i

v

The Whole Booke of Psalmes, Protestant Ideology,

and Musical Literacy in Elizabethan England

by

Samantha Arten

Department of Music

Duke University

Date:_______________________

Approved:

___________________________

Thomas Brothers, Supervisor

___________________________

Philip Rupprecht

___________________________

Robert Parkins

___________________________

Jeremy Begbie

___________________________

Kerry McCarthy

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of Doctor

of Philosophy in the Department of

Music in the Graduate School

of Duke University

2018

ABSTRACT

The Whole Booke of Psalmes, Protestant Ideology,

and Musical Literacy in Elizabethan England

by

Samantha Arten

Department of Music

Duke University

Date:_______________________

Approved:

___________________________

Thomas Brothers, Supervisor

___________________________

Philip Rupprecht

___________________________

Robert Parkins

___________________________

Jeremy Begbie

___________________________

Kerry McCarthy

An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial

fulfillment of the requirements for the degree

of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of

Music in the Graduate School of

Duke University

2018

Copyright by

Samantha Arten

2018

iv

Abstract

The Whole Booke of Psalmes, first published in 1562, was not only the English

Reformation’s primary hymnal, but also by far the most popular printed music book

published in England in the sixteenth century. This dissertation argues that in addition

to its identities as scriptural text and monophonic musical score, the WBP functioned as

a music instructional book, intended by its publishers to improve popular music

education in Elizabethan England. Motivated by Protestant ideology, the WBP promoted

musical literacy for the common people. This dissertation further demonstrates that the

WBP made a hitherto unrecognized contribution to music theory in early modern

England, introducing the fixed-scale solmization system thought to originate at the end

of the sixteenth century. Drawing upon musicology, book history, and the study of

Reformation theology, this dissertation makes a contribution to post-revisionist English

Reformation scholarship, arguing that the WBP and its music-educational materials

formed part of the process of widespread conversion from Roman Catholicism to

English Protestantism.

John Day’s highly successful claim to monarchical authorization and religious

authority for the WBP made the book the most prominent guide to a Protestant musical

aesthetic for the common people. According to the WBP, the English Protestant musical

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identity was characterized by several features: communal singing of easy monophonic

melodies, particularly by the laity rather than clergy and musical professionals; a broad

selection of appropriate texts that encompassed Scripture (particularly the psalms),

liturgical canticles, and catechetical texts; regular singing both devotionally as a

household and as a congregation in church settings; and performance with instrumental

accompaniment. Musical literacy was an imperative: if being a Protestant meant

becoming an active part of musical worship, then it was crucial to teach all the laity to

sing well, enabling them to fully inhabit that identity.

For this reason, many of the 143 known editions published from 1562 to 1603

contained one of two features intended to teach basic musical literacy: a letter to the

reader which served as an introductory music theory treatise, and a special font that

assigned solmization syllables to individual pitches for ease of sight-reading, which was

accompanied by its own single-page explanatory preface. These prefaces made the WBP

unique among the music-theoretical works produced in sixteenth-century England, the

prefaces being neither the sort of introductory essays found in instrumental instruction

books nor freestanding music theory textbooks. Their content was simple and accessible,

with the goal of educating their common readers in the musical skills necessary for the

singing of psalms (but not improvisation or composition, critical topics in other

sixteenth-century English music theory treatises), and both prefaces employed religious

language that gave sacred meaning to music education. The WBP’s simplified

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solmization system made an important advance in the history of music theory, one that

has up until now been thought to originate thirty years later with music theorists

Thomas Morley and William Bathe.

Yet as we know from early Jacobean documents and practices, the average early

seventeenth-century churchgoer remained unable to read music and was therefore

unable to utilize the WBP as a musical score. I contend that the failure of the WBP’s

didactic content was due to music printing errors that significantly hindered the

psalter’s capacity to improve musical literacy. Despite John Day’s introduction of the

music preface and printed solmization syllables and the general policy of his successors

to maintain Day’s general structure, content, and Protestant message, the usefulness of

the WBP in promoting musical literacy and Protestant musical devotion was severely

hampered by seemingly musically-illiterate compositors and a lack of editorial

oversight.

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Contents

Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iv

List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. xi

List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. xii

Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................................... xv

Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1

This Project in Post-Revisionist English Reformation Scholarship ................................. 7

This Project in Musicological Scholarship ........................................................................ 11

Chapter Overview ................................................................................................................ 14

Chapter 1. “Faithfully perused and alowed”: Claims of Authority and Authorization for

The Whole Booke of Psalmes .......................................................................................................... 19

Positioning The Whole Booke of Psalmes as an Authoritative Protestant Text ................ 19

Protestant Authority ............................................................................................................ 28

Monarchical Authorization ................................................................................................. 35

Evidence of Church Use ...................................................................................................... 37

Evidence from Patents ......................................................................................................... 50

Legitimizing Congregational Song .................................................................................... 51

Chapter 2. For “all sortes of people” “in one accorde”: Constructing an English

Protestant Ideology of Music .................................................................................................... 53

Versification as Interpretation ............................................................................................ 53

“For it is good vnto our God to synge”: Music and the Psalms .................................... 57

“All sortes of people”: The Songs of a Christian Community ....................................... 66

viii

“In psalmes, Hymnes & spirituall songs”: Genre in The Whole Booke of Psalmes ......... 82

“Now in thy congregations” and “priuately for their solace & comfort”: When and

Where to Sing ........................................................................................................................ 88

“Prayse ye the Lorde with harp and songe”: Aesthetics and Instrumentation ........... 93

The Whole Booke of Psalmes’ English Protestant Musical Identity ................................. 100

Chapter 3. ‘Without any other help sauing this book’: Musical Literacy, General Literacy,

and Music Instructional Texts ................................................................................................. 104

General Literacy Rates in Elizabethan England ............................................................. 112

Methods of Obtaining Musical Literacy .......................................................................... 116

Elizabethan Music Instructional Texts ............................................................................ 125

Learning From Printed Texts Without Knowing How to Read ................................... 132

Chapter 4. ‘For the helpe of those that are desirous to learne to sing’: The Whole Booke of

Psalmes’ Music-Educational Prefaces ..................................................................................... 138

Frequency of the Prefatory Material ................................................................................ 141

Group 1: Music Preface and Athanasius Preface (11 editions, 8.27%) ................. 146

Group 2: Athanasius Preface (35 editions, 26.32%) ................................................. 147

Group 3: Solmization (44 editions, 33.08%) .............................................................. 149

Group 4: Different Prefatory Material (3 editions, 2.26%) ..................................... 150

Group 5: No Prefatory Material (34 editions, 25.56%) ............................................ 151

Group 6: Text Only (6 editions, 4.51%) ..................................................................... 152

Publisher Choices ......................................................................................................... 153

The Temporal Relationship Between the Music-Theoretical Prefaces ................. 153

The Music Preface............................................................................................................... 156

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The Solmization Preface .................................................................................................... 169

Protestant Advocacy for Musical Literacy ...................................................................... 174

Prefaces and Prayers .................................................................................................... 175

Music Theory Treatises and Epistles to the Reader ................................................ 176

Metrical Psalmody in Schools ........................................................................................... 183

Chapter 5. “Come to the knowledge of perfect Solfaing”: Solmization in The Whole Booke

of Psalmes .................................................................................................................................... 187

Hexachordal Solmization .................................................................................................. 187

Solmization in England ..................................................................................................... 189

Continental Hexachords in Practice................................................................................. 192

Fixed-Scale Solmization in The Whole Booke of Psalmes .................................................. 196

The Exceptional Lord’s Prayer ......................................................................................... 204

The Making of English-Style Solmization: The Whole Booke of Psalmes, Bathe, and

Morley .................................................................................................................................. 211

Printed Solmization as a Protestant Impulse .................................................................. 213

The Significance of Fixed-Scale Solmization .................................................................. 222

Afterword: Solmization and Dowland’s Pilgrimes Solace .............................................. 223

Chapter 6. “Very fals printed”: Music Typesetting Errors and the Failure of Popular

Music Education ........................................................................................................................ 230

Early Seventeenth-Century Musical Illiteracy: The Evidence of Lining Out and The

Praise of Musick .................................................................................................................... 231

John Day and the Psalter Patent ....................................................................................... 241

Music Typesetting Errors and Other Problems in The Whole Booke of Psalmes ........... 255

x

Mechanics of Music Printing ...................................................................................... 255

Variants in Tune References Across Editions .......................................................... 258

Common Music Typesetting Errors .......................................................................... 260

Music Preface Problems .............................................................................................. 264

Solmization Preface Problems .................................................................................... 268

Case Study: Solmization Psalters, 1586-1603 ........................................................... 272

Evidence of Reader Corrections ....................................................................................... 281

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 285

The Whole Booke of Psalmes in a Competitive Market ..................................................... 290

Appendix 1. Whole Booke of Psalmes Editions ......................................................................... 296

Appendix 2. Musical References in The Whole Booke of Psalmes, Coverdale, and Crowley

Psalters ........................................................................................................................................ 306

Appendix 3. Transcription of The Whole Booke of Psalmes’ Music Preface (1562) ............. 339

A shorte Introduction into the Science of Musicke, made for such as are desirous to

haue the knowledge therof, for the singing of these Psalmes. ..................................... 339

Appendix 4. Epistolary Content of Sixteenth-Century English Music Prints .................. 347

Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 355

Biography ................................................................................................................................... 372

xi

List of Tables

Table 1. Musical References in the Psalters ............................................................................. 58

Table 2. Musical Features of the WBP’s Psalm Tunes ............................................................ 73

Table 3. Musical Instruments in the WBP’s Versifications .................................................... 98

Table 4. Printed Music Theory Texts ...................................................................................... 125

Table 5. Psalter Groupings ....................................................................................................... 145

Table 6. Epistolary Content of 78 Music Prints ..................................................................... 181

xii

List of Figures

Figure 1. Title Page of the 1562 WBP ........................................................................................ 27

Figure 2. First Page of Psalm 1 in the 1562 WBP ..................................................................... 33

Figure 3. Title Page of the 1566 WBP ........................................................................................ 49

Figure 4. Music of the Crowley Psalter .................................................................................... 60

Figure 5. Psalm 77 ....................................................................................................................... 62

Figure 6. Psalm 104 and its Text Underlay .............................................................................. 63

Figure 7. Psalm 1 ......................................................................................................................... 74

Figure 8. Hymns in the WBP ..................................................................................................... 88

Figure 9. Woodcut From Day’s Whole Psalmes in Foure Partes ............................................ 136

Figure 10. Presentation Psalter ................................................................................................ 149

Figure 11. Frequency of the Music-Theoretical Prefaces ..................................................... 154

Figure 12. Gamut Woodcut from the WBP’s Music Preface ............................................... 162

Figure 13. Woodcut Illustrations of Rhythmic Values from the WBP’s Music Preface .. 163

Figure 14. Manuscript Addition of Solmization Preface Music Examples ....................... 174

Figure 15. Music Books Containing an Epistle to the Reader Without an Epistle

Dedicatory .................................................................................................................................. 181

Figure 16. Ut queant laxis .......................................................................................................... 188

Figure 17. Complete List of Music-Theoretical Sources Examined by Johnson and Owens

..................................................................................................................................................... 191

Figure 18. Hexachordal Solmization in Blanchier’s 1562 Geneva Psalter ......................... 194

Figure 19. Syllables Used in Blanchier’s Psalm 47 ................................................................ 195

xiii

Figure 20. Fixed-scale Solmization in the WBP. .................................................................... 200

Figure 21. Psalm 100 ................................................................................................................. 202

Figure 22. Comparison of Solmization Assignments for Psalm 100 (WBP) and Psalm 134

(Geneva Psalter in Multiple Editions) .................................................................................... 204

Figure 23. First Page of The Lord’s Prayer (WBP 1562, STC 2430) ..................................... 205

Figure 24. The Solmized Lord’s Prayer (WBP 1569, STC 2439.5) ....................................... 207

Figure 25. Solmization Syllables Used in The Lord’s Prayer .............................................. 208

Figure 26. The Solmized First Phrase of The Lord’s Prayer ................................................ 211

Figure 27. Comparison of Syllable Assignments for the WBP, Bathe, and Morley ......... 212

Figure 28. Deriving the No-Flat Scale .................................................................................... 213

Figure 29. Solmization and Syllabic Lyrics in Bourgeois’ Le Droict Chemin de Musique .. 216

Figure 30. Solmization in Vallette’s c. 1560 Geneva Psalter ................................................ 218

Figure 31. Solmization in Davantes’ 1560 Geneva Psalter .................................................. 220

Figure 32. Opening Phrase of Lasso vita mia .......................................................................... 228

Figure 33. John Day’s Printed Music ...................................................................................... 242

Figure 34. The Psalter Patent at a Glance............................................................................... 252

Figure 35. Title Page of STC 2477.5, a Pirated Edition ......................................................... 254

Figure 36. Hexachord Example in WBP 1581 (no STC number) ........................................ 267

Figure 37. Solmization Example in WBP 1569 (STC 2439.5) ............................................... 269

Figure 38. Cleffing Error in WBP 1572 (STC 2442) ............................................................... 270

Figure 39. Music Example Errors in WBP 1584 (STC 2468.5) .............................................. 271

Figure 40. Lord’s Prayer Comparison: WBP 1594 (STC 2486) and WBP 1595 (STC 2490)

..................................................................................................................................................... 275

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Figure 41. Psalm 1 Comparison: WBP 1594 (STC 2486), WBP 1595 (STC 2490), WBP 1597

(STC 2492), and WBP 1598 (STC 2494) ................................................................................... 280

Figure 42. Reader Corrections in STC 2490.3 ........................................................................ 283

Figure 43. Additional Anthems in WBP Harmonizations ................................................... 294

xv

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to my dissertation committee: Philip Rupprecht, Bob Parkins, and Jeremy

Begbie; with special thanks to my advisor, Tom Brothers, for his never-failing

encouragement, wise advice, thoughtful questions, and excellent comments, and to

Kerry McCarthy, for frequent Skype calls to discuss the minutiae of sixteenth-century

English music.

I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to several other scholars for their assistance

on this project: Beth Quitslund, Timothy Duguid, John Milsom, Katherine Butler,

Nicholas Temperley, Jessie Ann Owens, Robin Leaver, Linda Phyllis Austern, and

Joseph Ortiz. The many conversations and emails I have shared with you all have made

this dissertation project a sincere pleasure.

My thanks too to the many librarians and staff at the 32 rare books libraries I

visited in the course of this research, and especially to Laura Williams, Duke’s music

librarian, who, we all agree, is a treasure of the department.

This research would not have been possible without generous financial support

from the Duke Graduate School, the Duke Department of Music, and the Conversions:

Medieval and Modern working group. I was able to visit those 32 libraries thanks to

you. Duke’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and its director, Michael

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Cornett, deserve special mention. Thank you for funding, for multiple opportunities to

present my work-in-progress and to receive interdisciplinary feedback, and especially

for the dissertation completion fellowship that enabled me to remain in Durham to

finish this project in a timely fashion.

Finally, my enthusiastic and loving thanks to my husband, Isaac Arten, for chai

and synonyms. I frequently tell people how convenient it is, as a scholar of sacred music,

to be married to a theologian. We make a spectacular team.

1

Introduction

Undoubtedly the most influential music book published in sixteenth-century England

was The Whole Booke of Psalmes (hereafter WBP). First published in 1562, the WBP was

reissued at least once every year, often in multiple editions with dramatically differing

formats. Rapidly and enthusiastically adopted by the English people for both public

worship and private devotion, these metrical psalms (psalms in verse, sung in unison)

proved to be a critical means of teaching and enabling English Protestant practice and

belief. In this dissertation, I argue that they were responsible for the formation of a

popular musical culture that was distinctly English and Protestant in its concerns.

The WBP played an important role in the development of musical literacy in

Elizabethan England. There has been little reflection to date on its contribution to music

education, and scholars have not considered how this psalter represents—and attempts

to inculcate—a Protestant musical aesthetic. This dissertation addresses both topics,

exploring the WBP’s attempt, motivated by Protestant ideology, to increase musical

literacy among the common people as well as the psalter’s contribution to music theory

in early modern England. I argue that early English Protestantism saw not only verbal

literacy as a primary goal, but musical literacy as well; Protestant advocacy for musical

literacy was a function of the Protestant theology of music. If being a Protestant meant

2

becoming an active part of musical worship, then it was crucial to teach all the laity to

sing well, enabling them to fully inhabit that identity.

My work centers on the two main didactic features of the WBP: an instructional

letter to the reader on the fundamentals of reading music and a system of printed

solmization syllables to aid in sight-singing. The letter to the reader included as one of

two prefaces in the 1562 WBP is particularly significant and has seldom been discussed

in any depth by musicologists.1 It was not only a rubric attempting to shape readers’

engagement with the text that followed but also an introductory music theory treatise.

This letter was intended to teach readers the basics of music theory, allowing them to

understand and perform not just for the musical contents of this psalter, but also any

other “playne and easy Songes as these are.” This little preface is remarkable for its early

publication date: it is the first known music theory treatise printed in the English

language, and it plays an important and hitherto unexamined role in the history of

music theory.

Second, many editions of the WBP beginning in 1569 printed solmization

syllables in the music and also included a new preface explaining their use. Through

analysis of these syllables as they were assigned in all of the printed psalm tunes, I have

been able to demonstrate that fixed-scale solmization, thought by Timothy Johnson and

1 See section below, “This Project in Musicological Scholarship,” and discussion throughout for the work of

those scholars who do engage significantly with the WBP, and Chapter 4 for previous musicological work

on the prefaces themselves.

3

Jessie Ann Owens to have been introduced in England in the 1590s by William Bathe

and Thomas Morley, was actually initiated in the WBP nearly thirty years earlier.2 The

WBP’s printed solmization syllables give us insight into the evolving nature of sixteenth-

century English music theory as it became increasingly distinct from the hexachordal

theory found on the Continent.

A book is not an immutable text, but rather a material object subject to variability

and change at many levels: when printed, when bound, when collected by antiquarians,

when cataloged by modern-day rare books libraries. One cannot assume that any one

edition of a book is identical to another edition; this is particularly true in early modern

printing, in which the creation of each new edition required completely re-typesetting

the entire text because printing houses did not possess enough pieces of type to leave

pages typeset. Variability across editions is the foundation of this dissertation project. To

show that the move towards musical literacy for the masses was not merely the impulse

of one publisher in 1562 but a key part of the English Protestant agenda, I have

attempted to view as many Elizabethan editions of the WBP as possible. The English

Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC) lists 141 editions between 1562 and 1603; I have discovered

two additional unlisted editions. Of these 143, I have viewed 133 (see Appendix 1 for

more details). In viewing all of these editions, I have been able to track publishers’

2 Timothy A. Johnson, “Solmization in the English Treatises Around the Turn of the Seventeenth Century: A

Break from Modal Theory,” Theoria 5 (1990): 42-60; Jessie Ann Owens, “Concepts of Pitch in English Music

Theory, c. 1560-1640,” in Tonal Structures in Early Music, ed. Cristle Collins Judd (New York: Garland

Publishing, 1998), 183-246.

4

choices in prefatory material across Elizabeth’s reign. And as bibliographer Joseph Dane

says, “A book-copy is always a material object that exists in time and space and carries

with it its own unique history…the word book refers to some abstract concept that

allows us to speak of a number of book-copies as a unit, as essentially identical.”3 While

seeing all Elizabethan WBP editions has been my goal, I do not account individual book-

copies as equal to the abstract concept of a single edition. Thus, seeing one copy of each

edition is good, but seeing as many book-copies as possible of each edition is even

better. This has allowed me to evaluate reader use, manuscript annotations, stop-press

corrections, and the like. At this point, I have seen literally hundreds of copies of the

same book (and I am not yet sick of the endlessly-fascinating WBP).

My approach to these 133 editions and hundreds of book-copies has been

informed by paratextual studies. The term “paratext” was coined by French literary

theorist Gérard Genette in his 1987 book Seuils, translated into English in 1997 with the

title Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation.4 In this highly influential book, Genette defines

paratext as “a certain number of verbal or other productions, such as an author’s name,

a title, a preface, illustrations,”5 which are found alongside the main body of text of a

3 Joseph A. Dane, What Is a Book? The Study of Early Printed Books (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame

Press, 2012), 8. I refer readers to this excellent and highly readable introduction to bibliography, especially if

they are unfamiliar with such terminology as “recto/verso,” “format vs. layout,” “edition vs. variant,”

“typeface,” “signature,” and “colophon.” 4 Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, transl. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1997). 5 Ibid., 1.

5

literary work. Paratext is not a neutral accompaniment to its text, but a means of

presentation which “enables a text to become a book and to be offered as such to its

readers and, more generally, to the public,”6 and a liminal space which serves as “a

transitional zone between text and beyond-text.”7 Genette gives several imaginative

metaphors for paratext throughout the course of his book, including “threshold,”

“vestibule,”8 “canal lock,” and “airlock;”9 it is a space that “offers the world at large the

possibility of either stepping inside or turning back”10 and “helps the reader pass

without too much respiratory difficulty from one world to the other.”11 Most

importantly, paratext represents the author’s (or publisher’s, or printer’s) attempt to

mediate and manage the reader’s experience: “[w]hatever aesthetic intention may come

into play as well, the main issue for the paratext is not to ‘look nice’ around the text but

rather to ensure for the text a destiny consistent with the author’s purpose.”12 Since

Genette, a number of scholars of print culture in sixteenth-century England have

examined the materiality of the book in sixteenth-century England and the conventions

of Tudor printing. Their work has shaped my approach to the WBP, and many of their

6 Ibid., 1. Genette is concerned only with printed materials in the course of his study, but of course

manuscripts may also contain paratext, and indeed, paratext served as an important means of organization

in the medieval scribal tradition. I do not suggest that paratext defines a printed book as opposed to a

handwritten manuscript, but printed works did come to have their own paratextual conventions. 7 Ibid., 407. 8 Ibid., 2. 9 Ibid., 408. 10 Ibid., 1. 11 Ibid., 408. 12 Ibid., 407.

6

explanations of the function of Tudor title pages, prefatory epistles, typefaces, and

marginalia appear as crucial parts of my arguments to come.13

Informed by paratextual studies, my approach to the WBP has focused largely

upon their prefatory material. Across 133 editions, I found that ongoing paratextual

changes offer insight into the changing goals of the psalter’s multiple publishers and the

(perceived) needs of the populace. The immediate and most important consequence of

my wide-ranging archival search has been a set of new statistics regarding the frequency

of the music preface and printed solmization: the music preface appears in 11 editions

out of the viewed 133; solmization appears in 44. Both of these figures are significantly

higher than modern scholarship has acknowledged. With this data as evidence, I can

now argue that music education was not a one-time experiment or casual effort, but an

ongoing priority for the publishers of the WBP.

13 Mark Bland, “The Appearance of the Text in Early Modern England,” Text 11 (1998): 91-154; Kevin Dunn,

Pretexts of Authority: The Rhetoric of Authorship in the Renaissance Preface (Stanford: Stanford University Press,

1994); Heidi Brayman Hackel, Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender, and Literacy

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); John Kerrigan, “The editor as reader: constructing

Renaissance texts,” in The Practice and Representation of Reading in England, ed. James Raven, Helen Small,

and Naomi Tadmor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 102-124; John N. King, ed., Tudor Books

and Readers: Materiality and the Construction of Meaning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010);

Michael Saenger, The Commodification of Textual Engagements in the English Renaissance (Aldershot: Ashgate,

2006); Valerie Schutte, Mary I and the Art of Book Dedications: Royal Women, Power, and Persuasion (New York:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker, eds., Reading, Society and Politics in Early

Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); William W. E. Slights, “The Edifying

Margins of Renaissance English Books,” Renaissance Quarterly 42, No. 4 (Winter, 1989): 682-716; idem,

Managing Readers: Printed Marginalia in English Renaissance Books (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,

2001); idem, “‘Marginall Notes that Spoile the Text’: Scriptural Annotation in the English Renaissance,”

Huntington Library Quarterly 55, No. 2 (Spring, 1992): 255-278; Helen Smith and Louise Wilson, eds.,

Renaissance Paratexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Evelyn B. Tribble, Margins and

Marginality: The Printed Page in Early Modern England (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993).

7

This Project in Post-Revisionist English Reformation Scholarship

How did the WBP help teach the common people their new Protestant faith, the

particularly Protestant views of music and musical practice, and the basics of music

theory? Answers to these questions will be important not just for musicology but also

for the general field of the history of the English Reformation. There is debate regarding

the speed and scope of the English Reformation. Explanations range from defining the

Reformation as a compulsory conversion of a reluctant laity to naming it, in Diarmaid

MacCulloch’s oft-quoted words, “a howling success.”14 However, it is generally accepted

that the majority of the English people had become Protestant in some sense of the word

by the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth I.15 Thus the focus of English Reformation

scholarship has shifted to the process by which the widespread conversion from Roman

Catholicism to English Protestantism occurred.16 This “post-revisionist” research

attempts to balance the opposing views of the Reformation as quickly integrated due to

14 Diarmaid MacCulloch, “The Impact of the English Reformation,” The Historical Journal 38, No. 1 (Mar.,

1995): 152. 15 Patrick Collinson, for example, asserts, “if I were to be asked when Protestant England was born I would

answer, with greater conviction than I could have mustered even a few years ago: after the accession of

Elizabeth I, some considerable time after,” and identifies the year 1580 as a watershed moment in which

Protestant culture reversed its willingness to use and appropriate aspects of secular cultural forms and

media for its own purposes, instead creating “an advanced state of separation of the secular from the sacred,

something without precedent in English cultural history”: The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and

Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), ix, 98. 16 See, for example, Norman Jones, The English Reformation: Religious and Cultural Adaptation (Oxford:

Blackwell Publishers, 2002); Christopher Marsh, Popular Religion in Sixteenth-Century England: Holding Their

Peace (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998); Peter Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1999).

8

demand by the general populace (the older, traditionalist model of A. G. Dickens) or as

slowly and reluctantly adopted (the revisionist model of John Bossy, J. J. Scarisbrick,

Christopher Haigh, Patrick Collinson, and most prominently, Eamon Duffy).17

Like other post-revisionist scholarship, I focus on psalmody as part of a long

process of converting the general populace to Protestant ideas and practices, a narrative

that stresses complexity, embraces contradiction, and highlights continuity with pre-

Reformation Catholicism. My goal is to understand how metrical psalters aided in this

process of persuasion, conversion, and education, thereby contributing a unique

perspective to this conversation regarding English Reformation devotional and artistic

practices. English Reformation studies has traditionally avoided musical works in favor

of financial records, material evidence, and non-musical texts, but recent attention to

psalms and ballads demonstrates a new interest in evaluating music and musical texts as

expressions and shapers of culture. Since 2000, several historians and literary scholars

have addressed metrical psalms directly in their attempts to understand the ways in

17 In chronological order: A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation (New York: Schocken Books, 1964, repr.

1974); John Bossy, The English Catholic Community 1570-1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976); J. J.

Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1984, repr. 1985); Christopher

Haigh, ed., The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, repr. 1988);

Patrick Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and

Seventeenth Centuries (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988); Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars:

Traditional Religion in England c. 1400-c.1580, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992; 2nd ed. 2005);

Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1993).

9

which this musical/textual genre played a role in the dramatic cultural, political, and

religious changes of late sixteenth-century England.18

Historians Christopher Marsh, Jonathan Willis, and Ian Green have made great

strides in understanding metrical psalmody in practice and in relation to print culture.

Green’s monumental survey of printed religious materials, for example, discusses

metrical psalmody at length alongside English Bibles, biblical commentaries, devotional

aids, dialogues, godly ballads, and similar genres. His study was limited to works

printed in many editions and thus, in his mind, those documenting the most popular,

successful, and enduring records of Protestant belief. Metrical psalm books certainly fall

under this purview, and Green’s treatment of them demonstrates the manner in which

the WBP was increasingly appropriated by the masses from its origin among the

educated elite. Like other studies of early modern printing, Green’s is carefully detailed,

tracking the number of editions printed in each decade, estimating the total number of

copies, comparing formats, and noting the other texts with which this psalter was often

bound. However, with Green’s attention on quantities and format, he seldom addresses

18 Ian Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000);

Hannibal Hamlin, Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2004); Christopher Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press, 2010); Beth Quitslund The Reformation in Rhyme (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); Jonathan

Willis, Church Music and Protestantism in Post-Reformation England: Discourses, Sites and Identities (Farnham:

Ashgate, 2010); Rivkah Zim, English Metrical Psalms: Poetry as Praise and Prayer, 1535-1601 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1987).

10

the psalter’s actual content, instead relying upon numbers to tell the tale of a metrical

psalter appropriated by the common people for their own uses.19

Meanwhile, inspecting church financial records to track the purchase of psalm

books, Jonathan Willis discovered a transitional period wherein choirs alone sang

metrical psalms as an alternative to traditional polyphony, before metrical psalmody

became established and widespread as a form of congregational song around the 1580s.20

He and Christopher Marsh have both found evidence of metrical psalms in schools

despite the lack of music in the official curricula; this becomes important in Chapter 4.21

Both historians have argued for the utility of metrical psalms in creating the communal

feeling of Protestantism and symbolizing social harmony.22

Literary scholars Hannibal Hamlin, Rivkah Zim, and, most recently and

thoroughly, Beth Quitslund have re-examined the texts of the WBP. Hamlin reflected

upon the ways in which metrical psalmody merged biblical and classical traditions and

analyzed the psalms’ theological content in relation to other literary works.23 Zim has

evaluated the literary quality of the WBP in relation to other contemporary psalm

translations.24 Quitslund considered the ways in which metrical psalm texts were used to

19 Green, Print and Protestantism, 503-552. 20 Willis, Church Music and Protestantism, 121-131. 21 Willis, Church Music and Protestantism, 163-204; Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England, 7-10. 22 Willis, Church Music and Protestantism, 205-237; Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England, 18,

435-446. 23 Hamlin, Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature, 19-50. 24 Zim, English Metrical Psalms, 112-151.

11

inculcate a largely Calvinist understanding of the Church and its leadership based on

the psalms’ depiction of God’s sovereignty in relation to the English monarch’s. Her

monograph tracking the genesis of the WBP and each of its parents is now the standard

reference on the family of Sternhold and Hopkins metrical psalters.25

Historians and literary scholars have not, however, been equipped with the

analytical tools of a music historian, and as such have not concerned themselves much

with the notes themselves. Marsh’s book rarely includes examples from actual pieces of

music; Willis’s has none at all. Historians in general often seem to regard music as a

purely literary genre, excluding both the auditory and performative aspects and neatly

sidestepping any need for proficiency in musical analysis. Yet Peter Marshall has placed

a call for active conversations between historians and musicologists, “as historians are

coming to recognize the vital importance of recovering the aural dimension of historical

lives.”26 I intend to help bridge the gap.

This Project in Musicological Scholarship

This dissertation fits into several broad concerns of current musicological scholarship.

Recent studies of sixteenth-century English music strive to recover overlooked or lost

repertory, understand the didactic function of music, examine musical scores not only as

25 Quitslund, Reformation in Rhyme. 26 Marshall, Reformation England, xii.

12

records of sounds but also as material objects in their own right, and place music in its

cultural, political, and liturgical contexts. I hope to contribute to these concerns with my

close study of a songbook intended as a form of religious text and doctrinal propaganda.

In addition, my consideration of the WBP as a form of music education offers a timely

contribution to renewed interest in musical didacticism in Tudor England due to the

forthcoming critical edition of Thomas Morley’s Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall

Musicke,27 not to mention the first critical edition of the WBP, currently being prepared

by Beth Quitslund and Nicholas Temperley.28

My dissertation will expand our understanding of the beginnings of Anglican

musical culture, following in the footsteps of Nicholas Temperley, who famously

examined the “lower” genres of parish church music rather than the “higher” genres of

music for cathedrals and the Chapel Royal.29 Temperley’s study of metrical psalmody

remains definitive and frequently cited to this day, but it does not address the questions

I am posing. The study is intended primarily as, in his words, a “factual record.”30 It

presents a comprehensive survey of notable characteristics from all psalters and the role

of psalmody in Church of England liturgy and it pioneered much of our understanding

27 Thomas Morley, Thomas Morley: A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, ed. John Milsom and

Jessie Ann Owens, 2 vols. (Aldershot: Ashgate, forthcoming). 28 The Whole Book of Psalms: A Critical Edition of the Texts and Tunes, eds. Beth Quitslund and

Nicholas Temperley, 2 vols., Renaissance English Text Society Publications 36 (Tucson: University of Arizona

Press, forthcoming). 29 Nicholas Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1979). 30 Ibid., xix.

13

of metrical psalm tunes, including the dramatic slowing in tempo by the early

seventeenth century and the distinction between the “official” tunes and the “common”

or “popular” tunes that the people preferred. However, the book is not a work of social

history or textual analysis, and it does not address theological concerns. Thus

Temperley’s Music of the English Parish Church leaves many questions open for

investigation.

More recently, Timothy Duguid’s Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice extended

psalmody scholarship significantly by answering questions about the relationship

between English and Scottish psalm books and psalm-singing practices.31 In his work

with English psalters, Duguid made significant strides in exploring the evolution of

psalm music in publication, tracking the appearances and disappearances of psalm

tunes and tune references as well as the alterations, often misprints, to the tunes

themselves. That Duguid’s work sidestepped cultural and even music-theoretical

concerns is understandable given the level of detail in his study, and his largely

quantitative research will serve as an important resource for further scholarship.

However, the work is not done. Historians and literary scholars have considered

the WBP as a printed book and as a scriptural text; musicologists have evaluated its

function as a musical score (monophonic hymnal). The WBP has not yet been fully

31 Timothy Duguid, Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice: English ‘Singing Psalms’ and Scottish ‘Psalm Buiks’,

c. 1547-1640 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014).

14

recognized in its additional identity as a music instruction book, and indeed, as

sixteenth-century England’s most prominent and widely-available means of popular

music education.

Chapter Overview

In Chapter 1, I argue that publisher John Day made a multifaceted effort to establish the

WBP as an authoritative Protestant text through appeals to Scripture, scholarship, the

ancient church, and the state. I analyze the psalter’s claim to translational accuracy and

the seeming legitimation created by the inclusion of a prefatory essay by St. Athanasius.

Informed by historical theologian Kenneth Parker’s work on Reformation Protestants’

supercessionist metanarrative of the Christian past (an emerging Protestant way of

using history in anti-Catholic polemics), I show that the WBP not only portrayed itself as

valid translation, but an essential corrective to other (read: Roman Catholic) corruptions

of the ancient tradition. Furthermore, without any official monarchical or ecclesiastical

authorization of metrical psalmody to be used in church, Day positioned the 1562 WBP

as authorized by Queen Elizabeth I. He accomplished this through reference to

Elizabeth’s 1559 Injunctions and by advertising Day’s psalter patent, granted by the

Queen herself. In doing so, he aligned the book firmly with the English crown and the

Church of England. Ecclesiastical records from the early 1560s make it clear that Day’s

musical psalters were employed in church settings, variously with or without the

15

support of religious officials. These sources demonstrate Day’s success in his attempt to

construct a legitimate genre of congregational song for England.

After having explained how the WBP positioned itself as authorized and

authoritative within the English Protestant tradition, in Chapter 2, I engage in close

reading of the hymnal’s words about music (the text of the psalms themselves,

particularly the paraphrases of those psalms that speak directly about music, singing,

worship, and instruments, and also other material including prefaces and canticles) to

understand how the WBP understood—and promoted—the purpose of music in

Reformation England. My analysis of the psalter’s versified (and thus interpreted)

psalms reveals that, more than any other vernacular psalter in use in England (including

the similarly paraliturgical 1549 Coverdale Psalter), the WBP emphasized music and

song in its scriptural texts. The WBP reflected the importance of communal liturgical

musical practice for Protestants and presented a consistent portrait of the desirable

theological aesthetic of congregational church music, one that drew upon aspects of both

Lutheran and Calvinist theologies.

Then, before turning to a close look at the WBP’s two musical prefaces, I first

situate these music-educational works in their context, exploring the nature and state of

musical literacy in sixteenth-century England. In Chapter 3, I argue that understanding

musical literacy rates requires considering general literacy rates as well as reference to

the sixteenth-century English understanding of musical knowledge. The bulk of this

16

chapter attempts to come to terms with what seems a fundamental paradox in the

acquisition of musical literacy: most of the English populace could not read, but nearly

all forms of music education that did not require reading were available only to the

gentry (who were the most likely to be able to read). I discuss chorister schools,

grammar schools, universities, and private music tutors before turning to a

comprehensive look at Elizabethan music instructional texts, which included the WBP’s

two prefaces, instrumental instruction books, and freestanding music theory textbooks.

Although it has often been noted that Protestant ideology led to an increase in

general literacy rates in the sixteenth century, it is less often said that Protestants helped

advance musical literacy. In Chapter 4, I argue that the WBP with its two music-

theoretical prefaces (the introduction to music theory and the preface accompanying

solmization syllables) serves as evidence that Protestant ideology helped advance the

cause of popular music education, and I analyze the language found in these two

prefaces, which makes it clear that this push towards increased musical literacy was a

theologically-motivated Protestant impulse. I also take a close look at the music-

theoretical content the prefaces transmitted, explaining precisely what they taught in

relation to other sixteenth-century English music theory treatises and instrumental

tutors.

In Chapter 5, I turn my focus from the WBP’s identity as a music textbook—a

pedagogical work—and consider how it functioned as a music theory treatise. I examine

17

the use of printed solmization syllables, arguing that the characteristically English

employment of a static scalar assignment of solmization syllables, rather than the

medieval hexachordal system, did not first appear around the turn of the seventeenth

century in the treatises of William Bathe and Thomas Morley, but a full generation prior

in the WBP. My study of these psalters has revealed that the system found in the WBP is

transitional, a chronological and conceptual link between continental and later English

styles of solmization. In this chapter, I analyze the way in which the WBP systematizes

the assignment of solmization syllables and compare this system with Bathe’s and

Morley’s treatises as well as four Genevan music books (1550-1562) that similarly

printed solmization syllables. Printed solmization, it seems, was a uniquely Protestant

phenomenon closely tied to the genre of congregational songbooks.

Finally, in Chapter 6, “‘Very fals printed’: Music Typesetting Errors and the

Failure of Popular Music Education,” I consider why the WBP, despite its music-

educational aims, did not significantly increase the level of musical literacy among the

general populace in sixteenth-century England. The seventeenth-century practice of

“lining out” and the early Jacobean Praise of musick manuscript (British Library Royal MS

18.B.xix) bear witness to the fact that the average churchgoer remained unable to read

music and to utilize the WBP as a musical score. Part of this failure was due, I contend,

to the poor quality of psalter printing, and especially music typesetting errors. Despite

John Day’s inclusion of the music preface and printed solmization syllables, along with

18

the general policy of his successors to maintain Day’s general structure, content, and

Protestant message, the usefulness of the WBP in promoting musical literacy and

Protestant musical devotion was severely hampered by seemingly musically-illiterate

compositors and a lack of editorial oversight. In this chapter, I discuss the careless music

printing found across all of John Day’s music books as well as the history of the psalter

patent following Day’s death, which led to an expansion and diffusion of editorial

control. The musical problems and mistakes printed in the WBP range from variants

across psalters that made it impossible for a group to sing from multiple editions but

which did not impede individual use, to mistakes that would not hinder an already

musically-literate reader but would sorely obstruct someone trying to learn basic music

theory, to serious errors that made the psalters unusable and which certainly obstructed

the WBP’s musical didacticism.

19

Chapter 1. “Faithfully perused and alowed”: Claims of Authority and Authorization for The Whole Booke of Psalmes

Positioning The Whole Booke of Psalmes as an Authoritative Protestant Text

How does a new religious text gain legitimacy in the tradition for which it is intended?

What additional challenges does a book of music face in order to be properly usable in

church? In the sixteenth-century Reformations, the most straightforward way for a

collection of music intended as congregational song to become authorized and

popularized within its reformed tradition was the advocacy of the prominent reformer,

particularly if such advocacy for certain forms of sacred music generally and this music

in particular was included as a preface within the work itself. Lutheran hymnals often

included prefaces by Martin Luther, and the Geneva Psalter was printed with an epistle

by John Calvin. These detailed the reformers’ thoughts about the purpose and right use

of music in Christian devotion.

The challenge was greater in England. Without a single prominent individual

serving as the driving force behind England’s Protestant music-making, any proposed

book of congregational song was unable to frame its musical contents with authoritative

instructions regarding music. Yet somehow, John Day’s Whole Booke of Psalmes, first

published in 1562, managed to popularize a new genre of metrical psalmody as

20

congregational song in England. The immense popularity of the WBP cannot be

overstated. Most other English hymnals and metrical psalters published in the sixteenth

century appeared in only one edition. In contrast, there are fully 143 extant editions of

the WBP published between 1562 and 1603, and it is certain that many more did not

survive. Beth Quitslund has guessed that, even estimating a conservative print run of

only 1,500 copies per edition, there could have been about 220,000 copies in circulation

by 1603—one book for every eighteen inhabitants of England and Wales.32

Biting seventeenth-century criticisms of the WBP by high-church Anglicans only

serve to demonstrate the firm hold the psalter had taken among the general Protestant

populace. Its psalm settings were decried as bad music and worse poetry. “Two

hammers on a Smith’s anvil would make better music,” wrote Thomas Fuller in The

church-history of Britain (1655). John Phillips, Milton’s nephew, called it “Tom Sternhold’s

wretched Prick song” (The religion of the hypocritical presbyterians, 1655), and Peter Heylyn

wrote in his Ecclesiasa restauratura, or, The history of the reformation of the Church of England

(1661) of “that Barbarity, and Botching, which every where occurreth in the Translation

of Sternhold and Hopkins.”33 Henry King in The psalmes of David (1651) thought they

32 Beth Quitslund, The Reformation in Rhyme (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 242. For further discussion of the

WBP’s popularity in the sixteenth century, see Ian Green, Print and Protestantism (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2000), 503-519, and Beth Quitslund, “The Psalm Book,” in The Elizabethan Top Ten: Defining Print

Popularity in Early Modern England, eds. Andy Kesson and Emma Smith (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 203-211. 33 Qtd. in Quitslund, Reformation in Rhyme, 1-2.

21

“both disfigured the meaning of the Holy Ghost, and reproached our English tongue.”34

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, penned a scathing poem “To a country clerk after

having heard him sing psalms” during the reign of Charles II (1649-1651), which read,

Sternhold and Hopkins had great qualms

When they translated David’s psalms

To make the heart full glad;

But had it been poor David’s fate

To hear thee sing, and them translate,

By God! ‘twould have made him mad.35

Furthermore, intensifying the ill effect of the poetry, the psalms’ performance by the

laity was viewed as ugly and unsophisticated. For example, less derisively than Wilmot

but equally critically, John Donne also placed his condemnation of congregational

metrical psalmody in poetic form:

When I behold that these Psalmes are become

So well attyr’d abroad, so ill at home,

So well in Chambers, in thy Church so ill,

As I can scarce call that reform’d untill

This be reform’d; Would a whole State present

A lesser gift than some one man hath sent?

And shall our Church, unto our Spouse and King

More hoarse, more harsh than any other, sing?36

34 Qtd. in Green, Print and Protestantism, 503. 35 Qtd. in Green, Print and Protestantism, 504. 36 John Donne, “Upon the translation of the Psalmes by Sir Philip Sydney, and the Countesse of Pembroke

his sister,” in The Poems of John Donne, ed. Herbert J. C. Grierson, Vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), 349,

lines 37-44.

22

Worse, the WBP represented compromised Christian practice. Linked to Puritanism and

Calvinism, the metrical psalms of Sternhold and Hopkins represented dangerous

political and religious ideas. In Aerius redivivus (1670), Heylyn considered them a plot

“to bring in the whole body of Calvinism, as well in reference to Government, and forms

of Worship, as to points of Doctrine.”37 Later, “arch-anti-presbyterian” Richard Watson

held the metrical psalms of the WBP responsible for civil unrest in his 1684 tract The

Right Reverend Doctor John Cosin:

The Foreign Protestants, as I have showed you, made use of Marot’s and

Beza’s Psalms, to cherish and encourage one another in their Rebellious

attacks and Sacrilegious spoils… Our Puritans have done the like, in our

late Civil Wars, with Sternhold and Hopkins, when they have gone about

to charge their more Loyal Countrymen then in Arms for the King, as

may be made good from their forces in Lincolnshire, and other

Countries.38

The reputation of the WBP was, in the seventeenth century, bad indeed; such criticisms

would not be needed were it not so immensely popular as part of the practice of English

Protestantism.

By the end of the sixteenth century, the book had become a symbol of English

Protestantism, along with English Bibles, Books of Common Prayer, and official Books of

Homilies mandated for use in parish churches. The WBP offered all the laity a chance to

raise their own voices in corporate worship. Its monophonic psalms could be sung by

37 Qtd. in Quitslund, Reformation in Rhyme, 3. 38 Qtd. in Quitslund, Reformation in Rhyme, 3.

23

congregations alone or with organ accompaniment, and the versified texts in the

vernacular offered the common people a new way to engage with Scripture. This psalter

was directly responsible for the formation of an English Protestant popular musical

culture. Yet the challenge of authority for new religious songbooks remained. How did

publisher John Day manage to construct the authority of the WBP and defend its

legitimacy in Church of England practice? In this chapter, I argue that Day made a

multifaceted effort to establish the WBP as an authoritative Protestant text through

appeals to Scripture, scholarship, the ancient church, and the state. Furthermore,

without any official monarchical or ecclesiastical authorization of metrical psalmody for

use in church, Day positioned the WBP as authorized through reference to Elizabeth’s

1559 Injunctions and by advertising Day’s psalter patent, granted by the Queen herself.

In doing so, he aligned the book firmly with the English crown and the Church of

England, whose religious practices were tightly regulated.

The WBP contained no prefatory letter from a foremost English reformer for one

simple reason: while England had prominent reformers, the most important of whom

was Thomas Cranmer, the country did not have a single key figure guiding the musical

reforms associated with its Reformation. Music historians of the Tudor period are fond

of quoting Cranmer’s recommendation “for every syllable a note,” which dictates

syllabic rather than melismatic text-setting for sacred music:

but in mine opinion, the song that shall be made thereunto would not be

full of notes, but, as near as may be, for every syllable a note; so that it

24

may be sung distinctly and devoutly, as be in the Matins and Evensong,

Venite, the Hymns, Te Deum, Benedictus, Magnificat, Nunc dimittis, and

all the Psalms and Versicles; and in the mass Gloria in Excelsis, Gloria

Patri, the Creed, the Preface, the Pater noster, and some of the Sanctus

and Agnus.39

However, this advice referred to adaptations of Latin chant for the new English service,

and was not intended as a guide to either congregational or choral music. As Robin

Leaver has pointed out, Cranmer, unlike Luther and Calvin, did not develop and

promote an extensive theological understanding of music centered on the congregation.

In fact, Cranmer’s liturgical reforms (the 1549 and 1552 Books of Common Prayer) made no

explicit provision for congregational singing.40 More important for our purposes, it

appeared in a private letter to Henry VIII, not in public and certainly not in print.

Beyond this single letter, Cranmer was not overly concerned with English musical

reform.

Without a prominent individual serving as the driving force behind England’s

congregational music-making, it is perhaps unsurprising that the WBP lacked an

authoritative preface by an English reformer like those found in Lutheran hymnals and

the Geneva Psalter.41 Instead, the WBP contained two other preliminaries that fulfilled

39 Thomas Cranmer, “To King Henry VIII,” in The Works of Thomas Cranmer: Miscellaneous Writings and Letters

of Thomas Cranmer, ed. John Edmund Cox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1846), 412. 40 Robin Leaver, The Liturgy and Music: A Study of the Use of the Hymn in Two Liturgical Traditions (Bramcote:

Grove Books, 1976), 3-13. 41 Martin Luther’s prefaces to Lutheran hymnals can be found in Martin Luther, Luther's Works, Vol. 53,

Liturgy and Hymns, ed. and trans. Ulrich S. Leupold (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965), 315-334. John

25

different functions and addressed the needs of the Church of England. First, it contained

a letter to the reader, one of a dramatically different character than Luther’s hymnal

prefaces and Calvin’s preface to the Geneva psalter. The WBP’s anonymous epistle

functioned both as a letter to the reader and as an introduction to basic music theory.

This was followed by an English translation of a letter by the fourth-century church

father Athanasius of Alexandria. Together, these prefaces accomplished in a less direct

manner the same objective as Luther’s and Calvin’s prefaces: the instruction of readers

in the specifics of their Protestant musical practice.

The title page (see Figure 1) was a central component in constructing Day’s

claims for religious authority and monarchical authorization. It advertised much about

the features and use of its contents: as “the whole booke of psalmes,” this was the first of

John Day’s various psalters to contain the entire contents of all 150 psalms;42 these are

Calvin’s preface to the Geneva Psalter can be found in John Calvin, “The Form of Prayers and Songs of the

Church, 1542: Letter to the Reader,” trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Calvin Theological Journal 15:2 (1980): 160-165. 42 The metrical versifications of the WBP originated with Certayne Psalmes ([1547-1549?]), a small book of

nineteen psalms by Thomas Sternhold. Following Sternhold’s death, an expanded version was published.

This book, Al such Psalmes ([1549]), contained 44 psalms: Sternhold’s original nineteen, eighteen additional

psalm versifications also by Sternhold, and seven new psalms penned by John Hopkins. After Catholic

Mary Tudor ascended to the throne, English Protestants in Geneva created a new order of worship modeled

on that of John Calvin’s, which modified and expanded Sternhold’s and Hopkins’ work into One and Fiftie

Psalmes of David in English Metre (1556). This “Anglo-Genevan Psalter” transformed courtly poetry to

liturgical song. One and Fiftie Psalmes contained seven new psalm versifications, anonymous but assumed by

scholars today to be by William Whittingham, alongside revised versions of all 44 of Sternhold’s and

Hopkins’ psalm paraphrases, and additionally, one hymn, “The [ten] commandements of God.” Perhaps

most importantly, this so-called Anglo-Genevan Psalter also added music: One and Fiftie Psalmes included a

different tune for every psalm, with the first few verses underlaid in the music and subsequent verses

printed beneath. John Day acquired the legal rights to the metrical psalms of in late 1559, and proceeded to

26

English psalms versified by Sternhold and Hopkins, representing a more accurate

translation of Scripture, given music, and allowed according to the Queen’s Injunctions.

They provide comfort and solace, and serve as a moral alternative to ballads. The value

of psalm-singing is attested with Scripture. And finally, the psalter has been published

by John Day, the only person legally allowed to publish metrical psalmody.

Day’s psalter demonstrated the needs of the reforming English Church, as

understood by (and to a certain extent, constructed by) a publisher who stood to benefit

financially from the creation of an audience. His title page attempted to shape the

behavior of the English laity, crafting a genre of psalmody and related hymns that had

use both in the church and the home, for both corporate and private devotion. The

purpose of some other features of the title page is not immediately apparent. Why stress

that these psalms are “conferred with the Hebrew”? What is the significance of the

Queen’s Injunctions? In the next section of this chapter, which considers the psalter’s

claim to Protestant authority, I will investigate these two questions in detail.

adapt the Anglo-Genevan Psalter brought back by the returning Marian exiles into a new book for the

English people and the Church of England. Day published four partial psalters between 1560 and 1562, each

supplementing or expanding upon the last, until he was able to complete The Whole Booke of Psalmes: Psalmes

of Dauid in English metre (1560), Psalmes. Of Dauid in Englishe metre (1560/1561), Foure score and seuen Psalmes

of Dauid (1561), and The Residue of all Dauids Psalmes in metre (1562).

27

Figure 1. Title Page of the 1562 WBP43

43 STC 2430. Image from Early English Books Online.

28

Protestant Authority

The WBP’s construction of religious authority through invocations of Scripture,

scholarship, and the ancient church reflects the particularly Protestant view of

themselves in relation to the ancient church. Building on Anthony Kemp’s work on

concepts of history, historical theologian Kenneth Parker terms this perceived

relationship between the present and the past the “supercessionist metanarrative.”

According to the supercessionist reading, the Roman Catholic Church as it existed at the

time of the Reformation represented a corrupt transmission of the beliefs and practices

of the early church. Christian truth could only be recovered by replicating the situation

found in the earliest Christian writings, thus superseding the inappropriate innovations

of the intervening period. Protestants identified ancient Christianity as uniquely

normative, and represented their vision for the church as a return to apostolic purity

after a long period of decline. 44

44 According to Parker, there are four “metanarratives” of history: distinct ways of relating the present to the

past, asserting the authority of the past over the present or vice versa. At the time of the Reformation, the

Catholics had a “successionist” view of history, believing that the Church and the truth of the Church’s

message have proceeded through time without change, and that the Church as steward of those truths

continues to proclaim them. In the nineteenth century arose the “development” metanarrative (a

teleologically progressive view) and the “apperceptive” metanarrative (the view that history contains errors

that must be critiqued and corrected). Kenneth L. Parker, “The Rise of Historical Consciousness Among the

Christian Churches: An Introduction,” in The Rise of Historical Consciousness Among the Christian Churches, ed.

Kenneth L. Parker and Erick H. Moser (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2013), 1-16; idem, “Re-

Visioning the Past and Re-Sourcing the Future: The Unresolved Historiographical Struggle in Roman

Catholic Scholarship and Authoritative Teaching,” in The Church On Its Past, ed. Peter D. Clarke and

Charlotte Methuen (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 2013), 389-416.

In the creation of this taxonomy (successionist, supercessionist, developmental, and apperceptive

metanarratives), Parker drew upon Anthony Kemp, The Estrangement of the Past: A Study in the Origins of

Modern Historical Consciousness (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); to further explore

29

In selecting as one of its two prefaces a text by Athanasius, the WBP privileged

antiquity, avoiding any mention or use of medieval (thus Catholic) theologians. This

“Treatise made by Athanasius the great” first appeared in the WBP, rather than in any of

Day’s earlier partial psalters. It was not Day’s invention, or even Protestant in origin, but

rather a translation of a portion of a letter from St. Athanasius to Marcellinus “on the

Interpretation of the Psalms.” Fourth-century bishop Athanasius of Alexandria had

written a pastoral letter regarding the psalms to one Marcellinus, who, when ill, had

begun a study of the psalms as a means of personal devotion. Marcellinus wrote to

Athanasius to request help in understanding the meaning contained in each psalm.45 The

portion of Athanasius’ response included in the WBP discussed the general virtue of the

psalms, laying out situations in which a recitation of the psalms might provide help,

comfort, joy, or thanksgiving, and identifying by number those psalms particularly

appropriate. It then continued as a list: to express such-and-such emotion or respond to

such-and-such situation, use these specific psalms (e.g., “If thou art escaped from

enemies, and deliuered from the[m] which persecute the[e], sing the 18. Psalme.”). The

the supercessionist shift in historical consciousness that occured at the time of the Reformation, see Kemp,

Chapter 3. 45 Marcellinus was possibly a deacon in the Alexandrian church, although the name was common, so the

letter’s recipient may have been a different Marcellinus; see Robert C. Gregg, trans., Athanasius: The Life of

Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 134n31. The date of this letter cannot be

fixed. It has been theorized based on internal evidence that the letter dates from Athanasius’s youth,

although of course, lack of reference to key debates later in Athanasius’s life cannot serve as definitive proof.

Another potential origin is during one of Athanasius’s four exiles between 335 and 366; see A Religious of

C.S.M.V., trans., St. Athanasius on the Psalms (London and Oxford: A. R. Mowbray, 1949), 6.

30

treatise proper is followed with the anonymous “Use of the rest of the Psalmes not

comprehended in the former Table of Athanasius.” Extraordinarily Protestant

concerns—persecution, God’s enemies, and God-given government—are presented as if

they are Athanasius’s. By thematically categorizing the psalms in this manner, the WBP

addressed contemporary concerns by invoking ancient authority and using the church

father to legitimize the Protestant use of psalms in metrical translation.46

The WBP’s claim to translational accuracy also reflected the supercessionist view

that the present Roman Catholic Church had erred. Beginning with the 1556 Anglo-

Genevan Psalter, the parent of Day’s publication, these psalmbooks’ title pages nearly

always advertised the accuracy of the psalms’ translation: psalm texts have been

“conferred with the Hebrew,” and in earlier title pages, “conferred with the Hebrew and

corrected” (emphasis mine).47 For sixteenth-century English Protestants, authority was

conveyed by rigorous scholarship ensuring as close a match with the original scriptural

text as possible while remaining accessible in its language. The WBP’s defense of its

46 The “Treatise” plays a surprisingly important role in Elizabethan and early Jacobean musical culture,

appearing not only in The Whole Booke of Psalmes but also in Archbishop Matthew Parker’s Whole Psalter of

1567, and it is even briefly quoted in the anonymous early Jacobean Praise of musick manuscript (BL Royal

MS 18.B.xix, fol. 10r)—see Chapter 6 for further discussion of this manuscript. 47 We also see this impulse to defend the quality of the translation in Robert Crowley’s 1549 Psalter of Dauid,

the first complete metrical psalter in English. Crowley’s Psalter had made similar claims as to scholarly rigor

and clarity where other translations were obscure. Its long-title advertised that the psalter had been “newely

translated into Englysh metre in such sort that it maye the more decently, and wyth more delyte of the

mynde, be reade and songe of al men.” The Letter “To the Christian Readar” further described Crowley’s

process and intention: “And so far as my knowledge woulde serue me: I haue made open and playne, that

whichein other translations, is obscure & harde.” (Sig.++.i.v) For further discussion of Crowley’s claim to

clarity, see Quitslund, Reformation in Rhyme, 90-91.

31

accurate scriptural translation made a strong statement against other psalm translations

and especially the Vulgate, which was associated with the perceived Roman Catholic

corruptions of the ancient tradition. This seemingly innocuous statement, “conferred

with the Hebrew and corrected,” served as a strong indictment of all other psalm

editions which corrupted and distorted proper Christian teaching. The corrected WBP

could be relied upon as an accurate conduit of the ancient original text.

Yet this was a publisher’s fiction. The WBP was not translated directly from the

original Hebrew. In paraphrasing the psalms for his original books of courtly poetry in

the 1540s, Thomas Sternhold relied upon five sources: four different psalters by Miles

Coverdale and the Vulgate itself.48 As Beth Quitslund and Rivkah Zim have shown,

Sternhold’s goal was psalmic interpretation with didactic intent rather than accuracy of

translation.49 Though Sternhold’s paraphrases were later modified by the editors of the

Anglo-Genevan Psalter, these revisions were in service of literary style, with an

emphasis on plain language and memorability.50 The WBP’s claim to translational

accuracy was a purposeful fiction that served to differentiate this Protestant psalter over

and against pre-Reformation religious texts.

