http://www.grovemusic.com/ (accessed February 14, 2008). 42 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. "Tregian, Francis" (by Raymond Francis Trudgian), http://www.oxforddnb.com/ (accessed June 30, 2008). 24 Francis Tregian Jr. was the oldest son of Francis and Mary Tregian and the presumed compiler and scribe of the FVB. He was born in 1574 at Golden Manor, the Tregian family seat in Cornwall. Francis Jr. and his younger brother, Charles, were both educated abroad at Eu and at the English College at Douai that was later moved to Rheims. It should be remembered that, according to English recusancy law, the practice of sending Catholic children away from England to be educated was strictly prohibited. The English College in Douai was founded in 1568 by Dr. William Allen, one of the ex- Oxford Catholic professors who fled England after Elizabeth I came to power. Many of these exiled professors had congregated into a colony in Douai. The main objective of Allen's college was to train young Englishmen to be Catholic priests in the hope that someday Catholicism would be restored to England. Dr. Allen left Rheims for reasons of health, and was afterwards summoned to Rome to help with the English College there. He was promoted to Cardinal in 1587 and remained in Rome for the rest of his life. It is possible that Francis Jr. was later able to secure employment as a personal secretary to Cardinal Allen in 1592 because of his success as an outstanding student and orator at the English College in Douai.43 Cardinal Allen sincerely believed that it was in England's best interest to return to "the old religion," and he was engaged in activities against Queen Elizabeth to help facilitate this return. Cardinal Allen had in fact helped plan the Spanish Armada's invasion of England, and, if that plan had succeeded, Allen would have been appointed both Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. Allen also encouraged Pope Pius V to issue the Papal Bull "Regnet in Excelsis," which excommunicated Elizabeth I and declared her deposed. After this bull was issued in 1570, Elizabeth chose not to continue 43 Pamela Willetts, "Oportet Meliora Tempora Non Expectare Sed Facere. The Arduous Life of Francis Tregian, The Younger," Recusant History 28:3 (2007): 380. 25 her policy of religious tolerance and instead began actively persecuting her religious opponents.44 Therefore, rather than helping the situation of his fellow Catholics back home, the effect of Allen's Counter-Reformation activities abroad resulted in making life even more difficult for Roman Catholics in England. In Cardinal Allen's papers, Francis Tregian Jr. is described as "of great nobility, a secular person [not an ordained priest], twenty years old, layman, exceptional intelligence, versed in philosophy, in music, and in the Latin language."45 Cardinal Allen died in 1594, and it was Francis Tregian Jr. who delivered the eulogy at Allen's funeral. There is also a record of Francis Tregian Jr. returning to England in 1594 to visit his parents. After Allen's death, he went to work for Albert, Archduke of the Spanish Netherlands, where he came in contact with the English composer Peter Philips. It is likely that when Francis Tregian Sr. left England in July 1606 on his way to Spain, he also visited his son, Francis Jr., in Brussels, where he presumably gave him instructions to return to England as head of the Tregian family to reclaim the properties and titles that had been confiscated by the Crown.46 By December of 1606, Francis Jr. was back in England and had begun the task of reclaiming possession of his family's estate, which had been given to George Carey (Lord Hundson) by Queen Elizabeth. In 1614, he was convicted of recusancy and debt and sentenced to the Fleet Prison, just as his father had been before him.47 The fact that he had worked for Archduke Albert, an enemy to Queen 44 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. "Allen, William (1532-1594)" (by Eamon Duffy), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/391 (accessed July 29, 2008). 45 Cuneo, "Francis Tregian the Younger," 403: "molto nobile, di 20 anni, secolare, di ingenio felicissimo, dotto in filosofia, in musica, et nella lingua Latina." 46 Willetts, "Arduous Life of Francis Tregian, The Younger" 382, fn. 42. 47 Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: vii. 26 Elizabeth, was a factor in his sentencing. Tregian was known to have been working on a very important book for two years while he was confined in the Fleet, which scholars now believe was the FVB. Francis Tregian Jr. died in the Fleet Prison in 1617 at the age of forty-three.48 In the 1899 publication of the FVB, Barclay and Squire listed incorrectly the date of Francis Tregian Jr.'s imprisonment as 1609 and his death as 1619. They wrote: From a statement drawn up by the Warden of the Fleet prison (apparently about 1622), it seems that at his death he owed over £200 for meat, drink and lodging, though in his rooms there were many hundreds of books, the ownership of which formed a matter of dispute between his sisters and the Warden. It may be conjectured with much plausibility that the present collection of music was written by the younger Tregian to wile away his time in prison.49 This fragmentary passage about Francis Tregian Jr. formulated by Barclay and Squire became the basis of the story of Tregian and his keyboard manuscript, which would remain unchanged for many years. Over fifty years later, in 1952, Elizabeth Cole wrote an article entitled "Seven Problems of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book." This oft-quoted article is considered to be one of the most authoritative even today, in spite of the fact that many of her conclusions are now thought to be incomplete or somewhat inaccurate. Cole was able to locate a signature of Francis Tregian Jr. on a legal document, along with other writings purportedly in his hand. As the handwriting style of the legal documents seemed to match that of the FVB, this appeared to be the long-awaited proof that Tregian Jr. was indeed the copyist of the Fitzwilliam manuscript. 48 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. "Tregian, Francis." 49 Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: viii. 27 Cole was of the opinion that the FVB was a musical representation of Tregian's friends, many of them living underground lives in the face of political and religious turmoil. She wrote: As for the question of who made [the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book], Squire noticed a set of initials in some of the titles like ‘Pavana Treg': at one point the name appears in full as ‘Tregian.' This led him to surmise that the book was written for or by one of the Tregian family, the two heads of which spent a total of thirty-four years in prison for Catholic recusancy. . . . Now going directly to the MS. we find . . . that no less than seventeen other names (both in full and in abbreviation) appear in exactly the same circumstances as the name of Tregian- that is, in the titles of the pieces and in the margins. . . . Between the lines of music cluster these little groups of men and women and they mean nothing to us. But they must surely have meant something to the composers and to the maker of the book. . . . To find out who they are and what they are doing there we must reverse the usual process of reading history backwards and go ourselves to the scene of action. Let us then go back for a few moments to the London of the first Elizabethan age, forgetting the musical statistics, and using the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book as a map of fifty years in the most troubled period of our history. The first stop is Tower Hill, a familiar piece by Giles Farnaby, and a place with two special features. From Stowe's Survey of London, we learn that "Upon this hill is alwayes prepared . . . a large Scaffolde and Gallowes for the execution of such Traytors as are delivered out of the Tower." Along one side of it runs the wall and entrance to ‘Lord Lumley's House.' Now Lord Lumley, introduced by Bull as the first of [Tregian's] friends pictured within the Book, came from a long line of Catholic conspirators. He was deeply implicated in the Ridolfi plot, to marry his brother-in-law to Mary Queen of Scots. For twenty years he was in and out of various prisons, and died in his house on Tower Hill in 1609. The Elizabethan age was an uncomfortable time for the old diehards; an age of violent contrast, of feminine inconsistency, and of fear which radiated downwards from the Queen herself, for one tends to forget that for fifty years she went in fear for her very life.50 Cole then goes on to talk about several other references to Catholicism which Tregian wrote in the margins of the manuscript. According to Cole, the "Pagget" for whom Peter Philips wrote the Pavana and Galiarda was a Charles Pagget, Catholic spy 50 Cole, "Seven Problems of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book," 52-53. 