英国音乐简史

An Outline History of British Music

© Chris de Souza/BBC The so-called "Land Without Music" was once anything but. From earliest times the Celtic fringe counted among its many skills freely improvised polyphonic singing. Written polyphony, and with it the development of rhythm and pitch notation evolved slowly. Winchester was an important centre. The monk, Wulstan (d963) describes an organ with 26 bellows and 400 pipes in Winchester Cathedral. The Winchester Tropers (c1050) contain over a hundred two-part compositions. The round Sumer is icumen in (c1300) demonstrates the ground-breaking skills of English composers, as do fragments from Worcester Cathedral. The Old Hall manuscript (c1410 - 1450) shows the first identified English composers developing an individual method of decorating the melody with harmony in thirds and sixths. The resulting sweetness of sound, eg in the Agincourt Song (1415) became known as the "contenance Anglaise". John Dunstable (d1453), famous throughout Europe, influenced the early Renaissance development of harmony and counterpoint.

The Reformation killed off an extraordinarily rich tradition. Musical collections were destroyed along with the monasteries. Some of the old Catholic composers bent with the wind, and developed new styles for the reformed liturgies. Music was maintained in the Cathedrals but

energies turned to the development of secular forms. The first lute primer was published in 1568. John Dowland (d1626) brought the lute song to unsurpassed heights. The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, (c1610) attests to the keyboard virtuosity of men like John Bull (d1628). The viol consort grew in popularity. Musica Transalpina, published in 1588, brought the Italian madrigal to Britain. Thomas Morley and others developed it into a uniquely English art-form which climaxed with the work of Byrd, Gibbons, Weelkes and Wilbye. The verse anthem developed under the first Stuart Kings. At Court the Masque developed into an extravagant musico/dramatic entertainment.

The Commonwealth period closed the Cathedrals and the theatres, so that most of the music composed at the time was for small vocal ensembles and viol consorts for use in private houses. Britain's first musical drama, The Siege of Rhodes was, paradoxically, a play set to music to get round the ban on spoken theatre

With the Restoration, James II brought with him the tastes of the French court, and sent musicians there to learn. The Chapel Royal was reformed and young composers such as John Blow trained in the new Italian style. Blow resigned as organist at Westminster Abbey in favour of his pupil Purcell (d1695), the greatest British composer for a hundred years before,