48 Miles Coverdale’s psalter from the 1535 Coverdale Bible; Coverdale’s subsequent revision for the 1539

Great Bible; Coverdale’s “Parallel Psalter” of 1540, which adapted the Coverdale Bible’s psalter to align

more closely with the Vulgate for the benefit of the laity as the psalms were read in Latin in church services;

Coverdale’s 1535 published translation of Jan van Campen’s psalm paraphrases; and finally, the Vulgate

itself. Quitslund, Reformation in Rhyme, 21-22; Rivkah Zim, English Metrical Psalms: Poetry as Praise and Prayer,

1535-1601 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 119-120. 49 Quitslund, Reformation in Rhyme, 21. 50 Quitslund, Reformation in Rhyme, 158-165; Zim, English Metrical Psalms, 139-142.

32

At first glance, the supercessionist metanarrative appears to be complicated,

perhaps even undermined, by the internal contents of the psalter. Despite the critical

distance and implicit critique of the Vulgate and Roman Catholicism found on the title

page, continued attachment to the Vulgate can be found on nearly every page within the

WBP due to its labeling of psalms with their Latin incipits (see Figure 2). The presence of

Latin maintained continuity with Roman Catholic practice, calling to mind the chanting

of Latin psalms. Indeed, the Latin text preceded the numbering of the psalm itself,

“Beatus vir” serving as a more important and immediate identifier than even “Psalm i.”

33

Figure 2. First Page of Psalm 1 in the 1562 WBP51

Yet as comparison with other sixteenth-century psalters reveals, reformers

clearly did not find the presence of Latin incipits problematic. The Coverdale psalter as

well as Coverdale’s Goostly Psalmes prefaced psalms with these Latin titles, as did many

(although not all) editions of Calvin’s Geneva Psalter.52 The Latin incipit was an

established means of identifying psalms in this era, a less problematic label than psalm

51 STC 2430. Sig. C.i.r. Image from Early English Books Online. 52 W. A. McComish, transl., Le psautier de Genève 1562-1865, Vol. 2 (Genève: Bibliothèque publique et

universitaire, 1986), Section 7.

34

numbers (even today, Roman Catholics and Protestants have slightly different systems

of numbering the psalms).

The Latin incipits formed but one part of the entire complex of introductory

information preceding each psalm. This grouping of Latin incipit, psalm number,

versifier’s initials (but never composer’s initials—see Conclusion for discussion of the

WBP’s lack of attention to musical authorship), and prose arguments (descriptions of the

theological and devotional value of the psalm) was a familiar one in Protestant

publications, and it stressed education and scriptural edification by helping to ensure a

reader’s proper interpretive stance (much like the prefatory material of an entire printed

book). Introductory material of this kind was first added to English metrical psalmody

in the Anglo-Genevan Psalter, which also provided verse numbers and marginal

commentary in a didactic move akin to that of the later Geneva Bible. Prose arguments

replaced the descriptions in verse that had prefaced the psalms in Sternhold’s original

psalters; these prose arguments were, in fact, almost identical to those accompanying the

psalms in the 1560 Geneva Bible.53 Rivkah Zim describes these editorial additions as

“produc[ing] a more uniform and anonymous style, thus facilitating the communal use

of a slightly closer paraphrase of the Hebrew Psalms as liturgical songs in accordance

with Calvinist practice.”54

53 Dan G. Danner, Pilgrimage to Puritanism: History and Theology of the Marian Exiles at Geneva, 1555-1560 (New

York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1999), 123. 54 Zim, English Metrical Psalms, 142.

35

In the WBP, only the psalms were given prose arguments, not the hymns. The

arguments themselves were often strengthened by the presence of a pilcrow (paragraph

symbol) or manicule (emphatically pointing hand) that called attention to these words. It

would seem that hymns were thought to be self-explanatory, while psalms required

interpretive glossing. These prose arguments served as an alternative to the liturgical

and musical instructions prefacing the original Hebrew psalms, which reframed the

Hebrew poetry as explicitly Christian texts. They also served to visually link the WBP to

the official prose psalter of the Church of England, which also included such prose

arguments. As companions to this introductory and interpretive material, then, the Latin

incipits assumed an educational and structural function that took precedence over their

reference to Roman Catholicism. These traditional incipits would not have attracted the

notice of readers who approached the WBP in the spirit in which it was intended: as a

Protestant text antithetical to Roman Catholic psalms and psalm-singing.

Monarchical Authorization

I turn now to Day’s claim to monarchical authorization, beginning with the Queen’s

Injunctions. Without any official authorization of metrical psalmody in Church of

England services to draw upon, the 1562 WBP was forced to argue that its contents were,

in fact, allowed for use in church. The title page’s phrase “Faithfully perused and

alowed according to thordreappointed in the Quenes maiesties Iniunctions” is

36

understood by most scholars today as a perhaps presumptive assertion that this psalter

(and, it follows, the genre of metrical psalmody itself) fell under the purview of the

Elizabethan Injunctions.

The forty-ninth article in the 1559 Injunctions allowed for

a modest and distinct song so used in all parts of the common prayers in

the church, that the same may be as plainly understanded, as if it were

read without singing … there may be sung an hymn, or suchlike song to

the praise of Almighty God, in the best sort of melody and music that

may be conveniently devised, having respect that the sentence of the

hymn may be understanded and perceived.55

With this language, the Injunction permitted sacred musical works to be performed in

church. Here “hymn” was meant in the broad and perhaps scriptural sense (“psalms,

hymns, and spiritual songs,” cf. Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16), not specifically

intending congregational genres like the Lutheran hymn or Calvinist metrical psalm. As

Beth Quitslund has observed, the phrasing of the Injunction is “masterfully ambiguous,”

and can be read as allowing both extremes of choral and congregational singing.56

Since the WBP was supposedly allowed according to the Queen’s Injunctions,

therefore (this fiction of authorization argued), these psalms could be sung in church. In

fact, Nicholas Temperley argues that not only did the WBP successfully promote itself as

a book of congregational song, it soon managed to position itself as the only metrical

55 Walter Howard Frere, ed., Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, Vol. 3 (London:

Longmans, Green & Co., 1910), 22-23. 56 Quitslund, Reformation in Rhyme, 196.

37

psalm collection authorized for use in church—a position it held until the nineteenth

century.57 Quitslund, however, argues that the statement refers not to the forty-ninth

Injunction concerning music sung in church, but to the fifty-first Injunction, which

regarded the regulation and licensing of books for publication. According to Quitslund,

Day’s reference to the Queen’s Injunctions as well as his statement that the WBP was

“faithfully perused and alowed” advertised the publisher’s obedience to Elizabeth’s

regulation of public religious discourse; Day was not making a claim about the right to

sing metrical psalms in church.58

Evidence of Church Use

However, even if the WBP’s title page originally referred only to the fifty-first

Injunction, the statement was certainly interpreted musically, and its metrical psalms

were employed in church settings. There are multiple forms of evidence for this claim.

First, prior to and contemporary with the publication of the 1562 WBP, metrical

psalmody was already being employed in English parishes in public and congregational

settings. Several recorded events from the late 1550s and early 1560s illustrate the rise of

57 Nicholas Temperley, “‘If any of you be mery let hym synge psalmes’: The Culture of Psalms in Church

and Home,” in “Noyses, sounds, and sweet aires”: Music in Early Modern England, ed. Jessie Ann Owens

(Washington, DC: The Folger Shakespeare Library, 2006), 94. See also Zim, English Metrical Psalms, 142, and

Hannibal Hamlin, Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2004), 27-28, both of whom also understand the title page’s statement to refer to the forty-ninth

Injunction. 58 Quitslund, Reformation in Rhyme, 201.

38

metrical psalmody in popular religious culture, enabled by Anglo-Genevan psalters and

John Day’s partial psalters published prior to the WBP. These events illustrate tensions

between proponents and opponents of metrical psalmody in a time of changing

religious practices. These two categories are loosely but not consistently aligned with

Protestant/Roman Catholic and laity/clergy dualities. However, not all cases of public

congregational psalmody were met with opposition by authorities.

In September 1559, diarist Henry Machyn described the service of Morning

Prayer at St. Antholin, Budge Row: “The [blank] day of September be-gane the nuw

mornyng prayer and sant Antholyns in Boge-row, after Geneve fassyon, — be-gyne to

rynge at v in the mornyng; men and women all do syng, and boys.” 59 The term “Geneva

psalm” (and later, in the seventeenth century, “Geneva jig”) was a frequent description

of the English metrical psalmody based upon the Calvinist style of psalmody found in

the Geneva Psalter and continued in England with the publications of John Day. It is

also interesting that Machyn carefully noted that women were involved, proving that

this psalm-singing was not limited to a choir composed of men and boys but was

executed by the congregation.

An exciting incident occurred at Exeter Cathedral three months later. In

December of 1559, some citizens of Exeter, along with Londoners visiting the town to

59 Henry Machyn, The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, from AD 1550 to AD 1563,

ed. John Gough Nichols (London: Printed for the Camden Society by J. B. Nichols and Son, 1848), 212.

39

attend St. Nicholas’s Fair, descended upon the cathedral to sing metrical psalms each

day at the service of Morning Prayer. In their zeal, they even occupied seats in the choir

of the church, ousting the vicars who normally sat there to recite the prayers. The

disturbed ministers admonished the people to cease, but despite the warning, the

visitors continued to interrupt with their psalm-singing.60 A flurry of impassioned letter-

writing ensued. Episcopal visitors (religious authorities sent to evaluate and correct

ecclesiastical institutions) Lord Montjoye, John Jewel (Bishop of Salisbury), and Raynold

Mohun took the side of the lay singers:

Whereas in the queen’s majesty’s late visitation in Exon, order was taken,

that the vicars of your church should weekly, and by course say the

morning prayer in the choir of your cathedral church, whereunto the

people might at time convenient meet together to serve God; and they so

resorting reverently, and in great numbers for their greater comfort and

better stirring up of their hearts to devotion, appointed amongst

themselves at every such meeting to sing a psalm, and altogether with

one voice to give praise unto God, according to the use and manner of the

primitive church; which order, taken by the visitors, you promised by

your corporal oath to see observed. We have now of late heard say, that

contrary to the said order, and your own oath, certain of your vicars have

scoffed and jested openly at the godly doings of the people in this behalf,

and by divers and sundry ways have molested and troubled them; and

that you the canons there, which of all others should most have rejoiced

hereat, and should have encouraged the people to go forward, have very

uncourteously forbidden them the use of your choir…we require and

charge you to see, that your vicars, and others your priests there not only

leave their frowardness, which they have used, but also that they aid and

60 David Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, Vol. 4 (London: 1737), 200-201; Herbert Reynolds,

The Use of Exeter Cathedral (London: Church Printing Company, 1891), 53-55.

40

assist the people in these their godly doings, and that you suffer them to

use your choir for that time…61

This letter not only commanded the ministers to allow the psalm-singing to continue but

also to assist them and make space for them in the choir.

In response, the Exeter ministers protested the disruption being caused and the

abuse being heaped upon them by the psalm-singers. The ministers argued that they

were following the order to say Morning Prayer daily, but that the order contained “no

mention made of such psalms to be sung.” Indeed, the proper “uniformity of common

prayer and service in the church” was being unlawfully interrupted. Therefore,

Which statute being so precisely made, and under so great pains, we

thought it our bounden duty, to stay this their presumptuous attempt,

proceeding of their private phantasms without authority, and that they

should no further obtrude such things to our ministers, both for the

discharge of us and them. And thereupon have had with divers the

authors thereof, and others in authority sundry conference, to cease in

such their songs; admonishing them of the said statute, and of their duty

of obedience to the same, and requesting them to cease such their doings,

till such time as order were taken therein by the superior powers; which

to do they have refused, and yet continue the same without further

interruption of us, ordering the choir here at their pleasures. How the

choir is abused by them, the ministers excluded out of their stalls, and we

reviled with unchristian and uncharitable words and reproaches, this

bearer can more at large declare to your honours.62

61 Wilkins, Concilia, Vol. 4, 200. 62 Ibid., 201.

41

This response, characterizing the common people as disobedient and presumptuous,

makes it clear that the problem was not so much the musical psalms and the devotion

they represented, but the interruption of the service of Morning Prayer (and the

resultant power struggle between clerics and laity). The Londoners and local citizens

were disrupting the ongoing work of the church in direct contradiction of the law.

Ultimately, however, the issue was decided by the ecclesiastical commissioners in the

people’s favor, and their right to metrical psalm-singing was upheld.63

Such tensions between singers of metrical psalms and those who wished to

maintain tradition emerged again at Merton College two years later, with even more

physically violent results.64 Senior dean William Hall was the leader of a small faction of

Catholic-minded Fellows who “did hide vnder a pece of our quere almost all our

popishe bookes of service with divers other monumentes of superstition.” Hall “wrote

an epistle to a frend of his in Lincolne…in whiche he shewed his malicious and cruell

minde towarde the professors of the truthe,” and even after avowing his conformity to

the Church of England attempted to convert others to papistry.65 It is perhaps

unsurprising, then, that Hall took issue with the replacement of Latin hymns with

English metrical psalms for the celebrations of high holy days. This decree had been

made in the absence of Hall and two other Fellows, who were all in London affirming

63 W. H. Frere, The English Church in the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I (London: Macmillan, 1904), 44. 64 W. H. Frere, ed., Registrum Matthei Parker Diocesis Cantuarensis A.D. 1559-1575, Register 1, Vol. 2,

Canterbury and York Series, Vol. 36, 697, 699, 706-707, 711. 65 Ibid., 706.

42

their conformity before the High Commissioners. Hall would later protest that “every of

the viij seniors oughte to agree to all decrees to be made or els it is no decree.”66

However, his complaint nonetheless offered little justification for Hall’s actions on All

Saints’ Day (November 1), 1561.67

On this feast day, as was customary on such high holy days, the Fellows began to

sing after dinner—English metrical psalmody rather than the old Latin hymns, as per

the decree. Hall, as the most senior Fellow present, should have begun the singing;

when he did not, another began the psalmody in his place.68 Hall attempted to stop the

singing by force. Here is the story, in the words of Hall’s victim, James Leche:

vppon all saintes daie last after diner (as the custome and decree is), the

Deane not being there, I being senior in the Hall beganne Te Deum,

whiche psalme was appointed for that daie; and or ever we had songe

throughe halfe the psalme Mr. Hall being senior deane came vp the hall

like a madde man crieng alowde that we ought not nor shold not singe:

and comming to me verie furiouslie and in a marveilous rage, stroke at

my booke of psalmes to have smytten it into the fire; and fayling of his

purpose therein, plucked my booke by force out of my hand and threwe

it with greate contempte a farre waie from him on the floore, saieng verie

threatninglie with trembline bodie and wanne countenaunce (like as a

man beside him selfe) vnto the poore batchelers, Ar you piping still after

66 Ibid., 699. 67 This event has been frequently misdated in modern scholarship. Working only from Frere’s Visitation

Articles (Vol. 3, 121), which includes only the list of items of concern from Parker’s 1562 Merton visitation

but does not include the date (May 1562) or any of the subsequent answers by Merton Fellows, scholars

often mistakenly assume (or at least imply) that this event also took place in 1562 (see, for example,

Quitslund, Reformation in Rhyme, 240-241). Norman Jones also puzzlingly misdates the event, saying it took

place not at All Saints’ 1561, but Christmas 1560: The English Reformation: Religious and Cultural Adaptation

(Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 118. 68 Frere, ed., Registrum Matthei Parker Diocesis Cantuarensis, 711.

43

his pipe (meaning me)? will you never have done puling? I shall teache

you to do as I bidd you.69

Just as Leche began singing the Te Deum, Hall struck the psalter from the hapless man’s

hands and berated him for leading the others astray. Leche was later proud of his self-

control, which allowed him not to engage in the physical altercation Hall so obviously

desired:

Mr. Hall in this his doing semed to vs to seke nothing els but either to

have fought with me, or els to have caused me to fighte with [him] (for so

had we done if I had bene as earnestlie bent against him, as he was sett

against me). Herein I have vsed the more wordes, for that this facte was

one of the impudentes dedes that ever I sawe, and most plaine against

our decree, and suche an one as all the papistes in the towne did

commend, as for a speciall example of a good shortnes in a just quarrell

against heresie. Surelie it can not be conceaved well in minde so grevous,

as it was then to see to, for thereby he had almost brought me to passe the

bandes of charitie, who had receaved the communion that same daie. It

was a mervelous greate terror and discurradgement to the godlie

disposed, no lesse incouragement and comforte to the papistes, but a

disquietnes in all the house.70

The ensuing commotion accomplished Hall’s goal of disrupting the practice of metrical

psalmody at Merton, but in the end, the orthodox Protestants prevailed:

And so we lackid our singing a greate time, till it happened Mr. Gifford to

fall from that faction and take with us for a time; who being second

deane, by my counsel brought in singing of psalmes againe contrarie to

Mr. Halls will, and with the greate displeasure of all the papistes in

69 Ibid., 706-707. 70 Ibid., 707.

44

Oxford for a season. Ellis shold we have had no singing of psalmes till

this daie.71

It should be noted that the Te Deum is not, in fact, a metrical psalm at all. However, a

metricized version of this hymn appeared in Day’s 1560/1561 Psalmes. Since the

1560/1561 Psalmes marked the first appearance of an English-language Te Deum in a

metrical psalter, it seems certain that Merton had a copy of that particular book. The

casual description of the Te Deum as a metrical psalm in these accounts also shows that

the metrical hymns included in Day’s psalters were thought of as part of the same genre

as metrical psalms.

This story of Merton College’s dramatic altercation tells us that in the early 1560s,

metrical psalmody was seen as diametrically opposed to continuing Roman Catholic

sympathies: metrical psalms were not only Protestant, but visibly anti-Catholic. By

Archbishop Matthew Parker’s visitation in 1562, English metrical psalmody had again

been restored at Merton, thanks to the defection of Mr. Gifford from the Catholic group.

Metrical psalmody was beginning to become the norm at English institutions and

representative of proper Christian practice in England.

The visitations of bishops to check on the functioning of a diocese and to ensure

that parish practice was doctrinally and practically in accordance with the new

Protestant orthodoxy provide us with a rich source of evidence: from visitation articles,

71 Ibid.

45

we can glean both desired reforms as well as where parishes went wrong. Some

visitation articles offered directives for churches to purchase and perform metrical

psalms. In 1562, Bishop Robert Horne’s Injunctions for Winchester Cathedral required

that

the Chanter of the said church clerks and choristers there shall…have in

readiness books of psalms set forth in English metre to be provided at the

costs of the church, and to sing in the body of the church both afore the

sermon and after the sermon one of the said psalms to be appointed at the

discretion of the said Chanter.72

It was common for churches to be required to purchase a psalter alongside the Book of

Common Prayer, English Bible, Books of Homilies, and so on; in this case, however, the

psalter called for is specifically a metrical one. Timothy Duguid has pointed out that it is

surprising that Horne, always an advocate for the unaltered English liturgy when an

exile during Mary’s reign, supported metrical psalm singing, which represented an

addition to the liturgy as prescribed in the BCP. Duguid suggests that it was perhaps

done for the benefit of Archbishop Parker, who would visit Winchester only a few days

later.73 However, Parker’s impending visitation could not have been Horne’s sole

motivation. Horne’s instruction was repeated in 1571; it would seem that Winchester

Cathedral was slow in responding to the multifaceted directive that choristers pay

attention to sermons, that the church provide books of metrical psalms, and that the

72 Frere, Visitation Articles, Vol. 3, 138. 73 Timothy Duguid, Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice: English ‘Singing Psalms’ and Scottish ‘Psalm Buiks’,

c. 1547-1640 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 187.

46

psalms be sung before and after sermons. Additionally, in 1567, Horne similarly

instructed chaplains at New College, Oxford, to sing metrical psalms before and after

the sermons.74

Jonathan Willis’s analysis of churchwardens’ accounts through the 1590s

provides evidence that churches were indeed financially investing in metrical psalmody

(he makes no arguments as to whether they were following instructions like those of

Bishop Horne, or whether such expenditures were of their own account). Willis

concludes that beginning in the late 1550s, many parishes purchased copies of psalters

often described as English, Genevan, “in meter,” or “with notes.” For this fourth case, as

in the others, the psalter in question is most likely the WBP, although Willis himself is

unwilling to state so with certainty. He supposes that choral metrical psalmody

probably stood alongside congregational singing of the WBP (and the partial psalters

that came before it), and that choirs may have given significant aid to the laity in helping

them learn the words and tunes of the psalter.75 More recently, Anne Heminger’s

archival study of London parish records c. 1540-1560, echoes Willis’s findings. Of the 22

parishes with extant records she has examined, twelve bought psalters in 1558/1559, and

three of these purchase records made specific references to psalms in meter or Geneva

books. In 1559/1560, 10 of the 22 parishes purchased psalters, and five of those included

74 “Ut capellani in choro post et ante conciones psalmos metrice conscriptos canent.” Frere, Visitation Articles,

Vol. 3, 189. 75 Jonathan Willis, Church Music and Protestantism in Post-Reformation England: Discourses, Sites and Identities

(Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), 121-128.

47

metrical psalms.76 St James Garlickhithe’s “It[em] p[ai]d for te deum & other salmes in

englishe meter” (4 pence) is particularly interesting in light of the altercation at Merton

College, which similarly centered around a metrical Te Deum.77

On the other hand, the practice of metrical psalmody was, most certainly, not

universally encouraged by church authorities. Such criticisms also demonstrate

churches’ actual practice. For example, Archbishop Parker and his bishops drafted a list

of diverse and problematic liturgical practices in 1565; among them, they noted the

dismaying tendency of some to “intermeddle Psalms in metre” rather than keep to the

liturgical order specified in the BCP.78 Clearly, Parker was not an absolute advocate for

metrical psalmody in all situations, despite his fondness for the genre as evinced by his

own printed Whole Psalter translated into English Metre (1567).

Finally, the WBP itself began to more explicitly promote the use of the public

performance of its psalms in churches. Even though Quitslund argues that the first

edition of the WBP properly refers to the fifty-first Injunction regarding the regulation

and licensing of printed books and not the forty-ninth Injunction regarding church

music, she acknowledges the difference between the publisher’s intention and the way

76 Private correspondence with Anne Heminger, November 2017. See her forthcoming dissertation:

“Confession Carried Aloft: Music, Sound, and Religious Identity in London, c. 1540–1560,” (Ph.D diss.,

University of Michigan, forthcoming). 77 London Metropolitan Archives Ms. 4810, fol. 10r. My thanks to Anne Heminger for sharing her research. 78 John Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, Vol. 1 (Oxford, 1821), 302.

48

in which it was interpreted by the populace.79 Within a few years, the title page was

altered. No longer did it include the indeterminate statement, “Faithfully perused and

alowed according to thordre appointed in the Quenes maiesties iniunctions.” Instead,

beginning in 1566, the title page read, “Newlye set foorth and allowed to bee soong of

the people together, in Churches, before and after Morning and Euening prayer: as also

before and after the Sermon, and moreouer in priuate houses” (see Figure 3). This

description matches what we know of the actual practice of metrical psalm-singing in

parishes, and with this change, the WBP argued forcefully that this practice was entirely

in accordance with the rulings of the queen and the Church.

79 Quitslund, The Reformation in Rhyme, 243-244.

49

Figure 3. Title Page of the 1566 WBP80

80 STC 2437. Photograph taken by the author, courtesy of the Bodleian Library.

50

Evidence from Patents

Furthermore, Day’s WBP aligned itself firmly with the English crown and the Church of

England in another sense, the title page advertising Day’s psalter patent granted by the

queen herself: “With the grace and privilege of her majesty the Queen, for seven years.”

In 1553, under Edward VI, Day had been granted his first printing patent, allowing him

to print only primers with catechisms. His first Elizabethan privilege in 1559 gave Day a

copyright of seven years for any original work printed at his expense. The second

privilege of 1567 extended the copyright to ten years. The third, in 1577, extended the

sole rights to print the WBP and several other works to John Day and now also to his son

Richard Day, for the entirety of their lives. All editions of the WBP, including those

printed by the assigns of Richard Day following John’s death in 1584, would

prominently advertise this psalter patent, and because of the immense popularity of the

psalter, there were frequent legal battles to combat pirated editions.81

The second Elizabethan privilege is particularly interesting. Not only was it the

first of Day’s patents to specifically name the WBP, identifying it as “the Psalmes of

David in Englishe Meter, with notes,” but the book was given primary importance,

listed even before the “ABC” that had long served as a mainstay of Day’s publishing

business. The privilege went on to state that the WBP, the ABC, and Day’s other books

81 The full text of all three privileges is given in Robert Steele, The Earliest English Music Printing (London:

Printed for the Bibliographical Society at the Cheswick Press, 1903), 21-26. See Chapter 6 for further

discussion of the psalter patent and its consequences.

51

could not legally be printed by anyone else, “so that no such Book or Bookes be

repugnaunt to the holy Scripture, or the lawes and order of our realme.” With this

wording, the privilege implied not only that pirated books would break both legal and

moral law, but also that Day’s works—particularly the named WBP and the ABC—were,

in fact, in accordance with Elizabeth’s laws as well as with Scripture. It serves as tacit

evidence of Elizabeth’s approval of the WBP’s claim to monarchical authorization and

religious authority.

Legitimizing Congregational Song

John Day consciously attempted to position his WBP as an invaluable resource for the

English laity, an authorized publication that met with approval of Queen Elizabeth, and

an authoritative Protestant text that stood with the Church of England and was

appropriate for its services. This position responded directly to England’s unique

religious and political situation, for unlike continental movements, English

Protestantism was intrinsically bound up with government and monarchy. The ideas

about music’s purpose and proper performance created in the first edition of 1562 (see

Chapter 2) and transmitted throughout the sixteenth century were taken up by the

English people as they enthusiastically adopted this psalter as a chief element of their

religious practice as members of the Church of England, along with their Bibles and

52

Books of Common Prayer (with which the WBP was often bound). With his WBP, Day was

successful in constructing a legitimate genre of congregational song for England.

The BCP, English Bible, and Books of Homilies were absolutely crucial to the

construction of the confessional identity of the Church of England. With these books, the

English people could attend uniform church services, read their Scriptures in their

vernacular, and hear preaching in support of Anglican polity. Alongside these texts, the

WBP enabled the English people to sing their faith. As churches were increasingly

purchasing—and required to purchase—copies of the WBP, it joined these other texts as

a symbol of the Church of England. Despite isolated instances of ongoing tension

between clergy and congregations regarding the proper use of metrical psalms in

liturgy—as we have seen, the laity were often far more enthusiastic about the practice

than ministers—the WBP became a functional and constitutive document recognized by

members of this church as a marker of their common identity and shared Protestant

faith.

53

Chapter 2. For “all sortes of people” “in one accorde”: Constructing an English Protestant Ideology of Music

Versification as Interpretation

Translators of Scripture are forced to navigate the conflicting impulses of fidelity to the

original text, the ideological impulses of the translator, and the transmission of the

Scripture to its audience in a way that allows meaningful engagement with its contents.

Translation is by definition interpretation. The process of versifying prose into poetic

form—as we will see, the WBP was largely adapted from Miles Coverdale’s prose

psalter—introduces additional challenges. Poetry that is rhymed and metrical is highly

restrictive, and word choice may prioritize the demands of the form over precision of

the translation. In the case of The Whole Booke of Psalmes, most of its psalms were

versified into common meter, often called “Sternhold’s meter”: paired “fourteeners”

made up of two lines of eight and six syllables, with end rhymes. Due to the limitations

imposed by its short phrases and frequent rhymes, this style has often been dismissed as

bad poetry. John Wesley, for example, wrote of “the miserable, scandalous doggerel of

Hopkins and Sternhold.”1 Sophisticated poetry and rhetorical complexity were found in

the freer psalm versifications of Mary Sidney and others, not in the far more popular

1 John Wesley, The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., ed. John Telford, Vol. 3 (London: Epworth Press,

1931), 227. For more criticisms of the WBP, see Chapter 1.

54

WBP.2 The WBP was not a sophisticated poetic version of the Book of Psalms; however,

its enthusiastic adoption by the general populace may have been because of, rather than

in spite of this fact. Its poetry is accessible, easy to read and understand, and its message

is straightforward.

As this chapter will explore, part of this message is a clear and deliberate

articulation of musical aspects of Protestant devotion. The psalms of the WBP were not

newly-composed texts. As versifications of English translations, they created the

opportunity to adapt these biblical texts for particular purposes. Just as the Geneva

Psalter helped create a Calvinist confessional identity both as a material artifact (a

congregational songbook that became a marker of Calvinist practice) and through its

textual content (its words helping define a particularly Calvinist understanding of the

Bible), so the WBP helped construct English Protestantism as it played out in Church of

England churches and in English homes. Thomas Sternhold, John Hopkins, William

Whittingham, and the anonymous other poets who contributed psalms to the WBP

adapted Miles Coverdale’s existing English translation of the Book of Psalms, found in

2 Hannibal Hamlin, Michael G. Brennan, Margaret P. Hannay, and Noel J. Kinnamon, eds., The Sidney

Psalter: The Psalms of Sir Philip and Mary Sidney (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). For discussion of

musical aspects of Mary Sidney’s psalm versifications, see Linda Phyllis Austern, “Women, Psalms, and

Domestic Music-Making in Early Modern England,” in Psalms in the Early Modern World, ed. Linda Phyllis

Austern, Kari Boyd McBride, and David L. Orvis (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 77-114; Katherine R. Larson, “A

Poetics of Song,” in The Work of Form: Poetics and Materiality in Early Modern Culture, ed. Elizabeth Scott-

Baumann and Ben Burton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 104-122; Beth Quitslund, “Teaching Us

How to Sing?: The Peculiarity of the Sidney Psalter,” Sidney Journal 23:1-2 (2005): 83-110; and Micheline

White, “Protestant Women’s Writing and Congregational Psalm Singing: from the Song of the Exiled

‘Handmaid’ (1555) to the Countess of Pembroke’s Psalmes (1599),” Sidney Journal 23: 1-2 (2005): 61-82.

55

the 1535 Coverdale Bible (among others; recall Chapter 1).3 Thus their work emerged

directly out of an existing and official English Protestant text. The first Book of Common

Prayer (1549) prescribed Coverdale’s prose psalms as part of the Church of England’s

liturgy, making Coverdale’s psalms a central component of English Protestant religious

practice. Although John Day (who chose and commissioned the psalms included in his

final version of the complete psalter) and the versifiers were limited by their source

material—the psalms themselves, and Coverdale’s English translation—they

nevertheless found ways to convey their own interpretation.

What, then, does the WBP have to say about music? According to the psalter

which successfully positioned itself as authoritative within the English Protestant

tradition and authorized by the monarch, and which became the English Reformation’s

primary hymnal, what is music? What is it for? How should it be written and

performed? What—and where—is music’s proper place in worship? In this chapter, I

analyze the theological account of music as presented by the first edition of the WBP

(1562), considering questions of participation, accessibility, text selection, aesthetics, and

instrumentation.4 To do so, I engage in close reading of the WBP’s psalm versifications

and paratext, placing them in conversation with the parallel passages found in two

significant contemporary psalters: its primary source, the prose Coverdale Psalter; and

3 See Chapter 1, note 48. 4 For this research on the 1562 WBP (STC 2430), I worked with the British Library’s book-copy (shelfmark

C.25.g.3), viewed in person and via Early English Books Online, with additional consultation of Harvard

University’s book-copy (shelfmark HOU GEN STC 2430).

56

Robert Crowley’s Psalter of Dauid (1549), the only other sixteenth-century English

metrical psalter intended for use in church. Crowley’s Psalter has been relatively

neglected in modern scholarship. There is no modern edition of its text, and the sole

digital copy found on Early English Books Online is incomplete. The Crowley Psalter is

usually mentioned in a cursory fashion by musicologists discussing sixteenth-century

English sacred music because it contains “a note of four partes.” This single musical

setting, a harmonization in four parts of the seventh psalm tone in the tenor voice (see

Figure 4 below), was intended for use with all psalm texts. The Crowley Psalter was, as

Peter Le Huray and others have pointed out, the first complete English-language

metrical psalter (containing all 150 psalms), and also the first to contain harmonized

music.5 It was financially unsuccessful and never reprinted. Though it had little lasting

impact on English Protestantism and English musical culture, the Crowley Psalter serves

as a useful point of comparison, for like the WBP, it seems to have been compiled with

liturgical use in mind.6 Comparing these three psalters, my purpose is to consider the

5 Peter Le Huray, Music and the Reformation in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967, repr.

1978), 371-372; Robin A. Leaver, ‘Goostly Psalmes and Spirituall songes’: English and Dutch Metrical Psalms from

Coverdale to Utenhove, 1535-1566 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 136. 6 Rivkah Zim believes that Crowley’s texts were never liturgical: English Metrical Psalms: Poetry as Praise and

Prayer, 1535-1601 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 135. Beth Quitslund argues otherwise,

basing her assessment of Crowley’s liturgical intentions on the completeness of the psalter, the inclusion of

many liturgical canticles, the liturgical origin of the tune as a psalm tune, and Crowley’s statement that the

music is provided in order that the psalms be both sung and heard (presumably in a choral liturgy):

Reformation in Rhyme, 106-107. Robin Leaver too suggests that “there might have been a few churches in

which these metrical versions [of Crowley, Hall, Hunnis, and the Lumley Partbooks] were sung

experimentally during the latter Edwardian years”: Leaver, Goostly Psalmes, 139. Nicholas Temperley points

57

differing messages transmitted to the English people in early Protestant psalters. To

begin this work, I compiled a complete list of all references to music found within their

psalm texts; this can be found as Appendix 2.

“For it is good vnto our God to synge”: Music and the Psalms

In all three psalters, references to music in the psalms abound. As first-person prayers to

God expressing praise, thanksgiving, and occasionally great lamentation, many psalms

contain extravagant manifestations of emotion that often find expression in song.

Overwhelmingly, such references to song are found at the beginning or end of a psalm,

with the middle content reserved for explanation of God’s qualities or actions. With such

justification, the psalmist can do nothing else than “sing laud and praise.”7 While all

psalms in any translation will by their very nature contain mention of songs and singing,

the WBP is remarkable in its sheer frequency of mentions of music, often adding musical

references in instances where the Coverdale Psalter did not contain them (see Table 1).

Only very rarely does the WBP remove a musical reference found in the Coverdale

Psalter. Some of these additions and removals may be driven simply by the needs of the

poetic form, but it seems to me that the resultant statement about music is too consistent

out that there was no legal impediment to the use of metrical psalmody in daily liturgy at the time: Nicholas

Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 25. 7 Psalm 9:1, with similar sentiments frequently found throughout the Book of Psalms.

58

for the sum of these changes to be inadvertent. In comparison to the Coverdale Psalter,

the WBP adds mention of music fifteen times, while removing reference to music in six

passages. As I shall explain, some of these removals seem in service of the consistent

understanding of music transmitted by this text.

Table 1. Musical References in the Psalters

Coverdale Psalter Crowley Psalter WBP

62 passages 75 71

The WBP is not alone in its addition of references to music. As Table 1 shows, the

Crowley Psalter added even more passages about music than the WBP (although

without such a strong and consistent theological message about music, as we shall see).

Both the Crowley Psalter and the WBP at times convert the Coverdale Psalter’s non-

musical verbs such as “speak,” “talk,” “rejoice,” “give thanks,” and “praise” to “sing.”

Since the Crowley Psalter and the WBP were England’s first complete metrical psalters

to contain musical settings, this increase in the musical qualities of the psalm texts

themselves serve to enhance the psalters’ own identities. Both the Crowley Psalter and

the WBP, unlike the Coverdale Psalter, explicitly present psalms not only as scriptural

texts, but also as songs. Thus it makes sense that the psalm versifications found in these

two hymnals would amplify the psalms’ self-description as texts intended to be sung.

The WBP further enhances the musical identity of the psalms through their

visual presentation on the page. The Crowley Psalter included only a single musical

59

setting (see Figure 4). Designed to be used for all 150 psalms, the four-part tune was

found among the prefatory material, divorced from the psalms themselves.

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Figure 4. Music of the Crowley Psalter8

The music of the WBP, in contrast, is not consigned to the prefatory material but

is found in the main body of content. 65 tunes appear in the WBP (47 psalms and 18

8 Photograph taken by the author, courtesy of Oxford University Brasenose College.

61

hymns), each with the first several verses set as text underlay. Placing words about

speech, and especially verbs describing praise and prayer, in the musical settings

transforms these explicitly spoken or neutral speech-actions into song when the psalter

is used as intended. For example, the verses which open Psalm 77, set as text underlay

accompanying its tune, read,

I with my voyce to God do cry,

with harte and harty cheare,

my voyce to God I lyfte on hyghe

and he my sute doth heare.

Visually on the page (see Figure 5), and aurally when the psalms are sung, this “voice”

which might otherwise be assumed to be a speaking voice becomes a singing voice.9

9 Traditionally, the speaking (or singing voice) is understood to be that of King David the psalmist, who was

nonetheless only one of several authors of the Book of Psalms. Very unusually, the WBP did not explicitly

assign authorship of the psalms to David. All four of Day’s partial psalters referenced David, with titles

“Psalmes of Dauid,” “Psalmes. Of David,” “Foure score and seuen Psalmes of Dauid,” and “The Residue of

all Dauids Psalmes,” but the title page of the WBP does not name David in either its short- or long-title.

Later editions of the WBP would substitute different prose arguments (prefacing each psalm) that discussed

David, but the first edition seems to have deliberately excised David’s authorship—alone of all psalters in

sixteenth-century England.

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Figure 5. Psalm 7710

Very often this process of placing text beneath music also has the effect of shifting the

temporality of these words, as in the opening verses of Psalm 104. When realized

audibly, this exhortation to praise God becomes a description of praise in progress, even

a song of praise itself: reader becomes singer, and future tense becomes present.

10 WBP 1562, STC 2430. Photograph taken by the author, courtesy of Harvard University’s Houghton

Library. Page 183.

63

My soule praise the lord:

speake good of his name.

O lord our great god,

how dost thou appeare,

So passing in glory that great is thy fame:

honour and maiestie in thee shine most cleare.

with light as a robe,

thou hast thee be clad

wherby all the earth

thy greatnes may see,

the heauens in such sort thou also hast spread,

that it to a curtaine compared may be.

Figure 6. Psalm 104 and its Text Underlay11

11 WBP 1562, STC 2430. Image from Early English Books Online. Pages 254-255.

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Because the WBP prints music directly under psalm texts, in contrast to the physically-

distant Crowley Psalter tune, many texts that accompany the WBP’s musical settings are

easily converted into musical references. This enhances the psalter’s overall presentation

of psalms as songs and contributes to the cumulative increase in musical imagery.

Occasionally, psalm texts given as text underlay already explicitly reference

music. Psalm 147, for example, begins,

PRaise ye the Lord, for it is good

vnto our God to synge,

For it is pleasante and to prayse,

it is a comely thyng,

the Lord his owne Ierusalem,

he buildeth vp alone,

and the disperst of Israell,

doth gather into one.

Elsewhere, text underlay begins neutrally but becomes musical. In Psalm 81, for

example, the voice spoken of in the first verse is made a singing voice through its

presentation as text underlay directly associated with a piece of music, before these

words go on to specify that the best way for the speaker to express him- or herself is

through song and the playing of instruments:

BE lyghte and glad in God reioyce

which is our strength & staie

be ioyfull and lyfte vp your voyce,

to Iacobs God I say,

prepare your instrumentes most mete

some ioyfull psalme to synge,

65

stryke vp with harp and lute so swete

on euery pleasant stryng.

In general, however, it would seem that the matching of psalms with tunes is not guided

by the preexisting presence of musical imagery. Many psalms that speak directly of

music and singing do not receive their own tunes, even those in which the opening

verses themselves contain plentiful musical references, such as Psalm 33:1-4:

YE rightuous in the Lorde reioyse,

it is a semely sight:

That vpright men with thankfull voyce,

should prayse the God of might.

Prayse ye the Lorde with harp and songe,

in Psalmes and pleasant thinges:

with lute and instrument among,

that soundeth with ten stringes.

Sing to the Lord a song most new,

with courage geue him prayes:

For why? his word is euer true,

his workes and all his wayes.

The WBP does not systematically match musical texts with musical settings. This

may be to its advantage: because any psalm may receive a tune, whether it explicitly

references music or not, it is made clear that all psalms are songs. And indeed, even for

psalms that are not given tunes of their own, there are still visual reminders that they are

meant as songs. Printed marginal annotations beside the first verse command readers to

“Sing this as the [number] psalm.” These tune references are not without error—printing

66

errors mislabeling the proper tune can cause confusion; see Chapter 6—but even in such

instances, the status of psalm as song is undeniable.

Sheer frequency of musical references does not by itself make the WBP a critical

component in the construction of an English Protestant musical aesthetic. Despite its

success and popularity, if the WBP did not portray worshipful music-making in a

consistent manner, it could not have contributed to England’s Reformation philosophy

concerning music. But the psalter is remarkably consistent in its manner of speaking

about music, transmitting a particularly Protestant understanding of music that is

largely in line with continental reformers’ attitudes towards music. In short, while it is

interesting that the WBP contains more musical references than the Coverdale Psalter, it

is far more important to track how these references are used and the message concerning

music that they convey.

“All sortes of people”: The Songs of a Christian Community

According to the Book of Psalms, faith in God is marked by praise of God in

thanksgiving for God’s actions. For Christians, the psalms demonstrate the belief that

proper piety includes this praise both in speech and in song. For reformers, the psalter

was caught up in broader statements about what it meant to be Protestant. Roman

Catholics sang psalms, but in Latin rather than the vernacular, and in Catholic liturgy,

psalms were sung by priests and choir rather than by congregation. Protestants saw

67

these practices as two levels of removal from the ordinary churchgoer, who neither

understood the language in which the psalms were sung nor sang themselves. Being

Protestant meant singing in praise of God as a community, and the WBP with its

increased musical references reflects this more thoroughly than the officially liturgical

Coverdale Psalter.

The WBP makes a powerful statement about who is able to sing. This begins with

its title page, which is clear about its intended audience: “all sortes of people” can use

this book.12 Michael Saenger has shown that title pages seek to define their customer and

in doing so, imply something about intended readership, central readership, and even

excluded readership. Social status, level of education, and gender could be (and often

were) strongly suggested by sixteenth-century English printed title pages.13 The act of

creating the ideal reader “must necessarily begin with both identification and negation,”

demonstrating who the audience is not in order to persuade the proper audience to

become purchasers of the book.14 A title page in Latin, for example, indicated the

exclusion of those who read only English, and signaled a higher level of scholarship in

the hopes of attracting the more literate. The WBP, on the other hand, does not exclude

12 Hamlin suggests that this is a return to Sternhold’s original goals for his published courtly poetry (devout

recreation for the godly), rather than (or perhaps in addition to) the Protestant reformers’ intent for all the

laity to become involved in church services: Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2004), 27. 13 Michael Saenger, The Commodification of Textual Engagements in the English Renaissance (Aldershot: Ashgate,

2006), 47. 14 Ibid., 49.

68

anyone from its readership. It is “Very mete to be vsed of all sortes of people” and for

“any [who] be afflicted,” for the benefit of themselves and “one another.” The WBP was

meant to appeal to all churchgoing English Christians across the bounds of their

particular religious distinctions: moderate Anglicans, the “hotter sort” of Puritans, and

even “church papists,” those Catholics who obediently appeared in the compulsory

Sunday services of the Church of England.15 The title page does not limit its desired

readership to a particular age range, even promoting its psalms as advantageous for

easily corruptible youth.

15 English Reformation historians have identified several varieties of lay Protestant conformity. Alexandra

Walsham examines “church papists” who remained Roman Catholic in their religious convictions but

attended church services for appearance’s sake: Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional

Polemic in Early Modern England (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1993). Christopher Haigh’s “parish Anglicans” were

a part of the Church of England but without vigorous Protestant beliefs; they were seen by the godly

Protestants (Puritans) as failed Protestants: English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). Judith Maltby describes “prayer book Protestants” as “women and men

who did conform and whose conformity grew beyond mere obedience to the prince…into an attachment,

perhaps even love, for the Church of England”: Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 2. Identification of Puritans as “the hotter sort” of

Protestants comes from Patrick Collinson’s body of work; beginning in The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, he

discusses Puritans not as a group opposed to Protestants but among them, with only “differences of degree,

of theological temperature so to speak, rather than of fundamental principle”: The Elizabethan Puritan

Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 26-27. It is important to remember the problems

associated with such labels. Peter Marshall has critiqued the anachronistic use of such terms, identifying the

situations and contexts in which labels like “Protestant,” “evangelical,” “papist,” and “Puritan” were

employed and self-employed in the sixteenth century: “The Naming of Protestant England,” Past and Present

214 (Feb., 2012): 87-128. Peter Lake and Michael Questier have further discussed the problems with

assuming discrete categories at all, resisting the binary oppositions and the diminishing of individual

confessional differences created by the modern practice of labeling groups: “Introduction,” in Conformity and

Orthodoxy in the English Church, ed. Lake and Questier (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2000), ix-xx.

However, such categories have proven to be a useful tool for understanding the wide variety of religious

beliefs and practices in England in a period that is too easily reduced to a Catholic/Puritan binary or even a

Catholic/Anglican/Puritan ternary.

69

The title of the preface that follows reinforces this open readership by

announcing that the “Shorte Introduction into the Science of Musicke” (and by

extension, as this is the first page of the book, the entire contents) is “made for such as

are desirous to haue the knowledge therof, for the singing of these Psalmes.” In other

words, this psalter is for anyone who wants to sing psalms. The implications are further:

everyone can sing, and psalms are designed to be sung, not merely read. The opening

lines of the preface place the emphasis on a certain subset of reader who wishes to sing

psalms: “the rude & ignorant in Song.” Although this designation may seem somewhat

discourteous today, these terms were customary and inoffensive descriptors for the

common people at the time. This address to “the rude & ignorant” provides an early

indicator of a crucial shift in the history of the printed book in England. Helen Brayman

Hackel has shown that in the late sixteenth and into the seventeenth century, reading

and book ownership in England were becoming increasingly available to a broader

audience beyond the gentry and clergy (the “gentle” or “learned” readers). In many

letters to the reader, this wider audience was named the “great Variety” of readers,

encompassing gentry and common reader alike. Book prefaces began addressing

“vulgar” readers directly and framing their contents as suitable for all social classes in

an attempt to capitalize on this growing market for books.16 Yet even as the authors of

16 Heidi Brayman Hackel, Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender, and Literacy (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2005), 71.

70

letters to these readers acknowledged this expanding audience, they “resign[ed]

themselves to it or insist[ed] upon its inadequacy.”17 A preface might address its learned

and merely literate readers separately; Hackel provides many examples of seventeenth-

century prefaces that assume the participation of what Hackel calls “abecedarian

[elementary] readers” and are rather dismissive or critical of these rudimentary readers’

ability to fully engage with the book.18 The WBP, published in 1562, was already

attempting to engage a broad audience of all literate readers, not just learned elite.19

Unusual in its early date for this explicitly common audience, the music preface also

refrained from criticizing its readers’ reading ability. Hackel’s examples of books that

complain about their unlearned readership stand in stark contrast to books like the WBP

that provide introductory aids to assist untrained readers to master their contents.

All of this is completely in keeping with Protestant thought, which sought to

minimize the gap between laity and clergy. The English Reformation in particular was

characterized by a unity that was both ideological and enforced. John Wall has written

of the unique way in which the English Reformation utilized printing to reduce

diversity, in contrast to continental reformers for whom the printing press served as an

17 Ibid., 72. 18 Ibid., 72-73. 19 Sixteenth-century England’s reading culture also indicates that books like this could have been—and very

well may have been intended to be—read aloud. I will discuss this phenomenon in Chapter 3.

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avenue towards increased variety of theological opinion and biblical interpretation.20

Unlike its continental counterparts, English Protestantism was not marked by multiple

liturgical options, several endorsed and competing Bible translations, or Protestant

splinter groups. The Book of Common Prayer demanded liturgical and theological unity

across the Church of England. Similarly, the English monarch in his/her role as

“supreme head” (later, “supreme governor”) of the Church of England authorized

official Books of Homilies and English translations of the Bible. The immense popularity

of the WBP makes it another key figure in understanding how Protestantism was

promulgated and received. Certainly John Day would have been delighted for financial

reasons when his psalter became the standard metrical psalter for England, a place it

held for roughly three hundred years. No doubt both he and the religious authorities

who were carefully crafting this united front for the Church of England were glad to

have only a single metrical version of the psalms in wide circulation, one that enabled

and encouraged all English people to sing a uniform set of psalms. Thus the WBP

promotes singing as an essential part of an inclusive Christian community, advancing

the idea that English Protestantism is—or should be—marked by communal praise of

God. All true believers are exhorted to sing together.

20 John N. Wall, Jr., “The Reformation in England and the Typographical Revolution: ‘By this printing…the

doctrine of the Gospel soundeth to all nations,’” in Print and Culture in the Renaissance: Essays on the Advent of

Printing in Europe, ed. Gerald P. Tyson and Sylvia S. Wagonheim (Newark: University of Delaware Press,

1986), 209.

72

The psalter itself enables this through its inclusion of simple melodies that are

intended as music for the general populace, and are thus easy to sing and to learn.21

These tunes were monophonic (a single musical line sung by the community in unison

or in octaves), syllabic, and unaccompanied (although the lack of formal accompaniment

does not prove that congregations did not use organs as an aid in learning and singing

these melodies; I will return to the question of instrumental accompaniment later in this

chapter). By far the most common range for a single tune is an octave; two tunes span a

sixth, eight a seventh, eighteen a ninth, and five a tenth.22 All tunes collectively span two

octaves from C3 to C5, but most lie between C3 and G4—some tunes, then, are

uncomfortable for women either at pitch or transposed up an octave, but when sung

without accompaniment are easily transposable. Most tunes begin and end on the same

pitch.23 With only two exceptions, in which tunes end on an unexpected sharp third, the

21 On the origins of the tunes found in the WBP, and in many cases their prior appearances in earlier

publications in this family of psalters, see Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church, Vol. 1, 33-34, 57-

58; and Leaver, Goostly Psalmes, 231, 233-236, 245-246, 249-250. Many tunes first appeared in the Anglo-

Genevan Psalter of 1556; subsequent editions of this psalter and Day’s own partial psalters added and

substituted tunes, some of which were new and others adapted from French or German sources. 22 Sixth: The Crede of Athanasius (Quicunque vult) and Psalm 136.

Seventh: The songe of the thre Children, The humble sute of the Sinner, The x Commaundements (of the

opening hymns), and Psalms 14, 35, 69, 95, and 147.

Ninth: Veni creator, The Lordes prayer (of the opening hymns), Psalms 1, 41, 59, 68, 77, 78, 81, 104, 119, 121,

124, 130, 137, 145, 148, and The xii Articles of the christian faythe.

Tenth: Te deum, Nunc dimittis, Psalms 88 and 112, and The Lords Prayer (of the closing hymns). 23 Only thirteen of these 65 melodies start on a different pitch than the tonic. Fifth above: Psalms 6, 30, 51,

112, 125, 126, 130, The Lords Prayer (of the closing hymns), and The xii Articles of the christian faythe. Fifth

below: The Lordes prayer (of the opening hymns), Psalm 21. Whole step above: Magnificat. Third below:

Psalm 41.

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concluding pitch is always the tune’s modal center.24 No tune uses a key signature other

than one or no flats, and only eleven contain any accidentals.25 Finally, these tunes

contain a great deal of stepwise motion that fills in intervallic leaps, making them easily

singable. See Table 2 for a summary of these musical features:

Table 2. Musical Features of the WBP’s Psalm Tunes

Range

Sixth Seventh Octave Ninth Tenth

2 tunes 8 32 18 5

Starting Pitch

Same as the

final

Fifth above Fifth below Whole step

above

Third below

52 tunes 9 2 1 1

Ending Pitch

Tonic Raised third

63 tunes 2

Accidentals

No accidentals Accidentals

54 tunes 11

Consider the tune assigned to the first psalm (see Figure 7). It begins and ends on

the final, D, and spans an octave, the climactic high D falling at the 2/3 mark (around the

Golden Mean). This music follows conventional rules for the composition of melodies:

24 Psalm 47 and The complaint of a Sinner end on the sharp third. 25 Tunes containing B-flat: Psalms 51, 112, 119, 126, 147; The Lord's Prayer (closing canticles).

Tunes containing E-flat: Psalm 130.

Tunes containing F-sharp: Psalms 141, 145, 147; The complaint of a Sinner.

Tunes containing C-sharp: The Lamentation.

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the melody reverses direction after leaps, and large intervals are usually filled in with

stepwise motion. With no melodic interval larger than a fifth and a high percentage of

movement by step, this tune, like the others throughout, (in the words of Hannibal

Hamlin) “combines stepwise motion with leaps of larger intervals in a way that lends

enough variety, yet without too much complexity.”26 It is neither difficult to learn nor to

sing.

Figure 7. Psalm 1

However, not all scholars agree that the tunes of the WBP are easy or that they

are of reasonable musical quality. Christopher Marsh has argued that “they were not the

26 Hamlin, Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature, 46.

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most memorable or accessible of melodies” and that “[m]any of them also seem rather

featureless and lacking in a clear sense of direction.” Citing only a single source from the

early seventeenth century, he claims that “contemporaries too sometimes grumbled

about the Sternhold-Hopkins psalms because of ‘the difficultie of their tunes’. They were

hard to remember and harder to love.”27 Marsh notes that this tune for Psalm 1 is one of

the “long-lasting ‘official’ tunes’”: one of the few WBP tunes that was successful enough

to survive in common performance after published collections of harmonized psalms by

Thomas East and others promoted different “common tunes.”28 However, Marsh is

forced to confess that nevertheless “[i]n several respects, the two breeds of melody are

more similar”29—musically, there is less distinction between the so-called “official

tunes” and “common tunes” than he would like to admit. Nicholas Temperley too

would argue that in choosing Psalm 1 for my model, I have selected one of the higher-

quality tunes, an atypical example of the music in the WBP.30 However, I have chosen

this one precisely because it was one of the best-loved tunes, as its inclusion in every

sixteenth-century harmonized version of the WBP (many of which included only select

tunes) would indicate. As an example of successful “music for the people,” Psalm 1 is

among the finest.

27 Christopher Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2010), 412. 28 Ibid., 412-414. 29 Ibid., 415. 30 Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church, 58.

76

Perhaps the most commonly criticized musical feature of the WBP tunes in

modern scholarship is rhythm; Hamlin’s praise of the WBP tunes’ “rhythmic energy” is

an outlier.31 For example, Temperley wrote that the tunes which originated in the 1556

Anglo-Genevan Psalter “seem almost wholly lacking in melodic, rhythmic, or structural

vitality… Above all, these tunes lack the strong rhythmical framework [of popular tunes

associated with sixteenth-century English ballad verse].”32 The Psalm 1 tune includes

only three note values: whole note (semibreve), dotted whole note, and half note

(minim). Each musical phrase is set with smaller note values as it reaches its end, a

string of half notes that has the effect of speeding up the delivery of the conclusion of

each line of text. This acceleration has great rhetorical effect. However, the beginning of

each phrase is not so effective. Unimportant articles and conjunctions—“the,” “nor,”

“but,” “both,” “and”—are stressed, rather than the more important nouns and verbs that

immediately follow.

While few of the tunes of the WBP were taken directly from the Geneva Psalter,

most were stylistically influenced by those French tunes. The rhythms of Geneva Psalter

tunes were carefully crafted to fit the French language, long and short notes matching

their texts’ patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables. Unfortunately, this pairing does

not translate well into other languages. Among these rhythmic features was a long first

31 Hamlin, Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature, 46. 32 Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church, 34.

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syllable for each line of text. Though this trait does not fit English text well, it

nonetheless became characteristic of the tunes of the WBP. Thus, while the music of the

Geneva Psalter stressed intelligibility and accessibility, its words easily understood by

congregations and its melodies easily sung by amateur singers, this goal was not so

well-executed in its English iteration.33

The tunes of the WBP therefore attempted, with varying levels of musical

success, to make sacred singing easy and accessible for the laity. The idea that singing is

characteristic of Christian believers is reinforced by the psalm texts about music, which

emphasize both who can sing and who cannot. Throughout the WBP, the psalm texts

state that true believers can and should sing, and they are often exhorted to sing

together as a community. In Psalm 47:1, for example, the WBP strengthens the command

found in both the Coverdale and Crowley Psalters for “all ye people” to clap their hands

and sing unto God. The WBP contains that same instruction, but expands it: “YE people

all in one accorde, / clappe handes and eke reioyce: / Be glad and sing vnto the Lorde.”

The WBP conveys the impression that not only should all Christians sing, but they

should sing together as a single voice (using the provided monophonic psalm tunes?).

33 In reference to the Anglo-Genevan Psalter (1556), from which many of the WBP’s tunes were drawn,

Timothy Duguid argues that seeming problems in metrical accentuation in the psalm texts can be explained

by their musical settings. Misplaced textual accents are mediated by the chosen melodies. According to

Duguid, then, the text-setting in the Anglo-Genevan Psalter is calculated for clarity and understanding on

the part of the listener. He finds these tunes’ rhythmic text-setting more effective than I do: Metrical Psalmody

in Print and Practice: English ‘Singing Psalms’ and Scottish ‘Psalm Buiks’, c. 1547-1640 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014),

29-33.

78

The phrase “in one accord” or “with one accord” appears in eight of the WBP’s passages

that reference singing. It is a convenient rhyme, certainly—“one accord” pairs nicely

with “Lord,” which is helpful for a poetic form characterized by short phrases and

frequent rhymes—but the Crowley psalter, which also employs end-rhymes, uses this

phrase only once among its musical references. The WBP, in contrast, consistently

emphasizes the unity of Christians when singing communally “in one accord.” As in

other Protestant writings, the WBP presents all Christians as a unified group, with

ordained priests and laity joined together in praise. Frequent references to the singing of

the “saints” follows the Protestant understanding that all Christians are saints (not

merely those canonized by the Roman Catholic Church). Protestants across England and

the Continent would have identified strongly with the WBP’s version of Psalm 30:4:

“Sing prayse ye sainctes that proue and see, / the goodness of the Lord: / In memorye of

his maiestie, / Reioyse with one accord.”