28 and agent of the Spanish king.51 William Byrd's Lady Montegle's Paven was dedicated to Lady Montegle but written for her husband, who helped dispatch an envoy to Spain with an invitation for King Philip to invade England. The anonymous composition entitled Lady Rich refers to a warm-hearted Catholic-sympathizer cousin of the Tregian family. "Ph Tr" and "S.T." refer to sisters of Francis Tregian Jr., Philippa and Sybil.52 Three Other "Tregian" Manuscripts Around 1950, the British Museum acquired a manuscript that contained about 1,200 villanellas, madrigals, and instrumental pieces primarily written by English and Italian composers. Identified as Egerton 3665, this huge anthology became of interest almost immediately because the handwriting in the manuscript appeared to be the same as the handwriting found in the FVB. In 1951, Bertram Schofield and Thurston Dart wrote an article for Music and Letters. In it they said the following: Whoever wrote the famous Fitzwilliam Book also wrote Egerton 3665. The two hands are identical, even down to minute details of erasure, pagination, correction of mistakes and numbering of the contents of the books; there can be no doubt that the British Museum now owns a companion volume to the Fitzwilliam manuscript, written by the same man at the same time. Though there is still no final proof that this man was in fact the younger Francis Tregian, the probability that he compiled both books is further strengthened by the presence of new items in the Egerton manuscript signed "F." and "F.T." and an "Allemanda Tr." set by P[eter] P[hilips]. . . . The contents of Egerton MS 3665 . . . have been copied mainly from Italian and English printed books, some of the former being now exceedingly rare. Moreover the volume contains annotations in Italian. If, as seems probable, the writer was English he must have been someone like Tregian who had spent long enough in Italy for Italian to have become a second language. It has been suggested that Tregian wrote the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book in prison. Certainly 51 It is more likely that the Pagget mentioned in the FVB was his eldest brother, Thomas Lord Pagget, an expatriate English recusant aristocrat who was also Philip's employer. 52 Ibid., 54. 29 the vast amount of work involved in the compilation of so large a collection as Egerton 3665 could scarcely have been undertaken by anyone who was not forced to be idle, and the "hundreds of books" in Tregian's lodging in the Fleet when he died may well have included the many collections of music from which the manuscript was copied.53 Discovery of the Egerton manuscript also led scholars to reevaluate a manuscript that had been housed in the New York Public Library since the early twentieth century, known as the "Sambrook Manuscript." This smaller compilation also included motets and madrigals by English and Italian composers and by its contents seemed to be a continuation of the Egerton anthology. The Sambrook manuscript also looked like it was written in the same hand as Egerton MS 3665 and the FVB. Also in the early 1950s, yet another manuscript thought to be notated by Tregian was discovered in the archives of Oxford's Christ Church Library. Now known as "Tregian's Part-Books," this collection contained transcriptions of five-part Italian madrigals, that were presumably copied from contemporary printed or other manuscript sources. Several of those sources are now considered to be extremely rare. Francis Tregian Jr. as Copyist - Legend or Fact? Up until the mid 1990s, the most widely accepted accounts of Francis Tregian Jr. portrayed him as the obedient eldest son of a Catholic refugee and a highly educated young man who served as an aide to Cardinal Allen. Upon hearing of his father's death, Tregian Jr. faithfully returned to reclaim his family's confiscated properties and was eventually convicted of recusancy and sentenced to the Fleet because he was a devout Catholic. Here he passed the last years of his life collecting valuable books and creating music manuscripts. 53 Bertrand Schofield and Thurston Dart, "Tregian's Anthologies," Music and Letters 32 (1951): 206-07, http://jstor.org/journals (accessed February 22, 2008). 30 In 1995, this account was challenged by Anne Cuneo, who wrote the article questioning some of the basic assumptions in the Tregian narrative: I began to feel somewhat skeptical about current theories concerning Francis Tregian when I first saw the imposing Tregian's Anthology in the British Library. It had seemed extraordinary enough that a man shut up in prison could have collected the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, with its great range and variety. Confronted by the unbelievable quantity of pieces in the Tregian collections as a whole, it became incredible: counting as well those in London and New York and those discovered in the 1950s at Oxford, there are close on 2,000. Approaching the question with an open mind, to speak of a poor copyist transcribing the pieces "to wile away his time in prison" becomes absurd. The writing out of 2,000 pieces was more than just a copying job: rather, it was surely the outcome of a life devoted to scholarship and the daily labour of research, and to study and reflection. Above all, it implies not only great open-mindedness but also freedom of movement and a degree of financial independence.54 Cuneo also challenged the "like father, like son" notion, especially with regard to the father's very conservative brand of Catholicism. Unlike Elizabeth Cole, who had found a strong Catholic religious flavor inherent in the selections of music that Francis Jr. chose for insertion in his manuscript, Cuneo argues that "the sureness of taste and the humanist spirit that his anthologies demonstrate" should be counted as well.55 She remarks that, after taking the historical context into account, the question of religion in music was not the collector's main concern, as both Catholic and Protestant composers were well-represented in the collection. She later states: As one studies Elizabethan England, it soon becomes clear that this society was not quite as black and white as it has subsequently been depicted. The era was full of turmoil, as were the people. The two camps, Catholic and Protestant, each of them further split into moderates and extremists, sometimes mingled with each other, and for many the divide between the two religions was blurred. The gray area was extensive, and in private Elizabeth I herself was ambivalent. The choices [of the music in Tregian's anthology] . . . reflect this social reality.56 54 Cuneo, "Francis Tregian the Younger," 399. 55 Ibid., 398. 56 Ibid., 401. 31 Cuneo also provides a different date for Tregian's confinement in the Fleet. Previously, it had been thought that he began his sentence in 1609, but Cuneo supplied evidence showing that the summons for Tregian was not issued until July 27, 1611. She claimed that it was possible that he was at liberty as late as 1616, as in Truro, Cornwall there have been found numerous contracts and business papers written or signed by Tregian between 1613 and 1616. Cuneo argues that the main reason Tregian was imprisoned was for his debts rather than his Catholicism, and that was the primary reason that he was imprisoned in the Fleet. In an age when an average family could live very well on a yearly income between £10-20, Tregian had amassed a huge debt of £3000 which he was unable to repay. Cuneo also relates a family legend regarding Tregian's supposed death in 1619, as told by Mr. Thomas Tomkin, who was a descendant of Francis Tregian Sr.'s sister, Jane: Mr. [Francis] Tregian resolving to do the best that he could, received some money by compounding with various parties to confirm their titles, and thus embarked for Spain, where, as it is said, he was very well received on account of his own father's sufferings for religion, and . . . he was made a grandee of that kingdom; and . . . his posterity still flourish there with the title of Marquis of St. Angelo. Whether this be true or not I cannot affirm, having it only by tradition.57 The family tradition held that Francis Tregian Jr. was still alive in 1630. Still another musicologist questioned the notion of Tregian being the copyist at all. In 2001, Ruby Reid Thompson published an article in Music & Letters that challenged Elizabeth Cole's 1951 supposition that the music script in any of the four so-called "Tregian" manuscripts was really in the hand of Francis Tregian Jr. She argues: 57 Davies Gilbert and Thomas Tomkin, The Parochial History of Cornwall (London, 1838), 361, quoted in Cuneo, "Francis Tregian the Younger," 402. 32 [Cole] discovered two legal deeds signed by him [Francis Tregian Jr.] which she believed to be entirely in his hand. For she decided that the script was identical with the text script in FVB, a judgment endorsed, perhaps a little cautiously, by [Bertram] Schofield. Cole reported that Schofield, having compared photographs of the documents and several variations of the signature closely with the Egerton manuscript, ‘saw no reason to doubt but that Tregian was indeed the scribe of Egerton 3665 and, therefore, of the Fitzwilliam Book. He remarked upon the distinct traces of Italianism in Tregian's script, and the individually characteristic way in which he formed the letters F, T, M, the small v or u, and, above all, the most unusually shaped small t. . . . Many early seventeenth-century English scripts contain a mixture of italic and secretary letter shapes which create an impression of similarity between them. The separation of the two styles was already breaking down before the end of the sixteenth century, so that for several generations ‘mixed' hands combining features of both styles were common. . . . [I]t is hard to know which one [of the styles] Schofield may have found especially characteristic or close to those in the Egerton scripts.58 Thompson also presents other arguments against Tregian being the copyist. She points out that it is not entirely clear from the signatures on several of the Tregian family legal documents that the signatory (Tregian) was also the scribe of the legal text. She conjectures that another relative of Francis Jr., Thomas Tregian, may have written the text for Francis to sign.59 Thompson's main argument, however, deals with the type of paper used in the FVB manuscript, paper considered to be very expensive, unique, and difficult to obtain: The 220 folios of FVB consist entirely of a single type of high-quality Swiss paper. The watermark is a simple crosier of Basle, with a letter D and the three-ring insignia of the manufacturers, the Düring family of Basle . . . . It is likely that all the paper was produced from three companion moulds, indicating that it has remained together since manufacture. . . . The paper is arranged in 36 perfect gatherings: 34 are made up of three bifolios each, and two of four bifolios each. . . . The great regularity of the paper content indicates that no leaves are missing and 58 Ruby Reid Thompson, "Francis Tregian the Younger as Music Copyist: A Legend and an Alternative View," Music & Letters 82 (2001): 6, http://jstor.org/journals (accessed February 17, 2008). 59 Ibid., 9. 33 that no paper was spoilt during copying. The manuscript appears to have been planned professionally as a unified project.60 Thompson argues that the so-called "Tregian" manuscripts were not copied by Francis Tregian Jr., but rather were compiled by more than one scribe in a scriptorium and that there was a conscious effort among the different scribes to preserve a uniform style of writing. Because she was able to find some surviving court documents that use the same expensive Düring paper of the same origin as the FVB, Thompson puts forward the theory that these manuscripts may have been prepared by a group of professional scribes working for aristocratic patrons who may have been connected with the court.61 In an article of 2002, David J. Smith refutes Thompson's views, especially with regard to the Düring paper. He writes: In order to make a connection between the manuscripts and the court, there needs to be proof that the paper was obtained exclusively for use at court. Thompson does not show this was the case: a large batch of paper might have been imported and sold to anyone who could have afforded it. Although it could be argued that Tregian was not in a position where he could afford such luxurious paper, by all accounts it was an extravagant lifestyle coupled with a dogged persistence in his religious beliefs that had landed him in trouble in the first place. Tregian was precisely the sort of man who would purchase expensive paper for copying music regardless of the cost.62 I also find Thompson's theory about the employment of professional scribes in copying the Tregian manuscripts hard to believe. I have studied facsimile manuscript pages from both the FVB and the Egerton 3665 manuscript, and I have compared the writing styles from those two collections with that of My Ladye Nevelles Booke. To me, the scribal work of the FVB and Egerton 3665 seems be in the same hand. For example, 60 Ibid., 16-18. 61 Ibid., 2, 5. 62 David J. Smith, "A Legend? Francis Tregian the Younger as Music Copyist," The Musical Times 143 (2002): 12. 34 certain notational elements such as clefs and custodes (Exs. 1 and 2) appear to be identical in the FVB and Egerton 3665 manuscripts. Neither of these manuscripts appears to be as professional in appearance as the stunningly beautiful handwriting found in My Ladye Nevelles Booke, which was copied by John Baldwin, a professional scribe at Windsor Castle and a member of the Chapel Royal. Ex. 1. Egerton MS 3665, "La Pecha" by Peter Philips. 35 Ex. 2. The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, "Walsingham" by John Bull. 36 Ex. 3. My Ladye Nevelles Virginal Book, "Will yow walke the woodes soe wylde" by William Byrd. 37 Additionally, I believe there is compelling visual evidence to support the idea that the handwriting in the FVB, Egerton 3665, and Francis Tregian Jr.'s signature in a legal document all belong to the same person. Example 4 below is a facsimile of a deed signed (and presumably written) by Francis Tregian Jr. If one compares the handwriting of this legal document with samples of writing from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and Egerton 3665, they all appear to be in the same hand. For example, the large case letters "L," "N," "G," "M," "B," "U," and "A" are all very similar, as are other letters with idiosyncratic curves and long stems, "T," "P," "h," and "d" (see exs. 5A, 5B and 5C). Ex. 4. Facsimile of a legal document signed by Francis Tregian Jr. Ex. 5A - Legal Document Ex. 5B - FVB Ex. 5C - Egerton 3665 L 38 N G M B T and h P U A d I believe that these handwriting samples from three different documents show that the same person was the scribe for both. Since the legal document was signed by Francis Tregian Jr. himself, it therefore seems logical to assume that he was also the transcriber/copyist for the FVB. 39 CHAPTER 2 A NEW EXAMINATION OF THE FVB MANUSCRIPT It was an invaluable experience to be able to immerse myself in looking at each page of the microfilm of the manuscript. Over the course of a few weeks, I became very familiar with Tregian's handwriting. I noticed that the size of the handwriting on the first page is slightly larger and wider than in the rest of the manuscript. By the middle of the second page, the handwriting settles down to a smaller size that remains consistent throughout the rest of the anthology. I also observed that the notes, stems and words on MSS pages 1-176 of the manuscript are wider in appearance than those on MSS. pages 181-419; it looked as if the copyist was using a finer-point writing implement for those pages. Tregian consecutively numbered each page of his keyboard anthology beginning with 1 and ending with 419. The page numbers are located in the upper left and right edges. The manuscript naturally falls into the following subsections: • First section of manuscript, pages 1-176 (Pieces 1 through 95) • Four blank unruled pages, pages 177-180 • Second section of manuscript, pages 181-419 (Pieces 96 through 297) • Three unnumbered ruled blank pages are found at the end • An index of pieces contained in the FVB was created by Richard Bartleman and copied by a Mr. Harry Smith in 1816 after the death of Lord Fitzwilliam, who had bequeathed the manuscript to Cambridge University. It was inserted into the manuscript after the three unnumbered ruled blank pages. In addition to listing the titles of the pieces in the first section of the manuscript, Tregian also consecutively numbered each piece, 1 through 95. When studying the manuscript, I also noticed a secondary numbering system in which Tregian assigned 40 another number to select pieces, thus linking a particular piece to a specific composer as part of a collection of works by that person. For example, "82. Amarilli di Julio Romano. 13" by Peter Philips indicates that this is the eighty-second piece in the manuscript, but the thirteenth piece in a group of works by that composer. This was an interesting feature that the original transcribers, Maitland and Squire, may have missed, misinterpreted, or ignored. For example, a "ii" in the manuscript (meaning the second piece in a composer "set," was transcribed as a nonsensical "11" in the original 1899 Breitkopf und Härtel edition, later reprinted by Dover. In fact, of all of the literature written about the FVB that I have read, I only found mention of this interesting organizational system in one other source. In 2002, David J. Smith wrote: The scribe [of the FVB] numbers pieces by each individual composer as they occur throughout the manuscript, but in the first layer (nos. 1-95) there is also a consecutive numeration. Judging from the position of the number for Byrd's Pazzamezzo Pavan (no. 56, p. 102), the consecutive numeration was added later, post-dating entry of the titles and pagination.63 Following piece No. 95, there are four blank pages in the manuscript. Tregian abandoned the chronological numbering of pieces in the second section of his anthology; however, he did continue with the secondary numbering system of linking individual pieces to composer "sets." Smith postulates: The numeration of the contents ceases in the remainder of the manuscript: the scribe finished the first layer as a unit, then inserted the numbers; presumably he would have continued the numeration had the manuscript been completed. The presence of empty, but ruled, folios at the end of the volume suggests that FVB was a work in progress.64 In 1988, a facsimile of the Egerton 3665 manuscript was published with a preface written by Frank D'Accone. In his preface, D'Accone created a chart which shows how 63 Smith, "A Legend? Francis Tregian the Youngest as Music Copyist," 11. 