the autobiography of thomas whythorneby thomas whythorne; james m. osborn

4
The Autobiography of Thomas Whythorne by Thomas Whythorne; James M. Osborn Review by: Nan Cooke Carpenter Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Summer, 1962), pp. 220-222 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/829649 . Accessed: 12/06/2014 21:57 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . University of California Press and American Musicological Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Musicological Society. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 195.34.79.223 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:57:38 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Upload: review-by-nan-cooke-carpenter

Post on 18-Jan-2017

212 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

The Autobiography of Thomas Whythorne by Thomas Whythorne; James M. OsbornReview by: Nan Cooke CarpenterJournal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Summer, 1962), pp. 220-222Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/829649 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 21:57

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of California Press and American Musicological Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Musicological Society.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.223 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:57:38 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

220 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

The Susanas grosadas offer nothing new: they conform to traditional meth- ods and may be added to the extensive lists of settings, instrumental and vocal, of Susanne un jour, compiled by John Ward6 and Kenneth J. Levy.7

Coelho's versos,8 outgrowths of impro- visational practices, show the traditional functions of the organist. He must be able to place the cantus firmus in any voice and accompany it with three other parts: Quatro pange linguas sobre o canto chbo de breves em cada voz (Four Pange linguas on the plainchant in breves in each part). He must be able to improvise or compose on motives drawn from the plainchant: Sinco versos sobre os pagos do canto chao da Ave Maris stella (Five versos on melodic steps of the Ave maris stella). Above all, the organist must be capable of playing on any "tone" or in any mode: Kirios ou versos por todos os sete sinos, comefando de se sol fa ut a te b fa negro (Kyries or versos on all seven tones from C to Bb) . . . "Et queste cose fatte d'improvviso dan chiaro indicio del valor de l'organista, facendole bene."9

Mr. Kastner and the Gulbenkian Foun- dation are to be congratulated for pro- viding an excellent and scholarly source of Portuguese music which will contrib- ute substantially to our knowledge of keyboard music in the i6th and i7th centuries.

RICHARD M. MURPHY Oberlin College

6 J. M. Ward, "The Use of Borrowed Material in I6th-Century Instrumental Mu- sic," this JOURNAL V (1952), p. 88.

7 K. J. Levy, "'Susanne un jour:' The History of a i6th Century Chanson," An- nales musicologiques I (1953), P. 375.

s The versos of Coelho have been studied by Klaus Speer: "The Organ Verso in Iberian Music to 1700," this JOURNAL XI (1958), p. 189.

9 After Ernst Ferand, Die Improvisation in der Musik (Zurich, 1938), p. 320;1 the quotation is from an early organ examina- tion given to aspiring candidates for the positions at San Marco.

The Autobiography of Thomas Why- thorne. Ed. by James M. Osborn. Ox- ford: Clarendon Press, 196I. lxv, 328 PP.

IN 1955, an old manuscript, wrapped in brown paper, turned up at Sotheby's, London, in a box of papers from the family home of Major H. C. H. Foley of Stoke Edith, Hereford. Signed "Thomas Whythorne, Gent.," the manuscript was identified by Sotheby's cataloguer, Mr. Peter Crofts, as the work of a little known Elizabethan composer. Coming under the hammer, the document was bought for Mr. James Osborn, who sub- sequently-after several years and much hard work on the manuscript-presented it to the Bodleian Library. There one may now see Mr. Osborn's name in large letters on the staircase, along with other notable benefactors to the library, begin- ning with Duke Humphrey.

The reproduction of this manuscript forms the major part of The Autobio- graphy of Thomas Whythorne. The auto- biography itself bears the title, A book of songs and sonetts, 'with longe discoorses sett with them, of the chylds lyfe, to- gyther with A yoong mans lyfe, and en- tring into the old mans lyfe-this devysed and written with A new Orthografye by Thomas Whythorne, gent. If Songs and Sonnets sounds like a more appropriate title for a collection of poetry (Tottel's Miscellany) than for an autobiography, all becomes clear in the light of Mr. Osborn's explanation in his introduction (p. lv):

Whythorne's poems are really the heart of the autobiography, providing its basic structure. For it is clear that when Why- thorne sat down to write his life story he opened up a manuscript wherein he had inscribed his Songs and Sonnets in chron- ological order, and used each poem as a peg on which to hang his narrative.

The author's "new orthography," Mr. Osborn tells us (p. lxii), is based on the method of John Hart, Orthographie, 1569. Faithfully reproduced here, it is bound to be a tremendous deterrent to the reader of this book-far more difficult, for example, than the system used by Charles Butler in his Principles of Musik (1636). Although Whythorne's method of phonetic spelling is clearly explained

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.223 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:57:38 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS 2 2

by Mr. Osborn, anyone trying to read the original will feel himself lost some- where between Old English (the thorn appears consistently) and the strange lan- guage found in many freshman term papers (piktiur, miuzik). Happily, how- ever, Mr. Osborn is preparing for the press a modernized version of the work, and most of us will be content to wait for that.

Meantime, Mr. Osborn's lengthy intro- duction is most readable and informative. Dealing first of all with Whythorne's reputation, our editor presents the com- poser to us as a once obscure early Eliza- bethan who published in I571 the first set of English madrigals, and then follows through the centuries Whythorne's ever improving reputation-which owed a great deal, incidentally, to the efforts of Philip Heseltine. "The recovery of Why- thorne's manuscript autobiography," says Mr. Osborn (p. xvii),

enables us to know him more intimately as a personality than any other Eliza- bethan man of music, art, or letters; at the same time we can follow Why- thorne's career, step by step, as a profes- sional musician consciously fighting to gain recognition of his status.