According to the WBP’s psalms, the whole of creation also praises God alongside

faithful believers. The WBP’s psalm versifications amplify the singing of creation beyond

that found in the Coverdale Psalter, which describes birdsong only once, in Psalm

104:12: “Beside them shall the fowls of the air have their habitation: and sing among the

branches.” The WBP too speaks of birdsong here, and adds another discussion of the

singing of birds to Psalm 84, which tells of the hospitality of God in providing a home

for the sparrow. Coverdale’s translation reads, “Yea, the sparrow hath found her an

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house, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young: even thy altars, O Lord of

hosts, my King and my God.”34 The Crowley Psalter expresses a similar sentiment.

Meanwhile, the WBP’s parallel passage adds the sparrow’s response of song:

The sparrowes find a rome to rest,

and saue them selues from wrong:

And eke the swalow hath a neste,

wherin to kepe her yong.

These birdes full nigh, thin aulter maye)

haue place to sitte and synge:

O Lorde of hostes thou art I say,

my God and eke my kynge.35

Similarly, in Psalm 96, when the psalmist details the rejoicing of creation, both the

Crowley Psalter and the WBP specify that some of this joyous noise is musical, the trees

of the wood singing with gladness. All of creation—humans, animals, and the earth

itself—sings in praise of their Creator.

However, the WBP makes it clear that song is purely the action of created things.

According to the psalm versifications throughout, God is the source of music but does

not sing; God acts and listens. This is not to say that God does not have a voice. God’s

voice “doth rule the waters all” and “is of great force, / and wonderous excellent: It is

most mightye in effect, / and muche magnificent.”36 God’s voice is a creating voice: “For

at his worde they were, / All formed as we see: / At his voyce did appeare, / All thinges

34 Psalm 84:3. 35 Psalm 84:3-4. 36 Psalm 29:3-4.

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in their degree.”37 God even speaks directly in some of the psalm texts, such as Psalm

81:13: “And yet my people woulde not heare, / my voyce when that I spake: / Nor Israell

would not obey, / but did me quite forsake.” While the word “gift” is not used to speak

of God’s gift of music to humanity, the WBP nevertheless reflects that Lutheran

conception of music,38 especially in Psalm 40:3: “To me he [God] taught a psalme of

prayse, / whiche I must shew abrode: / And sing new songes of thankes alwayse, / vnto

the Lorde our God.” Here, God is revealed to be the teacher of music, and humanity’s

response is songs of thanksgiving.

What of humans opposed to God’s people? The WBP depicts them as

fundamentally unable to participate: the heathen cannot sing. Enemies of God’s people

are never spoken of as singing or making music of any kind. Another of the WBP’s few

removals of a musical reference found in the Coverdale Psalter takes place in Psalm

69:13-14 (69:12 in Coverdale). Where the Coverdale Psalter described the music of the

critics of God’s people (“They that sit in the gate speak against me: and the drunkards

37 Psalm 148:6. 38 Among many other discussions of music as a gift of God, Luther wrote in his preface to the 1538

Symphoniae Iucundae, ““After all, the gift of language combined with the gift of song was only given to man

to let him know that he should praise god with both word and music, namely, by proclaiming [the Word of

God] through music and by providing sweet melodies with words”: Martin Luther, Luther's Works, Vol. 53,

Liturgy and Hymns, ed. and trans. Ulrich S. Leupold (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965), 323-324. Extended

discussion of this Lutheran conception of music as a gift can be found in Theodore Hoelty-Nickel, “Luther

and Music,” in Luther and Culture, ed. George W. Forell, Harold J. Grimm, and Theodore Hoelty-Nickel

(Decorah, Iowa: Luther College Press, 1960), 145-161; J. Andreas Loewe, “Why do Lutherans Sing?

Lutherans, Music, and the Gospel in the First Century of the Reformation,” Church History 82:1 (March,

2013): 69-89; Ulrich S. Leupold, “Luther’s Conception of Music in Worship,” The Lutheran Church Quarterly

13 (1940): 66-69; Paul Nettl, Luther and Music, trans. Frida Best and Ralph Wood (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg,

1948; repr. New York: Russel & Russel, 1967), Chapter 1; Carl F. Schalk, Luther on Music: Paradigms of Praise

(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1988), 31-49.

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make songs upon me.”), the WBP transforms these drunken songs into mere speech:

“Both hie and lowe, and all the throng, / that sit within the gate: / They haue me euer in

theyr tong, / of me they talke and prate.” In this narrative world, music—or indeed, any

worship at all—is only possibly for God’s people or for the converted, as in Psalm 22:27,

which describes conversion: “The Heathen folke shall worship hym.” Those who act in

opposition to God can speak but not sing. This is true even for the Israelites when they

turn against God, as described in Psalm 78.

Enemies of God’s people use their non-musical voices in dangerous ways. The

psalmist laments in Psalm 79:4 that “[t]he enemies at vs iest and mocke,” and the

heathen taunt the singing of the faithful in Psalm 137. Alternately, in several instances,

the heathen are described as having mouths but unable to speak.39 They do not employ

their voices rightly but use their tongues to cause harm to the faithful. In Psalm 109[:1-2],

the psalmist describes his enemies’ “wicked mouth and gilefull mouth” and “false and

lying tong.” He cries out to God for deliverance “from liers lips alway, / And tong of

false report,” and later, “From bloudy teeth, and theyr most cruell voyce. / Which as a

pray to eate vs woulde reioyce.”40 Psalm 140[:3] even describes the tongues of evil men

as adder’s poison. But the singing of God’s people can result in divine protection from

these harmful spoken voices. Psalm 18:3 makes this clear: “When I sing laud vnto the

39 Psalm 115[:5], Psalm 135[:16]. 40 Psalm 120[:2], Psalm 124:6.

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Lorde, / most worthy to be serued: / Then fro[m] my foes I am right sure, / that I shalbe

preserued.”

“In psalmes, Hymnes & spirituall songs”: Genre in The Whole Booke of Psalmes

To this point, I have examined who, according to the WBP, can and should sing. I turn

now to the question of what they should sing. Generally, the psalms identify the works

to be sung as simply “songs.” Psalm 96:1 reads, “SYng ye with prayse vnto the Lorde, /

New songs of ioy and mirthe.” Psalm 98:1 says similarly, “O Syng ye now vnto the

Lorde, / a new and pleasaunt songe.” Several more times, the songs are specified as

“new”: “A new song I will sing O God”; “SIng ye vnto the Lorde our God, / a new

reioysing song.”41 Of course, this description of “new songs” is not original to English

translations of the psalms, but for those English churchgoers who could remember the

pre-Reformation days of chant by professional choir, the congregational metrical psalms

of the WBP must have seemed very new indeed. Psalm 129, which would in later

editions of the WBP be replaced by a different version, even suggests the topic for a

song: “Of Israell thys may now be the song, / euen from my youth my foes haue oft me

41 Psalm 144[:9], Psalm 149[:1].

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noied / A thousand euils since, I was tendre & yonge / Thy haue wrought, yet was I not

destroyed.”42

Occasionally, the designation “songs” is joined by or replaced by the more

specific term “psalms.” This happens considerably more often in the WBP than in either

the Coverdale or Crowley Psalters. Three times in the Coverdale Psalter (Psalm 81:2,

Psalm 95:2, and Psalm 98:6), readers are exhorted to sing psalms. Both the Crowley

Psalter and the WBP maintain all three of these references to psalms in a musical context

but also add additional ones. I read this as a kind of conscious self-promotion, these

musical psalters promoting sung performance of the psalms. The Crowley Psalter does

this only once, in Psalm 30[:4], in a passage made all the more interesting by its addition

of not only “psalm” but also “hymn”: “Ye that haue felt the Lordes mercye, synge a

Psalme vnto hym: / Set forth the memorye of hys holynes with an hymne.” The WBP, on

the other hand, adds reference to psalms five times throughout the psalter. In Psalm

9:11, where the Coverdale Psalter counseled readers to “praise the Lord which dwelleth

in Sion,” and the Crowley Psalter made the command musical (“Synge to the Lorde that

doeth abyde in the cyty Syon”), the WBP becomes even more specific, telling its readers

to “Sing Psalmes therfore vnto the Lorde, / that dwelleth in Sion hill.” The WBP further

specifies the singing of psalms in Psalms 27:8, 33:2, and 68:32; neither Coverdale nor

42 Psalm 129:1.

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Crowley Psalters made mention of psalms in these passages. The WBP’s Psalm 40:3 even

indicates God as the source of psalm-singing: “To me he taught a psalme of prayse.”

From its very beginning, the WBP supported the singing of psalms in Christian

practice, its title page prominently displaying two quotations from the Bible: “If any be

afflicted let him praye, and if any be mery let hym syng Psalmes.” and “Let the worde of

God dwell plentuouslye in all wisedom teachinge & exhorting one another in psalmes,

Hymnes & spirituall songs, & sing vnto the Lord in your herts.” These verses, James

5[:13] and Colossians 3[:16]43 are drawn from New Testament writings referencing the

Book of Psalms, which serve to validate the Hebrew Psalms as a part of Christian

worship. These two epistles to early Christian communities provide instructions that

psalm-singing should play a role in both one’s individual life (cf. James 5) and common

life (cf. Colossians 3). Of course, by the sixteenth century, appeals to these particular

verses as reasons to sing the psalms were not new, nor was the WBP unique in

promoting them. They had appeared on the title pages of earlier English books of

devotional music: Coverdale’s Goostly Psalmes (printed by John Rastell for John Gough,

c. 1535) and the partial psalters Day had published prior to the WBP. Such prominent

43 The Geneva Bible, the first English-language Bible to assign verse numbers within chapters, was not

allowed to be published in England until 1575 (New Testament only) and 1576 (complete Bible). See Naseeb

Shaheen, “Misconceptions about the Geneva Bible,” Studies in Bibliography 37 (1984): 156-157. Thus we

should not be surprised that these Scripture quotations are not clearly identified by both chapter and verse.

Interestingly, many of the WBP’s psalm versifications do include verse numbers. Throughout this chapter, I

have added verse numbers in editorial brackets to clarify discussion of particular passages for which verse

numbers are not printed.

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placement of Scripture verses on title pages was characteristic of Protestant prints,

demonstrating the supercessionist metanarrative (see Chapter 1) which argued that

Protestantism had recaptured the spirit and truth of the ancient church as a corrective to

Roman Catholic abuses.

Even today, Christians remain unsure of the intended distinction in Colossians

3:16 between “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.” Are these three genres different in

text, theology, musical style, or use? Are they, in fact, three descriptors for a broader

genre of sacred vocal music? It is perhaps instructive to consider how these terms were

understood in early modern musical culture. Johannes Tinctoris’ Terminorum musicae

diffinitorium (“Dictionary of Musical Terms,” compiled before 1475 and printed c. 1495)

was among the first such glossaries of musical terminology.44 In this treatise, Tinctoris

defined “hymn” and “hymnist” in only general terms: “A hymn is the praise of God in

song;”45 “A hymnist is one who sings hymns.”46 The Brussels manuscript of Terminorum

musicae diffinitorium adds the following definition of a “song”: “A song is anything

which can be sung.”47 These definitions tell us little of a possible perceived distinction

between a “song” and a “spiritual song,” or a “hymn” and any other sacred vocal work.

44 The Latin text and its English translation can be found in Johannes Tinctoris, Dictionary of Musical Terms,

transl. Carl Parrish (London: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963). 45 “Hymnus est laus dei cum cantico.” Ibid., 36-37. 46 “Hymnista est ille qui hymnos canit.” Ibid. 47 “Carmen est quicquid cantari potest.” Ibid., 76-77.

86

A more closely-related English source, however, is more helpful. John Merbecke

[Marbeck], author of the 1550 Booke of Common praier noted and therefore one of

England’s foremost Protestant musical thinkers, published his commonplace book A

Booke of Notes and Common places in 1581. In his entry “Singing,” Merbecke wrote:

Let the word of the Lord abound plenteously in you, teach & admonish

ye one another, in Psalmes, Hymnes, and spirituall songs [marginal note:

Coll.3.16], singing in your hearts with grace. By these wordes Paule

expresseth two thinges, first that our songs be the word of God, which

must abounde plenteously in us, and they must not serue onely to giuing

of thankes, but also to teach and admonish. And then it is added with

grace, which is thus to understand, as though he shoulde haue sayde

aptlye and properlye both to the senses and to measures, and also unto

the voices. Let them not sing rude and rusticall things, neither let it be

immoderately, as doe the Tauerne hunters. To the Corinthians, where he

intreateth of an holy assembly, the same Apostle writeth after this

manner. When ye assemble together according as euery one of you hath a

Psalme, or hath doctrine, or hath tongue, or hath reuelation, or hath

interpretation, let all things bee done unto edifieng. By which wordes is

declared that singers of songes and Psalmes, had their place in the

Church.48

Even when quoting and then commenting upon Colossians 3:16 specifically, Merbecke

too fails to make a strict distinction between “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” as

separate categories. Instead, he identifies the three as a broader group of musical genres

that can appropriately be used in liturgical settings. Unlike “rude and rusticall things,”

psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs are edifying to the congregation, teaching and

48 John Merbecke, A Booke Of Notes and Common places (London: Thomas East, 1581), [1017-1018]

(misnumbered in the original as 1015-1016).

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admonishing the singers in addition to giving thanks to God. Following his gloss upon

Colossians 3:16, Merbecke turns to discuss 1 Corinthians 14:26, concluding that “singers

of songes and Psalmes, had their place in the Church.” From Merbecke we learn that

English Protestant musical thought—or at least one of its most prominent thinkers—

made no effort to distinguish between psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, but instead,

between music that was appropriate for church and music that was not. This distinction

was based on function: sacred songs could be recognized by the edification that resulted

from singing them. We see too that nonscriptural texts had a recognized and legitimate

place in Christian communities (and, by extension, in the Church of England).

This may help to explain why the main content of the WBP was structured in

three parts—a set of hymns, all 150 psalms, then another set of hymns—without

comment. The hymns, which included some metrical versions of canticles for Morning

and Evening Prayer as well as some key catechetical texts (see Figure 8), stood alongside

the psalms as useful religious texts.49 By including metrical versions of many of the

canticles of the English services required by the 1559 Book of Common Prayer—Venite

exultemus, Te Deum, Benedicite (Song of the Three Children), Benedictus, and

Quicunque vult for Morning Prayer; and Magnificat, Nunc dimittis, and Veni Creator

for Evening Prayer—the WBP made a strong case for the appropriateness of its own

49 One of Martin Luther’s strongest arguments in favor of music considered hymns a means of disseminating

theology; many of Luther’s own compositions were catechetical hymns.

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liturgical use.50 And, like Merbecke’s distinction between psalms, hymns, and spiritual

songs and “rude and rusticall things,” the WBP’s title page argues that the contents of

this hymnal are intended to displace “all vngodly Songes and Ballades, which tende

only to the nourishing of vyce and corrupting of youth.”

Opening hymns:

Veni creator

Venite

Te deum

The songe of the thre Children (Benedicite)

The song of Zacharias (Benedictus)

Magnificat

Nunc dimittis

The Crede (Quicunque vult)

The lamentation of a sinner

The humble sute of the sinner

The Lordes prayer (Pater noster)

The x commaundements

Closing hymns:

The x commaundements (Audi Israel)

(with A prayer)

The Lords praier

The xii articles of our faith (The Crede)

A prayer vnto the holy ghost

Da pacem domine

The complaint of a sinner

A prayer (A Lamentation)

A thankesgeuing

Preserue vs Lorde

Figure 8. Hymns in the WBP

“Now in thy congregations” and “priuately for their solace & comfort”: When and Where to Sing

Designations of what to sing are joined by descriptions of the proper location and

frequency of worshipful song. According to the WBP, praise of God should be sung

50 The Geneva Psalter too contained liturgical canticles—including, in some editions, the non-scriptural

Creed—despite John Calvin’s stated desire to employ only scriptural texts for liturgical song, with

preference for the psalms.

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daily, even multiple times a day. Psalm 119:164 depicts an extravagant devotion that

offers God frequent praise in thanksgiving for God’s abundant goodness: “Seuen times a

day I prayse the Lord / singing with hart and voyce: / Thy rightuous actes and

wonderfull, / so cause me to reioyse.” Psalms 61:8 and 96:2 also make the case for daily

song. Psalm 108[:2] suggests music-making in the morning (“Awake my viole and my

harpe, / swete melody to make, / And in the morning I my selfe, / right early will

awake.”), and Psalm 77:6 at night (“By night my songes I call to mynde, / once made thy

prayse to shew: / And with my hart, much taulke I finde, / my spirites doth searche to

knowe”). Each day should contain song, both morning and night, as Psalm 92:1-2 makes

clear:

IT is a thing, bothe good and meete,

to praise the highest Lorde:

And to thine name O thou most hye,

to sing in one accorde.

To shew the kindnes of the Lorde,

betime ere day be light,

And eke declare his truth abrode,

when it doth draw to nyght.

Like the rhyme “Lord”/“one accord,” “always” pairs conveniently with “praise.” Thus

in Psalm 35:30, 40:3, and 71:8, believers are exhorted to sing with thankfulness “always”

in order to laud, praise, and honor God. And in Psalm 89:1, the psalmist claims that “TO

syng the mercyes of the Lorde, / my tounge shall neuer spare.” According to the WBP,

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then, worshipful singing should take place constantly: every day, morning and evening,

and always; not only on certain days or at limited times.

Where should this singing take place—in a church or at home? The WBP

advocates for both. Psalm 68:25 makes allowances for congregational singing: “The

singers goo befrre[before] with ioy, / the minstrels folow after: / And in the midst the

damsels play, / with timbrell and with taber. / Now in thy congregations, / (O Israell)

prayse the Lord: / And Iacobs whole posteritie, / geue thankes with one accorde.”

However, most of the argument for using these psalms in a church setting is found not

in the text of the psalms themselves but among the prefatory material. As I have already

discussed in Chapter 1, the WBP’s title page claims that the book has been “Faithfully

perused and alowed according to thordreappointed in the Quenes maiesties

Iniunctions,” a statement that is usually interpreted today and was clearly interpreted

by some in the period to be a reference to the forty-ninth Elizabethan Injunction, which

allowed for the singing of “an hymn, or suchlike song to the praise of Almighty God” in

the liturgies of the Church of England. The title page goes on to describe how readers of

the psalter can use the book: in addition to enabling congregational singing, the WBP is

advertised as “Very mete to be vsed of all sortes of people priuately [domestically] for

their solace & comfort.” The music preface too characterized the “singing of Psalmes” as

a “godly exercise” in which a community “in the common place of prayer…with one

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voyce” may “render thankes & prayses to God.”51 Alternately, purchasers of this book

can sing psalms “priuatly by them selues, or at home in their houses.”52 This prefatory

essay, like the title page, created space for the singing of psalms by individuals

privately, devotionally as a household, and as a congregation in church. Further

encouragement of domestic performance can be found within the psalms themselves.

Psalm 118[:14-15] suggests singing in the home: “The lorde is my defence and strengthe /

my ioy, my mirth and song: / He is become for me in dede, / a sauiour most strong / The

right hand of the lord our God, / doth bring to pas great thinges: / He causeth voyce of

ioy and health, / in rightous mennes dwellynges.”

As a group, these psalms advocate for singing in community—in the company of

other Christians, “in one accord”—far more strongly than they specify a location.

Communal congregational singing was only sporadically a part of Roman Catholic

practice,53 and the Reformation shift to the vernacular enabled communal singing in an

entirely new fashion. And indeed, while domestic devotion was undeniably a vital part

of medieval English Catholicism,54 Protestants across Europe stressed and re-stressed

51 Sig. +.ii.r. 52 Sig. +.ii.r. 53 Joseph Herl, for example, has written of pre-Reformation congregational singing in Germany; though

evidence is scant and the extent of the congregational singing remains unknown, it is clear that lay

hymnody did exist prior to Luther. See Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism: Choir, Congregation, and Three

Centuries of Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 28. 54 The classic text is Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400-c.1580, 2nd

ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).

92

communal devotion within the home and the importance of families (especially

mothers) in religious education.

In Luther’s House of Learning, Gerald Strauss acknowledges that while “marriage

and the Christian household were crucially important to reformers,” it is also true that

“[v]ery little of what they declared on marriage, parenthood, and household

management had not been said before.”55 Earlier Roman Catholics too placed great

emphasis on matrimony and family life. However, the Lutheran Reformation idealized

the domestic educational scene to a much greater extent. To wit: “Woodcut illustrations

show how reformers imagined the scene: paterfamilias at head of table, wife and

daughters to one side, sons to the other, servants at the lower end, the whole company

respectfully attentive to the patriarchal voice reading aloud from a huge tome resting

before him.”56 (We shall see this sort of scene in the cultural context immediately

surrounding the WBP in Chapter 3 of this dissertation.) In Lutheran reformed thought,

parents—especially fathers—were expected to be the source of significant religious

instruction for their children (even as the reformers also expressed some anxiety

regarding the individual parent’s judgment).57

55 Gerald Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore

and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 108. 56 Ibid., 115. 57 Ibid., 116-131.

93

England was no different; in Reformation England too the godly household was

considered a crucial site of religious change.58 Meanwhile, Kenneth Charlton has shown

through inductive study of fragmentary evidence that in early modern England, the

mother (as well as the father) took an active role in the domestic religious education of

children and servants, despite cultural fears about the weakness of women.59 Both

parents, then, were involved in the religious formation of their Protestant children. And

it seems likely that among other texts, they employed the WBP to do so. Several scholars

have noted out that with its musical metrical psalms allowing for communal psalm-

singing and its catechetical hymns, the WBP served as a source for both domestic

devotion and domestic religious education.60

“Prayse ye the Lorde with harp and songe”: Aesthetics and Instrumentation

The final question I will explore is that of aesthetics and instrumentation: how should

the WBP’s psalms and canticles be sung? What advice do the WBP’s psalms give

58 Recent discussion of this theme, and the scholarship that has contributed to it, can be found in Alexandra

Walsham, “Holy Families: The Spiritualization of the Early Modern Household Revisited,” in Religion and

the Household, ed. John Doran, Charlotte Methuen, and Alexandra Walsham (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell

Press, 2014), 122-160. 59 Kenneth Charlton, “‘Not publike onely but also private and domesticall’: Mothers and familial education

in pre-industrial England,” History of Education 17 (1988): 1-20; idem, “Mothers as educative agents in pre-

industrial England,” History of Education 23 (1994): 129-156. 60 Walsham, “Holy Families,” 128-129 (though she seems to conflate the WBP and Day’s 1563 Whole Psalmes

in Foure Partes); Quitslund, Reformation in Rhyme, 249-250; Jonathan Willis, “‘By These Means the Sacred

Discourses Sink More Deeply into the Minds of Men’: Music and Education in Elizabethan England,”

History 94 (July 2009): 303-304.

94

regarding the manner of singing, and does the psalter express any partiality to particular

vocal qualities or possible musical accompaniment?

Some psalms display preferences regarding musical aesthetics. Psalm 47:1 asks

“YE people all in one accorde” to “Be glad and sing vnto the Lorde, / with swete and

pleasaunt voyce.” Psalm 71:25 echoes this sentiment, the psalmist describing his singing

as demonstrating “pleasant voyce,” and Psalm 97:9 prompts Sion and Judah to “make a

pleasaunt noyce.” Sweet, pleasant singing is praiseworthy, while other vocal attributes

beyond timbre, such as range and volume, go unremarked.61

The psalms describe ideal tone quality but not a potential singer’s ability to

sightread, lead others in song, or invent their own songs. However, while the ability to

improvise or to serve as a musical leader were beyond the needs of congregational

psalmody, this does not mean that the WBP regarded musical knowledge as

unnecessary. Psalm 47:6 exhorts readers to “all skillful, prayses syng.” The ideal psalm-

singer is not only pleasant in voice but also skillful in musical knowledge. In Chapter 4, I

explore how the WBP emphasized musical literacy as a goal of English Protestant

musical culture through its two forms of musical didacticism.

Far more important than vocal quality is the attitude of the singer. In his

Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536), John Calvin explained that because liturgical

61 “Sweetness,” of course, is not a uniquely Protestant virtue. For example, the epistle dedicatory of William

Byrd’s 1605 Gradualia (a thoroughly Catholic set of polyphonic Mass propers) speaks of the “sweetness” of

sacred words. See Kerry McCarthy, Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia (New York: Routledge,

2007), 11, for further discussion of this preface.

95

song is a form of prayer, it must be approached by the singer with the proper posture,

stemming from the heart: “it is fully evident that unless voice and song, if interposed in

prayer, spring from deep feeling of heart, neither has any value or profit in the least with

God” and again, “we do not here condemn speaking and singing but rather strongly

commend them, provided they are associated with the heart’s affection.”62 The WBP

places similar emphasis on the emotional condition of the singer: believers should sing

with an attitude of thankfulness and joy. Psalm 33:1 notes that “it is a semely sight: /

That vpright men with thankfull voyce, / should prayse the God of might.” Psalm 69:32

advises that praise be shown “with a song: / I will extoll the same alwayes, / with harty

thankes among.” Psalm 66:7 and 98:5 command singing “with joyful voice,” the latter

further advising that readers “Geue thankes to God, sing and reioyce / to him with ioy

and mirth.” Psalm 100:1, Psalm 118[:14], Psalm 132[:9], and Psalm 132[:17] all prompt

believers to sing with joy and mirth. Even instrumentalists are in Psalm 92:3-4

encouraged to play “With all the mirth you can inuent” and, like the psalmist, to “have

ioy, in harte and voyce.”

Finally, I turn to the fraught question of instruments. The debate over the

inclusion of instruments in worship was a tense point of contention in Protestant

thought. Luther and most (but not all) Lutherans encouraged the continued use of

62 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia:

The Westminster Press and London: S. C. M. Press, Ltd., 1960; repr., Louisville: Westminster John Knox

Press), 894.

96

organs.63 Calvin and subsequent Calvinists rejected the use of instruments, approving

only of unaccompanied unison congregational song.64 Zwingli occupied the other far

end of the spectrum, allowing no instruments and indeed no music at all in church

services.65 In England too, instruments were the source of much debate, with many

English reformers aiming to silence the organ altogether, with others continuing to

support the use of instruments in worship. Official Church of England policy was

agnostic; there was no mention of organs in the royal injunctions of 1547 or 1559, and an

attempt to ban “the use of organs and curious singing” at the Convocation of 1563 failed.

Arguments for and against the use of organs in churches can be found throughout the

period, as can evidence both of organ destruction and church payment for organs and

organists.66

63 Herl, Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism, 108-110; B. L. Horne, “A Civitas of Sound: On Luther and Music,”

Theology 88 (1985): 25-26; Robin A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (Grand Rapids:

William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2007), 91-92. 64 The most focused and extensive discussion of Calvin’s views on instruments can be found in W. David O.

Taylor, “John Calvin and Musical Instruments: A Critical Investigation,” Calvin Theological Journal 48:2

(November 2013): 248-269. Broader discussion of Calvinist belief and practice regarding the organ can be

found in Randall D. Engle, “A Devil’s Siren or an Angel’s Throat? The Pipe Organ Controversy among the

Calvinists,” in John Calvin, Myth and Reality: Images and Impact of Geneva’s Reformer, ed. Amy Nelson Burnett

(Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2011), 107-125. 65 For discussion of Zwingli’s rejection of music in worship, see Charles Garside, Jr., Zwingli and the Arts

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 43-75. 66 Duguid, Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice, 190-192; William P. Haugaard, Elizabeth and the English

Reformation: The Struggle for A Stable Settlement of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968),

166-182; Marsh, Music and Society, 394-405; Quitslund, Reformation in Rhyme, 260-262; John Strype, Annals of

the Reformation and Establishment of Religion, Vol. 1, Part 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1824), 475, 500; Jonathan

Willis, Church Music and Protestantism in Post-Reformation England: Discourses, Sites and Identities (Farnham,

Surrey: Ashgate, 2010, 100-101, 114-116, 140-145; idem, “Protestant Worship and the Discourse of Music in

Reformation England,” in Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain, eds. Natalie Mears and Alec

Ryrie (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 131-132.

97

When considered in relation to the spectrum of Protestant thought, from Luther’s

support of instruments through Calvin’s rejection of instruments in favor of

unaccompanied unison congregational singing to Zwingli’s rejection of any music at all,

the WBP demonstrates a surprisingly Lutheran bent. Because these psalms are not

newly-composed texts but versifications of Scripture, they cannot stray too far from their

source material. Descriptions of instruments in the original Hebrew Book of Psalms are

maintained in this psalter: worshiping Christians play instruments. Sometimes this

instrumental music is worshipful in its own right, most obviously and exuberantly in

Psalm 150[:3-5]: “His prayses with the princely noyse, / of sounding tropet [sic] blowe. /

Praise him vpon the viole and, / vpon the harp also. / Praise him with timbrell and with

flute, / orgaines and virginalles: / With sounding cimbals praise ye him: / praise him

with loud cimballs.” More often, instruments function as accompaniment to their own

players’ songs or those of others. Exhortations like that of Psalm 33:2, “Prayse ye the

Lorde with harp and songe, / in Psalmes and pleasant thinges: / with lute and

instrument among, / that soundeth with ten stringes” are common.

These descriptions of instrumental accompaniment would be unremarkable in

themselves except that, as in the case of singing specifically “psalms” and not just

“songs,” the WBP’s versifications modify the existing English translations and present a

wholly new understanding. The accompaniment of sacred music becomes concretely

encouraged rather than abstractly hypothetical through the deliberate addition of

98

common Elizabethan instruments. Twelve instruments are named in the WBP’s psalm

versifications: harp, lute, trumpet, timbrel, viol, the generic “string,” flute, tabor, shawm,

organ, virginal, and cymbals. Table 3 lists the psalms in which these appear.

Table 3. Musical Instruments in the WBP’s Versifications

Instrument Psalms in which it appears

Harp 33, 43, 49, 57, 71, 81, 92, 98,

108, 137, 147, 149, 150

Lute 33, 57, 71, 81, 92

Trumpet 47, 81, 87, 98, 150

Timbrel (tabret) 68, 149, 150

Viol 108, 144, 150

Generic “string” 33, 57, 92, 144

Flute 149, 150

Tabor (tabret) 68

Shawm 98

Organ 150

Virginal 150

Cymbals 150

By far the most common instrument mentioned in the psalm versifications is the

harp, and string instruments as a group dominate. This is entirely in keeping with the

nature of the psalms; their original Hebrew texts, while sometimes difficult to translate

precisely, name string instruments in the overwhelming majority.67 The harp or lyre,

famed instrument of choice of King David, is a symbol of the psalms themselves, and it

is unsurprising that it appears with such frequency. But in contrast to the original

67 Jeremy Montagu, Musical Instruments of the Bible (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002), 83.

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Hebrew texts, and more importantly, unlike the Coverdale translation, the WBP adds

additional Elizabethan instruments. The Coverdale Psalter names harp, lute, trumpet,

timbrel, tabor (tabret), shawm, and cymbals. However, flute and organ are new

additions found in both the Crowley Psalter and the WBP. Most interesting in my view

are the additions—found in the WBP alone—of viol (Psalm 108, Psalm 144, and Psalm

150) and virginal (Psalm 150). These two instruments were among the most

characteristic of Elizabethan instruments and were staples of amateur music education,

especially for young gentlewomen.68

Their inclusion ties the WBP’s psalm texts to this historical time and place,

making these Scriptures immediate and relevant for readers, who can see their own

culture reflected in these depictions of music-making. Psalm 150 in particular (quoted

above) reads as a reasonably inclusive list of Elizabethan instruments, naming trumpet,

viol, harp, timbrel, flute, organ, virginal, and cymbals. The original Hebrew text

contained a ram’s horn (shofar), two forms of lyre (which Coverdale translated as lute

and harp), timbrel, strings, two types of cymbals, and an air-powered instrument that

translates better as “woodwinds” than as “organ.”69 The addition of not one but two

68 Linda Phyllis Austern, “‘Sing Againe Syren’: The Female Musician and Sexual Enchantment in

Elizabethan Life and Literature,” Renaissance Quarterly 42, No. 3 (Autumn, 1989): 429-430; Suzanne Lord,

Music from the Age of Shakespeare: A Cultural History (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003), 120-121; David

C. Price, Patrons and Musicians of the English Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 42,

45; Walter L. Woodfill, Musicians in English Society from Elizabeth to Charles I (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1953), 224. 69 Montagu, Musical Instruments of the Bible, 82-83.

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keyboard instruments in Psalm 150—organ and virginal—makes the WBP further

distanced from the original Hebrew.70 By not merely naming generic or ancient Hebrew

instruments, but noticeably adding Elizabethan ones, this metrical psalter seems to come

down strongly in support of the use of instruments in both domestic and church musical

worship. (Yet it is interesting to note that, as Nicholas Temperley has observed, there is

little evidence that the metrical psalmody of the WBP was actually performed with

organ accompaniment, despite the advocacy found within the psalter itself.)71

The Whole Booke of Psalmes’ English Protestant Musical Identity

In its musical ideology, the WBP displays a distinctive Protestant identity. This printed

religious book was influenced by both Lutheran and Calvinist ideas, but it privileged

certain aspects of each in order to accommodate and reinforce the state-sponsored

Church of England, of which all English Christians were officially a part, regardless of

their own personal theological commitments. Jonathan Willis has written of the

Calvinist bent of the official and unofficial pronouncements of the Church of England,

many of which demonstrated (depending on the document) a mild to scathing distrust

70 Also interestingly, such additions of musical instruments are matched by a removal of “dance” from

depictions of musical performance. In both Psalms 149[:3] and 150[:4], Coverdale’s discussion of music and

dance is removed in both the Crowley Psalter and the WBP. This perhaps clarifies the psalters’ intention to

provide options for song within a Christian liturgical context. 71 Nicholas Temperley, “Organ Settings of English Psalm Tunes,” The Musical Times 122, No. 1656 (Feb.,

1981): 123-124. Christopher Marsh’s guess that organs “probably filled this function” remains but a

compelling hypothesis until further evidence is discovered: Music and Society, 422.

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of music.72 Other writings were more ambivalent, and sixteenth-century English

Protestantism was marked by complex arguments regarding the meaning of music and

its ideal practice. Into this environment, the WBP contributed a philosophy of music and

a framework for worship that was to influence the English church for several centuries.

Consider the WBP’s relationship to the Church of England. By claiming state

authorization, the WBP reinforced the idea that any aspect of English Protestantism

required the approval of the official state church. Ambiguity in the Elizabethan

Injunctions and the Book of Common Prayer meant that while metrical psalms were not

explicitly allowed, neither were they barred from liturgy, and many parishes across

England took advantage of the loophole.

The WBP also accords with many of the theological commitments of the

Protestant Reformation. The book claims continuity with scriptural practices and the

ancient church, demonstrating the Protestant way of using history (the supercessionist

metanarrative described in Chapter 1). It makes the role of the laity more significant,

increasing their congregational participation and providing new opportunities for

domestic devotion. The WBP contains only monophonic music rather than polyphony,

enforcing musical (and implying social) unity. Its tunes are accessible, easy to sing and

to learn, and the book even contains an introductory music theory treatise that can teach

the musically uneducated the skills they need to participate. While it included no

72 Willis, “Protestant Worship and the Discourse of Music,” 133-134, and passim.

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explicit discussion of the didactic role of music in teaching religious doctrine, the WBP

was employed as a useful resource for domestic devotion and religious education.

The WBP seems to have a complicated relationship with one of the most

important Protestant commitments: the primacy of the word. Nowhere does the text—

main content or prefatory material—state that music is employed in the service of the

words. In fact, the music preface is placed before the “Treatise made by Athanasius,”

giving music greater prominence than the text explaining the proper use of the psalms.

In many subsequent editions, the music preface would be removed (see Chapters 3 and

4) but Athanasius’s treatise would remain. The prefatory matter of the initial edition,

however, seemed to elevate music over the psalm texts. Yet only the ordering of the

prefatory essays conveys this idea. In all other respects, text is implicitly presented as

more important than music. While every psalm is prefaced with the initials of the

versifier (and Sternhold’s and Hopkins’ names are prominently displayed on the title

page), none of the composers is ever identified. (This is especially interesting,

considering the rising importance of musical authorship in early modern printing.73)

And as we shall see in Chapter 6, the WBP was plagued by music printing errors

throughout the Elizabethan editions, which points to much more careful typesetting of

text than of notes.

73 See Kirsten Gibson, “Author, Musician, Composer: Creator? Figuring Musical Creativity in Print at the

Turn of the Seventeenth Century,” in Concepts of Creativity in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Rebecca

Herissone and Alan Howard (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), 63-86.

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Collectively, the text and paratext of the WBP are undeniably Protestant.

Sometimes the psalter’s themes incline towards Calvinism, due in large part to the

influence of the Geneva Psalter. Yet surprisingly, in light of the aborted possibility of a

Lutheran-based English congregational song tradition represented by Coverdale’s

Goostly Psalmes (banned in 1546), the WBP also demonstrates distinctively Lutheran

sentiments. Only true Christian believers sing, the psalm texts argue, and they should

sing daily, both in church and at home. They should sing psalms (a Calvinist

commitment) but may also sing hymns and canticles (a Lutheran perspective). More

important is the proper attitude of the singer, who must always sing to God with

thankfulness and joyfulness, and with a pleasant and skillful voice. Psalms can, and

perhaps should, be accompanied by instruments—through its addition of specifically

Elizabethan instruments to its psalm texts, especially its invocation of the organ in Psalm

150, the WBP takes a definite stance against Calvinists’ and Zwinglians’ opposition to

the use of instruments (and especially the organ) in worship. Taken together, the

prefatory matter, hymns, and psalms of the WBP constructed a particularly English

Protestant understanding of music as a part of the psalter’s role in creating the religious

culture of a unified Church of England.

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Chapter 3. ‘Without any other help sauing this book’: Musical Literacy, General Literacy, and Music Instructional Texts

To argue that the WBP served as a means of increasing musical literacy among the

common people in Elizabethan England, it is important to first lay the groundwork by

addressing some fundamental questions. What do we mean by “musical literacy”? What

do modern scholars know about musical literacy rates in sixteenth-century England?

Did musical literacy rates improve by the end of the sixteenth century, and if so, for

whom, how much, and how quickly? What were the various means of obtaining musical

literacy, and were they equally accessible to all?

For reasons that will shortly become clear, I will not begin with the most

foundational question of how musical literacy might be defined. Instead, I would like to

start by exploring what scholars have said regarding musical literacy rates in sixteenth-

century England. Few musicologists have attempted to estimate them. In 1953, Walter L.

Woodfill wrote of the practice of lining out metrical psalmody (a musical leader sings

each phrase to the congregation, who repeats it; see Chapter 6 for discussion of this

practice) as evidence for widespread musical illiteracy, concluding that the general

populace, although some people might perform both vocal and instrumental music, was

105

musically illiterate.1 This extremely low estimate of musical literacy rates is due in part

to Woodfill’s narrow definition of “musical literacy,” which he seems to limit to the

ability to perform polyphonic madrigals, ayres, and “the finer music for virginals, lute,

and viol.”2

Thirty years later, David Price provided the most extensive discussion of musical

literacy in sixteenth-century England, tracking factors that contributed to what he saw as

an unmeasurable but unmistakably upward trend in musical literacy across social

classes.3 Price attributed the development of musical literacy to several causes, including

educational institutions, international travel, private music tutors, the encouragement

provided by guides to courtly behavior and by imitation of royalty, increased musical

repertoire, and printed music instructional manuals. Even in arguing that musical

literacy rates improved, he offered no estimate as to the exact level of improvement:

“There is no way to precisely assess the practical level of achievement reached by

different members of this musically ‘literate’ society, but it was evidently higher and

more broadly-based than the level reached by individual amateurs at any time

previously in England.”4

1 Walter L. Woodfill, Musicians in English Society from Elizabeth to Charles I (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1953), 201-202. 2 Ibid., 201. 3 David C. Price, Patrons and Musicians of the English Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1981), 1-47. 4 Ibid., 2.

106

Thus not only do we have no quantitative estimates regarding musical literacy

rates in sixteenth-century England, we do not even have consensus among musicologists

as to whether musical literacy rates improved at all or whether the general populace

remained functionally musically illiterate at the turn of the seventeenth century. These

disagreements are indicative of a deeper underlying problem: defining musical literacy

itself. Even in discussing evidence for musical literacy (or the lack thereof), neither of

these scholars defines precisely what he means by the term. Price stresses the

importance of defining musical literacy but then fails to explicitly do so.5 Options

abound. Do we consider someone musically literate if he or she can sing? play

instruments? improvise? play from a musical score? compose? Implicitly throughout his

chapter, Price seems to settle upon “the ability to play or sing from a music book” as his

definition. This definition demands several skills, including not only the ability to read

music but also the ability to sing or play an instrument and the ability to translate

written music into performance through that medium.

Outside the disciplinary bounds of musicology, a historian has recently

contributed to this discussion. In Music and Society in Early Modern England, a social

history of music and musical culture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England,

Christopher Marsh offers an explicit explanation and confident assessment of musical

literacy rates. Defining musical literacy as simply “reading music,” removing the

5 Ibid., 1-2.

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performative aspects of music-making, which he separates as “musicality,” Marsh gives

ample evidence of a society that took great pleasure in music, demonstrated frequent

willingness to participate, and often exhibited highly skilled performance. Indeed, he

concurs with Woodfill that musical literacy levels were extremely low, but he agrees

with Price that they were rising (though Marsh implies without stating outright that he

believes this rise occurred in the seventeenth century, not the sixteenth). Marsh paints a

picture of a culture that was highly musical but not musically-literate, even among

professional musicians, whom Marsh describes as often far more reliant upon memory

than the ability to read music.6

And yet, we must wonder how sixteenth-century English people themselves

thought about musical literacy. Before settling upon a definition for purposes of this

study, it may prove instructive to examine their own. There is no shortage of texts about

music written in sixteenth-century England, and though they do not employ the term

“musical literacy,” they are clear in their explanations of culturally-valued musical

knowledge and can thus give us a sense for what it meant to be educated in music.

Conduct manuals make it clear that musical knowledge was considered an essential

form of cultural sophistication.7 Musical proficiency was the mark of a gentleman—

6 Christopher Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2010), 4, 6-7, 173, 204, and passim. 7 A great many excerpts from conduct manuals discussing music can be found in Pamela F. Starr, “Music

Education and the Conduct of Life in Early Modern England: A Review of the Sources,” in Music Education

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though a gentleman (or gentlewoman) must be careful not to become too proficient in

musical performance lest they become associated with lower-class musical

professionals.8

As in the medieval period, early modern England understood two forms of

musical knowledge, speculative and practical. In the Annotations following the main

body of text in A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, Thomas Morley wrote,

As for the division, Musicke is either speculatiue or practicall. Speculatiue is

that kinde of musicke which by Mathematical helpes, seeketh out the

causes, properties, and natures of soundes by themselues, and compared

with others proceeding no further, but content with the onlie

contemplation of the Art. Practical is that which teacheth al that may be

knowne in songs, eyther for the vnderstanding of other mens, or making

of ones owne, and is of three kindes: Diatonicum, chromaticum, and

Enharmonicum. …9

Musica speculativa can be understood as the theoretical aspects of music: philosophical

and metaphysical study of harmony, proportion, consonance, and the music of the

spheres; the effect of musical sounds on the listener, modal affect, and the healing power

of music; as well as the role of music in education.10 Musica practica, on the other hand,

in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Russell E. Murray, Jr., Susan Forscher Weiss, and Cynthia J. Cyrus

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 193-206. See also Marsh, Music and Society, 174-175. 8 Marsh, Music and Society, 174-178, 199. 9 Thomas Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, (London: Imprinted by Peter Short,

1597), Sig. ¶.1.r-v; emphasis in original. 10 John Hollander, The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in English Poetry 1500-1700 (New York: W. W.

Norton, 1970), 26-37.

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encompassed the practical aspects of musical performance: technical skills; composition;

and in Morley’s words, “al that may be knowne in songs.” The distinction between the

two can also be thought of as contemplative vs. active and discourse vs. performance.

The relationship between musica speculativa and musica practica in early modern

England was a complex one which modern scholars have only just begun to untangle. In

the early modern period across Europe, the primacy of speculative music was beginning

to give way to practical music, but the transition was by no means straightforward or

universal. Though speculative and practical music are now often described as

increasingly disconnected in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, several scholars

have shown that in England these two spheres were not so separated.11 England’s

sixteenth-century practical music instruction books often open with brief discussions of

speculative music, and William Bathe’s and Thomas Morley’s practical music theory

treatises were influenced by speculative musical ideas, as Joseph Ortiz has shown.12 For

the learned English gentleman to be considered truly musically-literate, he would need

to demonstrate a certain level of expertise in both musical performance and musical

discourse, being able to perform music (preferably at sight) and/or compose, as well as

11 Linda Phyllis Austern, “Words on Music: The Case of Early Modern England,” John Donne Journal 25

(2006): 199-244; Joseph M. Ortiz, Broken Harmony: Shakespeare and the Politics of Music (Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press, 2011), Chapter 3. Roger Bray in “Music and the Quadrivium in Early Tudor England,”

Music and Letters 76, No 1. (Feb., 1995): 1-18, attributes the unusually strong connection between practical

and speculative music in early sixteenth-century England to the nature of the music degrees at Oxford and

Cambridge, and their strong emphasis on liturgical church music. 12 Ortiz, Broken Harmony, 104-119.

110

speak about music in a rhetorical or philosophical fashion.13 There is even evidence that

in the beginning of the seventeenth century, the ability to speak about music (musica

speculativa) was considered by some (particularly John Taverner, the early seventeenth-

century Gresham College music lecturer) to be an even more practical (in the sense of

“utilitarian”) form of musical knowledge than musica practica itself.14

Thus Price’s implicit definition of musical literacy as “the ability to play or sing

from a music book,” the definition I have adopted for this study, constitutes one half of

early modern England’s dual understanding of musical knowledge—musica practica, not

musica speculativa. In fact, this definition of musical literacy does not encompass all

aspects of musica practica—Morley’s definition, as we have seen, includes compositional

ability—yet “the vnderstanding of other mens [songs]” is considered a fundamental part

of this form of musical knowledge. It is not anachronistic to limit my definition of basic

musical literacy to musica practica because even sixteenth-century English musicians saw

musica practica as a prerequisite to the study of musica speculativa. In his Briefe

Introductione to the True Art of Musicke (1584), William Bathe wrote of the necessity to

learn the musical knowledge needed to sing before attempting other musical study. In

doing so, he seems to confuse musica speculativa with composition, but in either case, he

13 Austern, “Words on Music,” 205. 14 Joseph M. Ortiz, “Democratizing Music: Concepts of Musical Literacy in Early Modern England,” North

American British Music Studies Association Conference, August 4-7, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY.

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proves my point that the ability to sing from a musical score was considered the most

basic form of musical literacy.

It may be that it will seem absurd, and against order to many, that this

tractation of music practice should go before the other of speculation, as it

would seem against reason that a physician should learn to practice

before he hath the knowledge; in it is to be understanded therefore, that

singing is not to music, as the practice of physic is to the science thereof,

but rather as reading to grammar: for as reading is not the practice of

grammar, but rather the congrue making of Latin, so singing is not the

right practice of the right speculation of music, but rather artificial setting

is the speculation: and as by good order reading must go before

grammar, so it were not against order, that singing should go before

setting, although the one may be had without the other insomuch as a

note is the thing that is most materially entreated of in all the first book,

and as it were the subject of this former part called, ars cantandi, to which

the naming, time, quantity, &c. doth belong: it were not unfit thereof to

give some apart description, whereby the nature of it might be the better

known…15

15 William Bathe, A Briefe Introductione to the True Art of Musicke (London: 1584). The original is now lost, but

much of the text survives in transcription in Andrew Melville’s early seventeenth-century commonplace

book (University of Aberdeen Library MS 28). A transcription of this manuscript can be found in William

Bathe, A Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Song, ed. Kevin C. Karnes (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 112-126. I

make an exception to my usual practice of providing the original spelling in the main text because Melville’s

transcription is written in Scottish dialect: “It may be that it will seeme absurde, and against order to manye,

that this tractation of musicke practice should go befoir the other of speculatione, as it would semme against

reasone that a phisitiane should learne to practice befoir he hath the knowledge, In it is to be vnderstanded

thair for, that singing is not to musik, as ye practice of physick is to ye science thairof, bot rather as reading

to gramer: for as reading is not ye practice of gramer, bot rather the congrue making of Latine, so singing is

not ye richt practice of ye richt speculationne of musick, but rather artificicall setting is ye speculatione: and

as by guid ordour reading must goe befoir gramer, so it var not against ordr, that singing soud go befor

setting, although the on may be had vithout ye vther inso much as a not is the thing that is must matiriallie

intreated of in all the first book, and as it var ye subiect of this former part called, ars cantandi, to quhich the

naming, tyme, quantitie, &c. doth be long: it var not vnfit thairof to giw sume apart descreptionne, vharby

ye natur of it micht be ye better knawen…” (Fol. 41r-v)

112

Having decided on a working definition of musical literacy, the next question

may now be considered: did a would-be musician need to know how to read words in

order to learn how to read music? When attempting to estimate musical literacy rates,

neither Woodfill nor Price considered whether general literacy rates may have

influenced musical literacy rates. Would an inability to read hinder an early modern

English person’s ability to learn music?

General Literacy Rates in Elizabethan England

The primary source for this discussion, one unavailable to Woodfill and only barely

available to Price, is David Cressy’s 1980 Literacy and the Social Order, which remains the

single most definitive—though certainly not unchallenged—quantitative study of

general literacy rates in early modern England.16 Cressy’s statistical analysis is based on

incidences of signatures found in signed oaths and ecclesiastical court records (wills,

marriage license records, and court depositions). Because reading and writing were

taught as separate skills, and reading was always taught first, if a person could sign his

or her name we can be reasonably sure that he or she could also read—or so Cressy’s

logic goes. Through detailed statistical analysis focused primarily on variations by

region and social class, Cressy identified a social hierarchy of literacy wherein

16 David Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1980).

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gentlemen, the clerical elite, and professionals (lawyers, professors, and the like) were

most likely to be able to read; laborers and women the least likely; and craftsmen,

tradesmen, yeomen, and husbandmen somewhere in the middle.17 He is also deeply

interested in regional differences—Durham, for example, remained one of the few places

in which gentlemen remained largely illiterate (36% illiteracy rate) even when all other

areas of England saw near-complete literacy for this elite class.18

Because of his hierarchical and geographic interests, Cressy is reluctant to give

broad figures serving as overall literacy rates. However, he does identify several trends.

In Elizabethan England, gentlemen were nearly all literate (with the exception of

Durham and the far northeast). Tradesmen and craftsmen saw an increase in literacy

rates from approximately 25% literate in the 1560s to 50% by the beginning of the

seventeenth century. Women were almost universally illiterate in both the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries, their overall literacy rates failing to improve until the eighteenth

century (with the exception of London, which saw improvement in women’s literacy

beginning in the late seventeenth century). The accession of Elizabeth I marked the

beginning of a period of educational advancement and progress in literacy following the

educational recession caused by the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII,

and despite a second period of educational recession from 1580-1610, the end of

17 Ibid., Chapter 6. 18 Ibid., 142.

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Elizabeth’s reign still saw significant overall increases in general literacy.19 Cressy’s best

guess places overall literacy rates at the end of the sixteenth century as 20% for men and

5% for women (with the gentry and professional classes at or near 100%), up from 10%

for men and 1% for women at the beginning of the century.20

Cressy’s figures have been sharply criticized in the years since his study was

published. Many have critiqued his faith in the reliability of signatures to function as

signifiers of literacy. While most scholars do agree that reading was taught before

writing and that therefore, the ability to sign one’s name does serve as a marker that the

signer can read, many have reservations that signatures can provide us with an accurate

reading of literacy levels. To begin with, the nature of Cressy’s source material

(government-sponsored oaths and ecclesiastical court records) has in some quarters

been sharply criticized on methodological grounds (for example, how complete are

these surviving records?).21 Precisely because reading was taught before writing, we can

be sure that many who did not sign could, nonetheless, read. Poor men and women of

all classes, who might be given enough schooling to read, were unlikely to be given the

opportunity to progress past reading to the skill of writing. Thus it seems likely that

19 Ibid., Chapter 7. 20 Ibid., 176. 21 For further reading on criticisms of Cressy’s project, see Jonathan Barry, “Literacy and Literature in

Popular Culture,” in Popular Culture in England, c.1500-1850, ed. Tim Harris (New York: St. Martin’s Press,

1995), 69-94; Wyn Ford, “The Problem of Literacy in Early Modern England,” History 78 (Feb., 1993): 22-37;

and Keith Thomas, “The Meaning of Literacy in Early Modern England,” in The Written Word: Literacy in

Transition, ed. Gerd Baumann (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 97-131.

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Cressy’s figures vastly overestimate illiteracy and particularly underestimate the

reading abilities of these two groups.22 Furthermore, non-literate marks do not

necessarily function as a sign of illiteracy. For example, some people intentionally signed

with religious symbols of their professions, even if they themselves could read (thus

creating an additional cause of Cressy’s supposed underestimation of literacy rates).23

Even the ability to read was not a single skill that one either had or did not. Keith

Thomas has pointed out that the situation was far more complicated due to the wide

variety of forms of the written word in diverse scripts, typefaces, and languages.

Blackletter (gothic) typeface was significantly easier for an early modern reader than

roman typeface (the situation has since reversed).24 Secretary hand and various legal

hands would be impossible for the untrained to understand. Additionally, many

professional fields, including academic scholarship, law, administration, and medicine

relied upon Latin; literacy for them therefore necessitated reading knowledge of Latin as

well as English. Should we consider a person who could read the printed word in

blackletter but not in roman typeface to be illiterate? What if he could read a printed

book but not a handwritten letter or a legal text, or if she could read a book in English

22 James Daybell, “Interpreting letters and reading script: evidence for female education and literacy in

Tudor England,” History of Education 34, No. 6 (Nov., 2005): 695-715; Margaret W. Ferguson and Mihoko

Suzuki, “Women’s Literacies and Social Hierarchy in Early Modern England,” Literature Compass 12/11

(2015): 575-590. 23 Thomas, “The Meaning of Literacy,” 102-103. 24 Ibid., 99-101. The comparative accessibility of blackletter vs. roman typeface will prove to be an important

point in Chapter 4.

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but not in Latin? It is difficult to determine literacy rates when the definition of general

literacy was itself so fluid.25

Thus Cressy’s quantitative study of signatures does not give definitive literacy

rates. At worst, his detailed statistical study tells us little of literacy rates save the

incidence of signatures in certain documents. Yet his figures are the only ones we have,

and when correlated with other forms of research regarding literacy, the broad

conclusions Cressy hesitated to draw do paint a picture of increasing literacy rates

across sixteenth-century England: perhaps unevenly according to location, social class,

and gender, but nonetheless improving. However, “improving” does not yet mean

“good.” At the end of the century, most people beyond the male gentry could not read,

and the chance that someone could read fell precipitously on the lowest rungs of the

social hierarchy.

Methods of Obtaining Musical Literacy

It seems clear that any estimate of musical literacy rates must take general literacy rates

into account. If we accept my definition of musical literacy, we are left with the

troublesome question: was it necessary to be able to read in order to learn to read music?

If most people—80% of men and 95% of women, according to Cressy’s figures—could

not read, there could have been widespread difficulty in obtaining musical literacy. In

25 Thomas, “The Meaning of Literacy,” 99-102.

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this section, I explore forms of music education in sixteenth-century England. How

might someone learn music? What were aspiring student musicians taught, and who

taught it to them? When and where did this education take place? Who were the

students; to which members of society were these methods available?

It takes some training to understand the written language of music—pitches,

clefs, rhythmic durations, accidentals, etc. However, this training need not come from a

book. It was, and still is, entirely possible to learn to read music (if not the lyrics below)

with the help of another person. With the benefit of an instructor and with musical

scores on hand, no general literacy would be required. The necessity of general literacy

varied according to the means of acquiring musical literacy.

There were several options available to the aspiring Tudor musician.26 The most

comprehensive musical training was available to choristers through monastic schools

(but only until Henry VIII’s 1536-1540 suppression of the monasteries, resulting in the

closure of the monastic choir schools as well), through song schools (a type of

elementary school, different from reading and writing schools; most of these were

dissolved by Edward VI in 1547), or through cathedral song schools, which survived the

English Reformation. Musical skills taught to choristers included plainsong, pricksong

(mensural notation), figuration (singing chant in a rhythmicized manner), faburden,

26 Much of this section comes from David G. T. Harris, “Musical Education in Tudor Times (1485-1603),”

Proceedings of the Musical Association, 65th Sess. (1938-1939): 109-139, supplemented with other secondary

sources as listed.

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descant (singing counterpoint to written chant at sight), square-note (improvising

against mensural melodies which did not come from chant), counter (improvising a

melody below chant), and organ-playing. Later in the sixteenth century, chorister

education shifted focus from liturgy and improvisation, adopting a greater emphasis on

instruments and composition. Many (though not all) of these choristers were poor; all

were male. 27

Upper-class boys had additional opportunities to learn music through grammar

schools, universities, and private music tutors. Scholars disagree on the extent of music

education provided by grammar schools; traditionally, most have believed that few

sixteenth-century English grammar schools provided any music education at all.28

Bernarr Rainbow attributes this lack of music in grammar school curricula to John

Merbecke’s failure in the 1540s to imitate Luther and Calvin (and Loys Bourgeois) in

ensuring the role of music in education—without a strong musical leader persuading

them otherwise, English reformed schools did not emphasize musical studies.29 Yet

toward the end of the century, Rainbow argues, more schools began to offer music

education, including the Merchant Taylors’ School, St Paul’s School, Christ’s Hospital,

27 Jane Flynn, “The Education of Choristers in England During the Sixteenth Century,” in English Choral

Practice, 1400-1650, ed. John Morehen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 180-199. 28 Foster Watson, “The Teaching of Music in the 16th and 17th Centuries,” in The English Grammar Schools to

1660: their Curriculum and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), 205-221; Peter Le Huray,

“The Teaching of Music in 16th Century England,” Music in Education 30 (1966): 75-77; Price, Patrons and

Musicians, 35-39; Susan Forscher Weiss, “Didactic Sources of Musical Learning in Early Modern England,”

in Didactic Literature in England, 1500-1800, ed. Natasha Glaisyer and Sara Pennell (Aldershot: Ashgate,

2003), 40-62. 29 Bernarr Rainbow, Music in Educational Thought and Practice (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006), 64.

119

and Bridewell. The first two of these were due to the efforts of their headmaster, Richard

Mulcaster, who published Elementarie (1582), an educational account that included an

impassioned defense of music education and a plan for its instruction.30 Mulcaster’s

Elementarie, however, does not serve as evidence for more widespread advances in

grammar-school music education. Watson, who has perhaps the most skeptical view of

music in grammar schools, notes that multiple later educational books fail to mention it,

concluding that Elementarie’s promotion of music education had little to no impact.31

More recently, the prevailing pessimistic understanding of grammar-school

music education has been challenged by historians Christopher Marsh and Jonathan

Willis.32 Marsh’s wide-ranging archival work has turned up hitherto-unknown evidence

of musical education at a number of grammar schools, but he also strives to read beyond

grammar schools’ official documents: “The foundation charters of non-specialist

grammar schools did not often mention tuition in music, but these documents may not

necessarily be a reliable guide to the actual extent of such tuition.”33 Circumstantial

evidence supports Marsh’s claim that some or even many grammar schools did offer

musical education even if their records do not indicate it.34 Willis too advocates for

“scratching beneath the surface” of pedagogical manuals and school records, and in

30 Ibid., 86-88. 31 Watson, “The Teaching of Music,” 212. 32 Marsh, Music in Society; Jonathan Willis, “‘By These Means the Sacred Discourses Sink More Deeply into

the Minds of Men’: Music and Education in Elizabethan England,” History 94 (July 2009): 294-309. 33 Marsh, Music and Society, 7. 34 Ibid., 7-9.

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doing so, located mentions of required musical performance at several schools. “Music

did have an important role to play in some schools,” Willis writes. “Perhaps these were

exceptions. But they were significant ones.”35 It seems reasonably certain, then, that at

least some grammar schools (particularly at the end of the sixteenth century) did

provide some level of study in music for their male students.

Oxford and Cambridge both offered doctorates and bachelor’s degrees in music

to the elite men who attended university. This education consisted of music lectures

more speculative than practical (based on Boethius’ De Musica) and, despite the fact that

the lectures focused so heavily on musical philosophy, also required the submission of

original choral compositions, often a polyphonic mass setting.36 University-level

education was also available, free of charge, at Gresham College in London.37 Founded

in 1597 by the bequest of merchant and financier Sir Thomas Gresham, this college

offered open lectures to the general public by professors of Divinity, Law, Rhetoric,

Music, Physic, Geometry, and Astronomy. According to Gresham’s 1597 charter, these

lectures were created “for the credit of the place, the more encrease of learning, and

greater honour of the founder.”38 These lectures were given in both Latin and English

(unlike the Latin-only courses at Oxford and Cambridge), so that everyone—both the

35 Willis, “By These Means,” 299-300. 36 Harris, “Musical Education in Tudor Times,” 123-129; Rainbow, Music in Educational Thought, 85-86. 37 Harris, “Musical Education in Tudor Times,” 130-131; Rainbow, Music in Educational Thought, 83-85; Ortiz,

“Democratizing Music.” 38 Qtd. in John Ward, The Lives of the Professors of Gresham College (London: Printed by John Moore, 1740), iv.

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English-speaking citizens of London and any possible European visitors—might

understand them:

And for as much as the publick reading the said lectures is to be

performed in that manner, as may most tend to the glory of God, and the

common benefit of the people of this city, which we doubt not to be the

principal ends of the said founder in ordaining of the said lectures; and

for that the greatest part of the inhabitants within the city understand not

the Latin tongue, whereby the said lectures may become solitary in a

short time, if they shall be read in the Latin tongue only; and yet withal it

is very likely that diverse strangers of forreign countries, who resort

thither, and understand not the English tongue, will greatly desire to hear

the reading of the said lectures, whereby the memory of the said

found[e]r in the erecting of the said college for the encrease of learning

may be divulged, to the good ensample of forreign nations, and the

honour and credit of this honourable city: it is thought meet, that the said

solemn lectures be applied to the best benefit and contention of the

auditors of both sorts.39

According to John Strype’s 1720 Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, a reprint

and expansion of John Stow’s 1598 Survey of London, Gresham defended its English

lectures on several grounds. Not only were lectures in English thought to be more

appealing and more useful to the general populace, but the English lectures were

thought to serve as less competition to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge:

Reasons why the Lectures in Gresham College ought to be in English. Viz.

Because the Good that would ensue would be more Publick.

And the Founder seemed to have a more special Respect to the Benefit of

the Citizens; of whom few understand the Latin Tongue.

That there would be more Hope of Contribution from the Citizens for the

39 Ibid., v.

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perfecting this and other good Works…

That it would be less offensive and damageable to the Universities, that

this Reading be in English.

That the Maior, Aldermen, and Commonalty, to whom the ordering of

these Lectures is committed by the Will of the Founder, thought

themselves bound in Conscience to provide that they might be read to the

greatest Profit.

That if they be read in Latin, some of the Learned might probably resort to

them at first for Novelty’s Sake, but in short Time they would become

Solitary and void of Auditors…

That the Grecians taught all Parts of Learning in their own Tongue…

And Lastly, It will farther the Estimation of Learning among the People,

and will give them such a Taste of Learning as not to despise it, as the

ruder Sort do; and make them withal to find their own Wants, and how

necessary it is to have Learned Men among them.40

Gresham’s music lecture was to be read twice each week, from 3 to 4 pm on

Thursday and Saturday afternoons, “the theorique part for one half hour or thereabouts,

and the practique by concent of voice or of instruments for the rest of the hour; whereof

the first lecture is to be in the Latin tongue, and the second in the English tongue.”41

However, for the first ten years of Gresham College’s existence, music lectures were

given only in English because John Bull, Gresham’s first Professor of Music, spoke no

Latin: “because at this time, Mr. Doctor Bull is recommended to the place by the queen’s

most excellent majesty, being not able to speak Latin, his lectures are permited to be

40 John Stow, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, ed. John Strype, Vol. 1 (London, 1720), 128;

emphasis in original. 41 Qtd. in Ward, The Lives of the Professors, viii.

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altogether in English, so long as he shall continue the place of the musick lecturer

there.”42

Finally, many elite households, inspired by the court of Henry VIII in the 1540s,

which imported a great many Italian musicians, began to employ resident

instrumentalists who also served as music tutors.43 Such teachers were easily available to

gentry families, especially if they lived near a major city. These private music tutors

made music education available even to upper-class women, in addition to men—

indeed, they typically taught children and women of the household, but not older men.44

One such example of a male music tutor teaching musical basics to a young woman,

played for humorous effect, can be found in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (Act

III, Scene 1), when Hortensio, taking on the role of private music tutor, attempts to

express his love for Bianca under the guise of teaching her the gamut:

Hortensio. Madam, before you touch the instrument

To learn the order of my fingering,

I must begin with rudiments of art,

To teach you gamouth [gamut] in a briefer sort,

More pleasant, pithy, and effectual,

Than hath been taught by any of my trade;

And there it is in writing fairly drawn.

42 Ibid. 43 Price, Patrons and Musicians, 11-13. 44 Marsh, Music and Society, 198. Close study of Thomas Whythorne’s employment as a music tutor, and

contemporary fears of romantic love between tutors and their female students, can be found in Katie

Nelson, “Love in the music room: Thomas Whythorne and the private affairs of Tudor music tutors,” Early

Music 9, No. 1 (2012), 15-26.

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Bianca. Why, I am past my gamouth long ago.

Hor. Yet read the gamouth of Hortensio.

Bian. [Reads.]

“Gamouth I am, the ground of all accord:

A re, to plead Hortensio's passion;

B mi, Bianca, take him for thy lord,

C fa ut, that loves with all affection.

D sol re, one cliff [clef], two notes have I,

E la mi, show pity or I die.”

Call you this gamouth? Tut, I like it not.

Old fashions please me best; I am not so nice

To change true rules for odd inventions.45

Yet most of these opportunities to learn music from an instructor—at grammar

school, at university, or from a private tutor—were available only to the gentry (and, at

that, mostly to upper-class men). Cathedral song schools were available to lower-class

boys, but only a limited subset of them. Gresham College’s public lectures were

theoretically available to all, but only within the geographical confines of London, and

only for those with enough flexibility in their work to be able to attend them. Indeed, it

seems likely that Gresham College functioned more as a networking center for academic

elites rather than a center of education for lower classes.46 Most of the opportunities to

learn to read music without being able to read words were only available to that portion

of England’s population who already knew how to read words.

45 William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, in The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans, J. J. M.

Tobin, et al., 2nd ed. (Boston: Wadsworth, 1997), 157. Act III, Scene 1, lines 64-81. 46 Private correspondence with Joseph Ortiz, May 9, 2017.

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Elizabethan Music Instructional Texts

Access to music education for the lower classes was far more limited. The most widely-

available means of obtaining musical literacy in sixteenth-century England were printed

music-educational materials: the music primers often found at the front of instrumental

tutors, music theory treatises, and the music-instructional prefaces of The Whole Booke of

Psalmes. Nine of these English music instructional books were printed between 1561 and

1603 (see Table 4).47 Prior to 1561, the genre of the printed vernacular music theory text

did not exist in England.

Table 4. Printed Music Theory Texts

Author Title Publication Info

and STC

Number

Type of

Instructional

Material

Number

of Known

Editions

Through

1603

Anonymous A shorte Introduction

into the Science of

Musicke (music preface)

in The Whole Booke of

Psalmes.

Appeared first in

Psalmes. Of David in

Englishe Metre (London:

John Day, 1560/1561).

London: John

Day, 1562; STC

2430; and

subsequent

editions

Psalter preface 12

47 Thomas Robinson’s Schoole of Musicke (London: Thomas Este [East]) was printed in 1603, but the

dedication to King James I makes it clear that it falls outside the range of Elizabeth’s reign. An instrumental

tutor for lute, pandora, orpharion, and viola da gamba, containing two sets of brief music-instructional

material, it is kin to the other instrumental tutors from this period, unusual only in its mimicking of the

dialogue format used in Morley’s Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke.

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Anonymous To the Reader

(solmization preface) in

The Whole Booke of

Psalmes

London: John

Day, 1569; STC

2439.5; and

subsequent

editions

Psalter preface 44

Adrian Le

Roy,

translated by

J. Alford

A Briefe and easye

instrution to learne the

tableture to conducte and

dispose thy hande vnto

the Lute (1568).

Reprinted in A Briefe

and Plaine Instruction to

Set All Musicke of Eight

Divers Tunes in

Tableture for the Lute

(1574).

Possibly reprinted in

[The breffe and playne

instruction to lerne to

play on the gyttron and

also the Cetterne]

[1569?], of which only a

fragment of music

survives.

London: Ihon

Kyngston for

Iames

Roubothum,

1568; STC 15486.

London: Ihon

Kyngston, for

Iames

Rowbothome,

1574; STC 15487.

? London, 1569?;

STC 15486.5.

Primer found

in

instrumental

tutor

2,

possibly 3

P. Delamotte A Brief Introduction to

Musicke [lost]

1574 1

William

Bathe

A Briefe Introductione to

the True Art of Musicke

[only a manuscript

transcription survives]

London: Abel

Jeffes, 1584

Freestanding

treatise

1

William

Bathe

A Briefe Introduction to

the Skill of Song

London: Thomas

Este [East], [c.

1596]; STC 1589

Freestanding

treatise

1

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Anonymous The Pathway to Musicke London: William

Barley, 1596; STC

1433

Primer found

in

instrumental

tutor

1,

possibly 2

(lost 1593

edition?)

Thomas

Morley

A Plaine and Easie

Introduction to Practicall

Musicke

London: Peter

Short, 1597; STC

18133

Freestanding

treatise

1

The first edition of the WBP, published in 1562, included a brief introduction to

music theory as the first of its two prefaces, titled “A shorte Introduction into the Science

of Musicke, made for such as are desirous to haue the knowledge therof, for the singing

of these Psalmes.” This was not, however, the first appearance of this anonymous work;

it was first printed in John Day’s second partial psalter, the 1560/1561 Psalmes. Of David

in Englishe Metre. This “music preface,” as I will refer to it, was the very first printed

English-language music theory text. Beginning in 1569, some editions of the WBP

included a different, far shorter music-educational preface: a single page detailing the

use of the solmization syllables printed in the music throughout the psalter.

One might argue that the tiny half-page introduction to John Merbecke’s Booke of

Common Praier Noted (1550) might also be called a “music instructional text,” and that it

pushes the date for England’s first printed vernacular music theory text back by a

decade. Merbecke’s small introduction has been excluded from this study because it

differs in tone and content from the other music instructional texts. The BCPN’s preface

does not attempt to educate the reader in the rudiments of music theory; it is descriptive

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only, naming the four rhythmic values printed in the book. Merbecke has rechristened

the usual values, and he employs this preface not to teach (for example) the relative

values of breve and semibreve, but simply to identify for his readers their new names

(e.g. “The first note is a strene note and is a breue.”).48 Even the WBP’s similarly short

solmization preface has a greater educational function, not only naming the musical

notation (solmization syllables) found in the book that follows and demonstrating its use

but also specifying that the preface is intended “for the helpe of those that are desirous

to learne to sing” and that the material has been provided that the reader might “easily

call him [a note] by his right name, as by these two examples you may the better

perceiue.” Merbecke’s preface, in contrast, is solely concerned with listing the new

names for rhythmic values.

The WBP’s solmization preface was very nearly the second in the genre of

printed music theory in England, narrowly beaten by Adrian Le Roy’s Briefe and easye

instrution [sic] (1568), which was reprinted in Le Roy’s better-known Briefe and Plaine

Instruction of 1574. This was an English translation of a French lute instruction book, and

the music-theoretical preface was intended only for teaching the musical knowledge

necessary for playing the lute. Its intended audience came to the text with no prior

48 The full text of Merbecke’s preface is as follows: “In this booke is conteyned so muche of the Order of

Commo[n] prayer as is to be song in Churches: wherin are vsed only these iiii. sortes of notes, [music

example showing the four note values as printed in the BCPN] The first note is a strene note and is a breue.

The second a square note, and is a semy breue. The iii. a pycke and is a mynymme. And when there is a

prycke by the square note, that prycke is halfe as muche as the note that goeth before it. The iiii. is a close,

and is only vsed at ye end of a verse.” (sig. A.ii.r)

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instruction in music: “In the meane tyme I desire thee (that hast no entraunce in this

arte, for whom this booke is particularly made) to bestowe certaine howres, at thy

conuenient leasure, to reade and marke this little instruction.”49 P. Delamotte’s Brief

Introduction to Musicke, also published in 1574, is now lost, but it too is believed to have

been a translation of continental music theory.50 Thus the first known printed English

theory texts were not full-scale music textbooks authored by English theorists, but

psalter prefaces and translations of continental music theory.

The first freestanding English music textbook by an Englishman was William

Bathe’s Briefe Introductione to the True Art of Musicke (1584). The original book, now lost,

survives in a seventeenth-century manuscript transcription. Bathe’s True Art was

adapted and expanded into his Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Song, published c. 1596.51

Skill of Song has the distinction of being the first surviving full-scale music theory

textbook, but it is surprisingly small for such an important work—just 35 pages of text,

plus title page, seven pages of music, and a fold-out table detailing solmization

assignments for various key signatures. Its intended audience was made up of those

49 Adrian Le Roy, A Briefe and easye instruction [sic] to learne the tableture to conducte and dispose thy hande vnto

the Lute englished by J. Alford Londenor (London: Imprinted by Ihon Kyngston for Iames Roubothum, 1568),

Epistle to the Reader, no page numbers or signature information given. 50 Sakurako Mishiro, “The Influence of Continental Music Theory on English and Scottish Music Theory, c.

1560-1670,” (Ph.D thesis, University of Manchester, 2013), names this work instead A Brief Instruction of

Musicke collected by P. Delamotte. She states that it was probably comprised of translated excerpts from early

continental writings, edited by Delamotte. 51 For extensive discussion of the two treatises, and the relationship between them, see Kevin Karnes,

“Bathe’s A Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Song: History, Context, Significance,” in William Bathe, A Briefe

Introduction to the Skill of Song, ed. Kevin Karnes (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 3-53.

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adults who had not received music education in their youth, and Skill of Song promised

its readers that it would supply their lack quickly and easily: “Diuerse haue repented in

their age that they were not put to sing in their youth; but seeing that by these rules, a

good skill may be had in a moneth: and the ways learned in foure or fiue dayes: none

commeth too late to learne”52

In the 1590s, two more theory treatises appeared. First, in 1596, the anonymous

Pathway to Musicke was published, which has been identified as the original introduction

to William Barley’s New Booke of Tabliture (a tutor for lute, orpharion, and bandora).53 The

Pathway to Musicke was heavily influenced by continental music theory. A year later,

early modern England’s most famous music theory textbook was published: Thomas

Morley’s Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, a freestanding work like

Bathe’s but far more extensive. Also like Bathe’s, Morley’s book was written for the

benefit of those would-be musicians who had no access to any other form of musical

instruction: “to further the studies of them, who (being indewed with good naturall

wittes, and well inclined to learne that diuine Art of Musick) are destitute of sufficient

masters.”54 Morley promised his readers that, assuming they could sing a hexachord

(“that any of but meane capacitie so that they can but truely sing their tunings, which we

commonly call the sixe notes, or vt, re, mi, fa, sol, la”), they “may, without any other

52 Bathe, Skill of Song, sig. A.3.v. 53 John M. Ward, “Barley’s Songs without Words,” Lute Society Journal 12 (1970): 5-22. 54 Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction, sig. B.1.r.

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help sauing this booke, perfectly learn to sing, make discant, and set partes well and

formally togither.” Thus A Plaine and Easie Practicall Introduction assumed a higher level

of prior musical knowledge than any of the other music theory treatises of its time. Not

only would its users need to be able to read, but they would also have to possess a

minimum standard of singing proficiency—a far cry from Le Roy’s audience of those

“[who] hast no entraunce in this arte.”

In sum, the genre of vernacular printed music theory treatises in Elizabethan

England encompassed psalter prefaces, prefaces in instruction books for the lute and

other instruments, and freestanding music theory textbooks. They demonstrated a wide

range of instructional goals, assumptions about readers’ prior musical knowledge, and

the amount of musical content they attempted to teach. None, however, required their

readers to consult any additional musical texts—as Morley put it, “without any other

help sauing this booke.” (Though as we will see in Chapter 4, some encouraged readers

to seek help from a more skilled musician.) Indeed, most of these treatises specifically

positioned themselves as replacements for other, neglected forms of music education.

Interestingly enough, music-theoretical prefaces never appeared in books of song,

probably because the partbook format would have necessitated printing any such

preface multiple times.

Of these nine works of music theory, the WBP’s prefaces were by far the most

widely available. Most of the other theory treatises were printed only once. Le Roy’s

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Instruction is found in two editions (possibly three—it may have been included in Le

Roy’s [Breffe and playne instruction to lerne to play on the gyttron and also the Cetterne]

[1569?], of which only a fragment of music survives). There may be a lost second edition

of the anonymous Pathway to Musicke from 1593.55 Morley’s Plaine and Easie Introduction

was reprinted in 1608 (beyond the range of this study). These single editions—or even

two or three—cannot measure up to the eleven editions of the WBP that contained the

music preface or the fully 44 that had the solmization preface. The WBP was a more

plentiful and certainly more popular book than any other printed music theory treatise

in Elizabethan England.

The numerous editions and high availability of the WBP, however, could not

solve the problem of general literacy. Beyond the upper class, most English people were

caught in a contradiction: unable to read, but unable to gain access to those methods of

music education that eliminated the need to read; while those who could read were also

the most likely to have alternative ways to learn how to read music.

Learning From Printed Texts Without Knowing How to Read

It would seem that Cressy’s quantitative analysis of general literacy rates places serious

limitations on any estimate regarding musical literacy rates. Beyond the male gentry,

55 Jeremy L. Smith, Thomas East and Music Publishing in Renaissance England (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2003), 85.

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most sixteenth-century English people could not read. Thus the very people who,

lacking private tutors and higher education, needed printed music instruction books in

order to learn to read music were unlikely to be able to read them. The WBP’s two music

prefaces were by far the most abundant of these printed texts and therefore the most

widely-available means of obtaining musical literacy. Yet their ability to substantively

improve musical literacy rates was sorely hampered by poor general literacy rates. How

many people were actually able to read them?

Yet traditional ideas of literacy did not necessarily limit the spread of musical

knowledge from printed texts. We cannot judge access to the music education found in

music theory treatises by literacy rates alone. Sixteenth-century England had a culture in

which gaining knowledge was often a communal practice. Music instruction, like other

forms of education, could be learned from others (beyond professional teachers).

Though records were not kept, it is certain that the lower classes organized informal

musical instruction for musical performance, including bagpipe and drum.56 If even one

of these educators could read music, he or she could pass this knowledge on to others,

none of them needing general literacy.57

56 Marsh, Music and Society, 214. 57 See discussion of the seventeenth-century practice of “lining out” in Chapter 6.

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In addition, reading aloud was still a common practice. Silent reading originated

in the medieval period in a monastic context,58 but reading aloud as a general rule

endured throughout the sixteenth century. In Elizabethan England, members of the

lower class were almost certainly reading aloud, and even the gentry, who commonly

had the ability to read silently, often chose to read aloud as a form of sociable

entertainment.59 When a text is read aloud, access to its contents is granted by a single

literate individual to all listeners, literate or not. It would take only one literate person to

share the contents of a book with many. This practice greatly increased access to printed

works, placing the reader in the role of a performer realizing a text to an audience—or in

the role of instructor tutoring his students in music.

As we saw in Chapter 2, Protestant reformers especially advocated for reading

aloud at home as a form of religious education. We do in fact have evidence of John

Day’s metrical psalms being employed in a context of domestic education. In 1563, one

year after releasing the first edition of The Whole Booke of Psalmes, Day published a set of

four-part harmonizations of tunes from that psalter. Despite the collection’s title, The

Whole Psalmes in Foure Partes, it does not actually include all 150 psalms, but it contains a

large number of psalms and hymns, many of them in several different settings. It also

58 On the development of silent reading in the medieval period, see Paul Saenger, “Silent Reading: Its Impact

on Late Medieval Script and Society,” Viator 13 (1982), 367-414; and idem, Space Between Words: The Origin of

Silent Reading (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). 59 Roger Chartier, “Leisure and Sociability: Reading Aloud in Early Modern Europe,” in Urban Life in the

Renaissance, ed. Susan Zimmerman and Ronald F. E. Weissman (Newark: University of Delaware Press,

1989), 103-120.

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contains an intriguing woodcut depicting a scene of family life found on the verso of the

title page of three out of the four partbooks (contratenor, tenor, and bassus, but not

medius, which has a different woodcut honoring Queen Elizabeth). In this image (see

Figure 9), a father sits on a throne-like chair in a sparsely-furnished room, instructing his

wife and four children in solmization. One of the sons holds a toy, and another holds a

book—in upright rather than oblong format, and therefore not one of the Whole Psalmes

in Foure Partes partbooks (but perhaps a copy of The Whole Booke of Psalmes). Day’s

woodcut portrays his ideal audience for this set of partbooks in particular, and metrical

psalms in general: a Protestant family with a practice of patriarchal domestic musical

education. In Chapter 4, I will return to this image to discuss its depiction of the

Guidonian hand; for now it serves as evidence of oral teaching enabling the use of

metrical psalters by the illiterate.

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Figure 9. Woodcut From Day’s Whole Psalmes in Foure Partes60

I showed in Chapters 1 and 2 that Day’s WBP was intended as a prescriptive

Protestant religious text, demonstrating what English Protestant identity ought to be: a

musically-literate congregation singing together in community. Yet the WBP was

published at a time when a significant number of its intended audience could not use

these materials in the way they were intended. Poor general literacy rates were a

problem for the psalter, its music-instructional prefatory material relying on users of the

hymnal knowing how to read or having access to a literate person who could read it out

loud. Only a few people needed to be able to read—and to read music—in order to lead

60 Photograph taken by the author, courtesy of the British Library.

137

the others. In this way, poor general literacy rates were not so much an obstacle to the

WBP’s educational mission as they might first appear.

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Chapter 4. ‘For the helpe of those that are desirous to learne to sing’: The Whole Booke of Psalmes’ Music-Educational Prefaces

I argued in Chapter 1 that John Day’s prefatory material successfully situated The Whole

Booke of Psalmes as an authoritative and authorized Protestant text, thus claiming for this

hymnal the opportunity to shape English Protestant devotional culture. In Chapter 2, I

showed that one of the commitments of Protestantism—English or otherwise—was the

active musical participation of the laity. The WBP both reflected and shaped its musical

culture, emphasizing in words and in music the value of singing psalms in unison as an

inclusive community. In this chapter, I make this dissertation’s central argument:

alongside its identities as devotional scriptural text and congregational hymnal, the WBP

served as a music instruction book, and indeed, as the first and most easily accessible

work of popular music education in sixteenth-century England; and that it was born

from Protestant ideology regarding the Christian practice of music. The psalter is

evidence that English Protestantism saw not only verbal literacy as a primary goal but

musical literacy as well: if being a Protestant meant becoming an active part of musical

139

worship, then it was crucial to teach all the laity to sing well, enabling them to fully

inhabit that identity. 1

To accomplish this goal, the WBP included two main didactic features that aimed

to teach readers the rudiments of musical knowledge: an instructional letter to the

reader on the fundamentals of reading music and a system of printed solmization

syllables to aid in sight-singing. The “Shorte Introduction into the Science of Musicke”

found in the first edition of 1562 served as an introductory treatise in music theory, one

intended to aid readers in learning to sing the Psalms and any other “playne and easy

Songes as these are.” Other editions included a music typeface that contained

solmization syllables along with a new preface explaining their use.2 Throughout this

chapter, I will refer to these two educational aids as the “music preface” and the

“solmization preface.”

Scholars have long known of the existence of these two musical prefaces. In 1900,

John Stainer examined them along with prefaces from several other sixteenth- and

1 A useful introduction to several facets of Protestantism’s relationship to general literacy in England can be

found in Alec Ryrie, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), Chapter

11. 2 The printing of solmization syllables in musical staves was not unique to Day’s WBP; it could be found

earlier, on the Continent, in Louis Bourgeois’ Le Droict Chemin de Musique (Geneva, 1550; to be discussed in

Chapter 5). It would also be used in Bathe’s c. 1596 Skill of Song (sig. B.iii.v) and Barley’s 1596 Pathway to

Musicke (sig. B.ii.v - B.iv.r). However, the WBP marked the first known use of printed solmization in

England. Indeed, the WBP’s printed solmization influenced those examples that followed—Jessie Ann

Owens has pointed out that Bathe’s printed solmization is a four-part setting of Sternhold’s Psalm 4 with the

“church tune” taken from Thomas East’s 1592 Whole Booke of Psalmes: With Their Wonted Tunes: Jessie Ann

Owens, “Concepts of Pitch in English Music Theory, c. 1560-1640,” in Tonal Structures in Early Music, ed.

Cristle Collins Judd (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), 240n58.

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seventeenth-century psalters from England, France, and Germany in order to show that

the psalter offered unique scope for the provision of musical instructions, and that

“pioneers of congregational psalmody” did so intentionally in order to “secure an

intelligent, as well as a general participation in its rendering.”3 In 1982, Bernarr Rainbow

published a set of facsimiles of English psalter prefaces from the sixteenth through the

nineteenth centuries (including the music preface and the solmization preface from the

WBP), along with his own introductory essay that similarly argues that many psalters

provided elementary instruction in music for the general populace.4 Rainbow links this

method of providing popular music education to Protestantism, aligning the English

prefaces with Lutheran and Calvinist school-curriculum psalmody. Rainbow also reads

into Stainer’s “On the Musical Introductions Found in Certain Metrical Psalters” a

similar claim for a relationship between Reformation ideology and psalter prefaces;

however, this argument is not actually to be found in Stainer’s article.5 Both authors note

that Protestants were the source of this new form of popular musical instruction,

however, neither fully explains why, nor do they consider the prefaces in close

relationship with the other music theory treatises published in sixteenth-century

3 John Stainer, “On the Musical Introductions Found in Certain Metrical Psalters,” Proceedings of the Musical

Association, 27th Sess. (1900-1901): 1. 4 Bernarr Rainbow, ed., English Psalmody Prefaces: Popular Methods of Teaching, 1562-1835 (Kilkenny, Ireland:

Boethius Press, 1982). 5 Bernarr Rainbow, “Introduction,” in English Psalmody Prefaces: Popular Methods of Teaching, 1562-1835

(Kilkenny, Ireland: Boethius Press, 1982), 1-2.

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England. How do the WBP’s two prefaces enact the Protestant music-educational

mission?

My research into the music-pedagogical nature of the WBP, and particularly its

two prefaces, extends the work of Stainer and Rainbow. My archival research has

revealed that both forms of musical didacticism were far more prevalent than

scholarship currently acknowledges. In this chapter, I will show how the two musical

prefaces found in the WBP helped to advance the cause of popular music education (and

what, exactly, they taught). Close analysis of the language found in these two prefaces

makes it clear that this push towards increased musical literacy was indeed a

theologically-motivated Protestant impulse.

Frequency of the Prefatory Material

Musicological scholarship regarding the WBP’s two musical prefaces has historically

suffered from a quantitative problem: dates and frequency of these two psalter prefaces

have often been unknown, omitted, or simply errant. Older scholarship was highly

interested in identifying all appearances of the musical prefaces but was limited by the

comparatively few surviving primary sources known at the time, which made it

impossible to compile a complete list. As a result, these works continually misdated the

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first appearance of the solmization preface.6 Newer secondary literature, including work

by Nicholas Temperley, Jessie Ann Owens, and Timothy Duguid, accurately lists the

dates of each preface’s first appearance, but makes no effort to identify the dates and

frequency of future appearances.7 Scholars who discuss both prefaces often make it seem

that the solmization preface completely replaced the music preface, while in truth there

was a lengthy period of overlap in which both forms of musical didacticism appeared

(but never in the same edition). My own research has been greatly aided by increased

library cataloging and reporting, coupled with online resources like Early English Books

Online, which allows the viewing of digitized prints, and the English Short-Title

Catalogue, a database of editions and their locations worldwide. These resources have

allowed me to undertake a comprehensive survey of all known surviving Elizabethan

WBP editions. I am not the first person to take on this task—Temperley spearheaded

exactly this sort of project for his Hymn Tune Index, as did Timothy Duguid in order to

6 In chronological order: Stainer, “On the Musical Introductions Found in Certain Metrical Psalters;” Robert

Steele, The Earliest English Music Printing (London: Printed for the Bibliographical Society at the Cheswick

Press, 1903); Henry Watson, “The Article ‘Psalter’ in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (New

Edition),” Musical Times (Sept., 1907): 596-597; David G. T. Harris, “Musical Education in Tudor Times (1485-

1603),” Proceedings of the Musical Association, 65th Sess. (1938-1939): 109-139; D. W. Krummel, English Music

Printing 1553-1700 (London: The Biographical Society, 1975); Rainbow, “Introduction,” in English Psalmody

Prefaces. 7 Nicholas Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1979); Owens, “Concepts of Pitch in English Music Theory;” Timothy Duguid, Metrical Psalmody in

Print and Practice: English ‘Singing Psalms’ and Scottish ‘Psalm Buiks’, c. 1547-1640 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014).

143

track changes to tune references8—but I am the first to concentrate on prefatory

materials rather than texts or tunes.

To show that this attempt to improve the musical literacy of the masses was not

merely a single publisher’s impulse in one single year (John Day in 1562), but a key part

of the English Protestant agenda, I have viewed as many Elizabethan editions of the

WBP as possible. The English Short-Title Catalogue lists 141 known editions between

1562 and 1603; I have discovered two additional unlisted editions. (See Appendix 1 for a

complete list of these editions and their features.) Of these 143, I have viewed 133 via

Early English Books Online or in person. This has allowed me to track publishers’

choices in prefatory material across Elizabeth’s reign.

As discussed in Chapter 1, John Day’s first edition of The Whole Booke of Psalmes

in 1562 featured two prefatory texts: the music preface and the Athanasius treatise.

While some later editions echoed this preliminary content, many did not, and the

aggregate set of all WBP editions made use of a broad variety of prefatory material,

including the music preface, the solmization preface, two different translations of the

Athanasius treatise, other passages from Scripture and by church fathers, or even no

prefatory content at all.

8 Nicholas Temperley, The Hymn Tune Index: A Census of English-Language Hymn Tunes in Printed Sources from

1535 to 1820, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); also found at http://hymntune.library.uiuc.edu;

Duguid, Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice.

144

Scholars have not ignored the mutability of subsequent editions. The standard

reference for any study of the WBP, Nicholas Temperley’s Music of the English Parish

Church, briefly acknowledged this without further comment: “Certain prose items (the

treatise of Athanasius, musical introduction, and prayers for domestic use) varied from

edition to edition.”9 Beth Quitslund has been tracking textual changes, and the fruits of

her work to understand the method behind the WBP’s sixteenth- and early seventeenth-

century instability was presented in a 2013 public lecture.10 More recently, Timothy

Duguid’s Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice presented his own findings regarding

musical changes to tunes and the assignment of tune references.11 We can also look

forward to a more extensive discussion of changes both textual and musical in the essays

accompanying the forthcoming critical edition of the WBP, a joint project by Temperley

and Quitslund.12

I have identified six distinct categories of preliminary content, which has enabled

me to compile a new set of statistics regarding the frequency of the two musical

prefaces. In ordering these six groups, I have emphasized chronology rather than

frequency, numbering them according to their first occurrence. Thus, for example,

9 Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church, 55. 10 Beth Quitslund, “Adaptation and Popularity: Building The Whole Booke of Psalmes 1547-1577,” Psalm

Culture and the Politics of Translation Conference, London, July 16, 2013. This material will appear in the

forthcoming critical edition of The Whole Booke of Psalmes. 11 Duguid, Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice. 12 Beth Quitslund and Nicholas Temperley, eds., The Whole Book of Psalms: A Critical Edition of the Texts and

Tunes, 2 vols., Renaissance English Text Society Publications 36 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press,

forthcoming).

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although in this period it was far more common for a psalter edition to lack the music

preface than to have it, Group 1 (psalters with music prefaces) is listed before Group 2

(psalters with Athanasius treatise but without music preface), since the former first

appeared in 1562 and the latter in 1565. Thus the order in which I discuss these

categories is not a hierarchy of prevalence, but a chronological listing that helps us track

publishers’ choices when printing new editions. Table 5 outlines the frequency of each of

these six groups; for the details of each edition, including the group to which it belongs,

see Appendix 1. The reason for this level of detailed description is to show that for each

new—and newly typeset—edition, publishers chose from a number of possible

preliminary texts, each with a different emphasis. Thus some editions stressed musical

literacy, others consistency with historical theological tradition, and others affordability.

These ongoing changes offer insight into the changing goals of the psalter’s multiple

publishers and the (perceived) needs of the populace.

Table 5. Psalter Groupings

Group Psalter type First

occurrence

Number of editions

(out of the 133

viewed)

Percent

Group 1 Music preface and

Athanasius preface

1562 11 8.27%

Group 2 Athanasius preface 1565 35 26.32%

Group 3 Solmization preface 1569 44 33.08%

Group 4 Different prefatory

material

1577 3 2.26%

Group 5 No prefatory material 1578 34 25.56%

Group 6 Text only 1590 6 4.51%

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Psalters with musical didacticism

(Groups 1 and 3)

55 41.35%

Psalters without musical didacticism

(Groups 2, 4, 5, and 6)

72 58.65%

Group 1: Music Preface and Athanasius Preface (11 editions, 8.27%)

The first edition of the WBP in 1562 contained, in this order, the frontispiece, two

prefaces (first, the introductory music theory treatise and second, the translation of a

treatise by St. Athanasius, Opusculum in Psalmos—for more on the significance of the

Athanasius treatise, see Chapter 1), a set of hymns, settings of all 150 psalms, a second

set of hymns, a set of prayers, the index, and the colophon. This basic structure would be

preserved for most future editions of the psalter, though not without occasional and

sometimes quite significant changes, as we shall see in the other groups. This first

edition established an initial model for its prefatory material (music preface followed by

Athanasius treatise), which would be repeated in the next two years (1563 and 1564

editions) and then reappear sporadically through 1583. None of these Group 1 psalters

included the solmization preface (for that, see Group 3). The eleven psalters in this

group were not all printed in the same format; some (including the first edition) were

octavos (8o) and others quartos (4o).

The 1564 edition (STC 2432) is particularly interesting because it is the only one

to explicitly call attention to the inclusion of the music preface. Its title page contains the

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line “Whereunto is added a short introduction to learne to syng the Psalmes.” This

advertisement represents a commercial impulse, viewing this educational aid as a

selling point. It also increased the public visibility of the WBP’s utility as an aid to

musical literacy.

Group 2: Athanasius Preface (35 editions, 26.32%)

Just three years after the first edition, the 1565 WBP (STC 2434) would omit the music

preface, its prefatory material consisting only of the Athanasius treatise. This became the

standard template for the WBP, and it would not be long before psalters lacking the

music preface outnumbered those containing it. In total, 35 of the 133 viewed WBP

editions contained the Athanasius treatise without the music preface, with publication

dates ranging from 1565 through 1603 (the end of this survey).

A few of the Group 2 psalters also included additional prefatory material. The

1567 WBP (STC 2436/2438) contained a copy of Day’s psalter patent on the verso of the

title page; it was the only surviving WBP edition to call attention so blatantly to Day’s

legal rights as England’s sole publisher of metrical psalters. A 1582 edition (STC 2461)

included a woodcut on the verso of the title page and several more woodcuts

throughout.

There is a great deal of variation among this group. Formats, for example, ranged

from folio (2o) all the way down to thirty-twomo (32o). Some of folio-sized Group 2

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psalters demonstrated a particularly ornate visual style (see Figure 10). I think of these

as “presentation psalters,” akin to the Alamire presentation manuscripts: large and

illustrated as lavishly as the medium allowed, intended as much to be seen as performed

from.13 The WBP presentation psalters printed large blackletter type in a single column

(allowing an entire fourteener to fit on a single line, rather than the more typical two-

column layout, which required the division of each verse into lines of eight and six

syllables). Several additional kinds of type in various fonts and font sizes were used for

contrast, mostly among the prefatory apparatus accompanying each psalm or for the

occasional Gloria patri. Music was printed in larger-than-usual typeface with woodcut

initials. Other printed shapes and symbols were used to fill blank space on pages,

including vertical lines separating stanzas, fleuron medallions, and decorative borders.

Concentrated mostly around the turn of the seventeenth century but appearing as early

as 1565, these presentation psalters are the most visually arresting of all Elizabethan

WBP editions, representing one extreme on the continuum of psalter editions ranging

from highly economical to highly sumptuous.

13 On the visual presentation style of the Alamire manuscripts, see Herbert Kellman, ed., The Treasury of

Petrus Alamire: Music and Art in Flemish Court Manuscripts, 1500-1535 (Ghent: Ludion, 1999).

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Figure 10. Presentation Psalter14

Group 3: Solmization (44 editions, 33.08%)

The third group consists of the 44 psalters that printed solmization syllables,

accompanied by a short, one-page preface explaining these syllables. The first surviving

solmization psalter was printed in 1569 (STC 2439.5). The majority of this group

contained no other prefatory material; however, the following five editions also

included the Athanasius treatise following the solmization preface: c. 1570 (STC 2441.5),

14 WBP 1572, STC 2442.7. Photograph taken by the author, courtesy of General Theological Seminary.

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1578 (STC 2451.5), c. 1580 (STC 2456.6), 1581 (STC 2459.5), and 1583 (STC 2466.9). The

other 39 editions that did not print the Athanasius treatise stressed only musical

learning without theological justification.

Group 4: Different Prefatory Material (3 editions, 2.26%)

The three psalters of Group 4 are an interesting set, containing entirely different

prefatory material than that of all other WBPs printed in Elizabethan England. These

editions date from 1577 (STC 2449.5), 1593 (STC 2485), and 1599 (STC 2498.5). In contrast

to the usual Athanasius treatise and possibly the music preface, they contain quotations

from Ecclesiasticus (a deuterocanonical book of Scripture) and Augustine’s Confessions,

“A treatise made by Athanasius, vpon the psalmes, in Ann. Dom. 379” (a translation of

Pros Markellinon), as well as the essay “Of the vse and vertue of the Psalmes by

Athanasius” (a translation of Opusculum in Psalmos). This second piece of writing by

Athanasius is the same work as the standard Athanasius treatise found in most WBPs

(“A Treatise made by Athanasius the great, wherin is set forth how, and in what manner

ye may vse the Psalmes…”). However, it is not the same translation. The Group 4

version is a slightly condensed version of the translation of Opusculum in Psalmos found

in Archbishop Matthew Parker’s Whole Psalter translated into English Metre, a metrical

psalter published by John Day in 1567 that, up until now, has no known relation to the

WBP beyond the name of its publisher. Indeed, almost all of the new prefatory material

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in the Group 4 psalters is excerpted from the Parker Psalter (the brief Ecclesiasticus

quotation is the only exception).

All three Group 4 psalters are tiny thirty-twomos (32o), the smallest format in

which the WBP was printed. (Not all thirty-twomos, however, are in this group; see

especially Group 6.) The small format—the books are just over three inches tall—

necessitated reduced title pages that lacked some of the usual textual features. However,

the seeming goal of economy suggested by the page size is belied by the addition of the

extra prefatory material. In addition, the psalters print the standard prefatory apparatus

before each psalm (Latin incipit, psalm number, author, prose argument, and tune

reference). Many other editions (particularly among Group 5) do away with prose

arguments in the interest of preserving space. This begs the question: why do the Group

4 psalters have so much unnecessary material? Their page size may be small, but the

books themselves are very thick, and the extra paper needed did not serve to make these

books cheap. It is unclear why Day provided this unusual version of his psalter, but

these editions did serve to introduce additional paratextual material that contributed to

the authoritative Protestant identity of the WBP.

Group 5: No Prefatory Material (34 editions, 25.56%)

The 34 psalters making up Group 5, which first appeared in 1581, had no prefatory

material at all (although a few had woodcuts on the verso of the title page, a choice that

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required time and effort but did not necessitate extra paper). They were usually printed

in very small typeface, and many lacked the arguments that introduced each psalm,

which also helped save space. While most of the WBP editions used their prefatory

material as a means of transmitting Protestant ideas and shaping their readers’ approach

to the psalms, this group seemed to stress financial economy.

Group 6: Text Only (6 editions, 4.51%)

Six psalters concentrated at the end of Elizabeth’s reign not only had none of the usual

prefatory material, but also contained no musical notation within the psalter: 1590 (STC

2477.5, a pirated edition printed by “Iohn Legate, Printer to the Vniversitie of

Cambridge”), 1595 (STC 2490.5), 1597 (STC 2492a.5), 1599 (STC 2498), 1600 (STC 2501),

and 1601 (STC 2504). All six were miniature thirty-twomos (32os), like Group 4. Their

only prefatory matter is a list which specified the canticles found at the end of the book

(themselves a reduced set of the usual opening and closing canticles). The feature that

most sets off the Group 6 psalters, however, is their complete lack of printed music—

these text-only editions even remove the tune references. From a music-educational

standpoint, these psalters lacked any pedagogical features at all. By this point, the psalm

melodies were widely known, so it is probable that readers of the Group 6 psalters could

still have sung these texts. However, the editions themselves presented the metricized

psalms as spoken poetry rather than hymns, hearkening back to the original Sternhold

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books of courtly poetry but now with devotional (rather than the original courtly and

political) purpose.15

Publisher Choices

Across these six groups, the content of the WBP, its psalms and hymns, remained largely

the same.16 This content could by accompanied by a wide range of possible prefatory

material, and each new edition represented choices on the part of the publisher(s).

Should a given edition be fairly standard, meaning that it included the Athanasius

treatise with no other prefatory material, or should it contain the music preface, or

solmization syllables and accompanying preface? It might eschew the usual prefatory

essays and substitute several from the Parker Psalter. Perhaps it should include no

prefatory material, a cheaper option for both producer and consumer. Or it might not

even contain music at all.

The Temporal Relationship Between the Music-Theoretical Prefaces

In summary, the music preface appears in 11 editions out of the viewed 133, about 8%;

solmization appears in 44 editions, about 33%. Both of these figures are significantly

15 On the courtly identity and political purpose of Certayne psalmes and Al such psalmes, see Beth Quitslund,

The Reformation in Rhyme (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), Chapters 1-2. 16 See Duguid, Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice on tune changes and Quitslund, Reformation in Rhyme

on textual changes.

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higher than modern scholarship has realized. Nearly half of the surviving editions of the

WBP contained one of these two didactic features, demonstrating a consistent concern

for the musical knowledge of the book’s readers. Indeed, only seven calendar years did

not see the publication of at least one WBP edition that contained one of these two forms

of musical didacticism. Day’s contribution to musical literacy for the common people

was a regular feature of this publication across the entire Elizabethan period. This data

makes it clear that music education was not a one-time experiment or casual effort, but

an ongoing priority for the publishers of the WBP.

Figure 11. Frequency of the Music-Theoretical Prefaces

In Figure 11, each box represents an edition. Red boxes indicate those editions

which printed the music preface, and blue boxes the ones that included solmization.

Grey boxes represent editions that did not contain either form of musical didacticism,

and the thirteen black boxes indicate editions I have not yet been able to see. (A

complete list of these editions, categorized by group number, can be found as Appendix

1.) As this timeline shows, the music preface appeared in the first edition of the WBP,

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was reprinted in the next few years, and was then sporadically printed into the 1580s.

Why did it endure into the 1580s, well after solmization psalters were introduced in

1569, rather than being discontinued when solmization was introduced as an

alternative? No edition includes both the music preface and solmization; solmization is

clearly considered an alternate form of educational aid.

Conversely, why did the music preface cease to appear after 1583, while

solmization psalters, once introduced, were almost continually reproduced? The start to

an answer is biographical: John Day died in 1584, and the psalter began to be published

by his son Richard (or more accurately, by assigns of Richard Day; see Chapters 1 and 6

for more details about ownership of the psalter patent following John Day’s death).

However, Day’s death alone does not account for the disappearance of the music

preface. The new publishers maintained many of the other options regarding prefatory

material (Groups 1-5 all originated with John Day; only Group 6, the text-only psalters,

would be introduced by one of Richard Day’s assigns). It seems plausible that Richard

Day’s assigns realized that the music preface had become, in a way, obsolete, or at least

no longer absolutely necessary to allow the general public access to music education in

the form of a printed music theory treatise. In 1584, William Bathe published his Briefe

Introduction to the True Art of Musicke, which was England’s first large-scale printed

music instructional text (see Chapter 3 for more on Bathe’s True Art). In ceasing to print

the music preface in future WBP editions, Richard Day and his assigns yielded way to

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Bathe’s True Art, choosing not to compete with this far more extensive theory textbook.

Perhaps the new publishers assumed that with Bathe’s treatise in print, the English laity

had separate and sufficient access to this educational material. It seems likely too that

the WBP was making a final, definitive shift to solmization as its primary form of

musical didacticism: 1583 saw four editions printed with solmization, more than in any

other year.

The Music Preface

Upon opening the 1562 WBP, the first content encountered was an epistle to the reader

titled “A shorte Introduction into the Science of Musicke, made for such as are desirous

to haue the knowledge therof, for the singing of these Psalmes.”17 This “music preface,”

as I call it, provided basic instruction into the fundamentals of music. However, this

preface did not originate in the first edition of the WBP. It first appeared in one of John

Day’s partial psalters, the 1560/1561 Psalmes. Of David in Englishe Metre (STC 2429; it is

twice-dated because title page and colophon list different dates of publication). With the

exception of a woodcut on the title page verso, the music preface was the only prefatory

material in the 1560/1561 Psalmes. Neither source gives authorial attribution for this

essay. The content of the music preface did not change when it was reprinted in the

17 Sig. +.ii.r through +.vii.r. Special thanks to Kerry McCarthy, Jessie Ann Owens, and Nicholas Temperley

for their correspondence with me regarding this preface.

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WBP, with the exception of several small but significant printing errors, which will be

discussed at length in Chapter 6. Half of the woodcuts were re-used; the other half were

remade but contain the same content. See Appendix 3 for a complete transcription of

this text as printed in the 1562 WBP.

The music preface has a clear commercial quality, especially its first page, which

advertises quick and easy learning:

I haue set here in the beginning of this boke of psalmes, an easie and

moste playne way and rule… Wherby (any diligence geuen therunto)

euerye man may in a fewe dayes: yea, in a few houres, easely without all

payne, & that also without ayde or helpe of any other teacher, attayne to a

sufficient, knowledg, to singe any Psalme contayned in thys Booke, or

any suche other playne and easy Songes as these are.18

This music preface is “easie and moste playne,” understandable to all; this exact

descriptor would be maintained and reversed in Thomas Morley’s famous Plaine and

Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke of 1597. In her study of English music theory

treatises in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Rebecca Herissone has observed

that English treatises were less comprehensive than their continental counterparts, and

dealt primarily with “musical rudiments and the rules of composition, known

collectively at the time as practical music.”19 Simplicity and brevity were prized, and

descriptions like “plain,” “easy,” and “brief” show up in many titles—in addition to

Morley’s treatise, we have Le Roy’s Briefe and easye instrution [sic] (1568) and Briefe and

18 Sig. +.ii.r. 19 Rebecca Herissone, Music Theory in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1.

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Plaine Instruction (1574), Delamotte’s Brief Introduction to Musicke (1574), and Bathe’s

Briefe Introductione to the True Art of Musicke (1584) and Briefe Introduction to the Skill of

Song (c. 1596). See Chapter 3 for further discussion of these other music-theoretical

works.

This passage from “Shorte Introduction” also claims that this music preface is all

that is needed to gain a working understanding of the rudiments of music theory: in

only a few hours, without help from any other text or teacher, a student will gain all the

knowledge he or she needs to sing these psalms and other “playne and easy Songes as

these are.” It makes no claims to offer sophisticated musical training, which is an

accurate reflection of the little treatise. The preface itself later admits that its reader does

need additional outside aid, suggesting the reader seek help from another person or an

instrument in order to learn how to sing the hexachord:

Moreouer it is to be noted, that there are vi. voyces, or Notes, signified

and expressed by these vi. sillables: vt: re mi, fa, sol, la, by whiche through

repetition of them, may be song al songes of what compasse so euer they

be, which vi. notes, ye must learn to tune aptely of some one that can

already sing, or by som Instrument of musike, as the Virginals, or some

other suche like, Which thing wel learned, ye shal nede none other

teaching of any.20

This is entirely in keeping with the genre of epistles to the reader; Heidi Brayman

Hackel notes that “[s]ome books, particularly handbooks that teach a particular skill,

20 Sig. +.iii.v through +.iv.r.

159

urge less skilled readers to obtain help when they are puzzled about a meaning in the

text.”21 Encouraging readers to get help from a more experienced reader was a familiar

tactic of early modern printed books, whose authors greatly feared misinterpretation.

This assumption of outside aid would reappear in another music theory treatise, when

Adrian le Roy’s 1568 A Briefe and easye instrution described its utility in its epistle to the

reader in very similar terms: “Thou shalte vnderstande by this little treatise the

tablytorie for the Lute, howe thou mayest accorde or tune the same, eyther by arte or by

erae, the disposition of the hande…whereby thou mayest easily learne by thy selfe, with

very small helpe of a teacher.”22

Later in the “Shorte Introduction,” the author continues to advertise

understandable teaching and quick learning: “And for a plainer learning therof, I haue

set before your eyes, those vi. notes ascending and descending… For these two examples

well had, and tuned a righte, all other songes and Psalmes, with little vse and a small

labour will sone be attayned vnto.”23 The familiar, second-person address from the

author of the epistle to the reader (“ye”) is typical of Tudor literature. It is curious, then,

that this direct address does not appear on the first page of the music preface. It is not

until the reader (or, perhaps more importantly, potential reader) is invested enough in

21 Heidi Brayman Hackel, Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender, and Literacy (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2005), 118. 22 Adrian Le Roy, A Briefe and easye instruction [sic] to learne the tableture to conducte and dispose thy hande vnto

the Lute englished by J. Alford Londenor (London: Imprinted by Ihon Kyngston for Iames Roubothum, 1568),

Epistle to the Reader, no page numbers or signature information given. 23 Sig. +.iv.r

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the book to turn the page that the reader is addressed directly. Finally, the music preface

itself would in at least one later year be considered marketable: the 1564 edition of the

WBP (STC 2432) advertises the inclusion of this music preface right on its title page:

“Whereunto is added a short introduction to learne to syng the Psalmes.”

Unlike the typical Tudor epistle to the reader, the “Shorte Introduction” does not

overtly attempt to control the reader’s reception of the main body of content that

follows, but this letter does attempt to influence the reader’s approach to the psalter by

enabling a particular—a musically accurate—reading of the musical notation that

accompanies the psalm texts. The address to “the rude & ignorant in Song,” like other

such letters to the reader, describes the benefit of reading the book and implicitly pleads

for the reader to approach the book in the proper spirit (in this case, with the

appropriate musical training). The first page of the music preface (that all-important

page for advertising purposes) praises “the singing of Psalmes” as a “godly exercise” in

which a community “in the common place of prayer…with one voyce” may “render

thankes & prayses to God.”24 The page goes on to offer additional locations outside the

church building: a purchaser of this book can also sing psalms “priuatly by them selues,

or at home in their houses”25 This first page also describes the contents of the “Shorte

Introduction” that follow: “I haue set here in the beginning of this boke of psalmes, an

24 Sig. +.ii.r. 25 Ibid.

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easie and moste playne way and rule, of the order of the Notes and Kayes of singing,

whiche commonly is called the scale of Musicke, or the Gamma vt.”26 Thus the music

preface functions both as a letter to the reader, complete with the genre’s usual style and

aim, and simultaneously as a music theory treatise. Later in this chapter, I will discuss

the conventions of this epistle to the reader genre in greater depth and explore the

implications of this dual identity.

The majority of the music preface—fully seven and a half pages out of eleven—is

concerned with “the scale of Musicke, or the Gamma vt.” Its primary purpose is to teach

its readers how to identify pitches, both in an illustration of the gamut and on musical

staves. The treatise makes it clear that this is the single most important musical skill:

In this table, or gamma vt, is conteyned all, what is necessari to the

knoweledge of singing Wherefore it must be diligentlie waid & muste

also be perfectly committed to memory, so that ye can redely and

distinctly say it without boke, both forwarde and backward: that is,

vpward and downward And this is the greatest pain that ye nede to take

in this trauayle.27

The provided woodcut image (see Figure 12), with illustrated organ pipes enclosing

each hexachord and reinforcing the musical, physically-produced nature of each

theoretical pitch, and lengthy accompanying explanation allow readers to name each

pitch. Readers are taught how to specify pitches according to their names taken from the

gamut (e.g., “G sol re ut”) and then how to assign hexachordal solmization syllables.

26 Ibid. 27 Sig. +.ii.v

162

Figure 12. Gamut Woodcut from the WBP’s Music Preface28

Comparatively little space is allotted to the rhythmic values of notes and rests

(only two and a half pages). The treatise introduces this content in more casual fashion

than its section on note names, though it still recommends that the reader take pains to

memorize it: “Ye haue also in youre songes diuers fourmes and figures of Notes. Of

which all, it behoueth you to knowe bothe the names and value.”29 Multiple woodcut

illustrations depicting these rhythmic values allow for less explanatory textual content

(see Figure 13). The music preface teaches their names: large, long, brief/breve,

28 WBP 1562, STC 2430. Image from Early English Books Online. Sig. +.ii.v. 29 Sig. +.v.v.

163

semibrief/semibreve, minim, crotchet, and quaver. It also explains how dots (“pricks”)

lengthen a value by half: “If there chaunce any pricke to be set by anye of these Notes,

the pricke is worthe in value the Note next following it.”

Figure 13. Woodcut Illustrations of Rhythmic Values from the WBP’s Music Preface30

30 WBP 1562, STC 2430. Photographs taken by the author, courtesy of the British Library. Sigs. +.v.v through

+.vi.v.

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The conclusion to this aptly-named “Shorte Introduction” lists topics that are not

covered: “a full and absolute knowledg of the nature of the scale,” intervals, consonance

and dissonance, modes (temporal, not diatonic), perfection and imperfection of rhythmic

values, and the correct way of drawing notes’ stems and beams:

To set out a full and absolute knowledg of the nature of the scale, the

differences betwene notes and halfe notes, & halfe notes betwene

themselues, of interualles, proportions: and which notes concorde and

agree together, and which disagree. What modes there are: and how

many. What is perfection, what imperfection: How notes oughte to be

bounde together, and what theyr value is so bounde, tayled vpwarde or

downeward: perteineth to a iust Introduction to the arte of Musike. These

thinges before taught, seme at this time, for the poore vnlearned and

rude, sufficiente and inoughe to the atteyning of such knowledg in

singing as shall be requisite to the singing of Psalmes conteined in this

boke, for which cause only they are set out.31

The author of this “Introduction” seems almost apologetic for the incomplete nature of

this preface.32 These omitted topics, critical for composition and improvisation, were

deemed essential in the other English theory treatises printed later in the sixteenth

century (Le Roy’s Instruction is an exception, concerned as it is with teaching its

audience to read and play from lute tablature). The musical basics taught by the music

preface encompass only the first third of Morley’s Plaine and Easie Introduction,

“Teaching to Sing;” Morley’s treatise went on with two more sections, “Treating of

Descant” and “Treating of composing or setting of Songes.” The longest section in

31 Sig. +.vi.v through +.vii.r. 32 Sig. +.vii.r.

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Bathe’s Skill of Song is Chapter 4, “For Tune,” in the second half of the book, “The post

rules of Song”; this section teaches concepts omitted in the WBP: intervals, concords,

discords, and the rules for composing counterpoint over an existing tune. Even the short

Pathway to Musicke not only taught the gamut, hexachords, clefs, keys, and rhythmic

values, but also briefly explained intervals, mood, time, prolation, augmentation,

diminution, imperfection, alteration tactus, syncopation, proportion, descant,

consonance and dissonance, and the basics of composing counterpoint. In contrast, the

music preface lacks some basics; for example, it does not explain time signatures—

strangely, the chart depicting a tree of rhythmic values (refer to Figure 13) includes C2

and cut-C symbols without explanation, which contrasts with the lengthy explanation of

all parts of the gamut woodcut. The music preface does not even explain the

arrangement of half steps and whole steps in the hexachord (which is why, as discussed

above, the reader is told to seek outside help from another singer or instrument).

However, despite these omitted music theory concepts, the author of the “Shorte

Introduction” is confident that he has included all of the material necessary to fulfill the

purpose of this introductory treatise.