64 Ibid. 41 Tregian organized his huge madrigal and instrumental collection of over 1,100 compositions, using several different numbering systems. Using D'Accone's Egerton 3665 diagram as a model, I have constructed a chart of the FBV that shows how Tregian used two different numbering systems to organize his keyboard anthology. The chart lists the 297 pieces contained in the FVB in order of their appearance in the manuscript. Spellings of proper names have been modernized. Column 1 shows the chronological numbers (Chr. #) of the 297 pieces in the FVB. Column 2 (Tr.1) lists Tregian's arrangement of numbering pieces 1 through 95; after Piece No. 95 this column ends. Column 3 (Tr.2) shows Tregian's secondary numbering system, which linked pieces together into composer "sets." Contents of Tregian's Keyboard Anthology Outlining his two types of numbering systems Chr. # Tr.1 Tr.2 Title_________________________________________ 1. 1. Walsingham by John Bull 2. 2. Fantasia by John Munday 3. 3. Fantasia by John Munday (Faire Wether) 4. 4. Pavana by Ferdinando Richardson 5. 5. Variatio by Ferdinando Richardson 6. 6. Galiarda by Ferdinando Richardson 7. 7. Variation by Ferdinando Richardson 8. 8. Fantasia by William Byrd 9. 9. Goe from my window by Thomas Morley 10. 10. Jhon come kisse me now by William Byrd 11. 11. Galliarda to my L. Lumleys Paven pag. 76 by John Bull 12. 12. Nancie by Thomas Morley 13. 13. Pavana by John Bull 14. 14. Alman by anonymous 15. 15. Robin by John Munday 16. 16. Pavana by M.S. (seems to say "M.S." in the manuscript) 17. 17. Galiarda by John Bull 18. 18. Barafostus Dreame by anonymous 19. 19. Muscadin by anonymous 20. 20. Alman by anonymous 21. 21. Galiarda by anonymous 22. 22. Praeludium by anonymous 42 23. 23. Praludium El. Kidermister by anonymous 24. 24. Praeludium by anonymous 25. 25. Praeludium by anonymous 26. 26. The Irishe Ho-Hoane by anonymous 27. 27. Pavane by Fernando Richardson 28. 28. Variatio by Ferdinando Richardson 29. 29. Galiarda by Ferdinando Richardson 30. 30. Variatio by Ferdinando Richardson 31. 31. The Quadran Pavan by John Bull 32. 32. Variation of the Quadran Pavan by John Bull 33. 33. Galiard to the Quadran Pavan by John Bull 34. 34. Pavana by John Bull 35. 35. Galiard to the Pavan by John Bull 36. 36. St. Thomas Wake by John Bull 37. 37. In Nomine by John Bull 38. 38. (no title listed) by John Bull 39. 39. 1. Pavana. 1. by Robert Johnson (set by Giles Farnaby) 40. 40. The Woods so wilde by anonymous 41. 41. Pavana of my L[ord] Lumley by John Bull. 42. 42. Goe from my Window by John Munday 43. 43. Præludium by John Bull 44. 44. Gloria tibi Trinitas by John Bull 45. 45. Salvator Mundi by John Bull 46. 46. Galliarda by John Bull 47. 47. Variatio by Doctor Bull 48. 48. Galiarda to the Paven pag. 63 by John Bull 49. 49. Preludium by Thomas Oldfield 50. 50. In Nomine by William Blithman 51. 51. Ut re mi fa so la by Doctor Bull 52. 52. Fantasia by William Byrd 53. 53. 2. The K[ings's] Hunt by Giles Farnaby 54. 54. 3. Spagnioletta by Giles Farnaby 55. 55. 4. For 2 Virg[inals] by Giles Farnaby 56. 56. Passamezzo Pavana by William Byrd 57. 57. Galiardas Passamezzo by William Byrd 58. 58. The Carmans Whistle by William Byrd 59. 59. The Hunt's Up by William Byrd 60. 60. Treg[ian's] Ground by William Byrd 61. 61. Monsieurs Alman by William Byrd 62. 62. Variatio by William Byrd 63. 63. Alman by William Byrd 64. 64. Sellinger's Round by William Byrd 65. 65. Fortune by William Byrd 66. 66. O Mistris myne by William Byrd 67. 67. The Woods so Wild by William Byrd 68. 68. Walsingham by William Byrd 69. 69. The Bells by William Byrd 43 70. 70. 1. Tirsi Di Luca Marenzio 1a Parte. Intavalota di Pietro Philippi. 1. by Peter Philips 71. 71. 2. Freno. Seconda Parte. 2. by Peter Philips 72. 72. 3. Cosi moriro. 3a Parte. 3. by Peter Philips 73. 73. 4. Fece da voi a 6. 4. P. Philips by Peter Philips 74. 74. 5. Pavana Pagget. 5. by Peter Philips 75. 75. 6. Galiarda. 6. by Peter Philips 76. 76. 7. Passamezzo Pavana. 7. by Peter Philips 77. 77. 8. Galiarda Passamezzo. 8 by Peter Philips 78. 78. 9. Chi fara fede al Cielo, di Alessandro Striggio. 9. by Peter Philips 79. 79. 10. Bon Jour mon Cueur di Orlando. 10. by Peter Philips 80. 80. 11. Pavana Dolorosa Treg[ian] 11. by Peter Philips 81. 81. 12. Galiarda Dolorosa. 12. by Peter Philips 82. 82. 13. Amarilli di Julio Romano. 13 by Peter Philips 83. 83. 14. Margott Laborez. 14. by Peter Philips 84. 84. 15. Fantasia. 15. by Peter Philips 85. 85. 16. Pavana. 16. by Peter Philips 86. 86. 17. Le Rossignuol. 17. by Peter Philips 87. 87. 18. Galliardo. 18. by Peter Philips 88. 88. 19. Fantasia. 19. by Peter Philips 89. 89. 1. Fantasia. 1. by Nicholas Strogers 90. 90. Alman by Martin Peerson 91. 91. Pavana Bray by William Byrd 92. 92. Galiarda by William Byrd 93. 93. Pavana Ph[ilippa] Tr[egian] by William Byrd 94. 94. Galiarda by William Byrd 95. 95. Toccata by Giovanni Pichi [four blank pages in the manuscript] 96. 1. Praeludium Toccata. 1. by J.P. Sweelinck 97. 1. Pavana. 1. by Thomas Warrock 98. 2. Galiarda. 2. by Thomas Warrock 99. 1. Praeludium. 1. by Galeazzo 100. "Praludium to ye Fancie ppg. 94" by William Byrd 101. Ut re mi fa sol la by William Byrd 102. Ut mi re by William Byrd 103. Fantasia by William Byrd 104. All in a Garden green by William Byrd 105. Heaven and Earth by Fre [Francis Tregian] It is interesting to note that Tregian only used abbreviations for three composers in his manuscript: William Byrd, Peter Philips, and himself. 106. Praeludium by John Bull 107. Veni by anonymous 108. Fantasia by John Bull 109. 1. Felix Namque 1er. 1. by Thomas Tallis 110. 2. Felix Namque 2nd. 2. by Thomas Tallis 111. Short untitled counterpoint exercise, presumably written by Tregian 44 112. 5. Daphne. 5. by Giles Farnaby 113. 6. Pawles Wharfe. 6. by Giles Farnaby 114. 7. Quodlings Delight. 7. by Giles Farnaby 115. Praeludium by John Bull 116. Praeludium Dor. by John Bull 117. Praeludium by anonymous 118. 2. Ut re mi fa sol la by J. P. Sweelinck 119. In Nomine by John Bull 120. Praeludium by anonymous 121. Pavana Lachrymae by John Dowland, set forth by William Byrd 122. Galiarda by James Harding, set forth by William Byrd 123. 1. Pavana. 1. by Thomas Tomkins 124. Fantasia by Thomas Morley 125. Christe Redemptor by John Bull 126. The Maydens Song by William Byrd 127. 8. Put up thy Dagger Jemy. 8. by Giles Farnaby 128. 9. Bony sweet Robin. 9. by Giles Farnaby 129. 10. Fantasia. 10. by Giles Farnaby 130. 2. A Grounde. 2. by Thomas Tomkins. 131. 3. Barafostus Dreame. 3. by Thomas Tomkins 132. 4. The Hunting Galliard. No. 4 by Thomas Tomkins 133. Quadran Paven by William Byrd 134. Galiard to the Quadran Paven by William Byrd 135. The Kings Hunt by John Bull 136. Pavana by John Bull 137. Galiarda by John Bull 138. D[octor] Bulls Juell by John Bull 139. The Spanish Paven by John Bull 140. 1. In Nomine. 1. by Persons 141. 11. Wooddy-Cock. 11. by Giles Farnaby 142. The Duke of Brunswicks Alman by John Bull 143. 12. Rosasolis. 12. by Giles Farnaby 144. 3. Psalme. 3. by J.P. Sweelinck 145. Alman by Robert Johnson 146. Alman by Robert Johnson 147. Alman by Robert Johnson. Set by Giles Farnaby 148. 13. The New Sa-hoo. 13. by Giles Farnaby 149. 1. Nobodyes Gigge. 1. by Richard Farnaby 150. Malt's come downe by William Byrd 151. Praeludium by anonymous 152. Alman by Thomas Morley 153. Pavana by Thomas Morley 154. Galiarda by Thomas Morley 155. La Volta by William Byrd 156. Alman by William Byrd 157. Wolseys Wilde by William Byrd 158. Callino casturame by William Byrd 159. La Volta L[ord] Morley by William Byrd 45 160. Rowland by William Byrd 161. Why aske yow by anonymous 162. The Ghost by William Byrd 163. Alman by William Byrd 164. Galliard by William Byrd 165. Pavana by William Byrd 166. Galiarda by William Byrd 167. Pavana by William Byrd 168. Galiarda by William Byrd 169. Pavana by Thomas Morley 170. Galliarda by Thomas Morley 171. The Queenes Alman by William Byrd 172. A Medley by William Byrd 173. Pavana by William Byrd 174. Galliarda by William Byrd 175. Miserere. 3 Parts. by William Byrd 176. Miserere. 4 parts. by William Byrd 177. Pakington's Pownde by anonymous 178. The Irishe Dumpe by anonymous 179. Watkins Ale by anonymous 180. A Gigg by William Byrd 181. Pipers Paven by Martin Peerson 182. Pipers Galliard by John Bull 183. Variatio Ejusdem by John Bull 184. Praeludium. D. by John Bull 185. Galiarda by John Bull 186. Galiarda by John Bull 187. Allemãda by Marchant 188. Can shee by anonymous 189. A Gigge. Doctor Bull's my selfe by John Bull 190. A Gigge by John Bull 191. Sr. Jhon Grayes Galiard by W. B. ("W B" presumably stands for "William Byrd," although it also could mean "William Blithman") 192. Praludium by John 193. A Toy by anonymous [Because of their location at this point in the manuscript, it is possible that Nos. 194-199 represent the missing Nos. 14-19 in the Giles Farnaby set, although No. 197 is by his son, Richard Farnaby. They are not numbered as such by Tregian, so this is strictly conjectural on my part.] 194 (14?) Giles Farnabys Dreame by Giles Farnaby 195 (15?) His Rest Galiard by Giles Farnaby 196 (16?) His Humour by Giles Farnaby 197 (17?) Fayne would I Wedd by Richard Farnaby 198. (18?) A Maske by Giles Farnaby 199. (19?) A Maske by Giles Farnaby 200. An Almain by anonymous 201. Corranto by anonymous 202. Alman by anonymous 46 203. Corrãto by anonymous 204. Corrãto by anonymous 205. Corrãto by anonymous. 206. Daunce by anonymous 207. Worster Braules by Thomas Tomkins 208. Fantasia by Giles Farnaby 209. A Maske by Giles Farnaby. Curiously enough, this piece (along with Nos. 245, 267, 269, 270, 273, 280, 281, 283, 284, 285, 289, 290, 291, 293 and 296) was not included in the Giles Farnaby set by Tregian. 210. Praeludium by John Bull 211. (untitled work) by anonymous 212. Martin sayd to his man by anonymous 213. (1?) Almand by William Tisdall 214. (2?) Pavana Chromatica - Mrs. Katherin Tregians Paven by William Tisdall. [It is possible that Nos. 213 and 214 are the missing nos. 1 and 2 in the William Tisdall set, although they are not numbered as such by Tregian.] 215. Ut re mi, fa, sol, la by John Bull 216. Gipseis Round by William Byrd 217. 4. Fantasia by J.P. Sweelinck 218. Corranto set by William Byrd 219. 3. Pavana Clement Cottõ by William Tisdall 220. 4. Pavana by William Tisdall 221. Corranto by anonymous 222. Alman by Hooper 223. Corrãto by anonymous 224. Corranto by anonymous 225. Corrãto by anonymous 226. Corrãto by anonymous 227. Alman by anonymous 228. Corranto by Hooper 229. 20. Fantasia by Giles Farnaby 230. 21. Loth to depart by Giles Farnaby 231. 22. Fantasia by Giles Farnaby 232. 23. Fantasia 2nd [hard to decipher the title] by Giles Farnaby 233. 24. (Untitled) by Giles Farnaby 234. 25. (Untitled) by Giles Farnaby 235. 26. Walter Erle's Paven by Giles Farnaby 236. 27. (Untitled) by Giles Farnaby 237. 28. Fantasia by Giles Farnaby 238. 29. Fantasia by Giles Farnaby 239. 30. The L. Zouches Maske by Giles Farnaby 240. 31. A Groũde by Giles Farnaby 241. Coranto by William Byrd 242. 32. Up T[ails] all by Giles Farnaby 243. Jhonsons Medley by Edward Johnson 244. Nowels Galiard by anonymous 47 245. Tower Hill by Giles Farnaby 246. 33. Praeludium by Giles Farnaby 247. The Kings Morisco by anonymous 248. A Duo by Richard Farnaby 249. Alman by anonymous 250. 1. A Galliard Ground. 1. by William Inglot 251. 2. The Leaves bee greene. 2. by William Inglot 252. Pavana by William Byrd 253. Galiarda by William Byrd 254. Pavana by William Byrd 255. Galiarda by William Byrd 256. Pavana by William Byrd 257. Pavana Fant[asia] by William 258. Galliarda by William Byrd 259. The Earle of Oxfords Marche by William Byrd 260. 1. Galiarda. 1. by Jehan Oystermayre 261. Fantasia by William Byrd 262. The Duchesse of Brunswick's Toye by John Bull 263. A Toye by anonymous 264. Corrãto by anonymous 265. Corrante Lady Riche by anonymous 266. Corranto by anonymous 267. A Gigge by Giles Farnaby 268. A Toye by anonymous 269. Galiarda by Giles Farnaby 270. A Toye by Giles Farnaby. 271. The Primerose by Martin Peerson 272. The Fall of the Leafe by Martin Peerson 273. Farnaby's Conceit by Giles Farnaby 274. Allemanda by anonymous 275. Pavana. Canon 2 pts...(illegible) by William Byrd 276. Pescodd Time by William Byrd 277. Pavana Delight by Edward Johnson, set by William Byrd 278. Galiarda by Edward Johnson, set by William Byrd 279. Miserere 3 ptr by John Bull 280. Tell mee Daphne by Giles Farnaby 281. Mal Sims by Giles Farnaby 282. Mundays Joy by John Munday 283. Rosseter Galiard set by Giles Farnaby 284. The Flatt Paven by Giles Farnaby 285. Pavana by Giles Farnaby 286. Why aske you by Giles Farnaby 287. Farmers Paven by Giles 288. Dalling Alman by anonymous 289. The old Spagnioletta by Giles Farnaby 290. Lachrimae Pavan by J.D. [John Dowland], set by Giles Farnaby 291. Meridian Alman set by Giles Farnaby 48 292. Pavana by Orlando Gibbons 293. Muscadin by Giles Farnaby. 294. Lady Montegle's Paven by William Byrd 295. 5. Galiarda. 5. by William Tisdall 296. Fantasia by Giles. 297. Hanskin by Richard Farnaby MS p. 419 - blank page MS p. 420 - unnumbered blank page 1 MS p. 421 - unnumbered blank page 2 MS p. 422 - unnumbered blank page 3 Index page 1 (which was added in 1816 at the death of Lord Fitzwilliam, reads: "The Nine Movements marked thus + are in Lady Nevil's Music Book.") Index page 2 Index page 3 Index page 4 Index page 5 Index page 6 Index page 7 Index page 8 Index page 9 unnumbered blank page 1 unnumbered blank page 2 unnumbered blank page 3 final page: more handwritten notes. Very bottom of the page reads: Henry Smith, Richmond, Scripsit65 from a M.S. Index in the Possession of Mr Bartleman 24 March 1816 Certain patterns emerge when looking at the way that Tregian added pieces to his keyboard anthology. Several selections by the same composer are sometimes copied consecutively in small groups (Nos. 130, 131, 132 by Tomkins, for instance), and these composer-clusters reappear every so often throughout the manuscript. This clustering may have something to do with the specific sources from which Tregian was copying. Elizabeth Cole opined: "How [the FVB] was made, was by bulk donations to Tregian 65 "Scripsit" is a Latin word meaning "he wrote (it)" or "she wrote (it)." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc., s.v. "Scripsit," http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scripsit (accessed: March 15, 2009). 49 from Peter Philips, from Farnaby, from Byrd and his pupils, and from manuscripts lent by friends."66 It is interesting to note that the Giles Farnaby set is missing six pieces, nos. 14-19. It is my theory that Nos. 194-199 [MS 308-310] are the missing six pieces because of their location in the manuscript, as they fall between manuscript pages 267 (end of #13) and 331 (beginning of #20), even though one of these pieces is written by Richard Farnaby, son of Giles Farnaby. Likewise, William Tisdale's first and second compositions in the manuscript were not numbered, but the next three bear the digits 3, 4 and 5. It is also interesting to note that several of the composer sets contain only one numbered selection; it is likely that Tregian had planned to add more pieces later to these sets, if and when the music became available to him. The most interesting thing that I noticed when looking over Tregian's composer-sets was not whose music was chosen to be compiled into sets, but whose music was not, namely William Byrd and John Bull. This is especially puzzling, since the amount of music by these two men included in the FVB accounts for almost half of it. This raises the question: why was Tregian numbering his anthology in this manner? Was he copying copious amounts of music simply to add to his personal library, or for his own enjoyment? Or was there another reason as well? It is a fact that Tregian had accumulated a crippling amount of debt in his effort to regain his family's property, and this debt was one of the reasons that he was sentenced to serve prison time in the Fleet. Tregian had a grand-uncle, Henry FitzAlan, who was a music collector. There were also two other notable music collectors during this time who were both connected with William Byrd: Sir William Petre and Edward Paston. Byrd 66 Cole, "Seven Problems of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book," 60. 50 dedicated a keyboard work to Petre in 1591, and became even more connected to Petre when he moved from London to Stondon Massey in 1593.67 Edward Paston was also a patron of Byrd. A connection between Byrd and Tregian has already been established; it is possible that Tregian knew Petre and Paston as well. It is possible that Tregian received a commission from a wealthy collector such as FitzAlan, Petre or Paston to copy music for a personal library, and in this way he could earn money to pay off some of his debts. Perhaps this patron already had much of Byrd's and Bull's music in his collection and thus wanted something different, which would explain the sets by the lesser known composers in the FVB. At any rate, it seems likely that the main reason Tregian was numbering individual pieces into sets was as an organizational reference tool in case he should need to go back and find the pieces again. 67 John Harley, ed. British Harpsichord Music. vol. 2, (Hants, England: Scolar Press, 1994), 43. 51 CHAPTER 3 THE TREGIAN CIRCLE: COMPOSERS, FAMILY, FRIENDS, AND PATRONS Composers Represented in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book In this section I will show the connection between Francis Tregian Jr. and the four most prominent composers represented in the FVB: William Byrd, John Bull, Peter Philips, and Giles Farnaby. The bulk of music chosen for inclusion in the FVB was written by these four men, three of whom were fellow recusant Catholics with Tregian. Philips and Bull both fled from England to the more tolerant climate of the Spanish Netherlands, while Byrd lived his entire life as a publicly practicing Catholic in England and was apparently granted immunity from punishment many times by Queen Elizabeth herself. William Byrd (1539/43-1623) William Byrd is considered one of the most famous composers in the history of England, and his music appears more prominently in the pages of the FVB than that of any other composer. He was born in London sometime between 1539 and 1543, during the last years of Henry VIII's reign. His two older brothers, Symond and John, were both choristers at St. Paul's Cathedral. It is assumed that William was a boy chorister in the Chapel Royal, as he was listed as an organ pupil of Thomas Tallis. Byrd later became Tallis' assistant and remained close to the Tallis family throughout his life. It has already been mentioned that Francis Tregian Jr.'s mother was well-acquainted with Byrd's 52 brother, John. There is also the connection with the Tregian and Byrd families with regard to religion: both were devoutly Catholic. Both Francis Tregian Sr. and Francis Jr. were punished severely for their recusancy, but Byrd was not, primarily because he was considered by Queen Elizabeth to be one of the crown jewels in her Chapel Royal, where he was a member from 1572 to about 1592. Later in his life, Byrd was also known to have consorted with the Jesuits and even wrote liturgical music for them. 68 This was a treasonous offence, and yet he was never punished severely by either Elizabeth or her successor, James I. Byrd was appointed to his first major position, that of organist and Master of the Choristers at Lincoln Cathedral, when he was twenty years of age.69 He eventually ran into trouble with his Protestant superiors, who labeled his organ playing during services as "too Popish." 