Reviewed work(s): Source: Early Music, Vol. 11, No. 4, Rameau Tercentenary Issue (Oct., 1983), pp. 517-519 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3137881 . Accessed: 28/11/2012 14:38 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 support@jstor.org. . Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Early Music. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.82.206 on Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:38:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions iWW Nationale, Vm72108, C 3v; photo Alan Gerstman) not part of the title. The appearance of the attribution in a collection emanating in some way from Balbastre is strong support for its accuracy, since Balbastre was a warm admirer of Rameau and is likely to have known whether or not the piece was the work of the master;5 Marpurg's evidence reinforces the link. And the piece itself suggests Rameau's authorship, for it consists largely of batteries that are highly characteristic of his style (though they were widely copied). The two types he claimed in 1724 to have invented are neatly differentiated at the beginnings and ends of strains: 'In one of these batteries, the hands make between them the consecutive movement of two drumsticks: and in the other, the left hand passes over the right to play alternately the bass and treble.'6 One might object that the music is unworthy of Rameau, but the same objection applies to the little minuet in that same preface of 1724; obviously both are studies for beginners. Certainly neither is less worthy than the other harpsichord piece by Rameau known only in manuscript, the second-rate, mechani- cally spun-out La dauphine. Until proof to the contrary is adduced, it seems that we must accept Les petits marteaux as a minor addition to the Ramellian canon. 'F. W. Marpurg, Historisch-hritische Beytrage zur Aufnahme der Musih, 1 (Berlin, 1754), p.465 2Other copies may emerge during the preparation, by Bruce Gustafson and the writer, of a systematic catalogue of the repertory, which is now in progress. 3Recetiil [sic] de pieces de clavecin de differents auteurs Italienes et francois 4It should be noted that the mere presence or absence of an attribution in this source tells us nothing: of 40 pieces or pairs of pieces, about a third carry a composer's name; only three are attributed to Balbastre, so the blanket ascription to him on the title- page cannot be taken very seriously. (Nor can the description of the pieces, for little more than half are airs d'opera; certainly Les petits marteaux was always keyboard music and never an opera air.) The individual attributions, however, all seem to be plausible, though no verification has been yet undertaken. 5For further information about the relationship between Balbastre and Rameau see Laurence Libin's article in this issue, pp.510-13. 6' De la m6chanique des doigts', Pieces de clavessin avec une methode sur la mechanique des doigts (Paris, 1724); true, here it is the right hand that passes over the left. Dowland's darkness Diana Poulton I found Anthony Rooley's exposition of the philosophy and imagery in certain of Dowland's songs ('New light on John Dowland's songs of darkness', EM Jan 83 pp.6-21) extremely interesting. I think he makes a convincing case for Dowland's having been fully aware of the implication of the words in these songs. Nevertheless I am not convinced that my estimate of his character is incorrect. Rooley quotes from Thomas Fuller, without any qualification, that Dowland was'a cheerful person ... passing his days in lawful merriment' (p.6). But Fuller's History of the Worthies of England was published posthumously by his son John in 1662, 36 years after Dowland's death. Fuller himself may never have known Dowland, for he makes two incorrect statements when he writes of his 'being Servant in the Chapel to Queen Elizabeth and King James': Dowland was never in Elizabeth's service in any capacity, as is shown in the Audit Office Declared Accounts and by his own complaints, and there is no evidence whatsoever that he was connected with the Chapel Royal during his appointment to the court of James I. Surely if Fuller had known Dowland these errors would not have been made. Henry Peacham, who claimed Dowland as a friend, paints a very different picture of him in his poem Heere, EARLY MUSIC OCTOBER 1983 517 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.82.206 on Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:38:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions I A canon by Dowland on the first line of the chorale Vater unser im Himmelreich, with the composer's signature; from the Album amicorum (1599-1606) of Johannes Cellarius of Nuremberg (London, British Library, Add.27579, f.88) Philomel, in silence sits alone, which appeared in Minerva Britanna in 1612. Peacham describes Dowland and his music as being out of fashion and neglected. But at the time his music was echoing through most of Europe as __...--.. ---- -----
well as in England, and it can only be surmised that Peacham wrote thus after listening to complaints from his friend that he had not received at court them recognition he believed his due. Later, in The Compleat Gentleanna in (1622), Peacham wrote 'Of my good friend Master Doctor Dowland, in regard he has slipt many opportunities of advancement'. Dowland used on throuitle-page of some of his publications such mottos (in Latin) as: 'The arts that help mankind cannot help their master'; 'Whom fortune has not blessed, he either rages or weeps'; and the description of himself as 'Gio. Dulande infoelice Inglese'. Certainly these could be taken as being all part of the construction of an artistic 'persona'; but there are other complaints of Dowland's that can hardly be of such a kind. In the entertainment Daphne and Apollo, played before Elizabeth I at Sudeley Castle in 1592, in which Dowland's song My heart and tongue were twinnes was performed, a little scene is introduced that is entirely irrevelant to the argument of the entertainment. In it the character 'Do.' (abbreviations are used for all the names) has these lines: 'I have plaide so long with my fingers, that I have/beaten out of play all my good fortune'. But above all it is in his long letter written to Sir Robert Cecil from Nuremberg in 1595, disclosing the plotting of the English in Florence against the queen's life, that Dowland reveals his resentment at the thwarting of his ambition to secure a post at Elizabeth's court. Rooley states that Dowland undertook his journey to Italy in order to meet Marenzio; and this is the reason the composer gives in his Firste Booke of Songes. But in his letter to Cecil he gives a quite different reason for his wish to travel: Then in time passing one Mr. Johnson died & I became an humble