Yet in some ways, the preface provides more music theory than is needed for

singing the psalm tunes of the WBP. The extensive discussion of the complete gamut, for

example, far exceeds the actual total range of the tunes, which collectively span C3 to

C5, with all but two tunes falling in the even more limited span of C3 and A4. In another

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part of the treatise, discussion of rests explains why they are useful in polyphony,

though there is no polyphonic music in the WBP: “There are also oftentimes in singing,

Pauses or Restes, set in songes, sometime where diuers parts are, for swetnes of the

armonye, and apte repetityons & reportes.”33 The treatise does seem to be intended, as

the first page says, to equip buyers of the WBP with the music education needed to make

use of other books of music as well: “euerye man may…singe any Psalme contayned in

thys Booke, or any suche other playne and easy Songes as these are.”34

One might think that this “Shorte Introduction” was a generic music theory

treatise, commissioned or somehow acquired by John Day from a musician unknown

who was unaffiliated with Day’s psalter project. That the preface’s author is unknown is

not out of the ordinary; Hackel has pointed out that “In their preparatory and curatorial

roles, preliminaries and marginalia are the most explicitly collaborative parts of a

printed book. Unlike the main text, they are often of indeterminate or suppressed

provenance.”35 However, there are too many internal references to psalms in general and

to this psalter in particular within the music preface for its author to have been

completely unaware of the treatise’s intended placement at the start of the WBP. The

opening page, which I have now often quoted, writes of “the godly exercise of singing of

Psalmes” and argues that the preface will enable readers “to singe any Psalme

33 Sig. +.vi.r-v. 34 Sig. +.ii.r. 35 Hackel, Reading Material, 92-93.

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contayned in thys Booke.”36 The last sentence of the preface states that the entirety of its

music-theoretical content has been laid out in order to enable its readers to sing the

WBP’s psalms: “These thinges before taught, seme at this time, for the poore vnlearned

and rude, sufficiente and inoughe to the atteyning of such knowledg in singing as shall

be requisite to the singing of Psalmes conteined in this boke, for which cause only they

are set out.”37 Further self-referential allusions to the psalms and to the book itself

appear sprinkled throughout. For example, after teaching readers how to identify

whether a pitch is placed on a line or space in the musical staff, the treatise cautions, “so

also in the songs of your Boke, ye se[e] rules and spaces”38 One passage even

demonstrates the author’s knowledge of the specific tunes that accompany the psalm

texts: “but all these Kayes ar not signed or set in these Psalmes: but onely ii. or three

most commonly c, or e, or b.”39

Having outlined the preface’s music-theoretical content, I would like to add

some brief thoughts considering this preface in relation to musica speculativa, one of the

two kinds of musical knowledge discussed in Chapter 3. The title of the treatise itself, “A

shorte Introduction into the Science of Musicke,” refers to music as a science, alluding to

its place in the quadrivium and, for the knowledgeable reader, bringing to mind

36 Sig. +.ii.r. 37 Sig. +.vii.r. 38 Sig. +.iii.v. 39 Sig. +.iii.r. The treatise means “f” rather than “e;” see Chapter 6 for discussion of this frequent error in the

typesetting of the 1562 edition’s music preface. In this passage, the author is grouping discussion of clefs (C

and F clefs) with mention of the two options for B available in the gamut (B-natural and B-flat).

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philosophical study of music’s place in education and in the universe. The preface’s

intended audience of the musically-illiterate, however, would have little to no

understanding of the references being made by this description of music as a science.

The treatise itself does not contain any explanation of these speculative concepts, and so

the reference remains passing, demonstrating the author’s expertise but failing to

educate the reader. Throughout the treatise, there is no explanation of the moral effect of

music or good singing, or the effect of music on one’s emotions or health. A great many

music-theoretical concepts are overlooked, some of which—harmony and consonance in

particular—fall under the realm of musica speculativa. Indeed, in this music preface and

unlike many other sixteenth-century printed English music theory treatises (as in, for

example, Bathe’s Skill of Song and Morley’s Brief Introduction—see Chapter 3), musica

speculativa and musica practica are never named or their relationship explained.

This very short, practical treatise falls entirely under the realm of musica practica

(technical skills and composition), and—containing no instruction in composition—is an

extremely incomplete exemplar of that genre. Its singular purpose was to provide an

elementary form of music education for its general audience. While it is not a complete

music theory treatise in comparison with its contemporaries, it could certainly provide

some sight-singing ability (though neither compositional technique nor improvisatory

singing). And as I have shown in Chapter 3, this preface was by far the most widely-

available music theory treatise for the general populace in sixteenth-century England,

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with twelve editions published between 1561 and 1583 (one in the 1560/1561 Psalmes and

eleven in WBPs) in comparison with the single edition of most other music theory

treatises (at most, the possibly three editions of Le Roy’s Instruction).

The Solmization Preface

In contrast to the eleven-page music preface, which covered a wide but, as we have seen,

incomplete variety of music theory topics, the solmization preface is contained on a

single page and covers only one concept: how to understand the solmization syllables

printed in the music throughout the psalter (see Chapter 5 for a complete transcription).

The earliest surviving WBP edition to include solmization syllables and the

accompanying preface is STC 2439.5, which was printed in 1569 and survives in only

one copy, held at the Bodleian Library. Later editions did not change its content,

although spelling does vary, and a series of editions near the end of the sixteenth

century contain a recurring error (to be discussed in Chapter 6).

At first glance, this preface seems to describe a standard hexachordal

arrangement of solmization syllables. The use of these syllables throughout the psalter,

however, is by no means straightforward. Chapter 5 is devoted to close analysis of the

WBP’s system of fixed-scale solmization (distinctly different than contextual

hexachordal solmization), so I will not repeat myself here. More important for this

chapter’s argument is the fact that no solmization psalter included the music preface,

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and no WBP edition including the music preface printed solmization syllables. The

printed fixed-scale solmization syllables with accompanying preface is clearly

considered an alternate form of educational aid, one at odds with the more traditional

hexachordal solmization described in the music preface.

I promised in Chapter 3 to return to the woodcut found in Day’s 1563 Whole

Psalmes in Foure Partes, in which a father instructs his wife and four sons in solmization

using the Guidonian hand (recall Figure 9). Before the publication of the first solmized

WBP in 1569, this very closely-related collection of music from the same publisher

offered a distinct visual image of the teaching of traditional hexachords, one that

reinforced the woodcut image of the gamut found in the music preface. Both the music

preface and the woodcut demonstrate traditional hexachords, and it becomes clear that

the WBP did not introduce the idea of fixed scales from its beginning.40 The solmization

preface is not only an alternate form of musical education in comparison with the music

preface, it is a conflicting one. Instead, 1569 was a significant watershed moment in the

history of English music theory: the point at which fixed-scale solmization was

introduced (as I show in Chapter 5, about thirty years prior to Bathe’s and Morley’s

treatises, which have up until now been thought to be the advent of fixed-scale

solmization). And yet, we do not know who authored the solmization preface or

40 This realization comes in part from Kirsten Gibson, who is, to my knowledge, the first to point out that the

father in the woodcut is teaching his children the hexachord: “Age, Masculinity and Music in Early Modern

England,” in Gender, Age and Musical Creativity, ed. Catherine Haworth and Lisa Colton (Farnham: Ashgate,

2015), 55-56.

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assigned syllables to the WBP’s tunes, so we cannot know who is responsible for this

theoretical shift. STC 2439.5 took the trajectory of English music theory in a different

direction.

One might speculate that the two music-theoretical prefaces were intended for

different audiences, the simpler, single-page solmization preface meant for singers who

merely needed a guide to singing and did not need the more comprehensive musical

education provided by the music preface. This presentation echoes the basic educational

hierarchy employed in the music education of sixteenth-century choristers, in which

solmization was the first musical concept taught, even before the gamut.41 The

solmization preface, then, offered the first step toward musical literacy: solmization

syllables taught before letter names.

That hypothesis is problematized, however, by the typefaces employed by the

two prefaces. All eleven of the surviving music prefaces were printed using blackletter

font. The solmization preface, on the other hand, was consistently printed in italic roman

typeface as well as some un-italicized roman typeface for its two musical examples (text

underlay naming the solmization syllables). Although the situation is reversed for us

today, some have argued that in sixteenth-century England, blackletter was much easier

for the average person to read than roman type. Consequently, both roman and italic

41 Jane Flynn, “The Education of Choristers in England During the Sixteenth Century,” in English Choral

Practice, 1400-1650, ed. John Morehen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 183.

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type became associated with more sophisticated, intellectual, and academic works, while

blackletter was commonly employed when books were aimed at a more inexperienced

or less literate readership. This pattern was found in many popular genres of religious

printed texts, including catechisms, Bibles, and cheap print. It was not until the

seventeenth century that the position would reverse, roman type becoming the more

common and readable typeface.42 Why would the simpler solmization preface be printed

in roman typeface and the more comprehensive music preface in blackletter? The

specific addresses to the reader in each preface fall along these same lines, the music

preface directed to “the rude & ignorant in Song” and the solmization preface to the

“gentle Reader.” Yet these assumed audiences seem counterintuitive—shouldn’t it have

been the other way around, the easier preface printed in the easier typeface and thus

specifically aimed at the less educated reader?

An alternative reading of the semitics of blackletter does not offer much more

clarity. Zachary Lesser does not concur with Thomas’s argument that blackletter was

easier to read, arguing instead that use of the typeface signified not literate ability but

Englishness, English musical knowledge, English state authority, and nostalgia for

42 Keith Thomas, “The Meaning of Literacy in Early Modern England,” in The Written Word: Literacy in

Transition, ed. Gerd Baumann (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 99; Ian Green, The Christian’s ABC: Catechisms

and Catechizing in England c.1530-1740 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 7, 255-256. Green points out that the

choice of typeface was not always representative of strong publisher intentions but might also reflect

physical limitations such as a shortage of pieces of type. John Day’s large print shop, however, was unlikely

to face this problem.

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antiquity.43 This interpretation does not solve this question of the WBP’s preface

typefaces but instead presents a different puzzle. If blackletter symbolized English

musical knowledge, we would expect the music preface with its very traditional

medieval and continental music-theoretical content to be placed in roman typeface, and

the uniquely English solmization preface to be printed in blackletter. Yet this is not the

case. Only the last of Lesser’s constellation of meanings—blackletter evoking a “past-

ness” referencing antiquity—has any apparent significance for the WBP’s prefaces: the

traditional form of music theory printed in blackletter and the new solmization scheme

in roman typeface.

We do have evidence that the solmization preface was thought to be useful. STC

2478 (dated 1591) is one of the WBP editions that contains no prefatory material. A copy

of this edition that is now held at the British Library bears witness to the utility of the

solmization preface.44 One enterprising reader took advantage of the blank title page

verso and wrote in the music examples from the solmization preface (see Figure 14).

This manuscript annotation is a faithful transcription of the solmization preface,

complete with solmization letters in the musical staves and the full syllables printed

beneath, as well as the solmization preface’s idiosyncratic spelling of the third syllable as

“MY,” although the reader originally copied a few of the text-underlay syllables

43 Zachary Lesser, “Typographic Nostalgia: Play-Reading, Popularity, and the Meaning of Black Letter,” in

The Book of the Play: Playwrights, Stationers, and Readers in Early Modern England, ed. Marta Straznicky

(Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006), 103-108. 44 British Library shelfmark 3435.bb.29.

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incorrectly and later corrected the error. Solmization syllables are not printed in STC

2478, but the reader apparently still found it helpful to refer to a handy summary of

them when approaching the psalter and its tunes.

Figure 14. Manuscript Addition of Solmization Preface Music Examples45

Protestant Advocacy for Musical Literacy

As I showed in Chapter 3, the WBP’s music and solmization prefaces were unique

among the music theory works produced in sixteenth-century England. They were

neither introductory essays found in instrumental instruction books like Le Roy’s

Instruction or the anonymous Pathway to Musicke, nor freestanding music theory

textbooks like Bathe’s True Art or Skill of Song and Morley’s Plaine and Easie Introduction.

45 WBP 1591, STC 2478. Photograph taken by the author, courtesy of the British Library. Title page verso.

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The WBP’s two music-theoretical psalter prefaces were accompaniments to Protestant

books of congregational song. This section will explore two Protestant facets of these

materials. First, both prefaces employed sacred or even scriptural language that allowed

them to serve as religious instruction or even as prayers. Second, both prefaces were

simultaneously theoretical treatises and epistles to the reader, making a statement about

their audience that was unusual in sixteenth-century English print culture (and

especially in musical print culture).

Prefaces and Prayers

Both prefaces employ religious language that gives sacred meaning to this musical

education, emphasizing that the musical skills taught were intended for the purpose of

enabling and encouraging the singing of psalms. The music preface explains that the

singing of psalms is a “godly exercise” that serves as “thankes and prayses to God,” and

that this musical devotion could take place in a variety of settings and communities,

both in church and at home. The final section of the solmization preface is even more

prayerful in nature: “Thus I commit thee vnto him that liueth for euer, who graunt that

wee may sing with our hartes and mindes vnto the glory of his holy name. Amen.”

These words serve as a benediction for the reader and singer, using language similar to

Scripture and liturgical collects. It is assumed that the reader is gaining this theoretical

knowledge for the improvement of his or her devotional life.

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Music Theory Treatises and Epistles to the Reader

Both music-theoretical prefaces clearly indicate their simultaneous and parallel function

as epistles to the reader with the title or running title “To the Reader,” and both name

and address their readers directly. The music preface advertises itself as intended “for

such as are desirous to haue the knowledge…” and the solmization preface describes its

“gentle Reader” as one who is “desirous to learne to sing.”

What, then, is an epistle to the reader? Though the utility of this genre may seem

obvious, open-ended, and optional to modern readers, in the context of sixteenth-

century English printing, the presence of prefatory letters was an expected part of the

early modern printed book and their function was well-understood and bound by a set

of conventions. An epistle to the reader addressed the reader directly, interpreted the

following text for that reader, and prompted some desired reader response. There have

been several studies of early modern English epistles to the reader, which, taken

together, offer a multifaceted picture of the content and goal of this prefatory genre.

Michael Saenger has taken a commercial approach to early modern paratexts. In

his view, prefatory materials were directed not primarily to readers but to potential

readers, advertising and presenting the content that followed in an effort to convince a

viewer in a bookshop to become a purchaser.46 A prefatory epistle was therefore

46 Michael Saenger, The Commodification of Textual Engagements in the English Renaissance (Aldershot: Ashgate,

2006), 1.

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a disguised advertisement which promotes the book and entices the

reader into a particular frame of mind most suited to enjoying that

particular book… It is a private epistle, but not to a person who exists

prior to its consumption. Rather, it is directed (whether explicitly or

through subterfuge) to the imaginary customer which it helps to create.47

Usually paired with an epistle dedicatory, the epistle to the reader was “marked by a

contrastingly low tone of address,” and colloquial rather than formal language.48 The

epistle dedicatory, directed to an influential dedicatee in the hope of financial

remuneration, adopted a lofty tone, but the letter to the reader (seemingly

individualized but in truth directed to all potential readers except the hoped-for patron)

instead assumed a lower-class and far wider audience: “the former is formal, figuring

the work as an inadequate private gift, whereas the latter is colloquial, figuring the work

as a good bargain on sale to the public.”49 Both types of epistles aimed at financial

success, but the method for obtaining that success varied. Because the dedicatee was

chosen by the author, but anyone could become a book’s reader, the letter to the reader

was different in both tone and intent.

Neither an epistle dedicatory nor the epistle to the reader, however, filled the

role which we assign to modern introductions: describing and summarizing the book

itself. Instead of discussing the content of the book that follows, the early modern epistle

to the reader attempted to dictate the reader’s approach and response to the text. John

47 Ibid., 55, emphasis in original. 48 Ibid., 63. 49 Ibid., 63.

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Kerrigan has examined the ways in which addresses to the reader define and

circumscribe the appropriate audience for a given work, further shaping their audiences

by attempting to describe (but also constrain and compel) the reader’s approach; these

letters “attempt to manage reader-responses editorially.”50

Helen Brayman Hackel describes this phenomenon as “constructing the gentle

reader.”51 Rather than wooing the prospective reader (as in Saenger’s conception of

commercially-oriented paratext), Hackel argues that “many early modern authors and

publishers composed prefaces that tried to shape and control the reception of their

books. Three tactics, often used together, recur in many prefaces: the construction of a

‘gentle reader,’ a bid for protection, and the opposition to a hostile reader.”52 In defining

the ideal (friendly, uncritical, and impartial) reader, the address to the reader served as a

gateway, “drawing in desirable readers and sending others away.”53 The “gentle,”

“courteous,” “friendly,” “docile,” “discreet,” “Christian,” and “learned” reader (these

are ubiquitous and nearly interchangeable descriptions of readers, many with class

associations54) may be constructed in part by the epistle’s presumptive assumption of

50 John Kerrigan, “The editor as reader: constructing Renaissance texts,” in The Practice and Representation of

Reading in England, ed. James Raven, Helen Small, and Naomi Tadmor (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1996), 110. 51 Hackel, Reading Material, Chapter 3. 52 Ibid., 116. 53 Ibid., 87. 54 Ibid., 116.

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such traits: “the business of the preface is to shape each unknown reader into a

receptive, pleasant reader.”55

These studies of the epistle genre help inform our understanding of the ways in

which the WBP’s “Shorte Introduction into the Science of Musicke” and solmization

preface “To the Reader” interacted with their genre and would have been understood by

their audience. Like a traditional epistle to the reader, the theoretical prefaces attempted

to influence the reader’s approach to the psalter by enabling an accurate reading of the

musical notation that accompanies the psalm texts. Addressed to a broad audience,

demonstrating a definite commercial quality, and attempting to influence their

audience’s approach to the book’s main content, these letters to the reader participated

in their genre—yet they also served an educational function, teaching music-theoretical

content. In doing so, the WBP’s two music-theoretical prefaces stretched the limits of the

conventional epistle to the reader.

While epistles to the reader were common in printed books of the time, it was

highly unusual to include one without also an epistle dedicatory. In the context of

sixteenth-century English music printing, this singular epistle was almost unheard of. To

understand how the WBP fit into its context, I consulted 78 instances of printed music

from England between 1530 (the first known example of music printing in England) and

1603 (the end of the reign of Elizabeth I, so Thomas Robinson’s 1603 Schoole of Musicke,

55 Ibid., 117.

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dedicated to James I, was beyond the scope of my search), looking to see what prefatory

material was printed in each text. The complete list is available as Appendix 4. This list

is not entirely comprehensive; it lacks Sarum liturgical books, broadsides (single sheets,

including William Byrd’s Gratification unto John Case), later editions of these books

(including Thomas East’s hidden editions56), Day’s partial psalters published after the

advent of the WBP, and Scottish editions of the WBP. Everything on this list, however, is

a multi-page book of printed music (including music theory treatises, which contained a

great many musical examples), and it is representative of musical print culture in

sixteenth-century England. In Appendix 4, I have indicated the prefatory material each

book included: epistle dedicatory, epistle to the reader, or other prefatory material,

including woodcuts, indices and other lists or tables, other prefatory essays, prologues,

dedicatory poems, and endorsements.

Of these 78 music prints, it is far more common to see an epistle dedicatory than

an epistle to the reader: in total 52 have epistles dedicatory and 30 have epistles to the

reader. As Table 6 shows, while 32 prints have only an epistle dedicatory and 20 have

both, only ten have epistles to the reader without an accompanying epistle dedicatory.

These ten works, listed in Figure 15, can be divided into two categories. Eight of them

are psalters, most of which are very closely related to the WBP. The other two are music

56 See Jeremy L. Smith, “The Hidden Editions of Thomas East,” Notes, Second Series, Vol. 53, No. 4 (June,

1997), 1059-1091; and idem, Thomas East and Music Publishing in Renaissance England (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2003), passim.

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instructional manuals: one is an English translation of a French introduction to playing

the lute, and the other is a music theory textbook—neither is a music book in the sense

of “just a collection of scores.”

Table 6. Epistolary Content of 78 Music Prints

Epistle dedicatory

only

Both epistles Epistle to the reader

only

Neither epistle

32 prints 20 10 16

Psalters:

Miles Coverdale’s c. 1535 Goostly Psalmes

Robert Crowley’s 1549 Psalter of David

John Day’s 1560/1561 Psalmes. Of David, one of the partial psalters

John Day’s 1561 Hondert Psalmen Davids and 1566 De Psalmen Davidis, both collections of

Dutch psalmody

John Day’s 1562 WBP

Matthew Parker’s 1567 Whole Psalter

William Daman’s 1579 Psalmes of David, a WBP harmonization

Music Theory Texts:

Adrian le Roy’s 1568 Briefe and Easye Instrution

William Bathe’s c. 1596 Skill of Song

Figure 15. Music Books Containing an Epistle to the Reader Without an Epistle

Dedicatory

There are no printed music books not associated with psalms or with music

education that place the kind of emphasis on the reader associated with the inclusion of

only an epistle to the reader without also an epistle dedicatory. None of the collections of

printed music that characterize sixteenth-century musical culture to modern scholars are

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on this short list: not the famous 1575 Byrd/Tallis Cantiones Sacrae, any of Byrd’s other

collections, lute songbooks, reprinted continental music, and so on. Conventional music

books did not print an epistle to the reader without also an epistle dedicatory. Only

Protestant psalters and music theory books, which by definition courted a broader

audience than the traditional music books intended for more upper-class music-making

households, ever had the one epistle without the other. Furthermore, with the exception

of the WBP (and the 1560/1561 Psalmes, the first appearance of the WBP’s music preface),

none of the epistles to the reader found in the other eight books on this short list were

music theory treatises, but rather more traditional members of this epistolary genre. Out

of all the music books published in sixteenth-century England, only the WBP and its

parent contained a preface that served both functions.

With its two musically didactic epistles to the reader, the WBP made it clear that

the music-theoretical knowledge it contained was intended for everybody, opening up

this musical knowledge to the laity just as the Protestant vernacular Bible made

available the literary secrets of Scripture. Because the WBP contained only an epistle to

the reader, there was no implicit hierarchy, the common reader placed below privileged

dedicatee. All who “are desirous to haue the knowledge therof, for the singing of these

Psalmes” were welcome. The Protestant WBP saw its audience as made up of readers

who ought to be taught—perhaps deserve to be taught—the rudiments of music theory,

in order to aid and improve their practice of congregational and devotional singing.

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Metrical Psalmody in Schools

Having spent the majority of this chapter detailing the ways in which the WBP was

intended as an aid to music education, I conclude by exploring the intriguing possibility

that this psalter may have been employed literally as a music textbook.57 It seems clear

that the WBP was used in schools. Is it possible that not only its scriptural texts but also

its music-educational material were formally used as pedagogical tools?

A number of grammar schools required students and instructors to sing the

psalms, sometimes then leading the singing in local parish churches or cathedrals.

Consulting grammar school statutes, Nicholas Temperley located six such situations:

Worcester free school (1561); Sevenoaks grammar school (Temperley does not provide a

date); St Saviour, Southwark, parish school (1562); St Olave, Southwark, parish school

(1566); Kirkby Stephen grammar school (1566); and Burford grammar school (1571).58

Kirkby Stephen, for example, demanded twice-daily psalm-singing for students and

schoolmaster, and its statutes included recommendations for specific psalms:

I will that every morning and evening at six of the clock, which are days

for learning of scholars and keeping of school, the scholars by two and

two and the schoolmaster shall go from the school-house into the Parish

Church and there devoutly upon their knees before they do enter the

choir say some devout prayer, and after the same they shall repair

together into the chapel or choir, where I have made and set up a tomb

57 The theory that metrical psalters were used in schools originated in Jonathan Willis, Church Music and

Protestantism in Post-Reformation England: Discourses, Sites and Identities (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010),

Chapter 3. 58 Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church, 63.

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and there sing together one of the psalms hereafter instituted, such as the

schoolmaster shall appoint—so as every of the said psalms be sung

within fifteen days together, viz: [Psalms] 103, 130, 145, 46, 3, 61, 24, 30,

90, 96, 100, 51, 84, 86, 45.59

In a section recommending a structure for “Schoole times, intermissions and

recreations,” John Brinsley’s 1612 educational guide, Ludus Literarius, called for an

evening routine of

reading a peece of Chapter, and with singing two staues of a Psalme:

lastly, with prayer to be vsed by the Master. For the Psalmes, euery

schollar should begin to giue the Psalme and the tune in order, and to

reade euery verse fefore them, or euery one to haue his booke (if it can

bee) and reade it as they doe sing it: where any one can not begin the

tune, his next fellow beneath is to helpe him, and take his place. By this

they will all learne to giue the tunes sweetely, which is a thing very

commendable; and also it will helpe both reading, voyce and audicity in

the younger.60

Here Brinsley not only commanded daily sung psalmody for schoolboys but also

advised each student to own his own copy of the metrical psalter. Lest we wonder

whether Brinsley may have meant chanting prose psalms, he made his preference for the

metrical psalter clear earlier in the text. In a section detailing “How the Schollar may be

taught to reade English speedily,” Brinsley explained, “After these [the ABC and the

primer] they may reade ouer other English bookes. Amongst which, the Psalms in metre

59 Qtd. in Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church, 63, from Foster Watson, The English Grammar

Schools to 1660: Their Curriculum and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), 42. 60 John Brinsley, Ludus Literarius: Or, the Grammar Schoole (London: [Humphrey Lownes for] Thomas Man,

1612), 298.

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would be one, because children wil learne that booke with most readinesse and delight

through the running of the metre, as it is found by experience.”61

These statutes do not specify the WBP by name, but for most of these schools,

it—or in the case of the earlier statues, one of Day’s partial psalters—was undoubtedly

their source for metrical psalms. Further evidence that the WBP provided the metrical

psalms for grammar schools can be found in Edmund Coote’s The English schoole-master

(1596). This best-selling grammar school textbook, reprinted many times throughout the

seventeenth century, printed the texts (but not the tunes) for the WBP’s metrical versions

of Psalms 1, 4, 50, 51, 67, 104, 112, 113, 120, 126, and 148, as well as a prose version of

Psalm 119.62 Ian Green theorizes that the WBP probably found a profitable market as a

school textbook (particularly the smaller, cheaper editions found especially in the early

seventeenth century), alongside its other audiences, which included cathedral,

collegiate, and parish choirs as well as parish priests and literate adults wanting

personal copies.63

The place of music education in grammar schools may be disputed in modern

scholarship (see Chapter 3), but there is no question that music itself was used as a tool

61 Ibid., 17-18. 62 Edmund Coote, The English schoole-maister (London: Printed by the widow Orwin, for Ralph Iackson, and

Robert Dextar, 1596), 49-63. 63 Ian Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 509-

512.

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for religious pedagogy in schools.64 Its effectiveness was due to the assumed power of

music to affect the emotions of its hearers, especially children, who were particularly

susceptible to its influence.65 Music was believed to make boring topics less monotonous

and to serve as an aid to memorization.66 Metrical psalms and godly ballads especially

were used in schools to teach moral behavior and as forms of religious instruction.67

If the WBP was being used as a textbook in grammar schools, a means of

religious instruction and daily musical and spiritual recreation, might it be possible that

it—with its two musical prefaces—was also being used as a music theory textbook?

There is no indisputable evidence for this assertion, but the possibility remains. Recall

the debates among modern scholars, discussed in Chapter 3, over whether music was

being taught in grammar schools. Since WBPs were present in these schools, their music-

theoretical educational materials would have been available too. I have spent this

chapter arguing that alongside its identities as a book of Scripture and a musical score,

the WBP also functioned as a music instruction book. The idea that it may have come to

be used as a literal music textbook in Elizabethan England is an intriguing one.

64 For an overview of this, see Willis, Church Music and Protestantism, 164-180, and idem, “‘By These Means

the Sacred Discourses Sink More Deeply into the Minds of Men’: Music and Education in Elizabethan

England,” History 94 (July 2009): 294-309. 65 Willis, “By These Means,” 296-300. See also Linda Phyllis Austern’s work on sixteenth-century English

belief in the affective power of music, including “‘Sing Againe Syren’: The Female Musician and Sexual

Enchantment in Elizabethan Life and Literature,” Renaissance Quarterly 42, No. 3 (Autumn, 1989): 420-448;

and “‘Alluring the Auditorie to Effeminacie’: Music and the Idea of the Feminine in Early Modern England,”

Music & Letters 74, No. 3 (Aug., 1993): 343-354. 66 Willis, Church Music and Protestantism, 170. 67 Willis, “By These Means,” 300-302.

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Chapter 5. “Come to the knowledge of perfect Solfaing”: Solmization in The Whole Booke of Psalmes

In this chapter, we shift from understanding The Whole Booke of Psalmes’ identity as a

music textbook that advocated for musical literacy to analyzing the WBP as a music

theory treatise that advanced theoretical ideas concerning pitch in sixteenth-century

England. Here I take a close look at the assignment of solmization syllables in those

editions of the psalter that printed them, and I consider how they differ from

solmization techniques on the Continent and in later English music theory treatises.

Hexachordal Solmization

I begin with reference to Figure 12 in the previous chapter, the image of the gamut

placed near the beginning of the music preface found in some early editions of the WBP.

This sixteenth-century visual depiction of the nearly three octaves that made up the full

range of musical space theorized by medieval and Renaissance musicians was a

standard opening to music theory treatises. Its imaginative use of organ pipes can be

found in continental treatises such as Franchinus Gaffurius’s Theorica Musicae (Milan,

1492), Practica Musicae (Milan, 1496), and De Harmonia Musicorum (Milan, 1518), and

Louis Bourgeois’s Le Droict Chemin de Musique (Geneva, 1550). The span ranges from G2,

known as “gamma-ut” and symbolized by the Greek letter gamma, to E5, known as “E-

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la,” depicted here as “e-e” (these note names are in line with sixteenth-century English

practice, including Bathe’s Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Song and Morley’s Plaine and

Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke). This range of notes is organized as a series of

interlocking hexachords: sets of six notes built on G, C, or F. In the eleventh century,

Guido of Arezzo had named these six notes Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, and La, after the first

syllable of each phrase of the medieval hymn Ut queant laxis (see Figure 16).

Figure 16. Ut queant laxis1

Hexachordal solmization was intended as a sight-singing tool.2 Singers became

adept at assigning syllables to melodies, which helped them easily identify intervals—

solmization syllables are separated by a whole tone, except for the all-important

semitone separating Mi and Fa. However, not all melodies fit within the limited range of

1 Adapted from Stefano Mengozzi, The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2010), 2. 2 For an extended treatment of Guido’s use of Ut queant laxis as the basis for a new singing method centered

around solmization syllables, see Dolores Pesce, “Guido d’Arezzo, Ut queant laxis, and Musical

Understanding,” in Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Russel E. Murray, Susan

Forscher Weiss, and Cynthia J. Cyrus (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), 25-36. Summary of

Guido’s syllables along with discussion of solmization-based sight singing as it became standardized in the

medieval period appears in Stefano Mengozzi, The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory, 1-7 and

passim.

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a single hexachord. Because many melodies spanned more than a sixth, it was often

necessary to switch from one hexachord to another, a process known as “mutation.”3

Solmization in England

Scholars have noticed that around the turn of the seventeenth century, English music

theory treatises began to demonstrate a new way of organizing pitches, naming scales

according to a fixed series of solmization syllables rather than by hexachords. In 1990,

Timothy Johnson wrote of England’s shift away from traditional hexachordal theory,

arguing that beginning with William Bathe’s late sixteenth-century treatise A Briefe

Introduction to the Skill of Song (c. 1596), English musicians began to theorize the scale as

“a fixed series of syllables and a clearly defined tonal center.”4 Johnson’s article is

weakened by his insistence on a teleological viewpoint—he reads this English music

theory evolving beyond the hexachord towards tonality—but his article was an

important first step in our understanding of English Renaissance approaches to pitch,

key, and modulation.

3 Suggested reading regarding the basics of hexachordal solmization: Gaston G. Allaire, The Theory of

Hexachords, Solmization and the Modal System: A Practical Application (American Institute of Musicology, 1972);

Mengozzi, The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory, 1-7 and passim; Lionel Pike, Hexachords in Late-

Renaissance Music (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 13-16 and passim; Anne Smith, “Solmization,” in The

Performance of 16th-Century Music: Learning from the Theorists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 20-54. 4 Timothy A. Johnson, “Solmization in the English Treatises Around the Turn of the Seventeenth Century: A

Break from Modal Theory,” Theoria 5 (1990): 42-60, quotation on 44.

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Eight years later, Jessie Ann Owens responded to Johnson in an essay that

remains the standard study of English Renaissance music theory.5 She critiqued

scholars’ preoccupation with tonality in sixteenth-century English music—a problem

that is by no means limited to Timothy Johnson—but her much more comprehensive

and nuanced analysis of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century music theory

treatises came to the same conclusion as Johnson: English theorists moved away from

hexachordal solmization and adopted fixed scales, which differed by key signature

rather than tonic (as in common-practice tonality). A single note would have only one

assigned syllable, rather than the several possibilities offered by contextual hexachordal

theory, though the specific syllables used to identify pitches varied by key signature and

even by English author. Owens writes:

English music theory from the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the

seventeenth centuries presents a remarkably consistent profile. With the

exception of the anonymous author of The Pathway [to Musicke], whom

Morley criticized for ‘filching’ from German theory texts, and the other

translation of continental theory, all of the writers recognize the existence

of three scales, each with its own ‘key signature’: no flats, one flat, two

flats. … Each scale is associated with one of several possible systems of

solmization… While the number of syllables employed can vary from

four to six or seven, the fundamental principles of solmization remain

constant. Solmization is fixed, with a complete or near-complete

congruence between syllable and pitch class. There is no need to think in

terms of hexachords or to invoke the principles of mutation. Syllables

5 Jessie Ann Owens, “Concepts of Pitch in English Music Theory, c. 1560-1640,” in Tonal Structures in Early

Music, ed. Cristle Collins Judd (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), 183-246.

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keep the same name whether the line ascends or descends. All of the

systems employ octave duplication.6

Both Johnson and Owens consider fixed-scale solmization to be an English

innovation dating from the end of the sixteenth century, neither examining any English

theoretical writings prior to William Bathe’s first treatise, the 1584 Briefe Introductione to

the True Art of Musicke (see Figure 17). Owens acknowledges that some psalm books

contained short printed English music theory treatises, but they are beyond the scope of

her study. She writes of these earlier psalters, “This vast territory could profitably be

explored for evidence of English solmization practices.”7 Here I do exactly that.

1584 William Bathe, A Briefe Introductione to the True Art of Musicke

c. 1596 William Bathe, A Briefe Introductione to the Skill of Song

1596 Anonymous, The Pathway to Musicke

1597 Thomas Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke

c. 1610 Thomas Ravenscroft, Treatise of Musicke

c. 1613 Thomas Campion, A New Way of Making Fowre Parts in Counterpoint

1636 Charles Butler, The Principles of Music

Figure 17. Complete List of Music-Theoretical Sources Examined by Johnson and

Owens

In this chapter, I present evidence that the origin of fixed-scale solmization dates

from at least thirty years earlier, with sources associated not with music theorists but

with Protestant religious reformers and the English Reformation’s hymnal. I have

6 Ibid., 213. 7 Ibid., 237n29.

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discovered that the shift from contextual hexachords to fixed scales was initiated in the

WBP, a full generation before Bathe’s and Morley’s treatises were published. From 1569

onwards, some editions of the psalter began to employ a music typeface that contained

solmization syllables. These offer the earliest known surviving evidence regarding

England’s transition from hexachords to fixed scales. I discuss the way in which The

Whole Booke of Psalmes systematizes and explains the assignment of solmization syllables

to pitch classes, and I compare this system with that of Bathe and Morley as well as the

continental hexachordal theory found in music books printed in Geneva around the

same time. The first section presents an example of continental hexachordal solmization

as seen in a 1562 edition of the Geneva Psalter. Section two turns to the WBP, analyzing

its preface and the printed syllables to demonstrate how its system of solmization

works. The function of solmization in music education in both England and Geneva is

explored, and I suggest a Protestant motivation for the WBP’s music-theoretical shift.

The final section presents a new interpretation of John Dowland’s A Pilgrimes Solace: this

lute songbook gives evidence that the English style of fixed-scale solmization had taken

hold in English musical practice by 1612.

Continental Hexachords in Practice

Our modern understanding of hexachordal solmization stems largely from music theory

treatises that explain the processes of solmizing melodies and handling mutation. Less

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well-known, and therefore less studied, are several practical (rather than theoretical)

sources. These sources seem to have first occurred in mid-sixteenth-century Geneva,

which saw a number of published musical works that included solmization syllables

printed within or above their musical staves. Thanks to these works, we can observe the

various ways in which solmization syllables were applied in practical situations.

Consider, for example, a 1562 edition of the Geneva Psalter published by Michel

Blanchier for Antoine Vincent (see Figure 18). It is one of several editions of this psalter

that printed solmization syllables in the musical scores for its psalm tunes, and it is a

highly instructive example of hexachordal theory in action. Here, each note is prefaced

by a solmization syllable, the psalm tunes solmized according to the principles of

hexachordal theory as interpreted by this publisher and his staff (most likely, an

unknown musician or musically-literate person contributed a solmized manuscript to

the compositor).

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Figure 18. Hexachordal Solmization in Blanchier’s 1562 Geneva Psalter8

In this setting of Psalm 47, mutation occurs when a phrase extends beyond the

range of the initial hexachord. The opening phrase is solmized using the hexachord on F,

but halfway through the second system, the melody extends above this hexachord’s

range, resulting in a temporary mutation to the hexachord on C. Near the end of the

8 Image from Les Psaumes en vers français avec leurs melodies: ed. Pierre Pidoux, 2nd ed. (Geneva: Librairie

Droz, 1986), 152.

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third system, a mutation to the lower hexachord on C occurs in preparation for the low

E in the fourth system. These shifts continue to accommodate the wide-ranging melody,

and the tune concludes using the hexachord on C due to the penultimate note, a step

below the final. Psalm 47 is unusual in its need for three different hexachord positions,

one built on F, one on the C below, and one on the C above. Most tunes in the psalter

span only two individual hexachords—or in some cases, only one, meaning that the

melody does not exceed six notes in range and no mutation is required.

When multiple hexachords are used to solmize a tune, some pitches have

multiple possible syllables (see Figure 19). In this tune, A3 can be either Mi or La; G3 can

be Re or Sol, F3 can be Ut or Fa. The importance of local context in determining which

syllable is chosen can be easily seen at the end of the third system of Figure 18. For the

phrase ‘Le nom solennel’, the melodic ascent is assigned syllables from the hexachord on

F. Yet these same notes are assigned different syllables on the following descent (‘De

Dieu eternal’) because the phrase continues past F, necessitating a mutation to the

hexachord on C below. The choice of syllable thus depends on the direction of motion

and the local melodic span.

Figure 19. Syllables Used in Blanchier’s Psalm 47

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Fixed-Scale Solmization in The Whole Booke of Psalmes

In the WBP, we see an entirely different approach to syllable selection. Though the

printed notation itself looks extremely similar to that found in the 1562 Geneva Psalter

edition, with solmization syllables (abbreviated to their first letters only) prefacing each

note, analysis of these reveals that their assignment functions under an entirely different

set of rules.

As we saw in Chapter 4, about 35% of WBP editions published during the reign

of Elizabeth I included solmization syllables—specifically, 44 of the 133 editions I have

viewed (see again Figure 11). All solmized psalters included a brief and anonymous

preface explaining the purpose and working of the syllables. The text of this preface

follows in full, with spelling and punctuation taken from the first edition in which

solmization appeared (1569, STC 2439.5, located at the Bodleian Library):9

TO THE READER.

THou shalt vnderstand (gentle Reader) that I haue (for the helpe of those that are

desirous to learne to sing) caused a new Print of Note to be made wyth letters to

be ioyned to euery Note: whereby thou mayst know how to call euery Note by his

right name, so that with a very little diligence (as thou art taught in the

Introduction Printed heeretofore in the Psalmes) thou mayst the more easily by

the v[i]ewing of these letters, come to the knowledge of perfect Solf[a]yng:10

9 The text underlay spelling out the solmization syllables in full does not appear in this 1569 edition, nor in

six later sixteenmo (16o) editions, which were too small for this additional text, but it can be found in all

other editions of the solmization preface. 10 Sixteenth-century printing was not characterized by standardized spelling. Variations in the spelling of

“Solf[a]yng” (as it appears here in STC 2439.5) include “Solfaing,” “Solefaying,” Solefayeng,” and

“Solfaing.”

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whereby thou mayst sing the Psalmes the more easier.11 The letters be these. V.

for Vt, R. for Re. M. for My. F. for Fa, S. for Sol, L. for La. Thus where you see

any letter ioyned by the note. You may easily call him by his right name, as by

these two examples you may the better perceiue.

Thus committing thee12 vnto him that liueth for euer, who graunt that we may

sing with our hartes and mindes vnto the glory of hys holy name. Amen.

When the anonymous author wrote, “I haue…caused a new Print of Note to be made

wyth letters to be ioyned to euery Note,” he aptly described the mechanics of the

typeface itself. Single letters representing the syllables were separate pieces of type,

fitted together with noteheads by the compositor (rather than already cast together).13 It

was a system that might lend itself to frequent printing errors. However, while there

were occasional misalignments between syllable and note, mislabeled syllables, notes

lacking syllables, and gaps between notes and syllables, these printed solmization

syllables were usually rendered quite accurately (though some editions were more

prone to errors than others).

11 Later editions read “thou mayst sing the Psalmes the more speedily and easily.” 12 Later editions read “Thus I commit thee.” 13 D. W. Krummel, English Music Printing 1553-1700 (London: The Biographical Society, 1975), 72-73.

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This preface promises readers “the knowledge of perfect Solf[a]ying” and offers

a simple didactic tool for that purpose: a pair of music examples, each showing an

ascending and descending scale with solmization syllables. The first example is a six-

note scale using the six hexachordal syllables, with Ut placed on C. The second example

also begins on Ut, but it spans more than an octave, beginning with the full hexachord

on G and adding several syllables from the higher hexachord on C. This mutation to a

higher hexachord is shown with no explanation; indeed, neither mutation nor

hexachords are even named, much less defined. The lack of explanation is indicative of

the essentially passive experience of the person singing from the WBP, who does not

need to make any decisions about where and when to mutate, but who simply follows

the printed syllables. This typeface allows the novice reader to see any note and “easily

call him by his right name,” avoiding entanglement with the complex issues of

hexachordal theory.

The mechanical setting of the solmization typeface parallels the theoretical

concept: solmization syllables are attached to individual notes both literally (notes and

syllables as pieces of type) and figuratively (as fixed-scale solmization). Analysis shows

that with one strange exception (a setting of the Lord’s Prayer, to be discussed shortly),

the psalter is completely consistent in its assignment of syllables. All other tunes in the

WBP demonstrate a fixed solmization system rather than a contextual hexachordal

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system.14 Figure 20 shows how the system works throughout the entire 1569 edition.15

There is no need to think in terms of mutating hexachords because every pitch is reliably

given the same syllable, regardless of the final or the direction of motion. By this, I mean

“absolute pitch,” not “pitch class”—there is no automatic octave equivalence in the

WBP’s assignment of solmization syllables. Unlike the Geneva Psalter already discussed,

in the WBP no pitch is ever given any other syllable than those listed in Figure 20 (except

in error), with the exceptions of G3 and A3, each of which has two syllable options for

reasons that will become clear. In spite of the use of the traditional Guidonian syllables,

hexachordal solmization has been abandoned. Two fixed scales are used, according to

key signature: a no-flat scale and a one-flat scale.16

14 Kevin Karnes has also examined solmization in the WBP, erroneously concluding that “the solmization

provided by Day seems to derive from a hexachordal system.” He argues that the use of two different

syllables for E in Psalm 31—Mi in the lower octave and La in the upper—is indicative of hexachordal

thinking: Kevin Karnes, “Bathe’s A Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Song: History, Context, Significance,” in

William Bathe, A Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Song, ed. Kevin C. Karnes (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 27-29.

It is true that viewed individually, many psalm tunes appear to employ hexachords, but taken as an

aggregate, the psalter tunes do demonstrate the same kind of fixed-scale thinking that would occur in

William Bathe’s later treatise. Without examining all of the WBP’s solmized tunes, Karnes did not realize

that the psalter is, in fact, completely consistent in its assignment of syllables, and that it clearly

demonstrates a fixed-scale system rather than a contextual hexachordal system. 15 Later editions duplicate the same solmization choices, though misprints did occur. 16 England was not alone in its concept of fixed-scale solmization. Some late sixteenth- and early

seventeenth-century continental theorists proposed doing away with mutations by fixing syllables to

pitches. These included Hubert Waelrant in Antwerp, Erycius Puteanus in Milan, and Adriano Banchieri in

Venice, and others, all of whom added one or two syllables to the six traditional hexachordal syllables. As

Owens has pointed out, such changes had the effect of fixing syllables to pitches as well as creating octave

equivalence in pitch naming. See Jessie Ann Owens, “Waelrant and Bocedization. Reflections on

Solmization Reform,” Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation 2 (1997): 377–393; and Rebecca Herissone, Music

Theory in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 87-88.

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No-flat scale:

One-flat scale:

Figure 20. Fixed-scale Solmization in the WBP

Open noteheads indicate finals.

As for accidentals, the preface does not give any indication to readers that

accidentals appear in some tunes or any help in understanding how to solmize them.

The B-flats found in no-flat key signatures are all solmized as Fa (obeying the traditional

rule of “Una nota supra la / Semper est canendum fa,” or, “A single note above la /

Should always be sung as fa”). The WBP also includes a single E-flat, found in Psalm

130—its identity as E-flat is due entirely to its syllable assignment, as the E is given no

accidental. No other accidentals beyond these several B-flats and one E-flat appear in the

solmization psalters.17 These few that do appear thus seem to represent a remnant of

medieval solmization practice and fall outside the bounds of the new fixed-scale system.

17 The astute reader will recall that many more accidentals were found in the 1562 edition (see Chapter 2,

Table 2). Within a few years, many of the tunes were smoothed out and accidentals gradually removed.

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The WBP’s setting of Psalm 100 (Figure 21), a popular tune that endures in

modern hymnals, illustrates the practical application of the one-flat system. Like later

English practice, only the lowest two notes of the scale, C and D, are assigned Ut and Re;

all others are Mi, Fa, Sol, or La, prefiguring the four-syllable solmization system popular

in the seventeenth century.18 Were this tune being solmized according to contextual

hexachords, it would employ mainly the hexachord on F with some downward

mutations to the hexachord on C, as required by its plagal range. Here, though, F is Fa,

not Ut, because of the static system of fixed syllables. In both the WBP’s no-flat and one-

flat scales, Ut falls on C (or very occasionally, with a no-flat signature, on G), regardless

of the actual final of the tune. No F in the WBP is ever solmized as Ut, which is why

Psalm 100 displays the odd-looking solmization of its final as Fa.

18 On four-syllable solmization in seventeenth-century England, see Herissone, Music Theory in Seventeenth-

Century England, 86-87, and throughout Chapter 3, “Pitch Structure.”

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Figure 21. Psalm 10019

Comparison with multiple Genevan sources which also printed solmization

syllables is instructive (Figure 22). The tune for the WBP’s Psalm 100 originated in the

Geneva Psalter, where it was originally used for Psalm 134 (“Or sus serviteurs du

Seigneur”). Figure 22 compares the solmization assignments for Psalm 134 from three

Geneva Psalters (Pierre Vallette, c.1560; Pierre Davantes, 1560; Michel Blanchier for

Antoine Vincent, 1562) with that of the WBP’s Psalm 100. As we might expect, the WBP

differs from all of these continental psalters in the solmization of its final phrase, which

falls entirely within the fifth from F to C. In line with their general practice of assigning

Ut to the final of a melody wherever the range of a phrase allowed, the continental

sources employ syllables from the hexachord on F and conclude on Ut. It is also

19 STC 2443 (dated 1573). Photograph taken by the author, courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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interesting to note that not all continental psalters agree with each other, further

demonstration that solmization by means of mutating hexachords was subjective. The

switch in Vallette’s psalter to the hexachord on F for the end of the first phrase and the

beginning of the second, for example, is not wrong, but merely a different reading of the

psalm tune; its syllable assignment could be seen as an attempt to mutate as early as the

melodic range allowed to the hexachord on F, allowing the final of the tune to be

solmized as Ut. The other Genevan editions made different choices, presumably in

favour of the greater simplicity of remaining within the hexachord on C until the ascent

of the melody to B-flat made mutation unavoidable.

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Figure 22. Comparison of Solmization Assignments for Psalm 100 (WBP) and Psalm

134 (Geneva Psalter in Multiple Editions)

The Exceptional Lord’s Prayer

The one tune in the WBP that does not follow the fixed-scale system outlined is the first

of the two settings of the Lord’s Prayer found among the canticles and hymns located

before and after the psalms. It is one of the few tunes in the psalter that are entirely

composed—the complete text is set to music, and there are no additional verses meant to

be sung strophically. In the 1562 edition of the WBP (see Figure 23), the tune is in the

Aeolian mode on D. The final is on D4, and the tune begins a fourth below on A3. The

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melody spans a ninth, with a low plagal range extending from E3, a seventh below the

final, to F4, a third above it. The tune has a one-flat key signature and no accidentals.

Figure 23. First Page of The Lord’s Prayer (WBP 1562, STC 2430)20

Though several tunes were replaced in later editions, this setting of the Lord’s Prayer

survived. It appeared without melodic change in the 1569 edition that first included

printed solmization syllables (STC 2439.5; see Figure 24), and there is nothing about it

that would suggest a different treatment in comparison with all of the other tunes. Based

20 Photograph taken by the author, courtesy of Harvard University’s Houghton Library.

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on the solmization schema I have already described, which was employed consistently

throughout the rest of the psalter, this Lord’s Prayer should follow the one-flat fixed

scale. The tune should begin on La and end on La.

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Figure 24. The Solmized Lord’s Prayer (WBP 1569, STC 2439.5)21

However, the tune ends on Sol. The syllables used for this tune come from the no-flat

fixed scale appropriate for tunes with no key signature. How then are the two B-flats in

the tune treated? Both are solmized as Fa—upper neighbors that are part of a localized

La-Fa-La pattern. Oddly, this means that the scale as a whole for the tune places two Fas

next to each other, one on B-flat and one on C. See Figure 25:

21 Photographs taken by the author, courtesy of the Bodleian Library.

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Figure 25. Solmization Syllables Used in The Lord’s Prayer

Is this simply a misunderstanding born of a key signature problem? The 1569

edition included several key signature misprints in the Lord’s Prayer: the first four

systems lack the one-flat key signature. Did this lack of key signatures lead to the

erroneous use of the no-flat system of solmization rather than the one-flat system? It is

true that across editions, key signatures for this tune varied, sometimes wildly. Missing

key signatures, along with wrong C clefs, are the most common of the WBP’s music

typesetting errors (as I will discuss further in Chapter 6). Many solmized editions lack

the one-flat key signature on some staves of the Lord’s Prayer. Numerous editions

include accidental flats on the two instances of B in the tune. This means that nearly all

psalters have flatted the B, whether by key signature or accidental or both. The variation

in key signature and accidentals never, in my examination, resulted in a note that would

be performed as B-natural. In at least one case (1580, STC 2456.2), a single B lacks both

key signature and accidental, but because it is still solmized as Fa, the half step is still

clear and the B would be performed as B-flat.

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Thus in all cases, this tune is presented as a D Aeolian melody, never D Dorian.

All Bs are supposed to be flat. The printed solmization syllables, taken from the no-flat

system with alterations wherever the note B appears, undermine this modal reading.

The tune is solmized using the no-flat system almost exclusively, and the B-flats are

assigned the syllable Fa as if they are only local inflections (“fa supra la”). B-flats seem to

be anomalies rather than simply a part of the modality of the piece.

It is clear that the solmization syllables were simply copied in future editions.

The piece was never re-analyzed and reset. In the editions printed through to the end of

the century, I have found none that employs a different set of syllables. There was no

sudden realization of error. No correction was introduced (though some editions have

higher numbers of misprints or missing syllables—see Chapter 6 for further discussion

of music printing errors). Because printers over the years never changed the syllables

but merely duplicated those of prior editions, this strange mismatch between the

Aeolian mode on D (which necessitates B-flat) and the printed solmization syllables

(which present B-flat as a local inflection) becomes more pronounced as the one-flat key

signatures again become more consistent. The unsolmized 1562 edition had consistent

one-flat key signatures; solmization psalters from 1569 through the 1580s were often

inconsistent; and solmization psalters from the 1590s again tended to have consistent

signatures. A one-flat key signature, the very first piece of information a singer is

visually given about a work other than the clef, demands the use of the one-flat system

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of solmization. A singer familiar with the syllable assignments throughout the rest of the

psalter would expect this and be stymied by this one exception to the otherwise coherent

solmization system.

Nor do the peculiar syllable choices in the Lord’s Prayer reflect the continental

hexachordal solmization system. The first phrase alone (see Figure 26) makes it clear that

this tune does not represent a reversion to prior hexachordal practice. Since the phrase

begins on A and sweeps upward, continental solmization practices would choose to

start within the hexachords on F or G (depending whether the solmizer understood that

the one-flat key signature was missing). The tune would then mutate to the hexachord

on C when the phrase extended past the limits of the first. Yet that A, the first note of the

tune, is solmized as La from the lower hexachord on C, even though solmization then

immediately shifts to the hexachord on G. Like the rest of the WBP, solmization in this

tune is fixed, not contextual: all pitches are always given the same syllable. The

compositor (or more likely, the musician who solmized the tunes and passed them on to

him) seriously misread this particular tune, using the no-flat system even though the

tune employs B-flat, probably due to the missing one-flat key signatures. Despite the

error, this tune does not negate my argument for a fixed-scale solmization system in the

WBP. Indeed, the particular nature of this error supports my claim for a fixed-scale

system in contrast to the traditional hexachordal system.

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Figure 26. The Solmized First Phrase of The Lord’s Prayer

The Making of English-Style Solmization: The Whole Booke of Psalmes, Bathe, and Morley

Even though English theory took a decisive turn towards fixed-scale solmization, not all

sixteenth-century English theorists agreed on the details. The solmized scales found in

The Whole Booke of Psalmes differ slightly from those of Bathe and Morley as outlined in A

Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Song (c. 1596) and A Plaine and Easie Introduction to

Practicall Musicke (1597) respectively (see Figure 27). The use of Ut and Re in The Whole

Booke of Psalmes for the first two notes of the one-flat scale does not expressly contradict

Bathe and Morley, who agreed that these two syllables were allowed for the lowest

pitches in a part, but preferred that they be replaced by Fa, Sol, or La. The major

difference is the E3 found in the no-flat scale. Both Bathe and Morley employed octave

equivalence, so in a no-flat signature, all Es would be solmized as La, and Mi reserved

for B.22 In The Whole Booke of Psalmes, however, E3 was always given the syllable Mi.

Some tunes in The Whole Booke of Psalmes even include two different pitch classes labeled

22 As Owens has shown in “Concepts of Pitch in English Music Theory,” 213 and passim.

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as Mi, when the key signature has no flat and the melody spans both E3 and B3. When

they published their music textbooks, Bathe and Morley would not do this; as Owens

has pointed out (though neither theorist said so explicitly), both assigned a single,

unique Mi in each of their scales.23

Figure 27. Comparison of Syllable Assignments for the WBP, Bathe, and Morley

Without meaning to impose a sense of teleological design, we could say that the

WBP’s solmization represents a transition between continental hexachordal solmization

and the English style of fixed-scale solmization. Like the later English music theory

treatises of Bathe and Morley, the WBP employed fixed solmization syllables for scales

with key signatures of one or no flat. However, the psalter’s no-flat scale was derived

through the combination of the two music examples found in the preface. Figure 28

duplicates the music examples found in the preface and shows how they are combined

23 Owens, “Concepts of Pitch in English Music Theory,” 204.

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to create the no-flat scale. Because the two music examples contain overlapping pitches,

solmized in two different hexachords, when combined they result in two syllable

options for G3 and A3. The Whole Booke of Psalmes is both a chronological and a

conceptual link between continental and later English systems of solmization.

Music examples from the preface:

No-flat scale

Figure 28. Deriving the No-Flat Scale

Printed Solmization as a Protestant Impulse

I now turn back to Geneva. I have already shown one example of printed

solmization from the Continent (the 1562 edition of the Geneva Psalter) and briefly

mentioned a few more. Despite the difference in solmization system (hexachords vs.

fixed scales), these works have a crucial feature in common with the English WBP: all are

Protestant forms of musical didacticism.

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The first known appearance of printed solmization syllables is found in Louis

Bourgeois’ Le Droict Chemin de Musique, a music theory treatise printed in the vernacular

(Geneva, 1550) and intended for an amateur audience. In service of his goal to simplify

the naming of notes in order to improve sight-singing, Bourgeois included several music

examples that printed text alongside noteheads. The Song of Simeon, also known as the

Nunc dimittis, is notated twice: in the first example, the canticle is provided with

solmization syllables; in the second, with French lyrics, broken into individual syllables

(see Figure 29). In this way, Bourgeois demonstrated his ideal method of sight-singing.

He wrote,

After knowing well how to sol-fa and sound the notes, it is necessary to

learn how to sing the text (otherwise the words) instead of ut, re, mi, fa,

sol, la. This is moreover, why the ancients wished that one should grow

accustomed to sol-faing and sounding the notes of music by syllables,

rather than by simple letters. One must first sing the notes, then

afterwards the text, as follows.24

This pedagogical work, born from a context of Calvinist reform, is of great historical

importance. Written in French rather than Latin, Le Droict Chemin de Musique was among

the very first printed books of popular music education. The book’s title page makes it

clear that it was intended as an aid to learn to sing Calvinist psalms: “The Direct Road

24 “Apres scauoir bien solfier & entonner, il faudra apprendre à chanter le texte (autrement la letter) en lieu

de vt, re, mi, fa, sol, la. C’est aussi pourquoy les anciens ont voulu qu’on s’acconstumest à solfier & entonner

la Musique par syllabes, plustost que par simples lettres. Il faut cha[n]ter premierement les notes, & puis

apres le texte, comme il sensuit.” Louis Bourgeois, Le droict chemin de musique, transl. Bernarr Rainbow

(Kilkenny, Ireland: Boethius Press, 1982), 123.

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To Music / Contrived by Loys Bourgeois / Together with the manner of singing the

psalms by practice or cunning, as shown by the 34[th Psalm], newly set to music; and

also the Canticle of Simeon.”25 This frontispiece goes on to quote Psalm 9’s instruction to

“Sing psalms unto the Lord.”26 The final section of the book (chapters 11-12, which

Bernarr Rainbow hypothesizes may have been the first portion of the text written and

the result of Bourgeois’ original plan to create a popular guide to congregational

psalmody)27 discusses singing the psalms and the use of music in worship.

25 “Le Droict Chemin de Musique / Compose Par Loys Bourgeois. / Auec la maniere de chanter les Pseaumes

par vsage ou ruse, co[m]me on cognoistra au 34. De nouueau mis en chant: & aussi le Ca[n]tique de

Simeon.” Ibid., 29. 26 “Chantez en exultation / Au Dieu qui habite en Syon: Noncez à gens de toutes guises / Ses oeuures

grandes & exquises.” Ibid. 27 Bernarr Rainbow, “Introduction,” in Louis Bourgeois, Le droict chemin de musique, transl. Bernarr Rainbow

(Kilkenny, Ireland: Boethius Press, 1982), 14-15.

216

Figure 29. Solmization and Syllabic Lyrics in Bourgeois’ Le Droict Chemin de

Musique28

Two Geneva Psalters printed prior to the 1562 Blanchier edition also printed

solmization syllables. Each of the three chose to present the syllables in a different

manner, and not all included instructions for understanding them. As we have seen, the

1562 edition printed syllables in the music adjacent to the notes, like the later Whole

Booke of Psalmes (recall Figure 18). Along with an extract from the king’s privilege

allowing its printing, this edition includes John Calvin’s preface to the reader, our best

28 Facsimiles from Bourgeois, Le droict chemin de musique, transl. Rainbow, 124, 126.

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source for understanding the theologian’s views on music and congregational singing

(although in this edition Calvin’s name is not attached to the text).29 Unlike the WBP,

however, there is no music-theoretical preface explaining the use of solmization

syllables. Conversely, an edition of the Geneva Psalter published c. 1560 by Pierre

Vallette printed the syllables above the staff instead (see Figure 30).30 Like the WBP, this

edition included an essay explaining the musical notation. This essay is a far more

extensive music theory treatise than the WBP’s one-page solmization preface; yet it is

placed after the psalter, functioning as an afterword instead of as prefatory material

guiding readers’ interactions with the text that follows.31

29 John Calvin, “The Form of Prayers and Songs of the Church, 1542: Letter to the Reader,” trans. Ford Lewis

Battles, Calvin Theological Journal 15:2 (1980): 160-165. 30 Pseavmes De David, Mis En Rime Francoise (Geneva: Pierre Vallette, 1560?). In “The History of the Origin of

the Geneva Psalter (III),” Reformed Music Journal 1, No. 3 (July, 1989): 65, Pierre Pidoux notes that Vallette

first introduced solmization in a 1556 edition of the Geneva Psalter. This British Library edition may be a

later printing of that text. It is not my purpose here, however, to track all editions of the Geneva Psalter that

printed solmization syllables, but to offer several examples showing that the WBP fit into an existing

tradition of solmized psalmody. 31 Discussion of Vallette’s music-theoretical essay can be found in Daniel Trocmé-Latter, “Congregational

Singing of the Early Huguenot Psalms: the work of Bourgeois, Vallette, and Davantès,” (B.A. diss.,

University of Cambridge, 2006), 13-20.

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Figure 30. Solmization in Vallette’s c. 1560 Geneva Psalter32

Perhaps the most interesting Geneva Psalter I have examined is a 1560 edition published

by Pierre Davantes (see Figure 31).33 As Davantes’ opening preface explained,

solmization syllables were printed in the music, with an additional system also

introduced above the text underlay. This alternative system, which used numbers, lines,

and dots to indicate both pitch and rhythm, was intended by the publisher to replace the

32 Photograph taken by the author, courtesy of the British Library. 33 Pseaumes De David, Mis En Rhythme Francoise (Geneva: Pierre Davantes, 1560).

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solmization syllables.34 Certainly the system is even more useful as an aid to sight-

singing than solmization, because its format allowed it to be printed in all subsequent

verses (thus doing away with the problem of page turns necessitating memorization).

However, this numerical-symbolic system did not catch on, and it did not reappear in

any later music books. Davantes’ edition is particularly interesting because it assumed

that solmization was a standard technique and attempted to replace it with a different

system. And yet, very few surviving Geneva Psalters included solmization syllables, so

unless the surviving editions are a poor representation, it would seem that printed

solmization was not in fact quite so normative, even if widespread in unwritten practice.

34 See Trocmé-Latter, “Congregational Singing of the Early Huguenot Psalms,” 21-33, for extensive

discussion of this system and translation of many of the relevant passages of the preface.

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Figure 31. Solmization in Davantes’ 1560 Geneva Psalter35

The works I have discussed here—one music theory text, three Geneva Psalters,

and one English psalter in many editions— are the only early modern music books that

35 Photographs taken by the author, courtesy of the British Library.

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printed solmization syllables of which I am aware.36 I have not observed this practice in

any Renaissance contexts beyond the Calvinist and Anglican religious traditions. It

would seem that printing solmization syllables—and the music education this

represented—was a uniquely Protestant impulse. All of these books were in the

vernacular, intended for a general audience rather than the musically-literate,

intellectual elite, and all were related to Protestant religious traditions intent on

educating the populace and equipping them for congregational musical participation.

The strong emphasis on music education in Lutheran schools seems to have made this

kind of music-theoretical material unnecessary in that denomination’s hymnals.

Meanwhile, the close connection between Calvinist and Anglican musical didacticism

can be explained by the relationship between their metrical psalters. The WBP was based

on the Anglo-Genevan Psalters of 1556 and 1558, which were themselves modeled after

the Geneva Psalter by English Protestant exiles in Geneva during the reign of Catholic

Mary Tudor. Even after John Day published his first edition of the WBP, tunes continued

to be borrowed from the Geneva Psalter in later years. Though the WBP’s solmization

preface was not derived from any of the Geneva Psalter editions’ music-theoretical

36 A 1586 edition of George Whetstone’s Honourable Reputation of a Souldier printed in Leyden (STC 25340), a

side-by-side Dutch/English translation of Whetstone’s original book (London, 1586, STC 25339), included an

appended English pronunciation guide. This guide contained two metrical psalms (Psalm 127 and Psalm

130) taken from The Whole Booke of Psalmes, complete with printed music including solmization syllables.

Though this is a continental work using printed solmization syllables, I do not consider it a unique work

since these two pieces of music were clearly copied from the English psalter.

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content, the original impulse to add solmization syllables may well have been the result

of Calvinist influence.

The Significance of Fixed-Scale Solmization

Why does it matter that The Whole Booke of Psalmes used fixed-scale solmization, as

opposed to hexachords? First, the combination of prefatory music examples and

solmized tunes allows us to see the conceptual transition from traditional hexachords to

fixed scales, giving us insight into the evolving nature of sixteenth-century English

music theory. Second, considering the immense popularity of the WBP and the

thousands upon thousands of copies produced, purchased, and used, the WBP surely

influenced Bathe and Morley. There has been minimal speculation to date as to the

origin of fixed-scale solmization in England, but it is clear now that William Bathe did

not invent the system, even if his c. 1596 Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Song was the first

treatise to fully describe it. Fixed-scale solmization had already been highly visible in

English musical culture for nearly thirty years before Bathe and Morley repeated this

idea.

Finally, the WBP was a congregational psalter, and as such, it differed greatly

from Bathe’s and Morley’s freestanding music theory treatises intended for a much more

limited audience. Like the Geneva Psalters and Bourgeois’ Le Droict Chemin de Musique,

which also printed solmization syllables, the WBP stemmed from a Protestant religious

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context. Unlike those continental publications, however, the WBP’s solmization scheme

introduced the major innovation of fixed scales. Why might fixed-scale solmization have

originated in a Protestant religious text? In the WBP, we see the specialized knowledge

of academic music theory, formerly available only to choirboys and those similarly

trained in courtly or ecclesiastical contexts, made accessible to a broader audience.

Perhaps the simplification of hexachords to a fixed-scale system was intended to

accommodate those with less formal education. Bathe and Morley continued this

innovation and more fully explained it in their late sixteenth-century treatises, divorcing

the system from its roots in Protestant ideology. With its music-theoretical prefaces and

printed solmization syllables, the WBP advocated for musical literacy for the common

people, not just those formally trained in music. This popular, oft-derided psalter, until

recently largely overlooked in modern scholarship, thereby made a significant

contribution to sixteenth-century English music education and music theory.

Afterword: Solmization and Dowland’s Pilgrimes Solace

To show that this English-style fixed-scale solmization took hold, I conclude by jumping

ahead several decades to offer a new interpretation of what has always seemed to be a

fairly self-explanatory source. John Dowland’s fourth and final—and perhaps finest37—

37 In the opinion of lutenist and scholar Anthony Rooley. “1612—John Dowland and the emblem tradition,”

Early Music 41, No. 2 (May, 2013): 273.

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lute songbook, A Pilgrimes Solace (1612), represented a marriage of English and Italian

musical styles. This songbook included a letter to the reader that is often cited in modern

scholarship on Dowland in particular and on musical culture in the early seventeenth

century more generally.38 It is among the few sources that date Dowland’s year of birth,

and it tells us much about the composer’s continental travels in the latter part of his

career and the criticism he faced in England upon his return.

In this letter, Dowland wrote, “yet I must tell you, as I haue beene a stranger; so

haue I againe found strange entertainment since my returne; especially by the

opposition of two sorts of people that shroude themselues vnder the title of Musitians.”

He identified these two sorts of people as ignorant vocalists (“simple Cantors, or vocall

singers”) and proud lutenists (“young men, professors of the Lute, who vaunt

themselves, to the disparagement of such as haue beene before their time, (wherein I my

selfe am a party) that there neuer was the like of them”). Much of Dowland’s letter was

given over to advice to these lutenists as to the best way in which to defend their art

from its detractors (viol players in England and lute players from the Continent).39

Dowland’s description of those ignorant vocalists was comparatively brief; however, it

is extremely telling. I quote it here in full:

38 John Dowland, A Pilgrimes Solace (London: M.L., J.B., and T.S., 1612), sig. A.2.v. 39 For discussion of the context for and key figures in Dowland’s complaint against the young lute players,

see Matthew Spring, The Lute in Britain: A History of the Instrument and Its Music (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2001), 205-254.

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The first are some simple Cantors, or vocall singers, who though they

seeme excellent in their blinde Diuision-making, are meerely ignorant,

euen in the first elements of Musicke, and also in the true order of the

mutation of the Hexachord in the Systeme, (which hath ben approued by all

the learned and skilfull men of Christendome, this 800 yeeres,) yet doe

these fellowes giue their verdict of me behinde my backe, and say, what I

doe is after the old manner: but I will speake openly to them, and would

haue them know that the proudest Cantor of them, dares not oppose

himselfe face to face against me.40

Here Dowland argued that though these singers may be extremely skilled in

performance (“excellent in their blinde Diuision-making,” or in other words, highly

proficient in improvised ornamentation), they were unlearned in even the basics of

music theory. Kirsten Gibson discusses this passage as an example of the growing divide

between “ordinary performers and university-endorsed musicians.”41 Positioning

himself as a true musician due to his knowledge of music theory, Dowland emphasized

the primacy of speculative musical knowledge as opposed to practical music, a

hierarchy that may seem surprising coming from this expert lutenist. As Gibson has

pointed out, though, Dowland was never shy about flaunting his university training,

presenting himself as a musicus, a scholar, rather than merely a practitioner.42 The

elevation of speculative musical thought over practical musical performance was a

40 Dowland, A Pilgrimes Solace, sig. A.2.v. Emphasis in original. 41 Kirsten Gibson, “Author, Musician, Composer: Creator? Figuring Musical Creativity in Print at the Turn

of the Seventeenth Century,” in Concepts of Creativity in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Rebecca Herissone

and Alan Howard (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), 79. 42 Gibson, “Author, Musician, Composer: Creator?” 79.

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medieval concept that was only just beginning to be overturned around the beginning of

the seventeenth century.43

This passage from Dowland’s letter disparaging “simple Cantors” who are

ignorant of “the true order of the mutation of the Hexachord” has been taken by some as

evidence that hexachordal theory was becoming obsolete worldwide, a form of musical

knowledge known only to the most learned musicians.44 However, I read it differently.

Rather than representing a divide between the unlearned and the learned, practical

musicians who do not know music theory contrasted with musical scholars trained at

university in speculative thought, Dowland’s words may well describe a growing

distinction between those with purely English musical knowledge and those with the

opportunity and resources to also learn continental forms of music theory, with

Dowland himself among the latter, having published his translation of Ornithoparcus’s

Micrologus in 1609. The typical English musician may by this point have had little to no

understanding of the hexachord not because he or she was relatively musically illiterate,

but because English music theory itself had moved in a different direction. With a fixed-

scale system, solmization was no longer dependent upon mutating hexachords. If this is

the case, Dowland’s Pilgrimes Solace serves as an indication that the fixed-scale

43 For more on the changing relationship between speculative and practical approaches to music in early

modern England, see Chapter 3, “Teaching Music,” in Joseph M. Ortiz, Broken Harmony (Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press, 2011), 77-141. 44 Lionel Pike, Hexachords in Late-Renaissance Music (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 12; Edward Doughtie, Lyrics

from English Airs, 1596-1622 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), 615.

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solmization system introduced in the WBP and continued in Bathe’s and Morley’s

treatises was becoming standard in English musical thought at the beginning of the

seventeenth century.

Dowland’s lute songbook itself suggests that Dowland had in mind the contrast

between English fixed solmization and the hexachordal system of solmization employed

in continental Europe. In the eleventh song, Lasso vita mia, Dowland employed

solmization itself as a compositional technique: text was chosen due to its inclusion of a

high concentration of solmization syllables, and those syllables were set to the

appropriate pitches. In the opening phrase, “Lasso vita mia, mi fa morire,” Dowland

assigned solmization syllables in the text to the matching pitches within the hexachord

on C: “LA-SO[L] vita MIa, MI FA moriRE” (see Figure 32).45 Employing a common late-

Renaissance practice, as Lionel Pike has shown, Dowland matched vowels as well as the

more obvious textual solmization syllables: “-ta” of “vita” is set as if Fa, and “mo-” of

“morire” is set as if Sol. The saturation of solmization-motivated compositional choices

is highest in this first phrase, priming singers and listeners to watch closely for similar

devices as the piece goes on, and such forms of musical wordplay can be found

throughout.46

45 Diana Poulton discusses this in John Dowland, 2nd ed. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982),

305. 46 See analysis in Pike, Hexachords, 93-95, and also, much more briefly, in Doughtie, Lyrics from English Airs,

615.

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Figure 32. Opening Phrase of Lasso vita mia

It would seem, then, that with Lasso vita mia, Dowland was showing off his own

command of hexachordal theory. Perhaps, due to the extreme concentration of these

solmization devices, he was even poking fun at those singers who might purchase and

perform from A Pilgrimes Solace without even recognizing the hexachordal solmization.

Yet just as in the preface, the story may not be so simple as a divide between the

musically-learned and the unlearned singers who do not understand hexachords. The

song is distinctly different from the rest of the collection, and like the preface, Lasso vita

mia continued to emphasize the difference between English and continental musical

knowledge. Lasso vita mia is the only one of the 22 works in this songbook written in

Italian rather than English. Its text, which is (in Pike’s words) “a patchwork of clichés

from Italian madrigal verse,”47 even over-emphasize its continental provenance. The

solmization technique of pairing syllables and pitches is distinctly Italian as well; Pike

suggests that Dowland learned it from Luca Marenzio.48 Even the choice of syllables is

continental: at this octave, Bathe, Morley, and the WBP would all solmize the final note

47 Pike, Hexachords, 93. 48 Ibid.

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of the phrase, D4, as La rather than Re (recall Figure 27), whereas Dowland’s syllable

assignment reflects traditional hexachordal practice, in accordance with gamut diagrams

such as that shown in Figure 12 and many similar examples.

Thus Dowland highlighted the difference between Italian and English

approaches to solmization. Those “simple Cantors” ignorant of “the true order of the

mutation of the Hexachord” did not understand hexachordal theory, strongly linked in

the songbook itself with Italian solmization techniques. Dowland’s criticism, then, was

less that the singers were not educated in music theory, but more that unlike him (as he

emphasizes in the first part of his letter), they had not traveled across Europe and

learned how continental (hexachordal) music theory differed from that of England,

where fixed-scale solmization (introduced in the WBP over fifty years ago) had become

the norm.

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Chapter 6. “Very fals printed”: Music Typesetting Errors and the Failure of Popular Music Education

Despite The Whole Booke of Psalmes’ musical didacticism—its initial and short-lived set of

reprints of the music preface and its much longer-lived and consistent run of editions

with solmization—the WBP did not succeed in its apparent goal of musically educating

the general populace. This feels like a dangerous thing to admit. I have spent the last

two hundred pages arguing that the WBP made music-pedagogical and music-

theoretical contributions to sixteenth-century English culture, and yet in this final

chapter, I am forced to confront the fact that it failed in its educational aim.

This is not conjecture. We know that early seventeenth-century England’s

general populace remained almost entirely musically illiterate. The seventeenth-century

practice of “lining out” and the early Jacobean Praise of musick manuscript bear witness

to the fact that the average churchgoer remained unable to read music and was therefore

unable to utilize the WBP as a musical score. In this chapter, I argue that part of this

failure was due to the poor quality of psalter printing and especially to music

typesetting errors. Despite John Day’s introduction of the music preface and printed

solmization syllables, and the general policy of his successors to maintain Day’s general

structure, content, and Protestant message, the usefulness of the WBP in promoting

musical literacy and Protestant musical devotion was severely hampered by seemingly

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musically-illiterate compositors and a lack of editorial oversight. I discuss the careless

typesetting found across all of John Day’s musical prints, as well as the history of the

psalter patent following Day’s death, which led to a dilution of editorial control (from a

single editor to a group of editors) that in turn seems to have led to even greater music

printing problems. Then I turn to the specific musical misprints found in WBP editions,

giving detailed discussion of the wide variety of typesetting errors of both omission and

commission with accompanying photographs from my archival research. Many of these

misprints may not have hindered an already musically-literate reader, but would sorely

obstruct someone trying to learn basic music theory from the music or solmization

prefaces.

Early Seventeenth-Century Musical Illiteracy: The Evidence of Lining Out and The Praise of Musick

The first piece of evidence that musical illiteracy persisted in early seventeenth-century

England is the practice of “lining out”: a method of teaching tunes wherein a musically-

literate clerk, precentor, or cantor spoke or sang each musical phrase to the

congregation, who repeated it. Lining out originated earlier—Robin Leaver and

Jonathan Willis have noted that an early draft of the liturgical order of the Marian exiles

in Wesel seems to indicate an early form of the practice, in which the minister read each

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stanza before the congregation repeated it back in song1—but we have no evidence that

lining out was used in Protestant England until the seventeenth century.2 The earliest

known record of lining out in England is found in the 1636 Articles To Be Inquired of

Within the Dioces of Norwich, which names the practice an “uncouth and undecent

custom”:

If any Psalmes be vsed to be sung in your Church, before or after the

morning and euening prayer, or before or after the Sermons (vpon which

occasions only, they are allowed to bee sung in Churches) is it done

according to that graue maner (which first was in vse) that such doe sing

as can reade the Psalmes, or haue learned them by heart; and not after

that vncough and vndecent custome of late ttaken vp, to haue euery line

first read, and then sung by the people?3

This method of educating the laity in their psalm tunes did not require them to be

musically-literate or to become so; they merely learned these melodies by rote. This also

had the effect of divorcing the psalm texts from their tunes, because any tune could be

1 Robin A. Leaver, ‘Goostly Psalmes and Spirituall Songes’: English and Dutch Metrical Psalms from Coverdale to

Utenhove, 1535-1566 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 214; Jonathan Willis, Church Music and Protestantism in

Post-Reformation England: Discourses, Sites and Identities (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), 56. 2 In counter-argument, Jonathan Willis has cited an entry in the vestry minutes of the parish of St Michael

Cornhill in London, dating from 1592, which charged churchwardens to “provid a skylfull man to begyne

the syngynge salmes and to agre wt hyme for a resonable stypent and to pay hyme therefore”: Willis, Church

Music and Protestantism, 124. However, Timothy Duguid argues that this command does not necessarily

indicate lining out, but more likely, the singing of a full stanza by solo precentor before the congregation

joins: Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice: English ‘Singing Psalms’ and Scottish ‘Psalm Buiks’, c. 1547-1640

(Farnham: Ashgate, 2014, 195-196. Nicholas Temperley has stated that “there is no trace in Elizabeth’s reign”

of the practice of lining out: “‘All skillful praises sing’: how congregations sang the psalms in early modern

England,” Renaissance Studies 29, No 4 (2015): 549n44. Finally, John Milsom has recently questioned whether

certain features (repeat signs, punctuating breves, and barlines) in printed and manuscript musical scores

from the second half of the sixteenth century might indicate practices of lining out: “Discussion document:

Lining out in Elizabethan England,” unpublished manuscript, February 28, 2018. 3 Matthew Wren, Articles To Be Inquired of Within the Dioces of Norwich (London: Richard Badger, 1636), sig.

B.3.r; quoted in Duguid, Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice, 195.

233

given. Indeed, lining out could eliminate need for a printed copy of the WBP altogether

if the musical leader had the metricized psalms memorized and a tune in mind that fit.

A second source of evidence for continuing widespread musical illiteracy is the

anonymous early Jacobean manuscript, The praise of musick the profite and delight it

bringeth to man & other the creatures of God. And the necessarye vse of it in the service &

Christian Churche of God.4 This beautifully-produced manuscript, which may have been

intended as a presentation copy or perhaps even a compositor’s copy for a printed book

that was never actually published, serves as an extensive though indisputably biased

description of the state of church music at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The

manuscript has two central goals: first, to offer a defense of music in sacred contexts (in

doing so, it participates in the established Elizabethan “praise of music” genre, which

defended music against its detractors), and second, to discuss the causes of and

solutions to the decline of music in the Church of England. The author is primarily

concerned with protecting the livelihoods and wages of professional choir singers

(“singingmen”), as well as ensuring the quality of the next generation of church singers.

Psalms and the practice of psalmody appear in several forms in The praise of

musick. The psalms themselves are used as evidence for musical practices in the early

4 British Library Royal MS 18.B.xix. Alec Ryrie dates the manuscript to c.1610: Being Protestant in Reformation

England, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 476). It is certainly Jacobean and therefore its earliest

possible date is 1603. I am preparing a diplomatic edition of this manuscript for publication.

234

church.5 David and Solomon both “were excellently skilled in musick and making of

songs;” Christ himself and his apostles sang a psalm before going to the Mount of

Olives; and Christians in the early church sang psalms each morning.6 According to the

author, the singing of psalms offers many benefits to God’s people, including easing the

hearts of the dying and allowing sinners to bewail their sins and ask for remission of

them.7

Thus in the early sections of his manuscript, the author establishes the presence

and virtue of singing, and especially the singing of psalms, in Scripture and in the early

church; this allows him to defend the use of music in the church in his own time. Later,

the author returns to the idea of psalmody, examining descriptions of psalm-singing in

the Bible in order to understand biblically-defensible ideal musical practices:

The psalmes of the Church may and ought to be vsed as the Author of

them appointed, but the holy Ghost the author of the psalmes who was

the Indighter of them as he was of all the holy scripture, for as St Peter

sayeth, Holy men of God spake as they were inspired by the holy Ghost, and the

same so indyted in Dauid were by him appointed to be sung most

cunninglye with divers excellent instrumentes of musick and with sundry

and most excellent notes and Tunes.8

Psalms should be sung, not spoken, and ideally “sunge most cunningly”: performed by

a trained soloist (the “skillfull Chanter, or him that excelleth in musick”), well-

5 Fols. 1v, 4r, 4v. 6 Fols. 1v, 4v. 7 Fols. 1v, 4r. 8 Fol. 9v.

235

ornamented (“now change your voyce and that cunningly”), using a variety of pleasing

melodies (“severall and excellent notes and varietie of Tunes”). The true goal, says the

author, is not musical excellence for its own sake, but that “with another excellent

tune…the people may be more attentive.” The anonymous author names two of the

“diverse artificial instruments of music” employed by the Hebrews (“Gittith and

Niginoth”), but makes no argument that only these particular instruments might be

used. Maintaining only the requirement for musical accompaniment, the author tacitly

allows those instruments common in England around the turn of the seventeenth

century.9

Additionally, when despairing of the typical churchgoer who complains that he

or she cannot understand the words sung by the choir, the author points out that the

textual repetition necessitated by the Book of Common Prayer gives listeners little

excuse; in doing so, the author notes that many of the texts of anthems performed by

professional choirs in churches of his day are psalm texts:

Againe when the hearer (although well affected to songe) cometh to ye

Church-singing, and standeth farr of from the singer, howe is it possible

that he can vnderstand the words of the songe, which yf they were

intelligibly redd, would not be heard of him for the distance of the place,

muche lesse vnderstood, And yet he complayneth that he vnderstandeth

not what they singe, although the wordes thereof be the hym[m]es and

9 Fols. 9v-10r.

236

songes appointed and vsed dayly in ye booke of Comon praier,

(exceptinge only ye Anthems) many of which are ye psalmes of David.10

Thus the author has established the presence of psalms in both the early church and his

contemporary Church of England, and has used scriptural descriptions of psalmody as

an argument for appropriate musical practice in a church setting. With these arguments,

he has been prescriptive, not descriptive, identifying how music should be performed.

However, the manuscript is in no way lacking in description of musical practice in

English churches around the turn of the seventeenth century. Indeed, the author’s

distaste for the typical parishioner’s musical preferences reveals much about the state of

music in the average church—and tellingly, the typical parishioner is described as being

both musically illiterate and interested only in metrical psalms.

One of the author’s primary concerns throughout the manuscript is to trace the

decline in church music to three causes: the action of reformers, the musical preferences

of the common people, and the reduction in funding for singingmen due to changed

financial circumstances and the greed of clergymen. Having financial gains in mind,

reformers successfully

did perswade the people from the reverent vse of service in songe,

affirminge it to be nothing but an vnnessisary pypinge, and minstrelsie.

So as ye estimacion & reputation of songe in Churches (except Geneua

psalmes) was in short tyme in no regard (nay in detestacion) with the

Comon people. Thus the estimacion of singing being diminished in the

10 Fol. 8v.

237

myndes almost of all men (which was one speciall policye of these

pretented reformers) it was thought it would be very easie in tyme to take

away all the lyvinges that way imployed, or els at least to putt the

revenewe to preachinge onlye, and yf in ye alteracion) any remayne

weare, these Reformers were lyke to have a share.11

With such strong popular anti-music sentiment, the author here argues, the only musical

genre to maintain a positive image in the minds of the common people was that of the

“Geneva psalm,” meaning the metrical psalmody of the WBP, nicknamed for its origins

in the Anglo-Genevan Psalter.

Although the WBP is not named in The praise of musick, the reference is clear, with

the potentially ambiguous phrase “the singing of psalms” several times clarified as

referring specifically to “Geneva tunes” (bold formatting in the following quotations

indicates my own emphasis). This passage, for example, specifies that “those who have

taken offence at Churche musick” nevertheless allow for the singing of psalms, and

specifically for “Geneva tunes” sung by the entire congregation in unison:

The mayne discontent of the preciser sort in dislyke of musick in ye

Churche, is the want of edification as hath bene said. Now yf it be

demaunded of them whether if the singing of psalmes in the Churche at

Sermons by the whole multitude, and at other exersices (namely at the

Com[m]union) be meete to be vsed, I suppose they will acknowledge that

it is very meete, adding this that the same be songe, by the whole

multitude in a plaine Geneua tune, wch every one can singe, and not in

pricksonge and descant (as they call it)12

11 Fol. 5v. 12 Fol. 8v.

238

Speaking in the imagined voice of these reformers, the author quotes a popular objection

to “pricksong and songs of parts,” meaning the polyphony sung by professional choir:

But yet another obiection is made, all can singe the Geneua or psalme

tune, but for your pricksonge and songes of partes, fewe but those yt have

learned to singe can accompanye them, and all thinges in the service of

God ought to be heard with vnderstanding of other, or acted by himselfe,

but your singing of pricksonge can neither be vnderstood of all nor acted

of all, and therefore without edification.13

The praise of musick goes on to explain that psalm tunes are liked by the people because

of their simplicity and accessibility, but most of all because of their comfortable vocal

range.14 The author himself, however, has a clear preference for polyphony over

psalmody. Though he relates their viewpoint, the author himself condemns “these

ignorant psalm singers” for preferring the latter. If edification of listeners is the goal of

church music, he argues, the general preference for psalms is actually counter-

productive:

And yf the songes sett in partes cannot be vnderstood beinge skilfully

acted to the edification of these ignorant psalme singers, howe muche

lesse in a confusion of voyces all the people singinge but one part

together, can the vnlettered hearer be edified? nay it is to apparent, that

let one that can read and singe those psalme tunes come into the

assemblye when they are singinge, except himselfe have a booke or stand

very neere to some one whome he will especially give eare vnto, he shall

have lesse edifyinge, then by hearinge of the vsuall and dayly service

sung in partes: And great reason there is, for the varietie of psalmes being

13 Fol. 9r. 14 Fol. 9r.

239

many, it is impossible yt the hearer should vnderstand what psalme or

words are sunge, yf himselfe have not a booke to looke vpon, or by

listeninge neere to some one that singeth, or that himselfe hath the

psalme by rote, whereas the hearer which cometh to the service sung in

partes hath more helps for vnderstanding then where the foresaid

ignorant singing in one part is.15

Underlying The praise of musick is the assumption that the qualities of musical

illiteracy and a preference for psalm tunes are widespread throughout the populace. The

musically unlearned tradesmen, husbandmen, tailors, shoemakers, servingmen, and the

like can only sing (and only want to sing) the WBP’s metrical psalms, and have little

ability to read text, much less musical notation:

how is it possible but those that can heare, and be neere to them that

singe, and being invred by frequencye of those places where singinge is,

should pretend the want of vnderstandinge or edifyinge, yf yet it be

defended that it were meet that those which cannot read & singe the

plaine psalme tunes, would enhable themselues to learne, howe simple

would that reason be, when as tradsemen, husbandmen and of divers

other condicions, are vnlettered, and otherwise imployed, besydes

althoughe nature hath given every one a voyce, Yet not every one a

tuneable voyce, and so an impossibilitye as well to those which can read,

as also to those that cannot read ever to singe eyther psalmes or any

thinge in tune. And for any to plead for vntuneable singinge how absurd

is it: But yf the reason weare of force that those which cannot singe

psalmes, should enable themselues to do it by learninge, by as good

reason, those which can singe psalmes alreadye should by instruction

enable themselues to singe the songes of the Churche in partes and

pricksong as is vsed in Cathedrall Churches.16

15 Fol. 9r. 16 Fol. 9v

240

And again:

when there shall be no sufficiencye found in Singingmen fitt for a

Cathedrall Churche, but Taylers, Shoomakers Servingmen &c: whose

education was never in musick, neither can singe any thinge but a plaine

psalme tune, or yf any thing more, it is by singing out of tune and

vnperfectly, Yelling and bleating lyke Oxen and Calues.17

From this manuscript we gain several important insights about the practice of

congregational metrical psalmody in early Jacobean churches. First, metrical psalmody

was definitely sung in services: as we have seen, “at Sermons by the whole multitude,

and at other exersices (namely at the Com[m]union).”18 The only potential singingmen to

be found have no music education, and cannot “singe any thinge but a plaine psalme

tune”—or, if they have the musical ability to sing more complex music, they lack the

proper vocal technique to sing it in any other fashion than “Yelling and bleating lyke

Oxen and Calues.” Yet while congregational psalms are preferred by the laypeople over

choral polyphony or any other genre of church music, not everyone can sing them. The

praise of musick implies that even the WBP’s simple tunes required some modicum of

general literacy. As the author put it, “the unlearned are so far from being able to sing

the psalms with the rest of the company, as they can not read, much less sing.”19 With

his description “as they can not read,” the author implies that literacy is required in

order for the people to sing metrical psalms—they are not learned by rote or repeated

17 Fol. 15r. 18 Fol. 8v. 19 Fol. 9r.

241

according to the process of lining out, but read out of psalm books. Unexpectedly, The

praise of musick supports the conclusion that lining out was not in common use in

Elizabethan England or yet in the earliest years of Jacobean England.

According to The praise of musick, “the multitude…do consist of learned and

unlearned (the unlearned being the greater part).”20 That multitude “can not read, much

less sing.” This musically-illiterate general populace demonstrates the poor taste of

favoring metrical psalmody over the polyphony the author prizes; with this clear

preference in place, the author worries that there is little chance that the financial

situation of singingmen can improve.

John Day and the Psalter Patent

John Day was not primarily a music printer.21 Best known for John Foxe’s Actes and

Monuments, Day printed over 350 books on subjects as diverse as theology, astrology,

physiognomy, medicine, mathematics, and navigation, and in genres including

almanacs, ballads, sermons, textbooks, and poetry.22 Of his 350-odd printed works, only

nine (with closely-related works counted only once) were music prints:

20 Fol. 9r. 21 The first comprehensive study of Day’s work as a music printer can be found in FGE, “A Famous Music-

Printer—John Day, Parts 1 and 2,” The Musical Times 47 (March and April, 1906): 170-174 and 236-239. 22 See Elizabeth Evenden, Patents, Pictures and Patronage: John Day and the Tudor Book Trade (Aldershot:

Ashgate, 2008) and C. L. Oastler, John Day, the Elizabethan Printer (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society,

1975).

242

Utenhove, Hondert Psalmen Dauids (1561), STC 2739

Utenhove, De Psalmen Dauidis (1566), STC 2740

Partial psalters

WBP editions 1562-1584

The Whole Psalmes in Foure Partes (1563), STC 2431

Certaine notes / Mornyng and Euenyng prayer (1560/5), STC 6419 and 6418

Matthew Parker, The Whole Psalter [1567], STC 2729 (=2439)

Thomas Whythorne, Songes for Three, Fower and Five Voyces (1571), STC 25584)

William Daman, Psalmes of Dauid (1579), STC 6219

Figure 33. John Day’s Printed Music23

As we can see, quantity of music publications was not a high priority for Day. Neither,

unfortunately, was quality. Day’s music prints were plagued by typesetting errors and

other problems, some worse than others. Colin William Holman attributes the

prevalence of errors to lack of competition.24 This is certainly true; between 1561 and

1579, only five music collections (or books including music) not affiliated with Day were

published in England: John Hall’s Courte of Vertue (Thomas Marshe, 1565), two lute

instruction manuals by Adrian le Roy (John Kingston for James Rowbotham, 1568 and

1574; see Chapter 3 for more discussion), Orlando di Lasso’s Recueil du Mellange

23 The 1557 Sarum Missal thought by Robert Steele (The Earliest English Music Printing (London: Printed for

the Bibliographical Society at the Cheswick Press, 1903), 42) and the catalogues of the British Library and the

Bodleian Library to be among Day’s publications on the basis of a device found on the title page, has no

solid basis for such attribution. Day’s name does not appear on the title page or in the colophon, and the

four-line, black and red neumatic musical notation is not found in any of Day’s other musical publications.

Elizabeth Evenden (Patents, Pictures and Patronage, 44) has recently doubted the attribution, and I agree. 24 Colin William Holman, “John Day’s ‘Certaine Notes’ (1560-65),” (Ph.D diss., University of Kansas, 1991),

61.

243

d’Orlande de Lassus (Thomas Vautrollier, 1570), and Byrd and Tallis’s famous Cantiones

Sacrae (Thomas Vautrollier, 1575).

Day’s shortcomings as a music printer were obvious to some readers. I have seen

many manuscript music corrections in copies of Mornyng and Euenyng prayer, The Whole

Psalmes in Foure Partes, Whythorne’s Songes, and Daman’s Psalmes of Dauid. In fact, Day’s

own authors complained of his shortcomings. In his autobiography, Thomas Whythorne

wrote,

At my return again to London, I went to the printer to know of him how

my music went away out of hands, and he told me that it was not bought

of him as fast as he looked for. Then I told him that I thought that was

two causes that he sold them not as yet very fast, the first was because he

had printed music heretofore, the which was very false printed, and

therefore it was a discredit to that which should follow in print hereafter,

until such time as mine were commonly known, the true printing

whereof should shadow the falseness of the other.25

Here Whythorne is not complaining about poor quality of his own music, but of Day’s

supposedly “false printed” other music, which has, Whythorne argues, reduced the

value of all music printed by Day.

25 “At my return again to London, I went to my printer to know of him how my miuzik went awai owt of

handz, and hee told mee [th]at it waz not bowht of him so fast az hee loked for. [Th]en I told him [th]at I

thouht [th]at it waz ij kawzes [th]at hee sold [th]em not az yet very fast, [th]e first waz bekawz hee had

printed miuzik heer tofor, [th]e which waz very fals printed, and [th]arfor it waz A diskredit to [th]at which

shiuld follow in print heerafter, vntill sych tym as myn wer kommenly known [th]e trew printing wherof

shiuld shadow [th]e falsnes of [th]e o[th]er.” Thomas Whythorne, The Autobiography of Thomas Whythorne,

ed. James M. Osborn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 220.

244

In light of the apparently low priority music held for Day, why did the publisher

print dozens of editions of the WBP in his lifetime? The answer: the psalter was

profitable. Not only did it sell extremely well, but Day himself held a monopoly on the

printing of metrical psalters due to a patent that paralleled Tallis’s and Byrd’s music

printing patent (and at times even challenged it, as we can see with Daman’s 1579

Psalmes of Dauid).

On March 25, 1553, John Day was awarded his first printing patent, allowing him

to print primers (“the A. B. C.”) with catechisms. Under Elizabeth I, Day was granted far

more printing rights. Day’s first Elizabethan privilege, dated October 28, 1559, gave Day

a copyright of seven years for any original work printed at his expense:

[we, Elizabeth] do graunt and gyue Priuiledge and Lycence, vnto our wel

beloued subiect Iohn Day, of the citie of London, Printer, and Stationer,

and to his assignes…[specific discussion of an unrelated book

omitted]…during the tyme of vij yeares, all such Bookes, and workes, as

he hath Imprinted, or hereafter shall Imprint, being diuised, compiled, or

set out by any learned man, at the procurement, costes, & charge, only of

the said Iohn Day.

Day’s second Elizabethan privilege, granted May 6, 1567, extended the copyright to ten

years. This second privilege maintained Day’s rights to all original works published at

his expense, and listed two such works by name: the WBP and the primer with

catechism. Indeed, the psalter itself was given primary importance:

[We] do graunt and geue priviledge and Lycence unto our welbeloved

subject John Daye of the Citie of London Printer and Stationer, and to his

assignes for the terme of tenne yeares, now next ensuying, by himselfe his

245

assignes or Deputies, to imprinte or cause to be imprinted the Psalmes of

David in Englishe Meter, with notes, the A.B.C. with the little Catechism,

appointed also by our Injunctions for the instruction of Chyldren, and

also all such bookes and workes, as he hath imprinted or hereafter shall

imprint. being devised compiled or translated, and set out by any learned

man, at the procurement costes and charges onely of the sayde John

Daye, so that no such Book or Bookes be repugnaunt to the holy

Scripture, or the lawes and order of our realme.

Finally, on August 6, 1577, Elizabeth granted the sole rights to print “the psalmes of

David in English meeter with notes to singe them” to John Day and now also to his son

Richard Day, “for terme of there lyues and the longer liuer of them, by themselues or

ether of them, or by the assignes of them or either of them.” As before, the patent first

named the WBP and primer specifically (and now also any other books written by

Alexander Nowell, Dean of St Paul’s and author of the primer) before granting the rights

more generally to anything printed and paid for by John or Richard Day.26 The two Days

now held the psalter patent for life—though as we shall see, Richard would not in fact

become the printer of the WBP after John’s death.

From 1562 to his death in 1584, John Day published sixty surviving editions of

the WBP. As with Whythorne’s criticisms of Day’s music printing more generally, these

psalters were also poorly regarded. On May 18, 1584, John Wolfe (who was a printer of

the WBP after Day’s death, but at the time one of Day’s competitors) submitted a bill of

complaint to the Star Chamber against Day, which included this accusation about Day’s

26 Steele, The Earliest English Music Printing, 11-12; the full text of all three privileges is given on pages 21-26.

246

practices of printing the psalter: “Aswell in respecte of the false pryntynge and evell

paper whiche the said Iohn Day vsethe, As alsoe by pryntinge bookes of the halfe

psalmes whiche are soulde for bookes of the whole Psalmes to suche as are vnlearned

and Can not reade…”27 Harry R. Hoppe dismisses both the accusations of “half psalms”

on the basis that none survives (he seems unaware that Day continued to print partial

psalters even after the first edition of the WBP) and “false printing and evil paper”—the

latter too easily in my view, for in viewing hundreds of psalters I have seen a fair

number with poor paper quality or too-light (or too-dark) inking.28 Wolfe’s quotation is

also intriguing as it stands in support of the “unlearned,” or illiterate, purchasing WBPs.

When John Day died in 1584, the rights to publish the WBP should have gone to

his son, but John himself ensured that Richard would have no further career in printing.

The two men had had increasingly serious squabbles throughout the 1570s as Richard

attempted to establish himself as an independent printer. In 1578, Richard stole printing

materials and stock from his father’s printing house, enabling him to pirate some of

John’s books. Using John’s own imprint, he was able to sell these legitimate-looking

texts for a reduced price, undercutting his father’s business. Even after John attempted

to help his son set up a successful business, the elder Day seems to have sabotaged the

younger (intentionally or not) by providing only a stock of poorly-selling books rather

27 Qtd. in Harry R. Hoppe, “John Wolfe, Printer and Stationer, 1579-1601,” The Library, 4th ser. 14 (1933): 256. 28 Hoppe, “John Wolfe, Printer and Stationer,” 259.

247

than more popular works. Richard resorted to further and more blatant piracy of John’s

best texts, and the relationship between father and son deteriorated past any chance of

repair. In 1580, the enraged father resorted to physical violence to punish his son,

bursting into Richard’s shop to cart away pirated books by force and destroying

Richard’s printing equipment. The incident was described by Richard Vernon, manager

of John Day’s shop in St Paul’s churchyard, in a narration that specifically names as

casualties of the attack a number of psalters (presumably Whole Bookes of Psalmes) in

sixteenmo (16o) format:

The said Jo. Daye wi[th] the wardens of the company of Stac[i]oners, Did

take from the com[plainant] bothe booke[s], the chefe part of his press,

wi[th] A gr[ea]t quantytie of let[t]res for prynting and other Instrumentes

of Prynting verye necessarye. At which tyme this dep[onent] being the

com[plainant’s] seru[a]nt, for that he requested them to make no spoyll of

the said thinge[s] and saying that the com[plainant] was able to answer

them by law & praying them to staye ther hande[s] till the matter might

be indifferentlie hearde betwene the com[plainant] & ffather, they were

the more vehement and made no more adoe but in A hurry laded A

carr[t]e with the said thinges wi[th]out care of sauing any thing therof

and caryed them awaye to Stacioners hall … the Bookes w[hich] they

caryed awaye at that tyme and spoylled being all vnbound cam[e] to the

nombre of xvijc or thereaboute[s] all Salme booke[s] of [sextodecimo]

w[hich] drew to the value of xlli or theraboute[s] at the rate of vjd the

pece … the presse & prynting let[t]ers and other things w[hich] they had

alwaiye and spoyled wi[th]in the howse cost the com[plainant] nerehand

xxxli.29

29 Qtd. in Evenden, Patents, Pictures and Patronage, 164-165.

248

Permanently out of favor and now out of work, Richard Day took holy orders.30

The legal rights to publish the WBP may have gone to Richard, but practically

speaking, Richard had no means to print anything. Instead, the WBP was turned over to

five “Assigns of Richard Day”: Edward White, William Wright, Thomas Butter, John

Wolfe, and Francis Adams.31 These five men held the legal rights to publish the psalter,

and their group name, “The Assignes of Richard Daye,” would appear on title pages in

1584 and 1585. One of them, John Wolfe, was named as the printer of the WBP beginning

in 1586 (“Iohn Wolfe, for the Assigns of Richard Day”), and in 1591 the work of printing

the text was given over to John Windet. For almost forty years, this group of assigns

oversaw the publication of the WBP.

The year 1603 represented yet another major upheaval in the history of the

psalter patent.32 Elizabeth I died, and after James I ascended the throne, the new king

issued a new psalter privilege. This time, the entire Company of Stationers, rather than

an individual printer, was granted the right “To imprynte or cause to be imprynted all

30 Evenden, Patents, Pictures and Patronage, 161-165. 31 Evenden, Patents, Pictures and Patronage, 172. Transcripts of legal records naming these five men can be

found in Cyril Bathurst Judge, Elizabethan Book-Pirates (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934), 149-

155. 32 Despite the transference of the monarchy, no similar decisive shift occurred for the music patent,

originally held by Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, in 1603. After the Byrd/Tallis patent expired in 1596,

there was a two-year gap in which no one publisher was granted sole rights to publish music; printers like

Thomas East and William Barley took full advantage of the opportunity to publish freely without fear of

legal reparations. In 1598, Thomas Morley was granted a music-printing patent, but he died only four years

later. From 1602-1606, the music patent stood inactive, with no qualified musician able to take Morley’s

place. The ascension of James I to the throne thus had no immediate impact on the music patent. It was not

until 1606 that Barley would take it on. See Jeremy L. Smith, Thomas East and Music Publishing in Renaissance

England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), Chapters 6 and 8.

249

manner of booke and bookes of Prymers Psalters and Psalmes in meter or prose with

musycall notes or withoute notes both in greate volumes and small in the Englishe tonge

which nowe be or at anye tyme herafter shalbe sett forthe and permytted.”33 The patent

did exclude The Book of Common Prayer, the rights to which remained with Robert and

Christopher Barker; however, all other primers and psalters would now be printed by

this group.

James I did not forcibly remove the psalter patent from Richard Day and his

assigns. However, the new economic and political situation was such that it was prudent

for them to give it up. On May 7, 1603, James I suspended all grants and charters of

monopoly held by private persons. This proclamation had some exceptions, and

Richard’s psalter patent was not yet affected, but the patent’s future must have looked

precarious. Richard could (and ultimately did) sell it to the Company of Stationers,

making himself some money and ridding himself of an insecure patent. There were

other factors as well. John Windet, who was then serving as the printer for the WBP, had

just been named Printer to the City of London and was far busier. Additionally, the

assigns had for years been forced to defend their patent in court against other printers

pirating this text. (This is ironic since several of the assigns had themselves been WBP

printing pirates prior to 1584—more on piracy in a moment.) The Stationers’ Company

33 Edward Arber, ed., A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London; 1554-1640 A.D., Vol. 3

(London: Privately Printed, 1876), 42.

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itself had often been called upon to help resolve these legal disputes. For these reasons,

Richard Day sold the psalter patent to the Company of Stationers for £9,000, and James I

issued the new privilege to the Company on October 29, 1603.34

Our ability to identify editorial control over the WBP ends in 1603 when the

Stationers’ Company at large was awarded the psalter patent. Now, any publisher

affiliated with the Company of Stationers might print the WBP. Oversight of the

psalter’s publication, therefore, expanded in stages from an individual (John Day) to a

small group (the five Assigns of Richard Day) to the entire Company, and it now

becomes impossible to convincingly argue for any particular ideological supervision

beyond the Company’s broad commercial impulse. Furthermore, seventeenth-century

printing of the WBP was marked by mixed copies and continuous reprinting. The term

“mixed copies” refers to psalters as they have survived for us today; in many cases,

psalters dated in the seventeenth century prove to be difficult sources to work with.

Different gatherings might have been printed by multiple printers; gatherings might

have been completed in different years (making publication dates totally unreliable); a

single printer might have used two different music typefaces; antiquarians may have

combined two incomplete copies.35 “Continuous reprinting” refers to the seventeenth-

century practice of using up leftover sheets from a prior printing, necessitating the

34 D. W. Krummel, English Music Printing 1553-1700 (London: The Biographical Society, 1975), 26-27; Smith,

Thomas East and Music Publishing, 27-28. 35 Krummel, English Music Printing, 36-42.

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printing of fewer new sheets. This became common for the most popular printed books,

particularly Bibles and, Ian Green estimates, also the WBP.36 Due to the lack of close

supervision caused by the 1603 psalter patent and the increasing prevalence of mixed

copies and continuous reprinting, it becomes difficult for modern scholars to identify

and compare discrete editions. (It is convenient that my study ends in 1603 and spans

only Elizabethan WBPs: all of these editions were published in the same—relatively

speaking—political and religious climate, as well as the same publishing circumstances

represented by the Day’s three psalter patents.)

My purpose in outlining the psalter patent in such detail is to provide some

explanation for the increasing rate of typesetting problems as the century progressed. As

it changed hands, publisher motivations changed and editorial oversight became more

diffuse. Figure 34 summarizes the key points in this chronology:

1559 - Day’s first privilege: seven years for any original work published at his expense

1560 - Psalmes of Dauid in English metre

1560/1561 - Psalmes. Of Dauid in English metre

1561 - Foure score and seuen Psalmes of Dauid

1562 - The Residue of all Dauids Psalmes in metre

1562 - First edition of The Whole Booke of Psalmes

1567 - Day’s second privilege: ten years for any original work published at his expense;

specifically names “Psalmes of David in Englishe Meter, with notes”

1577 - Day’s third privilege: together with his son Richard, rights for life; specifically

names “the psalmes of David in English meeter with notes to singe them”

1580 - John Day destroys Richard’s print shop

36 Ian Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 508-

509, 673-678.

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1584 - John Day dies; the WBP begins to be published by “The Assigns of Richard Day”

1586 - WBP begins to be published by “John Wolfe, for the Assigns of Richard Day”

1591 - WBP begins to be published by “John Windet, for the Assigns of Richard Day”

1591 - grant to Verney Alley for the psalter patent, for thirty years, following the Days’

deaths37

1603 - psalter patent goes to the Company of Stationers; the WBP begins to be “Printed

for the Company of Stationers”

Figure 34. The Psalter Patent at a Glance

Finally, we can consider the WBP beyond the psalter patent. Piracy was a

problem and led to increasingly low publishing standards. Sales of the WBP were

extremely lucrative, so despite the psalter patent, many other printers created their own

copies of the psalter and passed them off as the work of Day or his assigns. Some of the

pirates whom John Day combated with legal suits later became Richard’s assigns;

Richard himself even pirated his father’s psalter.38 In 1585, John Wolfe and the other

assigns of Richard Day submitted a bill of complaint to the Star Chamber accusing

Humphrey Frank, Anthony Hill, and a group of other printers of printing 2,000 copies

37 As complicated as this history of the psalter patent as I have described it appears, the full story is even

more complex. Few documents survive to tell us much of an additional person who also seems to have held

a privilege to print the WBP. A man named Verney Alley—of whom next to nothing is known—was on

February 26, 1591 given a royal grant allowing him to take on the Days’ psalter privilege for “thyrtye yeres

to commence and begynne ymmediattlye from and after the deathe and decease of the said John Daye and

Richard Daye his sonne.” The transference of the psalter patent to the Company of Stationers in 1603 made

no mention of Alley; it is not clear whether they knew of Alley’s claim, which may or may not have been

legally valid at this point. In 1614, perhaps simply out of an abundance of caution, the Stationers’ Company

paid Alley’s executors £600, effectively buying him out and ensuring that they held the sole rights to publish

the WBP. See Krummel, English Music Printing, 27, and Beth Quitslund’s forthcoming discussion in The

Whole Book of Psalms: A Critical Edition of the Texts and Tunes, Beth Quitslund and Nicholas Temperley, eds., 2

vols., Renaissance English Text Society Publications 36 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, forthcoming). 38 Oastler, John Day, the Elizabethan Printer, 24.

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each of the WBP.39 Similarly, Robert Robinson was fined for pirating the WBP in 1594:

“Item that Robert Robinson shall pay for the lyke offence [i.e., buying and dispersing

Psalms disorderly printed] iijli to whiche he yeildeth and promiseth to pay yt within ten

Dayes after e[a]ster next [March 31, 1594] iijli paid 13s 4d 15 Julij 1594.”40 (The common

term “disorderly printing” could refer both to books that were carelessly or incorrectly

printed and to the practice of printing pirated editions of books protected by royal

privilege; it is a useful summary for the problems that plagued the WBP.)41

It is not always possible to identify a WBP edition as pirated. STC 2464 (a

solmization psalter) and STC 2466 (a psalter with no prefatory material), both dating

from 1583, have been identified as pirated editions printed by John Wolfe.42 Both

editions falsely named John Day as printer. However, pirated editions were not always

subtle. STC 2477.5, a text-only psalter published in 1590, blatantly advertised on its title

page that it was “Printed by Iohn Legate, Printer to the Vniuersitie of Cambridge,”

though at this time all legitimate WBPs were “Printed by Iohn Wolfe, for the Assignes of

Richard Day” in London (see Figure 35).

39 Judge, Elizabethan Book-Pirates, 63-64; Hoppe, “John Wolfe, Printer and Stationer,” 260. 40 Qtd. in Judge, Elizabethan Book-Pirates, 72. 41 Judge, Elizabethan Book-Pirates, 71n5. 42 Hoppe, “John Wolfe, Printer and Stationer,” 258-259; Oastler, John Day, the Elizabethan Printer, 24.

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Figure 35. Title Page of STC 2477.5, a Pirated Edition43

43 Photograph taken by the author, courtesy of the Huntington Library.

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Music Typesetting Errors and Other Problems in The Whole Booke of Psalmes

Mechanics of Music Printing

A book was created in the sixteenth century, as now, by the application of ink to a blank

sheet of paper, followed by gathering up all of the pages in the proper order. In a

process known as typesetting, a typesetter (compositor) would have to select every piece

of type—usually individual letters—and lay them in the proper order (backwards) in a

printing press, where they would be inked and the paper pressed on top of them. The

typesetter worked from a copytext, trying to match his manuscript or printed model

exactly. He would select pieces of type, filling in a composing stick letter by letter and

line by line. When the composing stick was full, usually after a couple of lines of text, the

typesetter would transfer them to a galley tray. Extra material would be added to fill the

space completely; this included extra-textual printed material like folio numbers,

signatures, and running heads, and also the furniture (wooden wedges that held

everything together). Together, the galley and this extra material was known as the

forme, and once it was inked, the forme would print a single side of a single sheet of

paper. After all sheets were printed, the forme would be broken up and the type sorted

back into its typecase. No print shop had enough type to leave pages set up, so every

new edition of a book required completely resetting it from scratch.44

44 There are many excellent introductions to bibliography. The classic works are R. B. McKerrow,

Introduction to Bibliography For Literary Students (Winchester: St. Paul’s Bibliographies, 1994) and Philip

256

Thus the content of a printed book was completely reliant on the typesetter’s

actions and decisions. He might have to slightly modify his copytext for one reason or

another. Perhaps he would try to correct an error. He would make on-the-fly decisions

about spelling to ensure that a line of text filled his composing stick exactly, because

otherwise the whole complex would fall apart. Even if given a completely error-free

copytext, his eye might jump or his hand falter. He might reach for a letter in the wrong

compartment, or he might not notice that a piece of type was mis-sorted. There were

many ways in which the process of typesetting could go wrong.

When it comes to music typesetting, these problems were exacerbated if the

typesetter was unfamiliar with musical notation. By the mid-sixteenth century, music

printing had moved beyond double-impression and into single-impression printing. In

double-impression printing, first the lines of the staff were laid down, and then the

notes. It resulted in a very beautiful page, but was time-consuming. In single-impression

printing, each individual piece of music type contained five small dashes and a musical

symbol. When lined up next to each other, these dashes would form the musical staff;

the resultant staff lines would not be smooth and continuous but often full of small gaps.

A set of musical typeface would need to include a lot of symbols: all the notes, on all the

Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (Winchester: St. Paul’s Bibliographies, 1995). Both Mark Bland, A

Guide to Early Printed Books and Manuscripts (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) and Joseph A. Dane, What is

a Book? The Study of Early Printed Books (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012) focus

specifically on early modern printing.

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lines and spaces, in all the rhythmic durations; rests, also in all durations; dots;

accidentals; clefs and time signatures; double bar lines to mark the end of a piece; and

custodes, to indicate the first pitch on the next staff, again on all lines and spaces. With

so many symbols, a great many actions went into creating even a single page of sheet

music, and there were a lot of ways to make mistakes.

It helped to have a music corrector: someone to proofread printed pages against

their copytext, allowing stop-press revisions to the forme.45 Certainly some music

printing houses employed such correctors; the corrections (stop-press, manuscript, and

cancel slips) employed in Vautrollier’s printing of the 1575 Cantiones Sacrae, for example,

have been well-documented.46 Day himself may have, at least temporarily, employed an

experienced musician as his musical proofreader. Elizabeth Evenden has suggested that

composer Thomas Caustun, whose music was heavily featured in Day’s Certaine notes /

Mornyng and Euenyng prayer (1560/5), served as music corrector for that collection, a task

offered in exchange for the publication of Caustun’s music.47 There is no evidence that

Caustun performed this service for any of Day’s other music prints, though the

possibility remains. However, any reliance on the musician as corrector of music proofs

45 To read more on the role and task of correctors, see Percy Simpson, Proof-Reading in the Sixteenth,

Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London: Oxford University Press, 1935, repr. 1970), Chapter 3. 46 John Milsom, “Tallis, Byrd and the ‘Incorrected Copy’: Some Cautionary Notes for Editors of Early Music

Printed from Movable Type,” Music & Letters 77, No. 3 (Aug., 1996), 348-367; and the new critical edition:

Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, Cantiones Sacrae 1575, ed. John Milsom, Early English Church Music 56

(London: Stainer and Bell, 2014), xxv and in the critical notes to each individual composition. Further

discussion of the difficulty of editing Byrd’s printed music due to various forms of corrections can be found

in Philip Brett, “Editing Byrd—2,” The Musical Times 121 (Sept., 1980), 557-559. 47 Evenden, Patents, Pictures and Patronage, 77-78.

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beyond Certain notes / Mornyng and Euenying prayer would have ended with Caustun’s

death in 1569. This is perhaps why, in 1569, Day experimented with the use of

woodblocks, rather than moveable type, to produce the entire musical score of each

psalm tune. This feature, with its noticeably smooth staff lines, is found only in STC

2440. Given the woodblocks’ potential for minimizing typesetting errors and speeding

printing, why were they never used again? Evenden hypothesizes that pressure from

other printers (objecting to Day’s already high profits on the WBP) and his own

compositors (whose work would be threatened by woodblocks) forced Day to abandon

this printing method, which might have completely altered the future—and typesetting

accuracy—of the WBP.48

Variants in Tune References Across Editions

Most WBP editions prefaced each psalm with a set of useful information: the Latin

incipit, the number of the psalm, the initials of the versifier, and a prose argument (a

description of the theological and devotional value of the psalm). If the psalm was not

one that came with its own tune, the book printed a reference to another tune either

underneath the prose argument or in the margins; e.g., “Sing this as the first psalm.”

With only 65 tunes in the 1562 WBP, and 150 psalms plus 18 hymns and canticles, over

half received only tune references. This hampered the usability of the psalter, since any

48 Evenden, Patents, Pictures and Patronage, 78.

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psalm with a tune reference could not be sung unless the corresponding tune, found on

a different opening, was memorized.

The tune references themselves were prone to printing problems across editions.

Tune references were frequently missing or misprinted (for example, a 5 erroneously

substituted for a 6). In some cases, a mistaken tune reference might suggest a tune

whose meter does not match that of the psalm. However, an even bigger problem was

the tendency for tune references to shift across editions. Timothy Duguid has tracked

changes in tune references across editions from 1562 to 1640, attributing them to popular

practice reflected in later printers’ choices.49 However, as Duguid has pointed out, tune

reference changes did not stick. Even after one edition altered its tune reference, the next

might revert to an earlier one. Few tune references were changed with any consistency.

After carefully analyzing textual variations in editions printed through the mid-1580s,

Beth Quitslund concluded that one major source of the problem lay in the rapidity with

which new editions were produced, which meant that compositors were using different

editions as their copytexts, and not usually the most recent one.50 Some editions did not

even bother printing tune references. In my own survey of editions, I have noted that the

Group 6 psalters (the “text-only” psalters) all lack tune references, along with their

elimination of printed music.

49 Duguid, Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice, Chapter 4 and passim. His spreadsheet detailing tune

references can be downloaded at http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6684. 50 Beth Quitslund, “Adaptation and Popularity: Building The Whole Booke of Psalmes 1547-1577,” Psalm

Culture and the Politics of Translation Conference, London, July 16, 2013, 8-9.

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Variants across editions meant that different editions could not be productively

used together. Imagine three singers, each possessing a different WBP edition, trying to

sing Psalm 22 together, perhaps in a household as a form of devotion or recreation, or

perhaps in church for worship as congregational song. The first person, singing from the

first edition (WBP 1562, STC 2430), would be instructed to sing it using the tune

provided for Psalm 21. A second singer, possessing the edition from two years later

(WBP 1564, STC 2432), would find that Psalm 22 would have its own, different tune. If

the third singer owned a 1577 edition (STC 2449.5), he would be instructed to sing Psalm

22 using the tune for Psalm 12—and upon turning to Psalm 12, would find yet another

tune reference for Psalm 3. With three such different tune references, the group would

be forced to disregard the WBP’s musical suggestions. Together, they would agree upon

a tune that fit the meter; it would almost certainly be a psalm tune that was popular and

already memorized. If their psalters were musically unreliable and the actual practice of

singing metrical psalmody discouraged them from reading the music printed in the

books, the WBP would be of little use in teaching them to read musical notation.

Common Music Typesetting Errors

Before turning to the more significant printing problems related to the music preface

and solmization preface, I first want to discuss common music typesetting errors found

in the WBP’s tunes. Errors can be divided into three categories: errors of omission

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(something that should be printed is missing), errors of commission (something is

printed that should not be), and placement errors (the content is present but in the

wrong location). Most of these printing errors would not seriously impact a singer who

easily reads music, but many of them would cause confusion for those trying to gain

musical literacy by means of the WBP’s music-theoretical prefaces.

By far the most common problems have to do with the printing of clefs and key

signatures. Close examination reveals that every edition inevitably has at least one clef

printed on the wrong line (usually many throughout the psalter), or more rarely,

missing entirely. Similarly, one or more staves within a tune with a one-flat signature

will lack that flat. In some editions, these mistaken clefs and key signatures are

extremely common and for an uneducated singer could cause serious confusion. For

example, when a C4 clef is printed instead of the correct C3, but the one-flat key

signature is still printed properly, the resultant tune may be Phrygian, a mode that does

not otherwise appear in the WBP. I have also seen at least one example of an entire tune

being printed with the wrong clef, a serious error that would confuse a singer who did

not already know the tune. The entire melody is off by a third, and the opening interval

is not the correct descending perfect fifth, but a descending tritone.51

Another problem, again more frequent in some editions than others, is the

substitution of the wrong note value. In some cases, incorrect rhythms may make it

51 WBP 1595, STC 2490.3, Psalm 130.

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impossible to sing the same tune using two different editions; in others, wrong rhythms

make a tune unsingable. A common erroneously-printed rhythm is a dotted half note

followed by a half note (where the second note value should be a quarter note).

Occasionally, rhythmic extremes occur—for example, “The complaint of a sinner” in

WBP 1578, STC 2451 has a printed eighth note that is clearly in error and interferes with

the tune’s meter, creating an obvious rhythmic displacement since no eighth notes

actually appear in any of the psalter tunes.

Other common typesetting errors include missing or misplaced dots, or dots

printed on the left side of a note rather than the right;52 incorrect accidentals, or even

unnecessary ones (an accidental B-flat in a one-flat key signature); and mismatches

between notes and text underlay. As discussed in Chapter 5, there are also frequent

errors related to the printed solmization syllables, including wrong, missing, misaligned,

or upside-down syllables, or syllables found on the right side rather than the left side of

a note. In rare occurrences, a note is missing but its syllable still appears. Over- or under-

inking when the page was printed can also make text or music difficult to comprehend.

But the two sorts of music typesetting problems that would most interfere with a

singer’s ability to learn to read music through a combination of music or solmization

preface and practice are the printing of music staves upside-down and the use of

random pieces of type as blank spacers. The difficulties associated with the former are

52 See, for example, Psalm 147 in WBP 1581, STC 2457.

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self-evident: if a staff is printed upside-down, it is impossible to sightread. It would not

take long for an experienced singer to recognize the problem and, turning the book

upside-down, quickly learn and memorize those phrases of music. (See later in this

chapter for images and discussion of an upside-down staff.) For an inexperienced singer,

however, an upside-down staff makes the psalm tune unusable without significant work

or a companion from whom to learn the tune by rote. Spacers are an even more curious

problem. In order to accommodate text underlay, notes would be irregularly spaced.

This requires the use of blank pieces of musical type—a narrow strip of type that

contains all five staff lines but nothing else. In some WBP editions, however, other pieces

of type were used in place of blank spacers due to inattention and carelessness on the

part of the typesetter, or perhaps running out of blank pieces. This resulted in random

symbols printed in the middle of psalm tunes, including custodes, accidentals (both flats

and sharps), solmization syllables (in psalters with or without solmization), longs,

breves, and dots. These weird symbols are easily ignored if one already knows how to

read music. But for a singer trying to come to grips with music theory, these symbols

could be incredibly confusing, especially since many of them are not named or defined

in the WBP’s music preface.

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Music Preface Problems

The first edition of the WBP suffered from typesetting problems—in this case textual, not

musical—that damaged and weakened the didactic purpose of the music preface.

Elizabethan English was not characterized by standardized spelling or capitalization,

and printing in particular was prone to spelling variants because typesetters needed to

completely fill each line with type; otherwise the entire construction would fall apart.

However, when it came to naming notes and explaining the workings of the gamut,

minor variants in spelling and capitalization quite literally spelled disaster.

On three occasions, the typesetter substituted a capital “E” when he really meant

“F.”53 In the first instance, he is attempting to name an F clef: “but all these Kayes ar not

signed or set in these Psalmes: but onely ii. or three most commonly c, or e, or b. C, hath

this form or signe, [C clef] E, is signed after this maner [F clef] B, hath thus, [flat] or thus

sharpe. [sharp]”54 In the second and third instances, the typesetter names but misspells

the gamut nomenclature, indicating the pitch F3 as “E fa ut” rather than the correct “F fa

ut.”55 No “E fa ut” exists; the three Es found in the WBP’s gamut are E la mi (E3), e la mi

(E4), and ee la (E5).

53 Bernarr Rainbow has commented briefly upon this phenomenon in “Introduction,” in English Psalmody

Prefaces: Popular Methods of Teaching, 1562-1835 (Kilkenny, Ireland: Boethius Press, 1982), 4. 54 Sig. +.iii.r. 55 Sig. +iii.r-v: “When it chaunceth ii. kaies to be of one letter, as G sol, re, vt: and g, sol, re, vt, A, la, mi, re and,

a, la, mi, re, E, fa, vt: and f, fa, vt: E, la, mi, & e, la, mi, ye may (to put difference and distinction betwene them)

call the one, capitall G, or G, sol, re, vt, the lower and tother small g, or g, sol, re, vt: the higher, and so of

others.” And again, sig. +.v.v, naming the starting pitch of a hexachord: “One example more haue I set,

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The second type of problem involves not the substitution of one letter for

another, but of uppercase for lowercase. Several pitches on the gamut are named with

the same hexachord syllables, and the case of the letter makes the distinction between

them—for example, E la mi and e la mi, as we have seen. A typesetting substitution of

this nature is especially problematic when it comes in the context of a passage that relies

upon the distinction of absolute pitches. Discussion of the gamut erroneously names “g

sol re ut” as “G sol re ut” (accidentally substituting uppercase instead of the correct

lowercase):

The kayes of this Scale or Table, are deuided and set forth by thre diuers

orders of letters. From gamma vt, to G, sol, re, vt, ar signed with capitall

letters, & are called graue base, or capitall kayes: From G, sol, re, vt: to G,

sol, re, vt, they are wrytten with small letters and are called meane or

small kayes: And from g, sol, re, vt, to ee, la, they are written with double

letters, and are called double kaies, and treble kaies.56

The typesetting error (in bold) voids the identification of the octave from G3 to G4. Later

in the preface, both types of error (again in bold) appear in close proximity:

Like wise may ye practise, placing youre first Note vt, in anye other kaye,

wherin ye fine vt, which are vii. Gamma, vt, C, fa, vt: E, fa vt, graue: G, sol,

re, vt, graue: c, sol, fa, vt: F, fa, vt, sharpe: g, sol, re, vt, sharpe, ascending up

to la, and descending as in your former example. These vii. seuerall

ascensions and descensyons vpon diuers groundes or cleues, are

wherin ye sing fa, in b, fa, [sharp], mi. Whose deductions beginneth in vt: placed in E, fa, vt, graue or capital

as ye see. [Music example: six notes spanning a hexachord on F, with one-flat key signature]” 56 Sig. +.iii.r.

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commonlye called of writers vii. deductions, whiche ye may playnlye and

distinctlye beholde in your table, or Scale.57

The first bold passage should properly read as “F fa ut;” the second as “f fa ut.”

It is curious that so many of these errors centered around the uppercase F. It is

clear that the typesetter did have access to uppercase F pieces of type, so substitutions of

“E” for “F” were not errors born of a lack of materials. Even more curiously, in all of the

cases I have here identified, the earlier printing of the music preface in Day’s 1560/1561

Psalmes was correct. The typesetter, working from this earlier publication or, less likely,

from the manuscript that the earlier edition had also been based upon (and which was

almost certainly also correct) was not working from a bad model. These errors were due

to misplaced pieces of type in his case, to general carelessness, or perhaps even to poor

eyesight.

These seemingly minor substitutions mattered. The music preface’s painstaking

explanation of the gamut—particularly those explanations centered around the

distinction between lower- and uppercase letters—were undermined by unthinking

substitution of the wrong letter or the wrong case. Moreover, most of the errors I have

identified here were not corrected in the 1563 edition (STC 2430.5)—indeed, in one case,

the 1563 edition even compounded one error; what should have been “f fa ut” became

“F fa ut” in 1562 and “E fa ut” in 1563. The majority of the other editions containing the

57 Sig. +.v.r-v.

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music preface did fix these passages. However, 1565 (STC 2435) and 1583 (STC 2466.7)

both saw reversions to earlier errors.

Furthermore, in addition to this history of textual errors in the music preface, the

last two surviving editions—1581 (no STC number) and 1583 (STC 2466.7)—also have

problems in their music examples. In the 1581 edition, the double example showing

hexachords ascending and descending first by step and then by thirds, is broken into

three staves, and those staves are printed out of order: the second half of the second

example is printed first of the three. See Figure 36:

Figure 36. Hexachord Example in WBP 1581 (no STC number)58

In 1583, not only is this hexachord example similarly printed out of order, but the

two later figures illustrating the rhythmic values of notes and rests also have problems.

It is unclear why the original woodcuts are not used, but in resetting the music examples

58 Photograph taken by the author, courtesy of the National Library of Scotland.

268

using moveable type, several entries were lost. The large, crotchet, and quaver are

missing, as is the long rest, while the text describing these values is maintained. These

are mere oversights, in all cases, but oversights that make it harder for a reader to learn

the music theoretical topics the music preface is intended to teach.

Solmization Preface Problems

Despite its brevity, the one-page solmization preface is an essential tool for

understanding the meaning of the solmization syllables found throughout the psalter.

Without it, the letters printed prior to every note are mysterious additions to the music.

Should the reader have access to a copy of the music preface, he or she will still be at a

loss because solmization syllables are named, but are not printed in the music example

demonstrating ascending and descending hexachords. The WBP solmization psalters

were the first printed music in England to introduce single letters that denoted

solmization syllables attached to individual notes.

Because the solmization preface was so important, then, one would think that its

brief content—and especially its two music examples, which carried most of the didactic

weight—would be printed carefully, without error or variation across psalters. This was

not the case, and as a result, the educational nature of the solmization preface was often

impaired. Through careful study of the 44 solmization editions I have located, I have

found three smaller sets of errors in solmization prefaces and one larger set of linked

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errors that will form an extended case study. The three smaller problems are, in

chronological order of appearance, missing text underlay, a cleffing error, and wrong

positioning of syllables.

First, some editions lacked text underlay (see Figure 37). Strictly speaking, this

was not an error; the very first surviving solmization edition (STC 2439.5, dated 1569)

lacked syllabic text underlay. Because its music examples still included single-letter

syllable assignment in the musical scores themselves, underlay was not strictly

necessary. However, writing the syllables out in full as text underlay helped clarify the

relationship between the letters and the syllables themselves. The underlay, a helpful

addition, was first added in 1572 (STC 2442) and would be found in all other solmization

psalters, with a few exceptions. These six exceptions were all in sixteenmo (16o) format,

and their small pages offered little space for the solmization preface’s content.59 As a

result, the music examples were compressed and underlay abandoned.

Figure 37. Solmization Example in WBP 1569 (STC 2439.5)60

59 WBP [1569], STC 2439.5; WBP [1570?], STC 2441.5; WBP 1578, STC 2451.5; WBP [c. 1580], STC 2456.6; WBP

1581, STC 2459.5; WBP 1583, STC 2466.9; and WBP 1598, STC 2494a.5. 60 Photograph taken by the author, courtesy of the Bodleian Library.

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The second problem I have identified was definitely an error, not a conscious

choice. In the very same edition which added syllabic text underlay (STC 2442, dated

1572), the typesetter made an error when selecting the clef for the first music example:

rather than employing a C4 clef, he printed C5 (see Figure 38). Rather than spanning C

to A, the notes on the staff now outlined a sixth from A2 to F3. These pitches extended

beyond the actual range of the psalter tunes. Furthermore, the music example now

mislabeled the fixed syllables. This cleffing error was duplicated in every surviving

solmization psalter from 1572 through 1577.61 This was not the only cleffing error; a 1584

edition (STC 2468.5) mistakenly substituted a C3 clef for this same first music example;

here, the six notes now spanned the even more awkward Phrygian E to C (see Figure 39

below).

Figure 38. Cleffing Error in WBP 1572 (STC 2442)62

61 WBP 1572, STC 2442; WBP 1573, STC 2443; WBP 1574, STC 2444; WBP 1576, STC 2446; WBP 1576, STC

2447; WBP 1577, STC 2448.5. WBP 1577, STC 2449.3 survives in only one copy, found at the University of

London Senate House Library. It lacks signatures A-F, so I cannot say if the cleffing error is replicated. 62 Photograph taken by the author, courtesy of the British Library.

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That same 1584 edition (STC 2468.5) containing a C3 clef, which also included

particularly egregious syllable typesetting errors throughout its tunes, demonstrated a

third kind of solmization preface error: the wrong positioning of syllables. As Figure 39

shows, the second music example has some problems: the third syllable, M, is printed on

the first space rather than the second; the sixth syllable, L, is printed on the fourth space

rather than the third; the ninth syllable, L, is printed on the top line rather than the space

above it; and the tenth note should repeat the pitch A and the syllable L. An astute

reader may perhaps ignore these problems, but a new singer might be sorely pressed to

make sense of them. Though the other errors in the second music example were

corrected in the next solmization edition, the wrong positioning of the top L endured in

several subsequent editions (WBP 1585, STC 2470a and WBP 1586, STC 2472).

Figure 39. Music Example Errors in WBP 1584 (STC 2468.5)63

From these errors, we can see the lack of editorial oversight controlling the fine

details of the WBP’s music printing. New reprints of the WBP generally took older

editions as their models without much attention to detail or care to correct earlier

63 Photograph taken by the author, courtesy of Cambridge University Library.

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problems. Errors might be corrected, or they might not; some errors might be corrected

but others maintained. The most egregious example of this unthinking copying can be

found in all solmization psalters printed between 1586 and 1603 (when my survey ends).

The next section examines this family of psalters and their set of linked errors.

Case Study: Solmization Psalters, 1586-1603

In these late-century solmization psalters, there are three errors that become linked

together. First, starting in 1586 (STC 2472), the tune for Psalm 136 lacks solmization

syllables. There is no reason for their omission. The tune for Psalm 137, found on the

same opening, has syllables as usual; no other tune but Psalm 136 is missing its syllables.

Yet once this error is introduced, every solmization psalter replicates it. From 1586

through the end of Elizabeth’s reign, Psalm 136 is never solmized.64 It is an odd error

because the typesetter would have to change his habit (conjoining syllables and pitches

for each note) for this one tune alone. The continually missing solmization for this tune

seems to indicate the presence of compositors who lacked the musical knowledge or

awareness of the functional goals of this book to reinsert it.

In the next solmization edition (STC 2475, dated 1588), the second of the

consistent errors is introduced: the second note in the second music example of the

64 WBP 1593, STC 2483, found only at the Huntington, is missing all content following page 56, so I cannot

verify that it too lacks syllables for Psalm 136.

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solmization preface is misplaced by a third (it is printed on the first line instead of the

second line). The syllable, R for Re, is also misplaced, so at least note and syllable remain

aligned. Again, this error would be repeated in all following editions.

Third, we begin to see increasingly significant music typesetting errors in many

of the tunes. My examples here come from the Lord’s Prayer and Psalm 1, but these are

by no means the only tunes with problems. Errors include misplaced notes, misplaced

syllables, missing syllables, syllables on the wrong side of the note, upside-down

syllables, and even—as we shall see—entire upside-down staves. Once an error is

introduced, it tends to be repeated, and when a new edition introduces additional

errors, the problems become compounded and the tune even more incomprehensible.

Consider, for example, the Lord’s Prayer found among the opening canticles. In

1594 (STC 2486), though some notes lack syllables, for the most part this tune is in good

shape. Just one year later, in STC 2490, the Lord’s Prayer has become virtually

unsingable (see Figure 40 for comparison). The first three staves are near-duplicates, but

the music quickly dissolves into incomprehensibility. Notes are dramatically wrong,

missing entirely, and even typeset upside-down; syllables are frequently misaligned,

solitary, and upside-down. The melody has become unrecognizable, and the printed

tune looks like a jumble rather than like music.

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1594:

275

1595:

Figure 40. Lord’s Prayer Comparison: WBP 1594 (STC 2486) and WBP 1595

(STC 2490)65

65 Photographs taken by the author, courtesy of the Bodleian Library (STC 2486) and University of Wales

Trinity Saint David (STC 2490).

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The evolution of Psalm 1 is even more interesting (see Figure 41). We can again

take STC 2486 from 1594 as our baseline—with the exception of an errant upside-down

L functioning as a blank spacer, the tune is printed cleanly. In the next year (STC 2490,

dated 1595), the upside-down L functioning as a blank spacer is maintained, and the

following two pitches are given solmization syllables upside-down and on the wrong

side of their notes—though the proper solmization placement is restored (while the

inserted blank spacer endured) in 1597 (STC 2492). The worst typesetting of this tune,

however, comes in 1598 (STC 2494). As if aware that some editions have demonstrated

problems with the second staff of this tune, the typesetter gives it careful attention,

inadvertently making the situation far worse. It is true that the two A3 pitches and their

syllable assignments “L” are in the proper relation to each other. However, they should

come at the end of the staff. Here they (and the following custos) are positioned at the

beginning. The remainder of the staff is placed upside-down and backwards, with the

clef and key signature appearing at the right margin. The typesetter has not even

managed to remove the blank-spacer L.

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1594:

278

1595:

279

1597:

280

1598:

Figure 41. Psalm 1 Comparison: WBP 1594 (STC 2486), WBP 1595 (STC 2490),

WBP 1597 (STC 2492), and WBP 1598 (STC 2494)66

66 Photographs taken by the author, courtesy of the Bodleian Library (STC 2486 and STC 2494), University of

Wales Trinity Saint David (STC 2490), and the British Library (STC 2492).

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The repetition of these various strange errors serves as evidence of typesetters

who imitated the copy they were given, either without any attempt to fix errors found in

their models or with actions that compounded these errors, in some cases causing a

cascade of more serious problems that, as with Psalm 1 in STC 2494, make the tune

unsingable. These typesetters either lacked musical knowledge entirely or had so little

they could not make proper corrections; as we say today, they knew just enough to be

dangerous. The fault is not entirely theirs. The publishers—first John Day and later the

assigns of Richard Day—should have caught these problems. Day’s reputation for poor

music typesetting was warranted.

Evidence of Reader Corrections

When viewing literally hundreds of copies of the WBP, I have watched for manuscript

annotations: marks that readers have placed in their books. Many surviving editions

contain such marks, most of which do not engage with the psalter’s content. I have seen

ownership marks and other names, practice forming letters and repetitions of the

alphabet, birth dates and baptism dates, and countless scribbles. I have even seen

illustrations, including drawings of a horse, stick figures, and lutes. Less frequently,

manuscript annotations engage with the psalter’s text: glossing it, correcting it,

remarking upon it, drawing attention to it, or offering personal prayers and devotions.

But only very, very rarely do annotations engage with the musical content of the WBP;

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these are usually alternate tune references. In one case, a reader practiced drawing

custodes at the end of musical staves and then scratched them out.67

Yet in all these copies, I have only once seen a manuscript correction to the

music.68 Worcester Cathedral Library holds the only surviving copy of STC 2490.3, dated

1595. This particular edition contained more music typesetting errors than most. In

response, one reader (or possibly two) found occasion to correct some of these problems.

In the fourth system of Psalm 51 (fol. 33v), a reader corrected the “-iust” of “from this

uniust and sinful act” from D to the correct C. The final has also been corrected from its

erroneous F to D. (See Figure 42.) This second manuscript annotation appears in a

different ink than the first, so it seems likely that these corrections were two separate

events and may have been made by different readers. Interestingly, not all errors in this

psalm tune have been fixed; for example, the pitch for “and” immediately following the

first correction has not been altered from the printed C to the correct A. Nevertheless,

though the corrections are incomplete, they serve as evidence that this copy of the WBP

was being used by musically-literate readers who noticed the music printing errors and

felt a need to correct them.

67 WBP 1595, STC 2489, Bodleian shelfmark Ps. Verse 1595 d.1, page 144 (misprinted as 14). 68 WBP 1580, STC 2456.4, British Library shelfmark 689.a.41, contains penciled annotations in the tunes for

Psalm 120 and Psalm 135. Due to their modern provenance, I am not including these when listing music

corrections.

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Figure 42. Reader Corrections in STC 2490.369

In an era when so many readers clearly felt no qualms about annotating,

scribbling in, and correcting their books, why is Worcester’s 1595 WBP the only

surviving copy to contain any music corrections? With so many egregious printing

errors, why are no others fixed or otherwise remarked upon? The answer lies with the

regrettably still musically-illiterate populace who, at the turn of the seventeenth century,

69 Photograph taken by the author, courtesy of Worcester Cathedral Library.

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loved metrical psalmody and purchased an abundance of metrical psalters, but who

could not read the music printed in their books.

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Conclusion

Unlike the continental Reformations, which often had a single prominent reformer

driving musical reform, in the English Reformation musical thought was by no means

unified or formally worked out. Cranmer’s private letter to Henry VII advocating “for

every syllable a note,” Merbecke’s Booke Of Notes and Common places, and the 49th

Elizabethan Injunction, all of which have found places in this dissertation, certainly

played a role in the development of English Protestant musical thought and practice, but

none presented as clear or influential a picture of the musical identity of the lay English

Protestant as The Whole Booke of Psalmes.

As I showed in Chapter 1, this congregational hymnal derived its apparent

authority from the state and from the Church, successfully presenting itself as

authorized by Queen Elizabeth (perhaps disingenuously so, but in a fashion that was

ultimately tacitly approved in Day’s second monarchical privilege for the printing of

metrical psalters) and authoritative within the Christian tradition by means of scriptural

support and a carefully-chosen (and expanded) piece of writing by a well-regarded

church father. Advertising rigorous scholarship and translational accuracy, the WBP set

itself up as in opposition to Roman Catholicism, presenting itself as a return to the

purity and truth of the ancient Church. In this way, the WBP constructed its own

identity as work that was itself participating in the construction of English Protestant

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confessional identity. The psalter thus became the most visible symbol of English

Protestant music-making, and was able to promote a particular “theology of music”

within sixteenth-century English Protestantism.

When I say “theology of music,” I mean “theological account of music,” where

“theological” means “stemming from Christian Scripture, belief, doctrine, and/or

practice.” This formulation “theology of [concept]” is a common one in Christian

scholarship. Some of the more common uses include such major branches of study as

ecclesiology, which means “theology of the Church” or “the study of the nature of the

Church;” soteriology, which means “theology of salvation” or “the study of the

doctrines of salvation;” and missiology, or “theology of missions and the missionary

endeavor.” Additional fields of theological inquiry which do not have Greek names (“-

ology”) include (and here I give only a few examples of the many available): theology of

creation, an account of the relationship between God and creation;1 theology of culture,

an account of culture by Christian theologians that argues that culture has a similar

identity-formation role on humans as does Christian liturgy and theological reflection; 2

and theologies of religions, accounts by Christians of the reality and validity of the

1 Found, for example, in Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God

(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985). 2 Found, for example, in James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation

(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009).

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experience of the divine in non-Christian religions.3 This last is pluralized in its source,

and is included here to demonstrate an important characteristic of such “theologies of”:

even within the realm of Christian thought, there may exist multiple theologies of a

concept, which may differ across history or along denominational lines, and which may

even conflict with one another.

This is precisely what we see in the sixteenth-century Reformations. As Chapter

2 shows, there was no single Protestant theological account of music. Luther’s and

Calvin’s philosophies of music differed greatly, including contrasting arguments

regarding the nature of texts allowed to be used for liturgical music. On the other hand,

multiple and often-conflicting theologies of music circulated in Reformation England;

recall fierce debates regarding the place of organs in churches, debates that often led to

widespread destruction of these expensive instruments.

Chapter 2’s exploration of the theological understanding of music promoted by

the WBP expands our understanding of the varied Protestant theologies of music to

include study of the metrical psalter that functioned as propaganda, educational

material, and a devotional tool for the Church of England. According to the WBP,

singing like a Protestant in Elizabeth’s England meant singing monophonic

congregational hymnody using metricized texts from Scripture and the Book of Common

3 Found, for example, in David R. Brockman and Ruben L. F. Habito, eds., The Gospel Among Religions:

Christian Ministry, Theology, and Spirituality in a Multifaith World (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2010).

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Prayer, and especially from the Book of Psalms, itself a celebration of worship through

music. The WBP falls on the pro-organ side of the English debate, taking a definitive

stand in support of the use of instruments in church. The psalter places strong emphasis

on the attitude of the individual even as it advocates for singing in community.

That emphasis on the individual leads to this dissertation’s central argument:

through the vehicle of the WBP, English Protestantism advocated for musical education

for the common people. Unlike the English Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and the

official Books of Homilies, which similarly shaped English Protestant confessional identity

and practice, the WBP was not printed with the goal of textual uniformity, but with a

variety of paratextual features that enabled the WBP to fill different perceived needs in

the development of English Protestant thought and practice. In Chapters 3 and 4, I show

that the WBP with its two musical prefaces was England’s earliest and most readily

available means of music education for the general populace. Even after John Day’s

death, the later sixteenth-century publishers of the WBP continued to print solmization

syllables in many editions, clearly considering this feature worth the extra work and cost

of typesetting. Access to the WBP’s musical knowledge spanned all social classes; the

iconographic evidence of the woodcut printed in Day’s Whole Psalmes in Foure Partes

bears witness to the continued utility of the cultural practice of reading aloud in making

written texts accessible to those who could not read.

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As I demonstrated in Chapter 5, the WBP did not only function as a music-

educational work aimed at improving musical literacy, but also as a music theory

treatise, and the solmization psalters contained an important advance in English music

theory. We have thought that fixed-scale solmization originated with William Bathe’s c.

1596 Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Song and Thomas Morley’s 1597 Plaine and Easie

Introduction to Practicall Musicke, both large-scale, freestanding music theory textbooks.

My close analysis of the solmization syllables employed in the WBP, however, shows

that this uniquely English system was first published in the psalter, and fixed-scale

solmization was therefore born in a Protestant religious context in a hymnal that aimed

at accessibility and popular music education.

Chapter 6 explores the apparent conflict between the publisher intent of popular

music education and the actual reception of the book by readers and congregations. The

WBP did not function as it was meant. The lived practice of English Protestantism, the

psalter argued, required congregations who could read music. However, ultimately the

WBP’s two musical prefaces failed to musically educate the general populace. Musical

illiteracy was still widespread at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Extensive

typesetting errors in the prefaces and especially printed musical tunes in many WBP

editions along with other problems including changing tune references impaired the

ability of the book to educate its readers in music and often made the psalter unusable as

a musical score.

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How, then, do we account for the continued and growing popularity of the WBP

at the turn of the seventeenth century and at the end of Elizabeth’s reign, in light of

continued musical illiteracy and increasingly careless and problematic music

typesetting? If my research does not actively support the longstanding hypothesis that

the majority of the English people singing metrical psalms were not using the printed

“proper” tunes, this dissertation project does not contradict it.4 The inclusion of printed

music in the Church of England’s congregational psalter was deemed necessary in the

vast majority of WBP editions (all but 6 editions, or 4.5%), perhaps because music was

part of the public presentation of English Protestantism, but if most of the WBP’s users

sang their metrical psalm tunes from memory, it was less imperative that the music be

functional and thus carefully proofread.

The Whole Booke of Psalmes in a Competitive Market

I conclude this dissertation with a thought experiment: how might the WBP have been

different if there were no psalter patent? Because of this patent, the printing of the WBP

was limited first to John Day and then, until 1603 (when the patent was given by James I

to the Company of Stationers), to the assigns of Richard Day. If the WBP could have

4 Timothy Duguid, Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice: English ‘Singing Psalms’ and Scottish ‘Psalm Buiks’, c.

1547-1640 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 105; Christopher Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 411-419, 422; Beth Quitslund, The Reformation in Rhyme

(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 242-243; Nicholas Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church, Vol. 1

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 57-76; idem, “‘All skillful praises sing’: how congregations

sang the psalms in early modern England,” Renaissance Studies 29, No 4 (2015): 551-553.

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been legitimately printed by other publishers—who may have had their own opinions

about useful paratext, prefatory material, and contents—might the psalter have had

more success in musically educating the general populace? Might it have had a different

role in the formation of English Protestant musical identity?

Even with the psalter patent in place, pirates were already printing substandard

versions of the WBP. Opening up the WBP to any interested publisher would have

enabled highly experienced publishers beyond Day and his successors to print the

psalter, which would likely have further diversified its identity. Publishers who did not

possess music typeface would have printed the psalter without music (though few in

number, these “text-only” psalters already did exist). It is perhaps more interesting to

speculate on the impact of other music publishers getting their hands on the WBP. Were

the WBP to have been published by Vautrollier, East, Barley, Short, or Morley, it could

have become a hymnal with a much stronger musical identity.

To begin with, it seems clear that if Thomas Vautrollier or Thomas East (the two

men who worked with William Byrd to print music under the terms of the music patent)

had printed WBPs, the music would have been much more carefully typeset.

Vautrollier’s prints in particular (Di Lasso’s 1570 Recueil du mellange and Tallis’ and

Byrd’s 1575 Cantiones Sacrae) were—there is no other word for it—gorgeous: sharp, crisp

noteheads, with plenty of space between them; clear, dark ink application (but never

over-inked); and frequent stop-press music corrections indicating great concern for

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accurate typesetting.5 Were East or Vautrollier publishing the WBP, I would probably

not have had to write a chapter discussing problems in music typesetting. Without these

music printing errors, might the WBP have been more successful in educating the laity

in musical literacy? It is possible too that if more experienced music publishers were able

to print WBPs, they might have revived the music preface, or even substituted their

own—if Morley had printed WBPs, might he have substituted an extract from his own

Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke? An expanded group of publishers may

have resulted in a diversified set of music-educational materials.

Based on the evidence of the other psalters published throughout the sixteenth

century, it also seems likely that WBPs published by experienced music printers would

have demonstrated increased attention to musical authorship, with existing tunes given

composer names or newly commissioned tunes printed with attribution. The latter

seems more likely, especially because Thomas East’s Whole Booke of Psalmes: With Their

Wonted Tunes (1592; reprinted in 1594, 1604, and 1611) printed a number of tunes

“commonly song now adayes, and not printed in our common Psalme books with the

rest,” always naming their composers.6 These new tunes, distinct from the official tunes

of the WBP, may not have already been commonly sung, but even if they were in fact

5 Refer to Chapter 6, footnote 46. 6 Thomas East, “The Preface,” in The Whole Booke of Psalmes: With Their Wonted Tunes (London: Thomas East,

1592), sig. B.i.r.

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newly introduced by East, they were ultimately successful in becoming so.7 East’s

harmonized WBP is entirely comprised of four-part settings, but it is entirely plausible

that given a chance to publish a monophonic WBP, East would have published his

“common tunes” on their own (and would certainly have included the compositional

authorship he so carefully printed in the four-voice print).

Furthermore, these music publishers would probably have included additional

anthems at the end of the WBP following (or expanding) the group of closing hymns and

canticles, because they (interestingly, including John Day) did so in nearly all printed

harmonizations of WBP tunes. See Figure 43):

Day, The Whole Psalmes in Foure Partes (1563)

Tallis, “A prayer” (“O Lord in thee is al my trust”)

Sheppard, “A prayer” (“O Lord of hostes, thou god of Israel”)

Parsons, “A praier for the Quene” (“Almighty god, whose kingdom is

everlasting”)

Causton, “Another praier” (“O most high and eternal king”)

Tallis, “A prayer” (“Remember not O lord god”)

Daman, Psalmes of Dauid in English Meter (1579)

“A Prayer and thankesgeuyng to God for the Queenes Maiestie” (“O

Lord of Lordes and kyng of kynges”)

“A Prayer for mercy wisedome and power to doe Gods will” (“O Lord

our lyfe and righteousnesse”)

Cosyn, Musike of Sixe, and Fiue Partes (1585)

[None - contains only psalms]

Daman, The Former Booke (1591)

7 For discussion of East’s “common tunes,” see Christopher Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 412-418, and Nicholas Temperley, The Music of the English

Parish Church, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 68-72.

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“A prayer for the Queenes most excellent maiestie” (“O Mightie God

preserue the throne”

Daman, The Second Booke (1591)

“O heauenly God, O Father deere”

East, The Whole Booke of Psalmes: With Their Wonted Tunes (1592)

Dowland, “A Prayer for the Queenes most excellent Maiestie” (“O God of

power omnipotent”) [not reprinted in any of the subsequent editions]

Barley, The Whole Booke of Psalmes: With Their Woonted Tunes (1598/9)

[largely a reprint of East’s harmonization]

Bennet, “A praier for the Queenes most excellent Maiestie” (“O God of

power omnipotent”) [different musical setting]

Allison, Psalmes of Dauid (1599)

[None - contains only psalms and the usual hymns/canticles]

Figure 43. Additional Anthems in WBP Harmonizations

While Day and his successors never included anthems of this sort in the WBP, these

would have been easy additions and an opportunity to prominently print the names of

famous composers such as Thomas Tallis (as well as advertise these new songs on their

title pages). Many of these musical prayers were anthems in praise of Elizabeth, and, if

included in the WBP, would have reinforced the perceived official authorization of the

genre and the relationship between psalter, monarch, and Church of England.

This is all speculation, of course, but there is a parallel to be found in the Geneva

Psalter. In Chapter 5, I examined only three of its many editions, but in the work of these

three different publishers we saw a variety of music-educational features, including two

different music-theoretical treatises and Davantes’ aborted experiment with a numerical-

symbolic system intended to replace solmization syllables. England’s psalter patent may

have ensured Day’s profit, but it also froze the WBP’s format and contents, closing off

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the possibility of innovation by other publishers and preventing the psalter from

reaching its full musical and music-educational potential.

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Appendix 1. Whole Booke of Psalmes Editions

Grey shading (either light or dark) indicates editions I have not viewed; dark grey

means it survives only in private collections.

An asterisk (*) in the “Viewed” column indicates that it is available on Early English

Books Online (EEBO).

For explanation of the group numbers, consult Chapter 4.

Abbreviations:

Ab University of Aberdeen

Ba Balliol College, Oxford

BL British Library

Bod Bodleian Library

Br Brasenose College, Oxford

Cam Cambridge University Library

Ch Christ Church College, Oxford

Cl Clare College, Cambridge

Cor Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

D Duke University

EC Emmanuel College, Cambridge

F Folger Shakespeare Library

G General Theological Seminary

Har Houghton Library, Harvard University

HM Harris Manchester College, Oxford

Hunt Huntington Library

Lamp University of Wales Trinity Saint David (Lampeter)

LOC Library of Congress

MC Magdalene College, Cambridge

NCL New College Library, University of Edinburgh

NLS National Library of Scotland

NYPL New York Public Library

PC Pembroke College, Oxford

SA Society of Antiquaries

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SH Senate House Library, University of London

So University of Southampton

StP St Paul’s Cathedral Library

TC Trinity College, Cambridge

UNC University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Win Winchester Cathedral Library

Wor Worcester Cathedral Library

Year STC# Publisher Comments Group Viewed

1562 2430 John Day Music preface 1 *, BL, Har

1563 2430.5 John Day Music preface 1 NYPL

1564 2432 John Day Music preface 1 *, BL

1565 2434 John Day 2 *, BL

1565 2435 John Day Music preface 1 *, BL

1566 2437 John Day 2 *, Bod

1567 2436 = 2438 John Day Psalter patent 2 *, BL, Hunt

1569 2439.3 John Day 2 F

1569 2439.5 John Day Solmization 3 *, Bod

1569 2440 John Day Woodblocks for

music

2 BL

1570 2441 John Day Music preface 1 *

[c. 1570] 2441.5 John Day Solmization with

Athanasius treatise

3 *

1572 2442 John Day Solmization 3 *, BL

1572 2442.5 John Day Music preface 1 *

1572 2442.7 John Day 2 *, BL, G

1573 2443 John Day Solmization 3 *, F

1573? 2443.5 [No title page

or colophon

survives]

2 Lamp

1574 2444 John Day Solmization 3 *, Hunt

1575 2445 John Day 2 *, Hunt

1575 2445a.5 John Day 2 *

1576 2446 John Day Solmization 3 *, Bod, D,

Hunt, LOC,

NLS, UNC

1576 2447 John Day Solmization 3 *

1577 2448 John Day 2 *

298

1577 2448.5 John Day Solmization 3 *, Bod, NLS

1577/1578 2449 John Day Music preface 1 *, Bod

1577 2449.3 John Day Solmization 3 SH

1577 2449.5 John Day Different prefatory

material

4 *, Bod

1578 2449.7 John Day Solmization 3 *

1578 2450 John Day Solmization 3 *, F, LOC

1578 2450.5 John Day No prefatory

material

5 Bod, Har

1578 2451 John Day No prefatory

material

5 Ab

1578 2451.5 John Day Solmization 3 G

1579 2452 John Day Especially high rate

of music

typesetting errors

2 *, BL, Bod,

Cam, Har

1579 [none] John Day No prefatory

material

5 MC

1579 2452.5 John Day Solmization 3 So

1579 2452.7 John Day Solmization 3 PC, StP

1580 2453 John Day 2 *, BPL, NLS

1580 2454 = 2455 John Day 2 *

1580 2456 John Day Solmization 3 *BL, D, F, Har

1580 2456.2 John Day Solmization 3 BL, G

1580 2456.4 John Day Music preface 1 *, BL

[c. 1580] 2456.6 [John Day] Solmization with

Athanasius treatise

3 *

1581 2457 John Day 2 *, Bod, F

1581 2458 John Day Solmization 3 *, Bod, NLS

1581 2458.3 John Day Solmization 3 *, LOC, NLS

1581 2459 John Day Music preface 1 *, BL, NLS

1581 [none] John Day Music preface 1 NLS

1581 2459.3 John Day No prefatory

material, including

title page

5 BL, Br

1581 2459.5 John Day Solmization 3 *

1581 2459.7 John Day No prefatory

material

5 *

1582/1583 2460 John Day Solmization 3 Hunt, StP

1582 2460.5

299

1582 2461 John Day 2 *, Bod, Hunt

1582 2461.3 John Day Gathering A from

this only surviving

copy is missing;

my educated guess

is that this is a no-

prefatory material

psalter

5 Bod

1582 2461.5

1583 2462 John Day Solmization 3 Bod, D

1583 2463 John Day 2 *, BL, Hunt

1583 2464 John Day Solmization 3 *, Har, LOC

1583 2465 John Day Solmization 3 *, F

1583 2466 John Day No prefatory

material

5 *, BL, Bod,

Har, Hunt

1583/1584 2466.5 John Day 2 *

1583 2466.7 John Day Music preface 1 *, Bod

1583 2466.9 John Day Solmization 3 BL

1584 2467 John Day 2 *

1584 2467.3 John Day Solmization 3 *, LOC

1584 2468 Assigns of

Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 *, Har

1584 2468.5 Assigns of

Richard Day

Solmization 3 *, Cam

1585 2469 Assigns of

Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 *, Hunt, LOC

1585 2470 Assigns of

Richard Day

2 *, Har

1585 2470a Assigns of

Richard Day

Solmization 3 *, Bod, LOC

1585 2470a.3 Assigns of

Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 *, Bod, Har

1585 2470a.6 Assigns of

Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 *, NLS

1586 2471 John Wolfe, for

the Assigns of

Richard Day

2 *, BL, Bod, G,

Hunt

300

1586 2472 John Wolfe, for

the Assigns of

Richard Day

Solmization 3 *, Hunt, LOC

1586 2472.5 John Wolfe, for

the Assigns of

Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 Win

1586 2473 John Wolfe, for

the Assigns of

Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 *

1586 2473a John Wolfe, for

the Assigns of

Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 *, Har, Hunt

1587 2474 John Wolfe, for

the Assigns of

Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 *, BL, F, LOC,

NLS

1588 2475 For the

Assignes of

Richard Day

Solmization 3 *, BL, BPL,

Hunt

1588 2475.2 Imprint does

not list

publisher

2 *, BL

1588 2475.3

1589 2475.5 John Wolfe, for

the Assigns of

Richard Day

Only the title page

survives

BL

1589 2475.7

1589 2476 John Wolfe, for

the Assigns of

Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 *, Bod

1590 2476.5 John Wolfe, for

the Assigns of

Richard Day

Solmization 3 *, LOC

1590 2477 John Wolfe, for

the Assigns of

Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 Bod

1590 2477.5 Iohn Legate,

Printer to the

Vniversitie of

Cambridge

Text only 6 Hunt

301

1591 2477.7 John Wolfe, for

the Assigns of

Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 *, F

1591 2478 John Wolfe, for

the Assigns of

Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 *, BL, Bod

1591 2478.5

1591 2479 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

Solmization 3 *, D

1591 2479.5 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

2 *

1592 2480 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 *, LOC

1592 2481 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

Solmization 3 *, BL, NLS

1592 2481.5 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

2 *

1593 2483 John Windet[,

for the Assigns

of Richard

Day]

Solmization 3 Hunt

1593 2483.5 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 Bod, TC

1593 2484

1593 2484.3 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 Cam

1593 2484.5

1593 2485 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

Different prefatory

material

4 Hunt

1594 2486 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

Solmization 3 *, Bod, Lamp,

LOC

302

1594 2487 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 *

1594 2487.3 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

2 *, Hunt

1594 2487.6

1595 2489 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

2 *, Bod, BPL,

Ch, NLS

1595 2490 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

Solmization 3 *, Bod, Lamp

1595 2490.2 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 *, BPL

1595 2490.3 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 Wor

1595 2490.4 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

No prefatory

material except a

woodcut

5 *, Bod, Hunt

1595 2490.5 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

Text only 6 F

1596 2490.6 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 *

1596 2490.7 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

2 Ch

1596 2490.8 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

No prefatory

material except a

woodcut

5 *

1597 2491 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

2 *, Ch, Hunt,

LOC

1597 2492 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

Solmization 3 *, BL, Bod,

Hunt, NCL

303

1597 2492a John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 EC

1597 2492a.5 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

Text only 6 *, BPL

1598 2493 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

2 *, BPL, F,

Hunt

1598 2494 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

Solmization 3 *, Bod, F,

Hunt, LOC,

Win

1598 2494a John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

No prefatory

material except a

woodcut

5 Bod, Cam

1598 2494a.5 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

Solmization 3 Bod

1599 2497.3 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

2 *, Bod, G,

NYPL

1599 2497.5 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

Solmization 3 *, Bod, Har

1599 2497.7

1599 2498 = 2496 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

Text only 6 *

1599 2498.5 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

Different prefatory

material

4 *, BL

1600 2500 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

Solmization 3 *, Cl, Hunt,

MC, NLS,

NYPL

1600 2500.3 [John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard

Day]

Solmization 3 D, F

304

1600 2500.5 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

No prefatory

material except a

woodcut

5 *, NLS

1600 2500.7 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

2 Cam

1600 2501 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

Text only 6 *, BL

1601 2502 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

No prefatory

material

5 *, Bod, F, NLS

1601 2503 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

No prefatory

material except a

woodcut

5 *, Bod, Hunt,

NLS

1601 2503.5 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

2 UNC

1601 2504 [John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard

Day]

Text only 6 BL, NCL

1602 2506 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

Solmization 3 *, D

1602 2506.5 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

2 *, Hunt

1602 2507 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

No prefatory

material except a

woodcut

5 *

1603 2508 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

2 *, Bod

1603 2509 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

Solmization 3 *, Bod

1603 2510 John Windet,

for the Assigns

of Richard Day

2 *, Bod

305

1603 2510.5

306

Appendix 2. Musical References in The Whole Booke of Psalmes, Coverdale, and Crowley Psalters

Only the white-background passages reference music. Verses that do not reference

music are highlighted light grey for easy comparison across psalters. Passages not

present in a psalter are highlighted dark grey.

Psalm

Verses

Coverdale Psalter

(1535)1

Crowley Psalter (1549) The Whole Booke of

Psalmes (1562)

5:12 (5:13

in WBP)

And let all them that

put their trust in thee

rejoice: they shall ever

be giving of thanks,

because thou defendest

them; they that love thy

Name shall be joyful in

thee;

[5:19-20]

And let suche as do

truste in the, synge &

reioyce alwaye: Let

suche as loue thy name

reioyce in thy defence I

saye.

But those that put theyr

trust in thee, / let them

be glad alwayes: / And

render thankes for thy

defence, / and geue thy

name the prayse.

7:18 I will give thanks unto

the Lord, according to

his righteousness: and I

will praise the Name of

the Lord most High.

[7:33-34]

After his righteousnes

I will prayse the Lorde

most myghtye: And

right so wyll I synge to

the name of the Lorde

most hye.

I will geue thankes to

God therfore, / that

iudgeth rightuously: /

And with my song

prayse will the name, /

of hym that is most hye.

1 Ernest Clapton, Our Prayer Book Psalter: Containing Coverdale’s Version From His 1535 Bible and the Prayer

Book Version by Coverdale From the Great Bible 1539-41 Printed Side By Side (London: Society For Promoting

Christian Knowledge, 1934). The Coverdale Psalter was prescribed for liturgical use beginning with the 1549

Book of Common Prayer.

307

9:1-2 I will give thanks unto

thee, O Lord, with my

whole heart: I will

speak of all thy

marvellous works. I

will be glad and rejoice

in thee: yea, my songs

will I make of thy

name, O thou most

Highest.

[9:1-4]

I wyll set forth and

prayse the Lorde with

al myne herte in dede:

/ And al hys wonderful

worckes shal by my be

declared. / I wyll be

glad & eke reioyce in

the (O thou most hye:)

/ And to thyne holy

name I wyl synge

moste reioyceyngly.

WIth hart and mouthe,

vnto the Lorde, / will I

syng laude and prayse:

/ And speake of all thy

wondrous workes, /

and them declare

alwayes. / I will be glad

and muche reioyce, / in

thee (O God) moste hie:

/ And make my songes

extoll thy name, / aboue

the sterry skie.

9:11 O praise the Lord

which dwelleth in Sion:

shew the people of his

doings.

[9:21-22]

Synge to the Lorde that

doeth abyde in the

cyty Syon: / Shewe hys

counselles in eche

people, and in eche

nacyon.

Sing Psalmes therfore

vnto the Lorde, / that

dwelleth in Sion hill:

13:6 I will sing of the Lord,

because he hath dealt

so lovingly with me:

yea, I will praise the

Name of the Lord most

Highest.

[13:11-12]

I will synge to the

Lorde I saye, with hert

vnfaynedly: / Because

he doeth requyte to me

all thynges

aboundantly.

I will geue thankes vnto

the Lorde, / and prayses

to hym syng: / Because

he hathe hard my

request, / and graunted

my wishyng.

18:2 (18:3

in WBP)

I will call upon the

Lord, which is worthy

to be praised: so shall I

be safe from mine

enemies.

[18:7-8]

The Lorde that is

worthy of prayse, I wyl

aye calle vpon: / And I

shall be preserued

from, myne enimies

ech one.

When I sing laud vnto

the Lorde, / most

worthy to be serued: /

Then fro[m] my foes I

am right sure, / that I

shalbe preserued.

308

18:50

(18:48 in

WBP)

For this cause will I

give thanks unto thee,

O Lord, among the

Gentiles: and sing

praises unto thy Name.

[18:105-106]

And for this cause (O

Lorde) I wyll, in the

Heathen prayse the: /

And wyll synge to

thyne holy name,

wherso euer I be.

And for this cause, O

Lorde my God, / to thee

geue thankes I shall: /

And syng out prayses

to thy name, / among

the Gentils all.

20:5 We will rejoice in thy

salvation, and triumph

in the name of the Lord

our God: the Lord

perform all petitions.

[20:9-10]

Then wyth syngynge

we wyll reioyce in thy

saluation: / And wyth

triumphe set vp

bannars in oure

goddes name anone.

We shall reioyse when

thou vs sauest, / and

our banners displaye: /

Unto the Lorde whyche

thy requestes, / fulfilled

hathe alwaye.

21:13 Be thou exalted, Lord,

in thine own strength:

so will we sing, and

praise thy power.

[21:25-26]

Extolle thy selfe Lorde

in thy powre, set vp

thy selfe on hye: / Then

shall we synge and

celebrate thy powr

most worthyly.

Be thou exalted Lorde

therfore, / in thy

strength euery houre: /

So shall we sing right

solempnely, / praisyng

thy might and power.

27:7 (27:8

in WBP)

Therefore will I offer in

his dwelling an

oblation with great

gladness: I will sing,

and speak praises unto

the Lord.

[27:15-16]

I wyll offer sacryfyces

in hys tente with

syngynge: / I wyl

synge and reherse an

hymne vnto the Lorde

our kynge.

Therfore within his

house will I, / Geue

sacrifice of prayse: /

With Psalmes and

songes I will applye, /

to laude the Lorde

alwayes.

309

28:8 (28:7

in WBP)

The Lord is my

strength and my shield;

my heart hath trusted

in him, and I am

helped: therefore my

heart danceth for joy,

and in my song will I

praise him.

[28:17-20]

The Lorde is my

strength and my

shylde, in him mine

herte trusted: / And I

receyued helpe,

wherfore myne herte is

delyted. / And with

my songe I will prayse

him, and eke his holy

name: / I will

remembre his goodnes,

and teache other the

same.

He is my shield and

fortitude, / my buckeler

in destresse. / My hope,

my helpe, my hartes

relyef, / my songe shall

him confesse.

30:4 Sing praises unto the

Lord, O ye saints of his:

and give thanks unto

him for a remembrance

of his holiness.

[30:7-8]

Ye that haue felt the

Lordes mercye, synge

a Psalme vnto hym: /

Set forth the memorye

of hys holynes with an

hymne.

Sing prayse ye sainctes

that proue and see, / the

goodness of the Lord: /

In memorye of his

maiestie, / Reioyse with

one accord.

30:13

(30:12 in

WBP)

Therefore shall every

good man sing of thy

praise without ceasing:

O my God, I will give

thanks unto thee for

ever.

[30:25-26]

Wherfore ech man shal

synge to the, glorie

wythouten staye: / O

Lorde my God for euer

more I wyll prayse the

I saye.

Wherfore my soule

vncessauntly, / shall

syng vnto thy prayse: /

My Lorde, my God, to

thee will I, / Geue laude

and thankes alwayes.

310

32:8 Thou art a place to hide

me in, thou shalt

preserve me from

trouble: thou shalt

compass me about with

songs of deliverance.

[32:15-16]

Thou arte myne

hydynge place and

wylt, kepe me from

miserie: / And wylt

beset me wyth the

myrth of men that

scape hardly.

When trouble and

aduersitie, / doo

compasse me about: /

Thou art my refuge and

my ioye, / and thou

doest rid me out.

32:12

(31:11 in

WBP)

Be glad, O ye righteous,

and rejoice in the Lord:

and be joyful, all ye

that are true of heart.

[32:23-24]

Be glad in the Lorde (O

ye iuste) & reioyce in

hys syght: / Synge vnto

hym so many as are in

youre hertes vpright.

Be mery therfore in the

Lorde, / ye iust lyft vp

your voyce: / And ye of

pure and perfect hart, /

be glad and eke reioyce.

33:1-3 Rejoice in the Lord, O

ye righteous: for it

becometh well the just

to be thankful. Praise

the Lord with harp:

sing praises unto him

with the lute, and

instrument of ten

strings. Sing unto the

Lord a new song: sing

praises lustily unto him

with a good courage.

[33:1-4]

Reioyce ye iust men in

ye Lord, prayse doeth

good men beseme: /

Prayse ye the Lord

wyth harppe & lute,

play on ten strynges to

hym. / Synge a newe

songe, synge swete

musick wyth

blowynge of trumpet: /

For the worde of the

Lorde is ryght, and all

hys worckes sure set.

YE rightuous in the

Lorde reioyse, / it is a

semely sight: / That

vpright men with

thankfull voyce, /

should prayse the God

of might. / Prayse ye the

Lorde with harp and

songe, / in Psalmes and

pleasant thinges: / with

lute and instrument

among, / that soundeth

with ten stringes. / Sing

to the Lord a song most

new, / with courage

geue him prayes:

311

35:28

(35:30 in

WBP)

And as for my tongue,

it shall be talking of thy

righteousness: and of

thy praise all the day

long.

[35:57-58]

And on my tong

(Lord) thy iustyce shal

sowne dylygently: /

And vpon thy most

worthy prayse my

tonge shal runne

dayly.

Wherfore my tonge I

will applye, / thy

righteousnes to pryse: /

Unto the Lorde, my

God will I, / sing laudes

with thankes alwayse.

40:3 And he hath put a new

song in my mouth:

even a thanksgiving

unto our God.

[40:5-6]

And in my mouth he

hath set a newe songe

prayse to our God: /

Which thynge many

shall se and feare, and

shall trust in the Lorde.

To me he [God] taught

a psalme of prayse, /

whiche I must shew

abrode: / And sing new

songes of thankes

alwayse, / vnto the

Lorde our God.

42:4

(42:4b in

WBP)

Now when I think

thereupon, I pour out

my heart by myself: for

I went with the

multitude, and brought

them forth into the

house of God;

[42:9-10]

When I remember

howe I led forth a

greate companie: /

Syngynge and

praysynge God, then

doeth myne herte

reioyce greately.

When I did marche in

good aray, / furnished

with my trayne: / Unto

the temple was one

way, / with songes and

harts most fayne.

42:10 The Lord hath granted

his loving-kindness in

the daytime: and in the

night-season did I sing

of him, and made my

prayer unto the God of

my life.

[42:19-20]

His mercifull goodnes

the Lorde sheweth to

me by daye: / And by

nyght I do syng &

praye to God that

lyueth aye.

Yet I by day felt his

goodnes, / and helpe at

all assayes: / Lykewise

by night I did not cease,

/ the liuyng God to

prayse.

312

43:4 And that I may go unto

the altar of God, even

unto the God of my joy

and gladness: and upon

the harp will I give

thanks unto thee, O

God, my God.

[43:7-8]

That to goddes aultare

& to God, my ioye and

reioyceynge: / I maye

enter, & to my God I

maye on myne harppe

synge.

Then shal I to the aultar

go, / of God my ioy and

cheare: / And on my

harpe geue thankes to

thee / O God, my God

most deare.

45:1-2 My heart is inditing of

a good matter: I speak

of the things which I

have made unto the

King. My tongue is the

pen: of a ready writer.

[45:1-4]

Some goodnes doeth

myne herte belche out,

my meanynge is godly:

/ My worckes and

dedes vnto the kynge

playnly declare wyll I.

/ My tonge is lyke the

penne of one that

wryteth most swyftely:

/ And in my talke I

speake my wordes

verie expeditely.

My hart doth now, take

in hande, / Some godly

songe to singe: / Thy

prayse I shall shew

therein, / perteyneth to

the kynge. / My tounge

shalbe as quicke, / his

honor to endite: / As is

the pen of any scribe, /

that vseth faste to

wryte.

47:1 O clap your hands

together, all ye people:

O sing unto God with

the voice of melody.

[47:1-2]

Ye people all, clappe

wyth your handes,

declare your herte

therby: / Syng vnto

God wyth merie voyce

reioyce most hertily.