70 Most of Byrd's Anglican liturgical music was written during his Lincoln years. After leaving Lincoln Cathedral, Byrd returned to London, where he was sworn in as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1572. He was also listed as a joint organist of the Chapel, along with his former teacher, Tallis. Over the next twenty years, it appears that Byrd moved very easily in Elizabethan aristocratic circles. His wealthy patrons included Thomas Lord Paget, the Earls of Oxford, Northumberland and Worcester, and the famous collector Edward Paston. In the 1570s, Paston decided to retire from court to live on his Norfolk estate, where he could practice the "old religion" undisturbed and also indulge in his passion for accumulating large quantities of art and music. Many of Byrd's works were included in Paston's 68 Hogge, God's Secret Agents, 336. 69 Harley, British Harpsichord Music, vol. 2, 19. 70 New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, s.v. "Byrd, William" (by Joseph Kerman), http://www.grovemusic.com/ (accessed February 23, 2008). 53 enormous collection. Queen Elizabeth was also an admirer of and benefactor to Byrd. In 1575 she bestowed her royal favor on both Tallis and Byrd by granting to them a joint monopoly on music printing in England.71 In 1593, further recusancy laws were enacted by Parliament, and persecutions against English Catholics reached an all-time high. Soon afterwards, Byrd retired from the Chapel Royal and moved to rural Stondon Massey in Essex, near the Byrd ancestral home. Essex was also the home of Sir John Petre, who now became the most important of Byrd's patrons. By this time Petre and Byrd had been acquainted for several decades. Petre was a very private man and maintained an appearance of being a royal "conformist." In actuality, he was a staunch Catholic who harbored a priest on his estate (just as Francis Tregian Sr. had done) and celebrated mass in secret throughout the entire years on his property, undisturbed by the authorities. Byrd wrote his greatest Catholic liturgical music during these years, including complete settings of the Proper and Ordinary of the Mass, and music specifically written for use by the English Jesuits. Dr. John Bull (ca. 1559-1628) Of all of the composers represented in the FVB, Bull's music is some of the longest, most difficult, and most virtuosic. One modern commentator has characterized Bull's music as "superficially brilliant."72 Bull was a student of William Blithman during his formative years. Later he also referred to Byrd as "my master," which would indicate that Byrd had been his teacher or mentor as well. He became a member of the Chapel Royal in 1586, during which time Byrd and Blithman were also there. Bull was awarded a Bachelor of Music degree from Oxford in 1586 and a Doctor of Music degree in 1592. 71 Ibid. 72 Harley, British Harpsichord Music, vol. 2, 47. 54 In March of 1597, Bull was appointed to be the first Public Reader in Music at Gresham College in London.73 When he became ill, it was Thomas Byrd, son of William Byrd, who replaced him for a time. Bull was a member of the Chapel Royal for over twenty-five years, serving under both Queen Elizabeth I and James I. In 1613, Byrd and Bull (along with Orlando Gibbons) issued Parthenia, which was the first published work for the virginals in England. Bull also was an organ builder, and, in 1609, he was commissioned by the Austrian Archduke Albert, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, to build an organ. As fate would have it, the organ was never finished, but in diplomatic state correspondence which survives, Bull's friendship with Peter Philips is mentioned.74 By temperament Bull seemed to be very passionate and strong-willed. Like Francis Tregian, William Byrd, and so many others, he was an English Catholic struggling to live under the confines of the new state religion. In 1607, he was fired from his post as Gresham Professor of Music for fathering a child out of wedlock. In 1613, he was again charged with adultery, and, inside the church in the presence of many parishoners, physically assaulted the clergyman who had accused him. It was in part because of this incident, and also because of recusancy and debts, that Bull fled to the Spanish Netherlands in exile in late 1613. Here he was employed as an organist by Archduke Albert and renewed his friendship with fellow English composer Peter Philips.75 Bull remained in the Spanish Netherlands for the rest of his life, where he eventually died in March of 1628 73 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, s.v. "Bull, John" (by Susi Jeans and O.W. Neighbour), http://www.grovemusic.com/ (accessed February 23, 2008). 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid. 55 Peter Philips (ca. 1560-1628) Peter Philips was born around 1560 and served as a choirboy at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. His mentor at St. Paul's was Sebastian Westcote, and there is evidence that he also studied with William Byrd.76 Westcote was in charge of the musical education for the choirboys. He was also a devout Roman Catholic who had been appointed to his post during the reign of Queen Mary, and his religious views had a great influence on young Philips. Shortly after Westcote's death in 1582, Philips fled to the Continent, partly to avoid persecution for his Catholicism and partly because he wanted to study music in Italy. He eventually arrived in Rome at the English College, where he was appointed as organist for three years. In 1585, the aristocratic English expatriate, Lord Thomas Paget, arrived at the English College, and Philips entered into his service. For the next five years, Philips accompanied Paget on his travels throughout the Continent until Paget's death in 1590 in Brussels. In 1591, Philips settled in Antwerp, where he married Cornelia de Mompere in the spring of that same year. Their only child, Leonora, was born in May of 1592. Tragically, Cornelia died two months after the birth of her daughter. Philip's bad luck would continue into 1593, when he made a visit to Amsterdam with the intent of meeting the great organist, Sweelinck. On the way back home, he became ill and had to stay for three weeks in Middleburg. While he was recuperating from his illness, another Englishman who was staying at the same inn became convinced that Philips was a fugitive from English justice and had been part of a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. 76 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, s.v. "Philips, Peter" (by John Steele), http://www.grovemusic.com/ (accessed February 23, 2008). 56 This man reported Philips to the Dutch authorities, who immediately took him into custody, interrogated him, and then put him in jail, while they waited for correspondence from London on the matter. During the period in which Philips was confined to a jail cell, he composed the now famous "Pavan and Galliard Dolorosa," which Francis Tregian Jr. titled "Pavana and Galiarda Dolorosa Treg." in the FVB. Eventually Philips was exonerated of all charges and was able to return home. In 1597, Philips became an organist for Archduke Albert, and he also became quite well known as a composer of note through the publication of many of his works. Sadness came to Philips in 1599, when his only child died at the age of seven. A few years later, he became acquainted with Francis Tregian Jr., who was also working for Archduke Albert in Brussels by 1603.77 Tregian left for England in 1606. A short time later Philips made the decision to become a Catholic priest; he was ordained in 1609. It is possible that Tregian received some of Philips' music directly from Philips himself while they were both in the Archduke's service. Giles Farnaby (ca. 1563-1640) Giles Farnaby's name is found in the titles of four of his compositions in the FVB. Numbers 194, 195, and 196 are a set of three short character sketches: • #194 - Giles Farnaby's Dream by Giles Farnaby • #195 - His Rest - Galiard by Giles Farnaby • #196 - His Humour by Giles Farnaby • #273 - Farnaby's Conceit by Giles Farnaby Unlike Byrd, Bull, and Philips, Farnaby was not Catholic but a Protestant. One historian, Anthony Wood, says that Farnaby "was of the family of Farnaby of Truro in 77 Smith, "A Legend? Francis Tregian the Younger as Music Copyist," 13. 