suitor for his place (thinking myself the most worthiest) wherein I found many good and honourable friends that spake for me, but I saw that I was like to go without it, and that any may have preferment but I, whereby I began to sound the cause, and guessed that my religion was my hindrance. Whereupon my mind being troubled I desired to get beyond the seas which I durst not attempt without a licence from some of the Privy council ... After describing his meeting with one of the plotters in Florence, who tried to persuade him to join them and promised him a large pension from the pope if he did so, Dowland goes on to say: After my departure I called to mind our conference & got me by myself & wept heartily, to see my fortune so hard that I should become servant to the greatest enemy of my prince: country: wife: children: and friends: for want... He admits to having been converted to Catholicism during the period he spent in France; but there is no evidence that he remained a practising Catholic on his return to England; indeed, he could not have obtained the degree of Bachelor of Music at Oxford in 1588 had any such suspicion been attached to his name. Perhaps the most telling argument against the idea that his religion was his hindrance is the fact that his licence to travel abroad was signed by Cecil and the Earl of Essex; for this licence was expressly used to prevent Catholics travelling as links between those at home and those abroad who were plotting the queen's overthrow. In fact, no one was appointed in John Johnson's place at court for four years, and the 518 EARLY MUSIC OCTOBER 1983 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.82.206 on Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:38:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions reduction in the number of court musicians may simply have been a result of one of the many attempts to bring about some economies in the heavy expend- iture of the royal household. It is clear that Dowland abandoned his stated intention of visiting Marenzio in Rome and fled to Nuremberg, where he wrote his letter to Cecil. Dowland's final complaints were made in A Pilgrimes Solace (entered in the Stationers' Register on 28 October 1611) and were directed against his fellow musicians. In the most extreme terms he attacks 'Cantors', 'young-men, professors of the lute', 'divers strangers from beyond the seas' and Tobias Hume. No other music book of the period had ever been used as a medium for abuse of this kind. On his appointment to the court of James I just one year later, his complaints ceased. His ambition realized, he appears to have enjoyed a period of tranquillity until his death in 1626. Surely these various complaints-together with the extraordinarily cavalier way in which he treated his lucrative employment at the court of Christian IV of Denmark, by overstaying his leave and contracting heavy debts-suggest a man embittered by long failure to achieve ambition, rather than one conscious- ly constructing an artistic persona for himself. The Elizabethan Competitive Festival 1923-6 Elizabeth Roche In the field of early music, where the time-scale usually runs in centuries, a mere 60th anniversary might not seem very remarkable. Yet it would be a pity to let 1983 go by without remembering the attempt of 60 years ago to establish a competitive festival based entirely on Elizabethan music. This was one of the boldest single ventures ever made in the long struggle to win for 'old', 'ancient' or 'early' music the recog- nition it deserves. After all, if the idea had taken root, and the Elizabethan Festival had survived to see its diamond jubilee, its influence on the revival of early music could well have been considerable, and 1983 would have been the occasion for celebration, not commemoration. Such a venture could not of course have been initiated in a vacuum, and when the first plans were made in 1922 the omens must have seemed particularly auspicious. An Elizabethan festival would be an ideal way of spreading the Tudor gospel by bringing together two important elements in contemporary musical life: the 40-year-old competitive festival movement, with its probably unrivalled power to influence the musical taste of ordinary people, and the 'Elizabethan fever' of the 1920s. There was of course nothing new about the appearance of 16th-century music at a competitive festival. English (and sometimes Italian) madrigals and Tudor anthems had been used as test-pieces since the early days of the movement, as an essential ingredient in that process of bringing ordinary people into contact with the best music, which was its main object. The Musical Times made this clear in its report on the 14th of Miss Wake'field's pioneering com- petitions at Kendal in 1899: It is indeed in the character of the music set as tests that the value of these competitions largely consists ... the eleven choirs that had prepared with such pains Marenzio's Lady, see on every side could not but be the better for becoming intimate with such music, and less likely to be contented with the sentimental pot-boilers that are, alas, so common.' From about 1900 onwards the competitive festival movement expanded with breathtaking speed: great cities, fashionable resorts, small market towns and even scattered country districts all had their festivals, and many of their syllabuses habitually included mad- rigals, whether for village-choir classes in rural Rutland or Northumberland, or for the epic battles fought out beside the Lancashire seaside as the crack choirs of northern England strove for the coveted Challenge Shields at Blackpool and Morecambe. In the latter case, the use of a madrigal as one of the three tests had a particular value: the difficult modern pieces, written for these classes by such composers as Bantock, increasingly tested the competitors' tech- nique at the expense of their interpretative powers, and as the Times report on the 1912 Blackpool Festival pointed out, the madrigal gave the choirs a chance to 'concentrate their musical perceptions' on a fine but relatively straightforward piece.2 By 1920, when the movement was well on the way to recovering from the disruption caused by World War I, the madrigal had become part of the festivals' artistic tradition, though of course the setting of madrigals as tests was no guarantee that they would be adequately performed (the available evidence suggests that often they were not). But the festivals were nevertheless well placed to capitalize on the wave of enthusiasm for Elizabethan music that presently swept the country, EARLY MUSIC OCTOBER 1983 519 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.82.206 on Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:38:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions