Music in early modern Scotland
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Music in early modern Scotland includes all forms of musical production in Scotland between the early sixteenth century and the mid-eighteenth century. In this period the court followed the European trend for instrumental accompaniment and playing. Scottish monarchs of the sixteenth century were patrons of religious and secular music, and some were accomplished musicians. In the sixteenth century the playing of a musical instrument and singing became an expected accomplishment of noble men and women. The departure of James VI to rule in London at the Union of Crowns in 1603, meant that the Chapel Royal, Stirling Castle largely fell into disrepair and the major source of patronage was removed from the country. Important composers of the early sixteenth century included Robert Carver and David Peebles. The Lutheranism of the early Reformation was sympathetic to the incorporation of Catholic musical traditions and vernacular songs into worship, exemplified by The Gude and Godlie Ballatis (1567). However, the Calvinism that came to dominate Scottish Protestantism led to the closure of song schools, disbanding of choirs, removal of organs and the destruction of music books and manuscripts. An emphasis was placed on the Psalms, resulting in the production of a series of Psalters and the creation of a tradition of unaccompanied singing.
Despite the attempts of the Kirk to limit the tradition of secular popular music, it continued. This period saw the adoption of the highland bagpipes and the fiddle. Ballads, some of which probably date from the Middle Ages, existed as part of a distinctive oral tradition. Allan Ramsey advocated the creation of a national musical tradition and collaborated with Italian composer and cellist Lorenzo Bocchi on the first Scottish opera the Gentle Shepherd. A musical culture developed around Edinburgh and a number of composers began to produce collections of Lowland and Highland tunes grafted on to Italian musical forms. By the middle of the eighteenth century a number of Italian musicians and composers were resident in Scotland and Scottish composers of national significance had begun to emerge.
In this era Scotland followed the trend of Renaissance courts for instrumental accompaniment and playing. James V, as well as being a major patron of sacred music, was a talented lute player and introduced French chansons and consorts of viols to his court, although almost nothing of this secular chamber music survives.[1] The return of Mary, Queen of Scots from France in 1561 to begin her personal reign, and her position as a Catholic, gave a new lease of life to the choir of the Chapel Royal, but the destruction of Scottish church organs meant that instrumentation to accompany the mass had to employ bands of musicians with trumpets, drums, fifes, bagpipes and tabors. Like her father she played the lute, virginals and (unlike her father) was a fine singer.[2] She brought French musical influences with her, employing lutenists and viol players in her household.[3]
James VI (r. 1566–1625) was a major patron of the arts in general. He rebuilt the Chapel Royal at Stirling in 1594 and the choir was used for state occasions like the baptism of his son Henry.[4] He followed the tradition of employing lutenists for his private entertainment, as did other members of his family.[5] When he went south to take the throne of England in 1603 as James I, he removed one of the major sources of patronage in Scotland. The Chapel Royal now began to fall into disrepair, and the court in Westminster would be the only major source of royal musical patronage.[4] Holyrood Abbey was remodelled as a chapel for Charles I's royal visit in 1633 and reclaimed by Charles II after the Restoration, becoming a centre of worship again during the future James VII's residency in the early 1680s, but was sacked by an anti-papist mob during the Glorious Revolution in 1688.[6]
These fashions permeated noble households, where resident musicians were employed, including viol and lute players. As elsewhere in Europe, musical ability became one of the major achievements expected of a nobleman or woman. Musicians were clearly employed as teachers for the children of the household, both male and female.[7] There is evidence for the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries of lessons being given in a variety of instruments and singing, and of the purchase of sheet music and instruments (including the virginals and harpsichords). In the Highlands clan chiefs continued to employ harpists, and increasingly, pipers as fili and bards, whose prowess and ability to glorify their ancestors was a key element in underlying a clan's status and heritage into the seventeenth century.[8] The earliest printed collection of secular music in Scotland was by publisher John Forbes in Aberdeen in 1662. Songs and Fancies: to Thre, Foure, or Five Partes, both Apt for Voices and Viols, known as Forbes' Cantus, was printed three times in the next twenty years. It contained 77 songs, of which 25 were of Scottish origin.[9]
Church music
The outstanding Scottish composer of the first half of the sixteenth century was Robert Carver (c. 1488–1558), a canon of Scone Abbey. His complex polyphonic music could only have been performed by a large and highly trained choir such as the one employed in the Scottish Chapel Royal. James V was also a patron to figures including David Peebles (c. 1510–79?), whose best known work "Si quis diligit me" (text from John 14:23), is a motet for four voices. These were probably only two of many accomplished composers from this era, whose work has largely only survived in fragments.[10] Much of what survives of church music from the first half of the sixteenth century is due to the diligent work of Thomas Wode (d. 1590), vicar of St Andrews, who compiled a part book from now lost sources, which was continued by unknown hands after his death.[11]
The Reformation had a significant impact on church music. The song schools of the abbeys, cathedrals and collegiate churches were closed down, choirs disbanded, music books and manuscripts destroyed and organs removed from churches.[12] The Lutheranism that influenced the early Scottish Reformation attempted to accommodate Catholic musical traditions into worship, drawing on Latin hymns and vernacular songs. The most important product of this tradition in Scotland was The Gude and Godlie Ballatis (1567), which were spiritual satires on popular ballads composed by the brothers James, John and Robert Wedderburn. Never adopted by the kirk, they nevertheless remained popular and were reprinted from the 1540s to the 1620s.[13]
The Calvinism that came to dominate the Scottish Reformation would seek to replace Catholic musical tradition and popular music with metricised versions of the Psalms, which it considered inherently more biblical. The Scottish Psalter of 1564 was commissioned by the Assembly of the Church. It drew on the work of French musician Clément Marot, Calvin's contributions to the Strasbourg Psalter of 1539 and English writers, particularly the 1561 edition of the Psalter produced by William Whittingham for the English congregation in Geneva. The intention was to produce individual tunes for each psalm, but of 150 psalms, 105 had proper tunes and in the seventeenth century, common tunes, which could be used for psalms with the same metre, became more frequent in the seventeenth century.[14] Because whole congregations would now sing these psalms, unlike the trained choirs who had sung the many parts of polyphonic hymns,[13] there was a need for simplicity and most church compositions were confined to homophonic settings.[15]
During his personal reign James VI attempted to revive the song schools, with an act of parliament passed in 1579, demanding that councils of the largest burghs set up "ane sang scuill with ane maister sufficient and able for insturctioun of the yowth in the said science of musik".[16] Five new schools were opened within four years of the act and by 1633 there were at least twenty-five. Most of those without song schools made provision within their grammar schools.[16] Polyphony was incorporated into editions of the Psalter from 1625, but in the few locations where these settings were used, the congregation sang the melody and trained singers the contra-tenor, treble and bass parts.[13] However, the triumph of the Presbyterians in the National Covenant of 1638 led to and end of polyphony and a new psalter in common metre, but without tunes, was published in 1650.[17] In 1666 The Twelve Tunes for the Church of Scotland, composed in Four Parts (which actually contained 14 tunes), designed for use with the 1650 Psalter, was first published in Aberdeen. It would go through five editions by 1720. By the late seventeenth century these two works had become the basic corpus of the psalmody sung in the kirk.[18]