57 Cornwall, and near of kin to Tho[mas] Farnaby, the famous schoolmaster of Kent."78 If so, then there would likely be a strong connection between Farnaby and Tregian Jr. Even if they did not know each other personally, it is likely that members of their families were acquainted. Farnaby was a joiner, or cabinet-maker, by trade, and as such, was not a member of the aristocratic class. He also worked alongside a cousin as a maker of virginals.79 In spite of his social standing and occupation, he was still able to attend Oxford University, receiving the Bachelor of Music degree in 1592. In his time he was known for his vocal compositions; his keyboard compositions circulated very little and were not widely known. It is therefore quite interesting that Tregian's keyboard anthology contains the complete keyboard works of Farnaby, save two pieces, over 50 in all. Giles Farnaby also had a musical son, Richard Farnaby, who has several compositions of his own included among the pages of the FVB. Family, Friends, and Patrons There are many proper names found among the titles and in the margins of the 297 compositions in Tregian's keyboard anthology. Most of these people can be easily connected within one or two degrees of separation to the Tregian family, thus reinforcing Elizabeth Cole's assertion that "these little groups of men and women . . . must surely 78 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. "Farnaby, Giles" (by Richard Marlow), http://www.oxforddnb.com/ (accessed July 27, 2008) 79 Ibid. 58 have meant something to the composers and to the maker of the book."80 Some of the names include: • Tregian - family name; may refer to Francis Tregian Sr. • Katherin Tregian - paternal grandmother of Francis Tregian Jr. • S.T. (to Tom) - Sybil Tregian, a younger sister of Francis Tregian Jr. The identity of "Tom" is not known, although there is a "Thomas Tregian" whose name is found on the legal documents which bear Francis Tregian Jr.'s signature. • Ph Tr - Philippa Tregian, another younger sister of Francis Tregian Jr. • Lord Lumley - A distant cousin to the Tregian family, also related to Queen Elizabeth. His wife, Jane FitzAlan, was more closely related to the Tregian family (second cousin, once removed). • The Earl of Oxford - Most likely refers to Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, who was a notorious bisexual courtier and one of Queen Elizabeth's lovers, and also a patron of both William Byrd and William Shakespeare. His daughter, Elizabeth, was married to William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, who was a first cousin once removed to Francis Tregian Jr. • Lady Rich - beautiful noblewoman, influential courtier, sister to the Earl of Essex, third cousin to Francis Tregian Jr. • John Munday - Elizabethan composer and organist. • Sir Jhon Gray - There are several persons with this name in the extended family tree of the Tregians. He could be a grandfather, granduncle, or first cousin twice removed of Francis Tregian Jr. • Lady Montegle - Elizabeth Tresham, wife of 4th Lord Montegle/11th Baron Morley William Parker. William Parker was a second cousin to Francis Tregian Jr. • Lord Morley - father of Baron William Parker, Lord Morley and Montegle; first cousin once removed to Francis Jr. • Walter Erle - Queen Elizabeth's virginal player. • Pagget - Recusant aristocrat Lord Thomas Pagget (also spelled "Paget," one-time patron and employer of Peter Philips until his death. 80 Cole, "Seven Problems of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book," 53. 59 In addition to being relatives of the Tregian family, many of the persons named above are also related to Queen Elizabeth. In fact, Francis Tregian Jr. himself is doubly related to Queen Elizabeth: through both his maternal and paternal lines. The following two genealogical charts outline the probable relationships of most of these people to Queen Elizabeth, and also to Francis Tregian Jr. Names which appear in bold print on the charts are those that are found in the pages of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. The third chart shows the twelve children of Francis Tregian Sr. and Mary Stourton.81 81 The genealogical charts were researched and created by C. Jean Varney. 60 61 62 63 CHAPTER 4 PERFORMANCE PRACTICE ISSUES The Edition of the FVB Published by Dover Publications At present, the only available complete edition of the FVB is the Dover Publications reprint of the original Breitkopf und Härtel publication (1899) edited by Maitland and Squire. There are numerous problems associated with this publication, as it is full of textual and transcription errors that have not been corrected in the 110 years since it was first issued. (This assertion can be easily proven, as a microfilm of the manuscript of the FVB has been in circulation since the 1980s.) Dover first printed this edition in 1963. In 1979 it issued a revised edition that purported to correct many of the mistakes. Blanche Winogron, the editor of the 1979 edition, commented: Although the Maitland-Squire text has long been accepted as a faithful translation into modern notation . . . a growing number of active performers and scholars have felt that the correction of obvious errors, oversights and misprints (perhaps due to insufficient proofreading) would make it ever more useful . . . [as] there were . . . a considerable number of misreadings and misinterpretations of the manuscript previously unsuspected.82 Despite Winogron's claim, further research has proven that no substantial corrections or changes were made. Silly proofreading errors, such as having no number 171 (skipping from No. 170 to No. 172 in the consecutive numbering) and then having two no. 182's to make up for the difference, could have been easily corrected before issuing the 1979 edition, but they were not. Misspellings of titles and composer's names abound, as do wrong numbers. For example, after looking at the microfilm of the 82 Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: iii. 64 manuscript, I realized that in one instance either Maitland and Squire or their publisher had misinterpreted Tregian's Roman numeral "ii" as the Arabic number 11. In 1986 W. D. Viljoen wrote a 368-page dissertation entitled "The Ornamentation in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book with an Introductory Study of Contemporary Practice" in which he shows that Dover's 1979 "revised" edition is riddled with errors when compared with the manuscript of the FVB. As part of his research, Viljoen compared both the 1963 and the 1979 editions with the original manuscript and then compiled a complete list of errors and textual deviations, particularly those dealing with signs for ornaments which he says "form the greatest part." He lists three categories of errors: • Ornaments which appear in the Tregian manuscript, but are omitted in the printed editions of the FVB • Ornaments which have been added in the editions of the FVB but which do not appear in the Tregian manuscript • Ornaments placed on wrong notes Viljoen then proceeds through every piece in Volumes I and II of Dover's editions, compiling and listing the transcriptional errors found in every composition.83 As a performer with a scholarly interest, I personally found Viljoen's research and commentaries on ornamentation the most helpful of all the sources available to me. Ornamentation There are two types of ornaments that are found in the manuscript of the FVB: a note with a single slash through the note stem, and a note with a double slash through the note stem. Double-slashed ornaments are by far the more prominent. In other 83 W. D. Viljoen, "The Ornamentation in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book with an Introductory Study of Contemporary Practice," (PhD diss., University of Pretoria, 1986), 116-128. 65 Elizabethan manuscripts, triple-slashed note stems are also found, but I did not encounter any of this type in the FVB manuscript. These two types of ornament signs are scattered throughout the FVB. Viljoen indicates that "their frequency and indication by symbol are unique in sixteenth-century keyboard music, when compared with Continental practice."84 As far as I am aware, there are no extant records written by contemporary English performers, composers, or theorists that explain exactly how the keyboard ornaments should be executed. There are, however, several English lute treatises that survive, and Viljoen shows that the single and double slash ornaments look much like the single- and double-slash signs used by English lutenists of this period: and . As I compared different recorded performances of the same piece played by prominent harpsichordists such as Davitt Moroney and Joseph Payne, I noted many interpretative differences in the exact placement and execution of ornaments. Although there is agreement among scholars and performers that these ornaments represent some type of oscillation, there is no real consensus on exactly how these ornaments should be realized in terms of such factors as beginning on the upper or main note or number of oscillations. From a practical standpoint, I believe that two additional factors must also be taken into consideration when playing these ornaments: the overall speed of the music, and the ease or difficulty in executing an ornament depending on which fingers one is required to use in a particular passage. After playing quite a few pieces from this repertoire, I have learned that many times I am required to use a simple mordent or three-note trill beginning on the main note simply because the fast speed of the work demands such a realization. 