The composer's life is then summarized: from his early training at Magdalen Col- lege School, his years as a Demy at Mag- dalen College (Oxford), and his early service to the dramatist-musician John Heywood, through his years as tutor in various households, his emotional involve- ments with a series of widows, his travels on the Continent, his years in business as London manager for a wealthy merchant, his preoccupations with religion as he grows older, and his service as Music Master to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Although the autobiography ends with the Archbishop's death in 1575 (and is therefore assumed to have been written ca. I576), Mr. Osborn-who has combed parish registers and the like for recorded fact--continues the account of the musi- cian's life until his death in 1596.

A third section of the introduction, "The Significance of the Autobiography,"

makes clear why not only musical people but those concerned with literature and social history will find the work of great interest. For the literary historian, here are some 200 poems by a hitherto un- known Tudor poet. Often, we are told, those poems that seem completely con- ventional "are revealed by the autobio- graphy to have been the products of intense emotional experience." And so Mr. Osborn wonders whether other con- temporary poems, seemingly conven- tional, may not have been based upon genuine emotion rather than conventional patterns. Literary historians whose chief interest is proverbs, moreover, will find a rich harvest here: more than one hun- dred complete proverbs occur, with many more bits and pieces. Finally, as an auto- biography, Whythorne's book is shown to be unique for its time. Unusual is the sense of structure underlying the life -the idea of the "ages of man" that gives the book its framework. An author- ity on the subject of early autobiogra- phies, Mr. Osborn seems justified in claiming Whythorne's to be the first sus- tained autobiography in England.

But it is, of course, the music historian who will be most eager to examine, step by step, the career of this professional musician. Especially illuminating here are Whythorne's remarks about music on the Continent, his descriptions of life at Cambridge (he was, for a short time, a private tutor at Trinity), his labors at pre- paring his songs for publications, and his activities as the Archbishop's Music Mas- ter. Toward the end of the autobiogra- phy, furthermore, there is a section that -although not formally organized-is actually a fairly lengthy treatise on music. Incorporating most of the topics found in the conventional introduction to mu- sic since the Middle Ages, this discussion treats of the inventors of music, its uses (substantiated, as was invariably done, by examples from the Scriptures), its power and effects. Like Butler some decades later, Whythorne has a long discourse on church music, with reference to con- temporary musicians as well as those of Antiquity. All this is especially interest-

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.223 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:57:38 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

222 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

ing, since the few theoretical works on music published in England during the Elizabethan period came later in the cen- tury.

Following the text of the autobiogra- phy, a series of appendices present addi- tional information about the man and the times. One of these gives the location of Whythorne's polyphonic Songes of 1571: the only complete set is in the Hunting- ton Library. Another clarifies relations between the composer and his sometime patrons, the Dudley family (at that time, the Dukes of Northumberland). Why- thorne's several portraits form the subject of another discussion. And there is an index of first lines of all his known poems. The most interesting bit in this additional material, however, is a "Musi- cal Scrap"-here reproduced in facsimile (facing p. 30)-a scrap of paper found with the autobiography and listing Eng- lish musicians "of ancient time" and "of late time." Among the former is a Dr. Newton, a "mystery figure" whom Mr. Osborn says he is unable to identify (p. 300). This is undoubtedly the same "Mr. Newton" who was suggested by Oxford for the professorship of music at Gres- ham College upon its founding in I596, when both universities were invited to suggest candidates for the position. (Cf. Wood, History and Antiquities, II, 263, where Oxford's suggestion reads, "And lastly for Music - Gifford, of - and - Newton." Actually, Dr. Bull, the Queen's candidate, was elected to the professorship.)

In appendices as well as introduction, Mr. Osborn's material is especially mean- ingful because he constantly sets Why- thorne against the Elizabethan political and social background. In this handsome and beautifully edited volume, in fact, the once obscure musician has richly come into his own.

NAN COOKE CARPENTER

University of Montana

Heinrich Schiitz. Neue Ausgabe siimt- licher Werke. Band I. Historia der Geburt Jesu Christi, ed. by Friedrich Sch6neich. Band V. Geistliche Chor-

musik 1648, ed. by Wilhelm Kamlah. Band VI. Der Psalter in vierstimmigen Liedsaitzen nach Cornelius Beckers Dichtungen, ed. by Walter Blanken-

burg. Kassel and Basel: Biirenreiter- Verlag, 1955.

Tins would seem to be the age of the Neue Gesamtausgabe. The works of Mo- zart, Bach, Handel-and now Schiitz, among others-will be available in the near or distant future not only in the complete editions we all grew up with, but in new editions as well. The situa- tion, entirely normal in the realm of literature (how many editions are there of Shakespeare or Dante? of Plato or Cicero?), is relatively new to musical scholarship, simply because musicology has not been in operation long enough. Who needs to be reminded that Haydn is still incomplete, even while Mozart is

enjoying his second turn? that Lassus is not finished, although Palestrina has al-

ready an edition and a half? And who does not have a favorite (even though perhaps minor) composer or manuscript that has yet to be prepared for the press? This state of affairs at first suggests that scholars would do better to concentrate their energies on filling the real gaps in the printed literature, rather than on the mere improvement of material already available; but this is hardly fair. Although there are still gaps, they are being gradu- ally filled, and there is no reason to sup- pose that they would be filled much faster if the "new complete editions" were not being produced.

Nevertheless, such new editions must justify themselves. They require time, money, and skill to produce, and not one of these items is over-plentiful in our profession. They add a further burden to the budgets of libraries and scholars; unless they can make some positive con- tribution to the knowledge of a com- poser's music, they are hardly more than an expensive nuisance. Mere scarcity of the first modem edition is no longer justification enough. A reprint of the original can be produced far more quickly and cheaply than a revision. A new edi-

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.223 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:57:38 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions