Travels of Music Through Time and Place

The travelling troubadour is  a well known stereotype of the middle ages and beyond.  Artists regularly travelled to wherever there was work.  Of course it was the norm for many to leave wife and kids to earn a living at court or elsewhere; Shakespeare being the most famous documented figure in this regard.  By the time of the reign of Henry VIII it was becoming de rigeur to employ exotic foreign musicians. But well before then, the music travelled before the musicians did. 

Lesser known English musician John Dunstaple has a prolific listing of his work in a foreign source.  He contributed 31 compositions to a well known italian manuscript;  MS Alpha X.1.11of the Bibiioteca Estense;  known colloquially to the rest of us as the "Mod B Manuscript".    

There is not enough evidence about Dunstaple's life to be sure if he did travel or not to Italy or how his music came to this manuscript. Very little is known.  But in his overseas music representation, Dunstaple was not alone. Of 120 pieces in the Mod B, a staggering 53 are by English composers making this a significant source of English music of that time.  What time? well, it is thought to be compiled from 1420 - 1448.  The other contributors are French, and include Dufay, Binchois and Benoit.  

Leonello d'Esete c. 1444

Compiled at the court of Marquis Leonello d'Este of Ferrara,  and like compilations today, it is a collection of music from outside that place and not commissioned by it, but possibly used in the chapel by the musicians (think any standard choir or singing book).  

The big question is how did the music travel there? To our knowledge some of the English composers listed in the Mod B never left England (Forest, Plummer, Benet) yet their music appears in a significant volume in Italy.

In brief, there have been several theories put forward:

* Council of Ferrara of 1438 Had an English envoy suggested - but there is no evidence they actually went

* Andrew Holes:  The king's resident Proctor in Ferrara at the time might have been a conduit for the music

* University of Ferrara:  Had several English students at that time with appropriate connections. Notably William Grey (later Bishop of Ely), Robert Flemmyng (later Dean of Lincoln) and Reynold Chichele - Nephew to the Arch Bishop of Canterbury and founder of All Souls Oxford, Henry Chichele.

All these people had connections with professional and court musicians, may well have known their music;  but as to how it travelled, whether by manuscript, with its author or simply aurally and later transcribed,  is still a subject of research, discovery and suggestion.  As so often in history, there is no compelling evidence, but wisps of thought and theorising. Perhaps it was a combination of all these people, occasions and opportunities listed above.  Or intriguingly , an explanation yet to be discovered. 

By the time of Henry VIII  it was more than just the music doing the travelling.  King Henry certainly employed foreign and particularly italian musicians in the English court.   Chronicler Edward Hall writes of events in 1513: 'On the daie of the Epiphanie at night, the kyng with a. xi. other were disguised, after the maner of Italie, called a maske, a thyng not seen afore in Englande . . . ' At the same time, royal account books begin to list many foreign musicians who were engaged to play at court. 

That the artists were used as political pawns, envoys, communicators or even informants (more likely in later times)  is not beyond the pale, albeit undetermined.  There is much discussion about court spies of the 1500's   and I wonder if that was a culmination of something which commenced or evolved from a much earlier innocent exchange of music. 

John Dowland

Later again and most famously, John Dowland was a professional musician who was disappointed not to gain the position of Court Lutenist for Elizabeth I after the death of John Johnson. The position went to Johnson's son Robert.    Robert Johnson had been apprenticed to the household of George Carey, a patron of Dowland, to whom Dowland dedicated his first published book of songs in 1597. As today, its a small pool and everyone knows eachother.

So Dowland sought work overseas in the service of Moritz, Landgrave of Hesse and King Christian IV of Denmark.

He thought his lack of appointment to the court of Elizabeth I was due to his being catholic, but there were various  catholic musicians working at court (Thomas Tallis, William Byrd for instance) and the reason/context for Downlands rejection has never been discovered.  

Certainly his opus is one of the largest for the time, is very well known today and was published in his lifetime in his home country.  By that era, technology was more robust and prolific, record keeping better and more evidence of this period survived despite the reformation, fires, wars and goodness knows what else.  But compared to his contemporaries we still have a LOT of Dowland. Was this good marketing? better publishing laws and techniques? simple opportunity or because he lived away from home and strived for involvement and recognition there? Like William Tyndale, perhaps banishment can be a great driver to achievement. 

Dowland's Notation and Signature

After first singing Dowland at 15, I've just started playing my first Dowland piece on a lute he would recognise in form, style and timbre. Later, he was welcomed to the court of James VI/I where he became irritated with the new styles of playing and the roughshod techniques of the younger players. Over his lifetime he changed his playing techniques and I am currently being taught in his later style, the minutiae of which is being discussed as I write, by the international Lute List members. All of a sudden much more is known about this generation of musicians.

I think he might be amazed to know how much his music, playing and even technique has survived and is so much more well known, arguably more widely than his contemporaries. Dowland is Shakespeare to Johnson's Marlowe, perhaps.

As for the earlier trailblazers, Leonel Power and Dunstaple, they're not lost to us either.

Further reading/Sources:

Lockwood, Lewis, Music in Renaissance Ferrara 1400 - 1505 

http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195378276.001.0001/acprof-9780195378276

Dowland: http://www.johndowland.co.uk/index.htm

Old Hall MSS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Hall_Manuscript

Mod B MSS: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/20532146uid=3737536&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=55958698903

Travelling Players: http://mathewlyons.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/travelling-players-minstrelsy-shakespeare-and-spies/