84 Ibid., 259. 66 One early twentieth-century commentator, Charles van den Borren, held the view that the ornaments were added at the composer's fancy and that the exact placement of the ornaments was not important. In his book entitled The Sources of Keyboard Music in England (1905), van den Borren wrote: We have, in fact, a conviction that the graces are purely superficial ornaments only, the presence of which has no determining influence on the stylistic physiognomy of virginal compositions . . . . It suffices to read just as they are - that is to say, deprived of their ornaments . . . these compositions are wholly sufficient in themselves, and that the mordents and shakes add nothing to their beauty.85 Along these same lines, Margaret Glyn wrote in 1934 that "the ornaments of this music, scattered throughout the virginal books, have no expressive character, and are not essential to the text."86 I definitely do not subscribe to this view, and believe that the very opposite is true: the ornaments are an integral part of the musical fabric, and are in fact the very elements which give English virginal music its distinctive sound. Tempo One of the most crucial issues of performance practice is determining the right tempo for a piece, one which is stylistically appropriate, and which enhances the character and captures the spirit of the music. Many of the compositions in the FVB are dances, the most common being the pavan-alman pairs. In cases such as this, the actual 85 Charles van den Borren, The Sources of Keyboard Music in England, London: Novello (1914), quoted in Viljoen, "Ornamentation in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book," 259-260. 86 Glyn, Margaret H. "The National School of Virginal Music in Elizabethan Times." Proceedings of the Musical Association 43rd Sess. (1916-1917): 29-49, http://jstor.org/journals (accessed December 30, 2007), quoted in Viljoen, "The Ornamentation in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book," 259. 67 dance steps would determine the appropriate tempo. Generally speaking, the most common mistake that performers make today is to take the tempi of this music too fast. Fingering In My Ladye Nevelles Virginal Book, I noticed that William Byrd had indicated a system of fingering in which the left hand fingers are notated differently than is common today. The fingering system is thus: Left Hand: 1-2-3-4-5 (modern notation = 5-4-3-2-1) Right Hand: 1-2-3-4-5 (same as modern notation) A few pieces in the FVB contain fingerings. An anonymous work titled "El- Kidermister" has an extended passage where Francis Tregian Jr. has indicated the fingerings above the top staff for the right hand. Here is how Maitland and Squire transcribed this section of the piece, as it is printed in the Dover 1972 edition: Ex. 6. "El Kidermister" by anonymous, from the FVB. 68 Notice the strange consecutive use of the second finger in a quick passage. Using this fingering makes no sense and would render this passage nearly impossible to play quickly. Because of this realization of the fingering in the original Breitkopf und Härtel edition which was later reprinted by Dover, one writer in 1905 commented on the strange fingering system of the English virginalists, and tried to explain why such fingerings would be used in this passage. As I looked at Tregian's manuscript and became familiar with his handwriting, I discovered that Maitland and Squire had mistakenly transcribed Tregian's "1's" as "2's." The passage as corrected reads: Ex. 7. MSS p. 40 - "Praeludium El Kidermister" by anonymous, bars 17-19. The underlined "1's" in this score were transcribed as "2's" in the Breitkopf und Härtel (1899) and Dover (1972) editions. Maitland and Squire also transcribed the word "Kiderminster" as the composer instead of "Kidermister" as part of the title. 69 Creating a New Performing Edition of Four Pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book One of the main obstacles a modern performer faces is finding published editions of the repertoire contained in the FVB that are both transcribed accurately and edited clearly and intelligently. As I continued in my research for this paper, it became obvious that I would need to make a more accurate performing edition of some of the pieces that I would be performing from the FVB. Despite numerous typographical errors in the original Maitland and Squire publication, that edition has proven to be a valuable resource over the years, primarily because it was the only edition available for much of the twentieth century. Of the 297 keyboard pieces found in the FVB, compositions by William Byrd, John Bull, Peter Philips, and the father-and-son pair Giles and Richard Farnaby are now available in several different editions, including the prestigious scholarly edition Musica Britannica. However, many of the smaller pieces by lesser known or anonymous composers have only been transcribed once, by Maitland and Squire in the late 1890s, and have not yet been re-edited by Musica Britannica. This afforded me a perfect opportunity for an editing project: pick four shorter compositions by unfamiliar or anonymous composers from the FVB that had not been re-edited since the 1890s, and create a cleaner, more accurate performing edition of these works by transcribing and editing them directly from the primary source itself, the manuscript of the FVB. The four pieces that I chose are: • No. 19, MSS page 37 - Muscadin / anonymous • No. 23, MSS page 40 - Praludium El-Kidermister / anonymous • No. 25, MSS pages 41-42 - Praeludium / anonymous • (no number listed) MSS pages196-197 - Heaven and Earth / Fre (Francis Tregian Jr.) 70 In setting up the parameters for this project, I read the editorial policies used by the first transcribers, Maitland and Squire, and also those of the editors of Musica Britannica. Other sources were helpful as well, such as a D.M.A. dissertation dealing with the transcription of the Nani Bunko keyboard manuscript. I used the following guidelines in transcribing and editing: • The microfilm copy of the manuscript of the FVB was used as the sole primary source, as the pieces I transcribed and edited are not found anywhere else. Maitland and Squire's (1899) published edition was also used as a secondary source as a basis of comparison with the manuscript, or in situations where the manuscript is not very legible. • Time signatures and note values have been transcribed exactly as they appear in the manuscript, with the exception of Tregian's preferred usage of tying two half notes together, which I have transcribed using modern notation into a single whole note instead. • All ornaments and bar lines have been transcribed exactly as in the manuscript. • C clefs have been rendered as G or F clefs. • Accidentals and fingerings are notated just as they appear in the manuscript, either to the left, above, or under a note. • Editorial suggestions such as musica ficta, realization of ornaments, fingerings, and articulation appear above the affected note and are given in brackets. Accidentals were indicated in retroactive circumstances to preserve the mode, to avoid augmented seconds, and to sharp the leading tone at cadential points. • Directions of stems on groups of notes have been changed to conform to modern usage, unless the original barring implies a certain phrasing. • The beaming of note groups has also been changed from the original notation to conform to the modern notation of grouping the notes within a beat. • The six-line staves used by Francis Tregian Jr. have been replaced by modern five-line staves. 71 Ex. 8. No. 19, MSS 37 - "Muscadin" by anonymous, from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book Tregian has inserted some fingerings under a few of the notes in the second bar. Ex. 9. No. 19, MSS 37 - Measure 2 of "Muscadin" I believe that the second "3" may provide a clue to the realization of this ornament, i.e., begin on the upper auxiliary note in this particular instance. 72 Ex. 10. Transcription of "Muscadin" (No. 19, MSS 37) from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book by Pamela Palmer Jones. 73 Ex. 11. No. 23, MSS 40 - "Praludium El-Kidermister" by anonymous, from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. This piece features an extended passage of written-out fingerings which were transcribed incorrectly by Maitland and Squire (see Example 7) and now appear in their original form in my transcription. 74 Ex.12. Transcription of "Praludium El-Kidermister"(No. 23, MSS 40), from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, by Pamela Palmer Jones. 75 Ex.13. No. 25, MSS 41-42 - "Praeludium" by anonymous, from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Maitland and Squire found some discrepancies in the manuscript between the custodes at the end of a line at the bottom of MSS 41 (which indicated which pitches should follow on the next stave) with the actual notated pitches on the following stave at the top of MSS 76 42. They postulated that<