YE people all in one

accorde, / clappe

handes and eke reioyce:

/ Be glad and sing vnto

the Lorde, / with swete

and pleasaunt voyce.

313

47:5-7

(47:5-6 in

WBP)

God is gone up with a

merry noise: and the

Lord with the sound of

the trump. O sing

praises, sing praises

unto our God: O sing

praises, sing praises

unto our King. For God

is the King of all the

earth: sing ye praises

with understanding.

[47:9-14]

God ascendeth wyth

freshe syngynge, and

wyth greate melodie: /

Wyth the blasse and

sowne of trumpettes,

the Lorde goeth vpon

hye. / Synge vnto God,

synge vnto hym, synge

ye vnto our kynge: /

Synge to our God and

kyng I saye, alwaye

wythout ceaseynge. /

For God is kynge of all

the earth, and ruleth in

the same: / Synge vnto

him, synge conynglye

vnto his holy name.

Our God ascended vp

on hye, / with ioy and

pleasaunt noyce, / The

Lorde goeth vp aboue

the skye, / with

trompets royall voyce. /

Sing prayse to God,

sing prayse, / sing

prayses to our kynge: /

For God is king of all

the earth, / all skilfull,

prayses syng.

49:4 I will incline mine ear

to the parable: and

shew my dark speech

upon the harp.

[49:5-6]

I wyll enclyne myne

eare to knowe thynges

full dearckely spoken: /

And eke vpon myne

harpe I wyll make my

dearcke speach open.

I will inclyne myne eare

to knowe, / the parables

so darke. / And open all

my doubtfull speache, /

in metre on my harpe.

314

51:8 Thou shalt make me

hear of joy and

gladness: that the bones

which thou hast broken

may rejoice.

[51:15-16]

Brynge thou to passe

that I maye heare great

ioye and reioyceynge:

And that they whome

thou haste brought

lowe, may thy great

prayses synge.

Therfore (O Lorde)

suche ioy me send, /

that inwardly I may

fynd grace: / And that

my strength may now

amend, / which thou

hast swagd for my

trespace

Another Psalm 51 (not

given verse numbers):

Of ioy and gladnes

make thou me / to

heare the pleasing

voyce: / That so the

broosed bones, which

thou / hast broken, may

reioyce.

315

51:14 Deliver me from blood-

guiltiness, O God, thou

that art the God of my

health: and my tongue

shall sing of thy

righteousness.

[51:27-28]

O God, the God of my

soule helth, deliuer me

from bloud: And my

tonge shall wyth ioye

declare, the boeth

ryghtwise and good.

O God that of my

health art Lorde, /

forgeue me thys my

bloudy vice: / My hart

and toung shall then

accorde, / to sing thy

mercies and iustice.

Another Psalm 51 (not

given verse numbers):

O God that art God of

my health, / from blood

deliuer me: / That

prayses of thy

righteousnes / my tonge

may syng to thee. / My

lippes that yet fast

closed be, / doo thou, O

Lorde vnlose: / The

prayses of thy maiestie /

my mouth shall so

disclose:

56:5 They daily mistake my

words: all that they

imagine is to do me

evil.

[56:9-10]

They are offended at

my wordes, and do

them dayly carpe: All

theyr studye is to hurt

me, on this one strynge

they harpe.

What thinges I eyther

did or spake, / they

wrast them at theyr

will: / And all the

counsell that they take,

/ is how to worke me ill.

316

57:8-10

(57:9-11 in

WBP)

My heart is fixed, O

God, my heart is fixed:

I will sing, and give

praise. Awake up, my

glory; awake, lute and

harp: I myself will

awake right early. I will

give thanks unto thee,

O Lord, among the

people: and I will sing

unto thee among the

nations.

[57:19-24]

To synge and geue the

prayse (O God) myne

hert is euer prest: To

set forth thy greate

prayse, I saye, my

mynd is redye dreste.

Awake my tonge and

strength to speake, for

thou arte my glorie:

Awake my lute and

eke my harpe, for I

wyll rise erlye.

Amonge the people

wyll I geue thankes

vnto the O Lord: And

amonge the heathen

my tonge shall thy

prayses recorde.

My harte is set to laude

the Lorde, / in hym to

ioye alwayes. / My hart

I say doth well accorde,

/ to syng hys laude and

prayse. / Awake my ioy,

awake I say, / my lute,

my harpe and strynge: /

For I my sealf before the

daye, / will rise, reioyce

and syng / Amonge the

people I will tell, / the

goodnes of my God: /

And shew hys prayse

that doeth excell, in

Heathen landes abrode.

59:16-17 As for me, I will sing of

thy power, and will

praise thy mercy

betimes in the morning:

for thou hast been my

defence and refuge in

the day of my trouble.

Unto thee, O my

strength, will I sing: for

thou, O God, art my

refuge, and my

merciful God.

[59:31-34]

Wyth reioyceynge I

shall declare thy

myght and greate

goodnes: Because thou

arte my tower of

strength, & refuge in

distres. To the I saye

(O God my strength)

wyll I reioyce and

synge: Because thou

arte my whole defence,

and most mercifull

kynge.

But I will shew thy

strength abrode, / thy

goodnes I will prayse: /

For thou arte my

defence and God, / at

nede in all assayes. /

Thou art my strength,

thou hast me staid / O

Lorde I synge to thee: /

Thou arte my forte, my

fence and ayde, / a

louing God to me.

317

61:8 So will I always sing

praise unto thy Name:

that I may daily

perform my vows.

[61:15-16]

Then shall I neuer

sease to synge, vnto

thy holy name: That I

maye performe all my

vowes dayly vnto the

same.

Then shall I singe for

euer still, / with prayse

vnto thy name: / That

all my voues I may

fulfill, / and dayly pay

the same.

63:6 (63:5

in WBP)

My soul shall be

satisfied, even as it

were with marrow and

fatness: when my

mouth praiseth thee

with joyful lips.

[63:11-12]

Then shall my soule be

satisfied, as wyth most

swete fatnes And

therfore shall my

lyppes reioyce, and my

mouth shewe thy

prayse.

My soule is filled as

with marow, / whiche is

bothe fat and swete: /

My mouth therfore

shall sing such songs /

as are for thee most

mete.

65:14 The folds shall be full

of sheep: the valleys

also shall stand so thick

with corn, that they

shall laugh and sing.

[65:27-28]

The fieldes and valleys

of the earth haue for

theyr couerynge: Such

flockes of shipe and

plottes of grayne, that

they reioyce and

synge.

In places playne the

flocke shall fede, / and

couer all the earth: / The

valies with corne shall

so excede, / that men

shall sing for mirth.

318

66:1-3 O be joyful in God, all

ye lands: sing praises

unto the honour of his

Name, make his praise

to be glorious. Say unto

God, O how wonderful

art thou in thy works:

through the greatness

of thy power shall thine

enemies be found liars

unto thee. For all the

world shall worship

thee: sing of thee, and

praise thy name.

[66:1-6]

All earthly men

reioyce to God, and

prayse hys holy name:

Set forth hys praise I

saye & geue glorie

vnto the same. Saye

vnto God, Oh in thy

worckes howe

wonderfull art thou?

For the pletie of thy

power doeth cause

thyne enmies to bowe.

All they that dwell

vpon the earth, shall

honour the, O Lorde:

And shall all synge to

the and to thy name

wyth one accord.

Ye men on earth in God

reioyce, / with prayse

set forth his name: /

Extoll his might with

hart and voyce / geue

glory to the same. /

How wonderfull, O

Lorde, say ye, / in all

thy workes thou art: /

Thy foes for feare doo

seke to thee, / full sore

agaynst theyr hart. / All

men that dwell the

earth throughout / doo

prayse the name of

God: / The laude therof

the worlde about, / is

shewd and set abrode.

66:7 O praise our God, ye

people: and make the

voice of his praise to be

heard;

[66:13-14]

O ye people, preach ye

our God, and make his

name be knowne: By

you let the voyce of his

prayse, throughout the

earth be blowne.

ye people geue vnto our

God, / due laude and

thankes alwayes, / With

ioyful voyce declare

abrode, / and syng vnto

hys prayse.

68:4 O sing unto God, and

sing praises unto his

Name: magnify him

that rideth upon the

heavens, as it were

upon an horse; praise

him in his name JAH,

and rejoice before him.

[68:7-8]

Synge vnto God, synge

to his name, & make a

perfect waye: To him

that rideth in hygh

heauen, whose name is

Lorde for aye

Sing prayse, sing prayse

vnto the Lord / who

rideth on the skie: /

Extoll this name of Iah

our God, / and him do

magnifie.

319

68:25 The singers go before,

the minstrels follow

after: in the midst are

the damsels playing

with the timbrels. Give

thanks, O Israel, unto

God the Lord in the

congregations: from the

ground of the heart.

[68:45-46]

The syngyng me do go

before, then folowe the

mynstrelles: And laste

of all the fayer

maydens playinge

vpon tymbrelles.

The singers goo

befrre[before] with ioy,

/ the minstrels folow

after: / And in the

midst the damsels play,

/ with timbrell and with

taber. / Now in thy

congregations, / (O

Israell) prayse the Lord:

/ And Iacobs whole

posteritie, / geue

thankes with one

accorde.

68:32 Sing unto God, O ye

kingdoms of the earth:

O sing praises unto the

Lord;

[68:59-60]

Synge to the Lord (O

ye kyngdomes of the

earth) and reioyse: To

him that rideth on the

heauens, & stretcheth

out his voyce.

Therfore ye kingdomes

of the earth, / geue

prayse vnto the Lorde: /

Sing Psalmes to God

with one consent, /

therto let all accorde.

69:12

(69:13-14

in WBP)

They that sit in the gate

speak against me: and

the drunkards make

songs upon me.

[69:21-22]

Yea they that sate in

the towne gates the

rulars and the kynges:

Iested at me, and the

drunckardes made the

songes of these

thynges.

Both hie and lowe, and

all the throng, / that sit

within the gate: / They

haue me euer in theyr

tong, / of me they talke

and prate.

320

69:31

(69:32 in

WBP)

I will praise the Name

of God with a song:

and magnify it with

thanksgiving.

[69:53-54]

Then shall I prayse

goddes; holy name,

wyth most ioyfull

syngynge: and shall

magnifie the same

with most hertie

thanckes geuynge.

That I may geue thy

name the prayse, / and

shew it with a song: / I

will extoll the same

alwayes, / with harty

thankes among.

71:7 (71:8

in WBP)

Let my mouth be filled

with thy praise: that I

may sing of thy glory

and honour all the day

long.

[71:13-14]

Many take me for a

monster, but thou arte

my defence: And my

mouth shall not lacke

thy praise, nor thy

magnificence.

Wherfore my mouth no

tune shall lacke, / thy

glory and thy prayse: /

And eke my tong shall

not be slack, to honor

thee alwayse.

71:20-21

(71:24-25

in WBP)

Therefore will I praise

thee and thy

faithfulness, O God,

playing upon an

instrument of musick:

unto thee will I sing

upon the harp, O thou

Holy One of Israel. My

lips will be fain when I

sing unto thee: and so

will my soul whom

thou hast delivered.

[71:41-44]

Wherfore (my God)

vpon my lute I wyll

synge and prayse the:

And all my songes

vpon myne harpe,

shall prayse thy veritie.

O holy one of Israel,

when I shall to the

synge: My lyppes and

soule that thou hast

bought, shall flowe

wyth reioyseynge.

Therfore thy faithfulnes

to prayse, / I will bothe

lute and sing: / My harp

shall sound thy laude

alwayes / O Israels holy

king. / My mouth will

ioy with pleasant voyce

/ when I shall sing to

thee: / And eke my

soule will muche

reioyce, / for thou hast

made me free.

321

72:18-19

(72:19-20

in WBP)

Blessed be the Lord

God, even the God of

Israel: which only

doeth wondrous things;

/ And blessed be the

Name of his majesty for

ever: and all the earth

shall be filled with his

majesty. Amen, Amen.

[72:33-36]

Let the Lorde our God

be blessed, the God of

Israell: For he alone

worcketh wonders in

heauen earth and in

hell. Blessed be the

holy name of hys

glorie for aie: Let his

maiestie fyll the earth,

amen, amen I saye.

Praise ye the Lord of

hostes and sing, / to

Israels God eche one: /

For he doth euery

wondrous thing, / yea

he him self alone. / And

blessed be his holy

name, all times

eternally: / That all the

earth may prayse the

same, / Amen, Amen,

say I.

75:11-12

(75:9-10 in

WBP)

But I will talk of the

God of Jacob: and

praise him for ever. All

the horns of the

ungodly also will I

break: and the horns of

the righteous shall be

exalted.

[75:19-20]

As for me I wyll

preach for aye, &

synge to Iacobes God: I

wyll breake all the

wycked hornes euen

wyth an Iron rodde.

But I will talke of God (I

say) / of Jacobs God

therfore: / And will not

cease to celebrate, / his

prayse for euermore. /

In sunder breake the

hornes of all, / vngodly

men will I: / But then

the hornes of righteous

men, / shalbe exalted

hye.

77:6 I call to remembrance

my song: and in the

night I commune with

mine own heart, and

search out my spirits.

[77:11-12]

My verses in the nyght

dyd I call to my

memorie: And wyth

myne herte I comuned,

and dyd myne owne

sprite trie.

By night my songes I

call to mynde, / once

made thy prayse to

shew: / And with my

hart, much taulke I

finde, / my spirites doth

searche to knowe.

322

81:1-3 Sing we merrily unto

God our strength: make

a cheerful noise unto

the God of Jacob. / Take

the psalm, bring hither

the tabret: the merry

harp with the lute.

Blow up the trumpet in

the new-moon: even in

the time appointed, and

upon our solemn feast-

day.

[81:1-6]

Synge vnto God with

reioyseynge, who is

our force and myght:

And endeuour wyth

lowde trompettes

Iacobs God to delyght.

Begyne a Psalme and

playe to it, with tabrete

and wyth harpe: And

wyth the swete and

solemne lute wyth

notes pleasaunt and

sharp. Blowe wyth the

horne the blastes that

are vsed at the newe

mone: The tyme

wherin our sacrifice is

poynted to be done.

BE lyghte and glad in

God reioyce / which is

our strength & staie / be

ioyfull and lyfte vp

your voyce, to Iacobs

God I say, / prepare

your instrumentes most

mete / some ioyfull

psalme to synge, /

stryke vp with harp and

lute so swete / on euery

pleasant stryng. / Blow

as it were in the new

mone, / with trumpets

of the best: / As it is

vsed to be done, at any

solemne feast.

84:3 (84:3-

4 in WBP)

Yea, the sparrow hath

found her an house,

and the swallow a nest

where she may lay her

young: even thy altars,

O Lord of hosts, my

King and my God.

[84:5-8]

For the verie sparowe

hath founde a place

wherin to dwell: And

the swallowe a neste

where she maye kepe

hir yonge ones well. O

Lord of myght, that

arte my kyng and eke

my God for aye: Thyne

altares are the place

wheron these byrdes

do fynde theyr staye.

The sparrowes find a

rome to rest, / and saue

them selues from

wrong: / And eke the

swalow hath a neste, /

wherin to kepe her

yong. / These birdes full

nigh, thin aulter maye) /

haue place to sitte and

synge: / O Lorde of

hostes thou art I say, /

my God and eke my

kynge.

323

87:7 (87:8

in WBP)

The singers also and

trumpeters shall he

rehearse: All my fresh

springs shall be in thee.

[87:15-16]

In the (Sion) are all my

welles where out all

they do sprynge: That

in my trase do leade

the daunce, & do my

praises synge.

The trumpetters with

such as syng, / therin

great plenty be: / My

fountayns & my

pleasant springs / are

compast all in thee.

89:1 My song shall be alway

of the loving-kindness

of the Lord: with my

mouth will I ever be

shewing thy truth from

one generation to

another.

[89:1-2]

Thy mercies and thy

goodnes Lorde I wyll

synge wythout staye

And wyth my mouth

(Lord) wyll I cause, thy

truth be knowe for aye.

TO syng the mercyes of

the Lorde, / my tounge

shall neuer spare: / And

with my mouth from

age to age, / thy truthe I

will declare.

324

92:1-4 It is a good thing to

give thanks unto the

Lord: and to sing

praises unto thy Name,

O most Highest. To tell

of thy loving-kindness

early in the morning:

and of thy truth in the

night-season. Upon an

instrument of ten

strings, and upon the

lute: upon a loud

instrument, and upon

the harp. For thou,

Lord, hast made me

glad through thy

works: and I will rejoice

in giving praise for the

operations of thy

hands.

[92:1-8]

Nowe is it mete (O

thou most high) to

synge vnto thy name:

And for to celebrate

the Lorde, and to

encrease his fame. To

preach his mercie and

goodnes erly before

the pryme: And also to

declare his sayth, and

trueth in the nyght

tyme. On the

instrument of ten

strynges and lute wyth

notes sharppe: And

eke on the lowde

instrumentes, and also

on the harppe. For

thou (O Lorde) haste

wyth thy worckes,

made me merie and

glad: In the worckes of

thyne handes I wyll

reioyce and not be

sadde.

IT is a thing, bothe good

and meete, / to praise

the highest Lorde: /

And to thine name O

thou most hye, / to sing

in one accorde. / To

shew the kindnes of the

Lorde, / betime ere day

be light, / And eke

declare his truth

abrode, / when it doth

draw to nyght. / Upon

ten strynged instruent, /

on lute and harpe so

swete: / With all the

mirth you can inuent, /

of instruments most

meete, / For thou hast

made me to reioyse, / in

thinges so wrought by

thee: / And I haue ioy,

in harte and voyce, / thy

handy workes to see.

325

95:1-2 O come, let us sing

unto the Lord: let us

heartily rejoice in the

strength of our

salvation. Let us come

before his presence

with thanksgiving: and

shew ourselves glad in

him with psalms.

[95:1-4]

Come , let vs all

reioyce and synge to

the Lord that is one.

Let vs synge to the

suer grownde of our

saluation. Let vs

preuent him & falle

downe before his face

wyth prease: Let vs

synge vnto him wyth

psalmes, and studie

him to please.

O Come let vs lyfte vp

oure voyce, / and synge

vnto the Lorde, / in him

our rock of health

reioyce, / let vs with one

accorde, / yea let vs

come before his face, to

geue him thanks and

prayse, / in singing

Psalmes vnto his grace,

/ let vs be glad all

wayes.

96:1-2 O sing unto the Lord a

new song: sing unto the

Lord, all the whole

earth. Sing unto the

Lord, and praise his

name: be telling of his

salvation from day to

day.

[96:1-4]

Synge a newe songe

vnto the Lord, in

faythse ye accorde All

ye that dwell vpon the

earth, synge this songe

to the Lorde. Synge to

the Lorde, and prayse

his name preach his

saluation: Tell his

glorie and wondrouse

worckes in euerie

nation.

SYng ye with prayse

vnto the Lorde, / New

songs of ioy and mirthe

/ Sing vnto him with

one accorde, / all people

on the yearthe. / yea

sing vnto the Lorde, I

saye, / prayse ye his

holy name / Declare

and shew from day to

daye, / saluation by the

same.

326

96:11-12 Let the heavens rejoice,

and let the earth be

glad: let the sea make a

noise, and all that

therein is. Let the field

be joyful, and all that is

in it: then shall all the

trees of the wood

rejoice before the Lord.

[96:19-22]

Let the heauens be

merie and glad, and let

the earth reioyce Let

the sea and all thynges

therin geue out

asoundynge voyce. Let

the corne field and all

that is therin reioyce I

saye: Then all the trees

of the foreste, let them,

synge out for ioye.

The heauens shall great

ioy begin, / the earth

shall eke reioyce: / The

sea with all that is

therin, / shall shoute

and make a noice. / The

field shall ioye and

euery thing, / that

spryngeth of the earth: /

The wod and euery tree

shall sing, / with

gladnes and with mirth.

97:8 (97:9

in WBP)

Sion heard of it, and

rejoiced: and the

daughters of Judah

were glad, because of

thy judgements, O

Lord.

[97:15-16]

Sion heard this and

was right glad and

Iudes daughters (O

Lord) Reioyced for thy

iuste iudgementes, and

dyd the same record.

With ioy shall Sion here

this thyng, / and Juda

shall reioyce: / For at

thy iudgements they

shall sing, / and make a

pleasaunt noyce.

98:1 O sing unto the Lord a

new song: for he hath

done marvellous

things.

[98:1-2]

Synge a newe songe

vnto the Lord, for he

hath wonders

wrought. By hys holy

arme & owne strength

health to him selfe he

brought.

O Syng ye now vnto the

Lorde, / a new and

pleasaunt songe: / For

he hath wrought

throughout the world /

His wonders great &

strong.

327

98:5-7

(98:5-6 in

WBP)

Shew yourselves joyful

unto the Lord, all ye

lands: sing, rejoice, and

give thanks. Praise the

Lord upon the harp:

sing to the harp with a

psalm of thanksgiving.

With trumpets also and

shawms: O shew

yourselves joyful before

the Lord the King.

[98:7-14]

All ye that dwell vpon

the earth synge

prayses to the Lorde:

Breake out in voyce

and eke reioyce, &

synge in musickes

corde. Synge to the

Lord vpon the harppe

syng Psalmes to your

harppynge Make

swete noyse wyth

trumpettes and

shawmes, before the

Lorde and kynge. Let

the sea and all thynges

therin, geue out a

sowndyng voyce. Let

all that dwell vpon the

earth, in lyke maner

reioyce. Let the freshe

waters clap wyth

handes, as pleased

wyth the thynge. And

let the mountaynes so

reioyce, that they sease

not to synge.

Be glad in him, with

ioyfull voyce, / all

people of the earth: /

Geue thankes to God,

sing and reioyce / to

him with ioy and mirth.

/ Upon the harp vnto

him sing, / geue thankes

to him with psalmes: /

Reioyce before the Lord

our king, / with

trumpets and with

shalmes.

100:1 O be joyful in the Lord,

all ye lands: serve the

Lord with gladness,

and come before his

presence with a song.

[100:1-2]

All earthly men synge

to the Lorde &

worshyp hym gladly:

Come merily into his

syght, reioyceynge

hertily.

IN God the Lorde be

glad and lyght, / prayse

him throughout the

yearthe: / Serue him

and come before his

sight, / with singing and

with mirth.

328

100:3

(mis-

numbered

as 100:13

in WBP)

O go your way into his

gates with

thanksgiving, and into

his courts with praise:

be thankful unto him,

and speak good of his

Name.

[100:5-6]

Enter his gates to geue

him thanckes & his

courtes to synge

prayse: Set him forth

wyth prayses and

laude his name all

maner wayes.

O go into his gates

alwayes, / geue thankes

within the same: /

within his courts set

forth his prayse, / and

laud his holy name.

101:1

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

My song shall be of

mercy and judgement:

unto thee, O Lord, will

I sing.

[101:1-2]

Mercie and iudgment

wyll I synge, of them

my songe shall be: Of

mercie and iudgment

(O Lord) I wyll synge

vnto the.

I Mercye will and

iudgement sing, / O

Lorde God vnto thee:

104:12 Beside them shall the

fowls of the air have

their habitation: and

sing among the

branches.

[104:23-24]

And that the foules of

the ayer, that on the

trees do synge: Myght

lyue nygh them

haueynge fast by,

theyr abode and

dwellynge.

By these pleasant

springs / or fountaynes

full fayre.The foules of

the ayre / abide shall

and dwell: Who moued

by nature / to hoppe

here and there, /

Among the grene

branches / their songs

shall excell.

104:33 I will sing unto the

Lord as long as I live: I

will praise my God

while I have my being.

[104:63-64]

So longe as I shall lyue

therfore, to the Lorde

wyll I synge: To my

God wyll I synge, I

saye, whylse I shall be

lyueynge.

To thys Lorde and God

/ sing will I alwayes: /

So long as I liue, / my

God prayse will I

329

105:1-2

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

O give thanks unto the

Lord, and call upon his

Name: tell the people

what things he hath

done. O let your songs

be of him, and praise

him: and let your

talking be of all his

wondrous works.

[105:1-4]

Confesse &

acknowledge the Lord,

and call vpon hys

name: Teach his

studies to the people,

& make them learne

the same. Describe the

Lorde and synge to

hym, and talke of hys

wonders. Reioyse in

hys moste holy name,

and be hys glad

sekears.

GEue prayses vnto God

the Lorde, / and call

vpon his name: /

Among the people eke

declare, / his workes, to

spred his fame. / Sing

ye vnto the Lorde, I say,

/ and sing vnto him

prayse, / And talke of

all the wondrous

workes, / that he hath

wrought alwayes.

105:42

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

And he brought forth

his people with joy: and

his chosen with

gladness;

[105:79-80]

And he led forth his

owne people, with ioye

and reioyceynge: So

dyd he his beloued

men, with most ioyful

syngynge.

He brought his people

forth with mirth / and

his elect with ioy: / Out

of the cruell land where

they, / had lyued in

great anoye.

106:12

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

Then believed they his

words: and sang praise

unto him.

[106:25-26]

Then gaue they credite

to his wordes, & gan

his prayse to synge:

But streyght waye they

forgate his worckes

myndynge his lawes

nothynge.

Then they beleued his

wordes, & praise / in

song they did him geue.

330

107:22 That they would offer

unto him the sacrifice

of thanksgiving: and

tell out his works with

gladness!

[107:33-34]

And let them offer

sacrifice of hertie

confessynge: And let

them tell forth all hys

dedes, wyth most

ioyfull syngynge.

And let them offer

sacrifice, / with thankes

and also feare, / And

speake of all his

wondrous works / with

glad and ioyfull cheare.

108:1-3 O God, my heart is

ready, my heart is

ready: I will sing and

give praise with the

best member that I

have. Awake, thou lute,

and harp: I myself will

awake right early. I will

give thanks unto thee,

O Lord, among the

people: I will sing

praises among the

nations.

[108:1-6]

Myne herte is made

redie to synge (O God)

and eke to playe: On

instrumentes

melodiouse, O my

glorie I saye, My lute

and eke myne harppe

arise, for I wyll wake

erlye: In the mornynge

wyth the daye

sprynge, my Lorde to

magnifie. And vnto the

wyll I confesse,

throughout all regions:

And wyll synge and

set forth thy name,

emonge all nations.

O God, my harte

prepared is, / and eke

my tong is so. / I will

aduaunce my voyce in

song, / and

geuyug[geuyng] prayse

also. / Awake my viole

and my harpe, / swete

melody to make, / And

in the morning I my

selfe, / right early will

awake. / By me among

the people, Lorde, / still

praysed shalt thou be, /

And I among thy

Heathen folke, / will

sing, O Lorde, to thee.

108:9

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

Judah is my law-giver,

Moab is my wash-pot;

over Edom will I cast

out my shoe, upon

Philistia will I triumph.

[108:17-18]

As for Moah, is my

washe pan, on

Edomwyll I walke:

And ouer Palestine

wyll I, synge and

pleasantly talke.

My hed strength

Ephraim, and Law /

shall Juda geue for me: /

Moab my washpot, and

my shoe, / on Edom

will I throwe, / Upon

the land of Palestine, /

in triumph will I goo,

331

118:14

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

The Lord is my

strength, and my song:

and is become my

salvation.

[118:25-26]

For God it is that is my

strength, my salfgard

and my wealthe: So is

he my reioyceynge

songe, & eke myne

only health.

The lorde is my defence

and strengthe / my ioy,

my mirth and song: /

He is become for me in

dede, / a sauiour most

strong.

119:54 Thy statutes have been

my songs: in the house

of my pilgrimage.

[119:93-94]

As for me whe I am at

home in my house

where I dwell: My

delyte is to synge thy

lawes, and thy decrees

to tell.

And as for me, I framed

my songs, / thy statutes

to exalt: / When I

among the straungers

dweld, / and thoughtes

gau me assalt.

119:164 Seven times a day do I

praise thee: because of

thy righteous

judgements.

[Crowley includes only

sections 1-20; this

passage is from section

21 (Shin)]

Seuen times a day I

prayse the Lord /

singing with hart and

voyce: / Thy rightuous

actes and wonderfull, /

so cause me to reioyse.

119:171-

172

My lips shall speak of

thy praise: when thou

hast taught me thy

statutes. / Yea, my

tongue shall sing of thy

word: for all thy

commandments are

righteous.

[Crowley includes only

sections 1-20; this

passage is from section

22 (Tav)]

Then all my lippes thy

prayses speake, / after

most ample sort: /

When thou thy statutes

hast me taught, /

wherin standeth all

comfort: / My tong shall

sing and preache thy

word / and on this wise

say shall: / Gods

famous actes and noble

lawes, / are iust and

perfect all.

332

126:2-3

(126:2 in

WBP)

Then was our mouth

filled with laughter:

and our tongue with

joy. Then said they

among the heathen:

The Lord hath done

great things for them.

[126:3-4]

Our mouth and tonge

shall be full wyth

laughter and syngynge

then And the Heathen

shall saye the Lorde,

hath done much for

these men.

our mouthes were with

laughter filled then, /

and eke our tongues

did shew vs ioyfull

men. / The Heathen

folke were forced then,

this to confes, / How

that the Lord for them

also great things had

don,

126:7

(126:6 in

WBP)

He that now goeth on

his way weeping, and

beareth forth good

seed: shall doubtless

come again with joy,

and bring his sheaves

with him.

[126:11-12]

The man that beareth

the seedlepe, shall go

on styll wepynge: But

when he shall carie the

sheaues, he shal

returne syngynge.

They went and wept in

bearing of their

precious sede. / For that

theyr foes full often

times did them anoye: /

But their returne with

ioye they shall sure see,

/ Their sheaues home

bryng, and not impered

be.

129:1-2

(129:1 in

WBP)

Many a time have they

fought against me from

my youth up: may

Israel now say. / Yea,

many a time have they

vexed me from my

youth up: but they have

not prevailed against

me.

[129:1-4]

Nowe may Israell saye

they haue fought ryght

sore agaynst me: Uerie

ofte from my youth vp,

that myne enimies be.

Ryght ofte they haue

fought against me

from my yougth (may

he saye) Yet agaynst

me could they neuer,

preuayle ne haue theyr

waye.

Of Israell thys may now

be the song, / euen from

my youth my foes haue

oft me noied / A

thousand euils since, I

was tendre & yonge /

Thy haue wrought, yet

was I not destroyed.

333

132:9

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

Let thy priests be

clothed with

righteousness: and let

thy saints sing with

joyfulness.

[132:15-16]

Let thy priestes put on

rightuousenes, & let

thy good mensynge:

And for thy seruant

Dauids sake, saye not

naye to thy kynge.

Let all thy prestes be

clothed Lorde, / with

truthe and

righteousnes: / Let all

thy sayntes and holy

men, / sing all with

ioyfulnes.

132:17

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

I will deck her priests

with health: and her

saints shall rejoice and

sing.

[132:25-26]

Hir priestes I wyll

indue wyth health they

shall be in salftie: And

the good me that dwel

in hir, shal synge

reioyceyngly.

Yea I will decke, and

cloth her pristes, / with

my saluation: / And all

her sainctes shall sing

for ioye, / of my

protection.

135:1-3 O praise the Lord, laud

ye the Name of the

Lord: praise it, O ye

servants of the Lord; Ye

that stand in the house

of the Lord: in the

courts of the house of

our God. O praise the

Lord, for the Lord is

gracious: O sing praises

unto his Name, for it is

lovely.

[135:1-4] [this one

clearly has

untranscribed

expansions – do all?]

Oh ye yt be the Lordes

seruates, prayse his

name without staye Al

ye yt stade in ye Lordes

house & our goddes

courtes I saye. Prayse

God (for whye? ye

Lord is good) & syng

vnto his name: For it is

full pleasaunt and

good, wherfore prayse

ye the same.

O Praise the lord praise

him praise him, / praise

him with one accord, / o

praise him stil al ye that

be / the seruaunts of the

lord, / o praise him ye

that stand & be, / in the

house of the Lord, / ye

of his court and of his

house / praise hym with

one accord. / Prayse ye

the Lord for he is good,

/ syng prayses to his

name: / It is a comly,

and good thing, /

alwayes to doo the

same.

334

135:14

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

For the Lord will

avenge his people: and

be gracious unto his

servants.

[135:23-24]

For the Lorde shall

iudge his people, he

shall reuenge theyr

wronge: And from his

flocke he shall returne

wyth a reioyceynge

songe.

The Lorde will surely

auenge, / his people all

in dede / And to his

seruauntes, he will

shewe, / fauour in tyme

of nede.

335

137:1-5 By the waters of

Babylon we sat down

and wept: when we

remembered thee, O

Sion. As for our harps,

we hanged them up:

upon the trees that are

therein. For they that

led us away captive

required of us then a

song, and melody in

our heaviness: Sing us

one of the songs of

Sion. How shall we

sing the Lord’s song: in

a strange land? If I

forget thee, O

Jerusalem: let my right

hand forget her

cunning.

[137:1-10]

Vpon the riuers sides

we sytte, and wepe

moste bytterly. In

Babylon, when Sion

doeth come to our

memorie. And vpon

the grene wyllowe tres,

that growe in Babilon:

We haue hanged vp

our swete harpes, and

instrumentes echone.

For there, they that

made heapes of vs,

required vs to synge:

And to make myrth,

sayinge let vs, heare of

Sion somethynge. But

howe shoulde we

synge the Lordes

hymnes wyth myrth

and melodie: In a

straynge lande where

we are kept in such

captiuitie? But (Oh

Ierusalem) if I forget

the in myne herte: I

praye God that my

right hand maye forget

all musyckes arte.

WHen as we sat in

Babylon, / the riuers

rounde about: / and in

the remembraunce of

Sion / the teares for

grief bust out. / We

hangd our harps &

instruments, / the

willow trees vpon, / for

in that place men for

their vse, / had planted

many one. / Then they

to whom we prisoners

were, / sayde to vs

tauntingly: / Now let vs

heare your Ebrue

songes, / and pleasant

melody. / Alas (sayd

we) who can once

frame, / his sorowfull

hart to syng: / The

prayses of our louing

God, / thus vnder a

straunge kyng? But yet

if I Ierusalem, / out of

my hart let slyde: /

Then let my fingers

quyte forget, / the

warblyng harp to

guyde.

336

138:1

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

I will give thanks unto

thee, O Lord, with my

whole heart: even

before the gods will I

sing praise unto thee.

[138:1-2]

I wyll confesse to the

(O Lord) wyth herte

vnfaynedly. And wyll

synge vnto the before

the iudges openly.

Thee will I prayse with

my whole hart, / my

Lorde my God alwayes:

/ Euen in the presence

of the Gods, / I will

aduaunce thy prayse.

138:5

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

Yea, they shall sing in

the ways of the Lord:

that great is the glory of

the Lord.

[138:11-12]

And they shall synge

of and describe the

Lordes wayes and his

wyll. Because hys

maiestie is greate, in all

hys doynges styll.

They of the wayes of

God the Lord, / in

singing shall entreate: /

Because the glory of the

Lorde, / it is exceding

great.

144:9

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

I will sing a new song

unto thee, O God: and

sing praises unto thee

upon a ten-stringed

lute.

O God, to the wyll I

synge the newe song of

right dealeyng: On the

instrument of ten

strynges, I wyll vnto

the synge.

A new song I will sing

O God, / and singing

will I be, / On viole and

on instrument, / ten

stringed vnto thee.

145:7

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

The memorial of thine

abundant kindness

shall be shewed: and

men shall sing of thy

righteousness.

[145:13-14]

The memorie of thy

goodnes, & passeynge

great mercie. Men shall

brynge forth and

celebrate, thy iustice

merily.

And they into the

mention shall, / breake

of thy goodnes great: /

And I aloud thy

righteousnes, / in

singing shall repete.

146:1

(146:1-2 in

WBP)

Praise the Lord, O my

soul; while I live will I

praise the Lord: yea, as

long as I have any

being, I will sing

praises unto my God.

[146:1-2]

My soule prayse thou

the Lord for I, wyll

prayse him my lyfe

longe. And whylse I

lyue vnto my God, I

wyll aye make my

songe:

My soule prayse thou

the Lord alwayes, / My

God I will confes: /

Whyle death and lyfe

prolong my dayes, / my

tonge no tyme shall

cease.

337

147:1

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

O praise the Lord, for it

is a good thing to sing

praises unto our God:

yea, a joyful and

pleasant thing it is to be

thankful.

[147:1-2]

Prayse God, for it is

verie good, and

pleasaunt for to synge:

To our God, and to

geue hym prayse, is

also besemeynge.

PRaise ye the Lord, for

it is good / vnto our

God to synge, / For it is

pleasante and to prayse,

/ it is a comely thyng,

147:7

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

O sing unto the Lord

with thanksgiving: sing

praises upon the harp

unto our God;

[147:11-12]

Synge to the Lorde

wyth verse for verse,

and thanckes

geueynge also: And

synge to our God wyth

the harppe, that so

swetly doeth go.

Sing vnto God the Lord

with prayse, / vnto the

Lord reioyse: / And to

our God vpon the harp,

/ aduaunce your

singing voyce.

149:1

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

O sing unto the Lord a

new song: let the

congregation of saints

praise him.

[149:1-2]

Synge a newe songe

vnto the Lorde reioyce

in hym alone: And

synge hys prayse in

hys deare church and

congregation.

SIng ye vnto the Lorde

our God, / a new

reioysing song: / And

let the prayse of him be

heard, / his holy

sainctes among.

149:3

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

Let them praise his

Name in the dance: let

them sing praises unto

him with tabret and

harp.

[149:5-6]

Let them prayse his

name wyth the pype,

and eke wyth the

tymbrelle: And synge

to hym vpon the

harppe, that sowneth

swete and well.

Let them sound prayse

with voyce of flut / vnto

his holy name: / And

with the timbrell and

the harpe, / sing prayses

of the same.

338

149:5

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

Let the saints be joyful

with glory: let them

rejoice in their beds.

[149:9-10]

Let them that be gentle

and good, reioyce

wyth great honour:

And in theyr beddes

let them reioyce, and

synge wyth greate

pleasure.

With glory and with

honor now, / let al the

sainctes reioyse: / And

now aloude vpon their

beds, / aduaunce their

singing voyce.

150:3-5

(WBP has

no verse

numbers)

Praise him in the sound

of the trumpet: praise

him upon the lute and

harp. Praise him in the

cymbals and dances:

praise him upon the

strings and pipe. Praise

him upon the well-

tuned cymbals: praise

him upon the loud

cymbals.

[150:5-8]

Prayse hym wyth the

sowne of trumpet,

prayse hym wyth

harppe and lute:

Prayse hym, I saye,

wyth the tymbrel and

wyth the pype or flute.

Prayse hym with

organnes and rebecke,

and cymballes of

lowde sownde. Prayse

hym, I saye, wyth such

cymballes, as make the

voyce rebownde. Let

eche spirite and

lyueynge thynge,

prayse God boeth

night and daye: Let

them all worcke hys

holy wyll, prayse ye

the Lorde I saye.

His prayses with the

princely noyse, / of

sounding tropet blowe.

/ Praise him vpon the

viole and, / vpon the

harp also. / Praise him

with timbrell and with

flute, / orgaines and

virginalles: / With

sounding cimbals

praise ye him: / praise

him with loud cimballs.

339

Appendix 3. Transcription of The Whole Booke of Psalmes’ Music Preface (1562)

Macrons over vowels and the use of y for thorn (th) have been tacitly expanded.

A shorte Introduction into the Science of Musicke, made for such as are desirous to haue the knowledge therof, for the singing of these Psalmes.

FOr that the rude & ignorant in Song, may with more delight desire, and good

wyl be moued and drawen to the godly exercise of singing of Psalmes, aswell in the

common place of prayer, where altogether with one voyce render thankes & prayses to

God, as priuatly by them selues, or at home in their houses: I haue set here in the

beginning of this boke of psalmes, an easie and moste playne way and rule, of the order

of the Notes and Kayes of singing, whiche commonly is called the scale of Musicke, or

the Gamma vt. Wherby (any diligence geuen therunto) euerye man may in a fewe dayes:

yea, in a few houres, easely without all payne, & that also without ayde or helpe of any

other teacher, attayne to a sufficient, knowledg, to singe any Psalme contayned in thys

Booke, or any suche other playne and easy Songes as these are.

[manicule] Beholde this table

[chart of the gamut hexachords, illustrated as if organ pipes; text of this page is squeezed

along the right and below]

340

In this table, or gamma vt, is conteyned all, what is necessari to the knoweledge of

singing Wherefore it must be diligentlie waid & muste also be perfectly committed to

memory, so that ye can redely and distinctly say it without boke, both forwarde and

backward: that is, vpward and downward And this is the greatest pain that ye nede to

take in this trauayle.

Ye must also note that the letters ascending on the left hande of the Table, are

called Kaies, or Clevis: of whiche the first is a Greke letter, signifying g, & is called

gamma, (of whom the whole table or scale is called, the Gamma vt.) All the other ar lattin

letters vii. in number. a, b, c, d, e, f, g, then repeting the same again, beginning at a, & the

third time repeting the same, till ye com to ee, la. which is the last, but all these Kayes ar

not signed or set in these Psalmes: but onely ii. or three most commonly c, or e, or b. C,

hath this form or signe, [C clef] E, is signed after this maner [F clef] B, hath thus, [flat] or

thus sharpe. [sharp]

The kayes of this Scale or Table, are deuided and set forth by thre diuers orders

of letters. From gamma vt, to G, sol, re, vt, ar signed with capitall letters, & are called

graue base, or capitall kayes: From G, sol, re, vt: to G, sol, re, vt, they are wrytten with

small letters and are called meane or small kayes: And from g, sol, re, vt, to ee, la, they are

written with double letters, and are called double kaies, and treble kaies.

341

When it chaunceth ii. kaies to be of one letter, as G sol, re, vt: and g, sol, re, vt, A,

la, mi, re and, a, la, mi, re, E, fa, vt: and f, fa, vt: E, la, mi, & e, la, mi, ye may (to put

difference and distinction betwene them) call the one, capitall G, or G, sol, re, vt, the

lower and tother small g, or g, sol, re, vt: the higher, and so of others.

They are called kayes, because they open, as it were the doore, and make a waye

into song: for by the sight and place of the kaye, ye shall know easelye the whole songe,

the nature of euery Note, in what kaie or place it standeth, and how ye shall name it. ye

see also in the table, that some of the kayes be set in lines or rules, and other are set in

spaces betwene the lines: as gamma, vt, is set in rule: a, re, in space: b, mi, in rule. c, fa vt:

in space d, sol, re, in rule, and so ascending to the ende: so also in the songs of your Boke,

ye se rules and spaces: so that euery rule & space in your boke, answereth to some one

rule or space of your table or scale: and taketh the name of the same, whiche ye may

easely fynde oute, eyther by ascending or descending from the kaye set and marked in

your song.

Moreouer it is to be noted, that there are vi. voyces, or Notes, signified and

expressed by these vi. sillables: vt: re mi, fa, sol, la, by whiche through repetition of them,

may be song al songes of what compasse so euer they be, which vi. notes, ye must learn

to tune aptely of some one that can already sing, or by som Instrument of musike, as the

Virginals, or some other suche like, Which thing wel learned, ye shal nede none other

teaching of any

342

And for a plainer learning therof, I haue set before your eyes, those vi. notes

ascending and descending: and again with a litle varietie from theyr naturall order, to

the end ye may attayne to the iust tunes of them, how so euer they be placed. For these

two examples well had, and tuned a righte, all other songes and Psalmes, with little vse

and a small labour will sone be attayned vnto

[two music examples: ascending scale from G3 to E4; the second has the same range but

moves in ascending thirds]

Firste ye muste diligently searche out, in what kaie euery note of your song

stondeth: Which ye may easely do, in beholding your signed kaie (commonly called the

cleaue) which is set in the beginning of euery song: & that lyne or, space wherin the

signed kaie is set, beareth the name of the same kaie: and all Notes standinge in the line

or space, are saide to stand in that kaie: and so ascending or descending from that kaie,

ye shall straight way see wherin, or in what kaie euery Note of your song standeth. As

in this present example if ye will know wherin your first Note standeth, consider your

kaie, signed (marked with this letter C. in the second rule (and because it standeth in

rule, ye finde, by youre Table that it is C, sol, fa, vt. For thother two c, c, whiche are c, fa,

vt: and, cc, sol fa: stande in space) wherfore that seconde lyne throughout, is called c, sol,

fa, vt, and all the notes placed in that line, are counted to stand in c, sol, fa, vt: Then

343

discend from that kaie to the next space, which (as your table telleth you) is b, fa, [sharp],

mi. from thence to the next rule, whiche is a, la, mi, re, & from thence to the nexte space

wherin your first Note standeth, which is G, sol, re vt: so finde ye by descending in order

beginning at youre signed kaye, after thys sorte: e, sol, fa, vt,: b, fa, [sharp], mi: a, la, mi, re:

G, sol, re, vt: ye find that your first note standeth in G, sol, re, vt: wherfore ye may sing it

by anye of these iii. Notes sol, re, or vt: But because this note vt, in this place is most

aptest to ascend withall: ye shall call it vt: by the same triall ye shal find that your second

Note standeth in a, la, mi, re, ye shall expresse in singing by this voice re, rather than by

la, or mi, because re, is in order next aboue vt, so shall ye fine the thirde Note to stand in

b, fa, [sharp], mi, which ye shall expresse by mi, The fourth standeth in the signed kaie or

claue, wherfore it standeth in c, sol, fa, vt, whiche ye must expresse by fa. The fift in d, la,

sol, re: and is to be expressed by sol. The sixt and highest Note, ye shall by ascending

from your keie, finde to stande in e, la, mi: and is to be expressed in voice by la, so haue

you the whole compasse of your song and as in order of notes, and sound of voice, ye

ascendid, so contrarie wise, ye must descend till ye come to the last Note of your song.

Here note that when b, fa, [sharp], mi, is formed and signed in this maner, with

this letter b, whiche is called b, flat, it must be expressed with this voice or note, fa, but if

it be formed and signed with this forme [sharp], whiche is called b, sharpe: or if it haue

no signe at all, then must ye expres it in singing with thys voiyce or Note. mi.

344

Like wise may ye practise, placing youre first Note vt, in anye other kaye, wherin

ye fine vt, which are vii. Gamma, vt, C, fa, vt: E, fa vt, graue: G, sol, re, vt, graue: c, sol, fa,

vt: F, fa, vt, sharpe: g, sol, re, vt, sharpe, ascending up to la, and descending as in your

former example. These vii. seuerall ascensions and descensyons vpon diuers groundes

or cleues, are commonlye called of writers vii. deductions, whiche ye may playnlye and

distinctlye beholde in your table, or Scale.

One example more haue I set, wherin ye sing fa, in b, fa, [sharp], mi. Whose

deductions beginneth in vt: placed in E, fa, vt, graue or capital as ye see.

[Music example in F with one-flat key signature. Spans only six notes (one hexachord)]

Ye haue also in youre songes diuers fourmes and figures of Notes. Of which all,

it behoueth you to knowe bothe the names and value.

[section title:] Diuers forms of Notes.

[music example showing rhythmic values in decreasing value: large [maxima], long,

breve, semibreve, minim, crotchet [semiminim], quaver [fusa]]

The first of these is called a Large: the second a Long. The third a Brief the fourth

a Semibrief: the fift a Minime: the sixt a Crotchet: The seuenth and laste a Quauer. The

345

first is worth in value two of the seconde, that is, two Longes: and one Longe is worth ii.

Breues: and one Breue, is two Semibrefes: & one Semibrefe: two Minimes: and hathe

twise the time in pronouncing in singing that the Minime, hath One Minime is worthe

two crochets: and one Crochet, is two quauers, as appereth in this Table folowing:

[tree of rhythmic values, with C2 time signature horizontally aligned with the breves,

and cut-C time signature aligned with the semibreves]

If there chaunce any pricke to be set by anye of these Notes, the pricke is worthe

in value the Note next following it. As apricke set by a Semibriefe, as thus, [dotted

semibreve] is worthe this none, [minim] whiche is a Minime: and a pricke by a Minime,

as here, [dotted minim] is worthe a [semiminim]. There are also oftentimes in singing,

Pauses or Restes, set in songes, some time for ease of the singer, and comely staye of the

songes: sometime where diuers parts are, for swetnes of the armonye, and apte

repetityons & reportes: Whiche are signifyed by litle strikes or lines, or halfe lines

betwene the rules as thus.

[music example of rests in descending value]

346

The first which is drawen from the firste line to the iii. is called a longe Rest: &

signifyeth that ye must pause while that a longe is song, which is worthe iiii. plaine song

Notes, or foure Semibreues. The second which is from one lyne to a nother, is called a

Breue rest, & requireth the pausing of a breue or of ii. semibreues. The iii. whiche is from

a lyne to the halfe space vnderneth: is called a semibreue rest, and requireth the pause or

space while a semibreue is in singing. The fourthe whiche is ascending from the line, to

the halfe space aboue, is called a Minime rest, & is but the drawing of a breth, while a

minime may be song The fifte and laste, whiche is like vnto the Minime reste, but croked

at the top, requireth the pause of a crochet.

To set out a full and absolute knowledg of the nature of the scale, the differences

betwene notes and halfe notes, & halfe notes betwene themselues, of interualles,

proportions: and which notes concorde and agree together, and which disagree. What

modes there are: and how many. What is perfection, what imperfection: How notes

oughte to be bounde together, and what theyr value is so bounde, tayled vpwarde or

downeward: perteineth to a iust Introduction to the arte of Musike. These thinges before

taught, seme at this time, for the poore vnlearned and rude, sufficiente and inoughe to

the atteyning of such knowledg in singing as shall be requisite to the singing of Psalmes

conteined in this boke, for which cause only they are set out.

347

Appendix 4. Epistolary Content of Sixteenth-Century English Music Prints

Publication STC# Epistle

dedicatory

Epistle

to the

reader

Other

prefatory

material

Additional

notes

Twenty Songs (1530) 22924 x

Miles Coverdale, Goostly

Psalmes and Spirituall

Songes ([John Rastell for]

John Gough, c. 1535)

5892 x

Robert Crowley, The

Psalter of Dauid ([Richard

Grafton and Stephen

Mierdman], 1549)

2725 x x

John Merbecke, The Booke

of Common Praier Noted

(Richard Grafton, 1550)

16441 x

Francis Seager, Certayne

Psalmes (William Seres,

1553)

2728 x

Christopher Tye, The Actes

of the Apostles (William

Seres, 1553)

2983.8,

2984,

2985

x x

Psalmes Of Dauid in

Englishe Metre (John Day,

1560)

2427

Psalmes. Of David in

Englishe Metre (John Day,

1560/1561)

2429 x x

Foure Score and Seuen

Psalmes of Dauid (John

Day, 1561)

2428

Hondert Psalmen Dauids

(John Day, 1561)

2739 x x In Dutch

The Residue of All Dauids

Psalmes in Metre (John

Day, 1562)

2429.5

348

The Whole Booke of Psalmes

(John Day, 1562)

2430 x x

The Whole Psalmes in Foure

Partes (John Day, 1563)

2431 x

Mornyng and Euenyng

Prayer (John Day, 1565) /

Certaine Notes (John Day,

1560)

6419 /

6418

x Certaine

notes lacks

the

prefatory

material

found in

Mornyng

and

Euenyng

Prayer

John Hall, Courte of Vertue

(Thomas Marshe, 1565)

12632 x x

De Psalmen Dauidis (John

Day, 1566)

2740 x x In Dutch

Matthew Parker, The

Whole Psalter (John Day,

1567)

2729

(=2439)

x x

Adrian le Roy, A Briefe and

Easye Instrution (John

Kingston for James

Rowbotham, 1568)

15486 x Two

epistles to

the reader

(one from

translator)

Orlando di Lasso, Recueil

du Mellange d'Orlande de

Lassus (Thomas

Vautrollier, 1570)

15266 x Different

partbooks

have

different

prefatory

material

(or lack

thereof)

349

Thomas Whythorne,

Songes for Three, Fower and

Five Voyces (John Day,

1571)

25584 x Different

partbooks

have

different

prefatory

material

(or lack

thereof)

Adrian le Roy, A Briefe and

Plaine Instruction (John

Kingston for James

Rowbotham, 1574)

15487 x x x

William Byrd and Thomas

Tallis, Cantiones Sacrae

(Thomas Vautrollier, 1575)

23666 x x In Latin

William Daman, Psalmes of

David (John Day, 1579)

6219 x x

William Hunnis, Seven

Sobs of a Sorrowfull Soule

(Henry Denham, 1583)

13975 x x x

William Bathe, A Briefe

Introductione to the True Art

of Musicke (1584)

[None] Survives

only in ms

John Cosyn, Musicke of Six,

and Fiue Partes (John

Wolfe, 1585)

5828 x x

Christopher Fetherstone,

Lamentations of Ieremie

(John Wolfe, 1587)

2779 x x

William Byrd, Psalmes,

Sonets & Songs (Thomas

East, 1588)

4253;

4253.3;

4253.7

x x x

Musica Transalpina I

(Nicholas Yonge [printed

by Thomas East], 1588)

26094;

26094.5

x x

William Byrd, Cantiones

Sacrae I (Thomas East,

1589)

4247 x In Latin

350

William Byrd, Songs of

Sundrie Natures (Thomas

East, 1589)

4256 x x

Italian Madrigalls Englished

(Thomas Watson [printed

by Thomas East], 1590)

25119 x In Latin

Thomas Whythorne, Duos,

or Songs for Two Voices

(Thomas East, 1590)

25583 x x

William Byrd, Cantiones

Sacrae II (Thomas East,

1591)

4248 x x In Latin

William Daman, The

Former Booke (Thomas

East, 1591)

6220 x x x

William Daman, The

Second Booke (Thomas East,

1591)

6221 x x x

John Farmer, Diuers &

Sundry Waies (Thomas

East, 1591)

10698 x x x

The Whole Booke of Psalmes:

With Their Wonted Tunes

(Thomas East, 1592)

2482 x x

William Byrd, Mass for

Four Voices (Thomas East,

c. 1593)

4250

Thomas Morley,

Canzonets. Or Little Short

Songs to Three Voyces

(Thomas East, 1593)

18121 x x

William Byrd, Mass for

Three Voices (Thomas East,

c. 1593-4)

4249

John Mundy, Songs and

Psalmes (Thomas East,

1594)

18284 x x

Thomas Morley,

Madrigalls to Foure Voyces

(Thomas East, 1594)

18127 x

351

Thomas Morley, First

Booke of Balletts (Thomas

East, 1595)

18116 x x

Thomas Morley, The First

Booke of Canzonets to Two

Voyces (Thomas East, 1595)

18119 x x

William Byrd, Mass for

Five Voices (Thomas East,

c. 1595)

4251

William Bathe, A Briefe

Introduction to the Skill of

Song (Thomas East, c.

1596)

1589 x

A New Booke of Tabliture

[with The Pathway to

Musicke] (William Barley,

1596)

1433 x x x

John Dowland, The First

Booke of Songes or Ayres

(Peter Short, 1597)

7091 x x x

Anthony Holborne, The

Cittharn Schoole (Peter

Short, 1597)

13562 x x

Thomas Morley, Canzonets

or Litle Short Aers to Fiue

and Sixe Voices (Peter

Short, 1597)

18126 x

Thomas Morley,

Canzonets. Or Little Short

Songs to Foure Voyces

(Peter Short, 1597)

18125 x x

Thomas Morley, A Plaine

and Easie Introduction to

Practicall Musicke (Peter

Short, 1597)

18133 x x x

Charles Tessier, Le Premier

Liure de Chansons & Airs de

Court (Thomas East, 1597)

23918 x x In French

352

George Kirbye, The First

Set of English Madrigalls

(Thomas East, 1597)

15010 x x

Thomas Weelkes,

Madrigals to 3. 4. 5. & 6.

Voyces (Thomas East, 1597)

25205 x x

Musica Transalpina II

(Nicholas Yonge [printed

by Thomas East], 1598)

26095 x x

Michael Cavendish, 14

Ayres in Tabletorie to the

Lute (Peter Short, 1598)

4878 x

Giles Farnaby, Canzonets to

Fowre Voyces (Peter Short,

1598)

10700 x x

Orlando di Lasso, Novae

Aliquot (Thomas East,

1598)

15265

Thomas Morley, Madrigals

to Fiue Voyces (Thomas

East, 1598)

18129 x x

Thomas Weelkes, Balletts

and Madrigals (Thomas

East, 1598)

25203 x x

John Wilbye, The First Set

of English Madrigals

(Thomas East, 1598)

25619;

25619.3;

25619.5

x x Only STC

25619.5 has

prefatory

material;

the other

two have

none

The Whole Booke of Psalmes.

With Their Woonted Tunes

(William Barley, 1598/9)

2495

Richard Allison, The

Psalmes of Dauid in Meter

(William Barley, 1599)

2497 x x

353

Thomas Morley, The First

Booke of Consort Lessons

([H. Ballard for] William

Barley, 1599)

18131 x

John Bennet, Madrigalls to

Foure Voyces ([H. Ballard

for] William Barley, 1599)

1882 x

Anthony Holborne,

Pauans, Galliards, Almains,

and Other Short Aeirs

(William Barley, 1599)

13563 x

John Farmer, The First Set

of English Madrigals

(William Barley, 1599)

10697 x x x

John Dowland, The Second

Booke of Songs or Ayres

(Thomas East, 1600)

7095 x x x

Robert Jones, The First

Booke of Songes and Ayres

(Peter Short, 1600)

14732 x x x

Thomas Morley, The First

Booke of Ayres ([H. Ballard

for] William Barley, 1600)

18115.5 x x x

Thomas Weelkes,

Madrigals of 5. and 6. Parts

(Thomas East, 1600)

25206 x x

Richard Carlton, Madrigals

to Five Voyces (Thomas

Morley, 1601)

4649 x x Epistle

dedicatory

in Latin

Robert Jones, The Second

Booke of Songes and Ayres

(Peter Short for Mathew

Selman, 1601)

14733 x x x

Thomas Morley,

Madrigales. The Triumphes

of Oriana (Thomas East,

1601)

18130;

18130.5

x x

354

Philip Rosseter [and

Thomas Campion], A

Booke of Ayres (Peter Short,

1601)

21332 x x x

John Dowland, The Third

and Last Booke of Songs or

Aires (Peter Short for

Thomas Adams, 1603)

7096 x x x

355

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372

Biography

Samantha Arten was born in 1989 in Madison, Wisconsin. She graduated summa cum

laude from Washington University in St. Louis in 2011 with a Bachelor of Music degree

in Music History and Literature, and received a Master of Arts degree in Musicology

from Duke University in 2014. Samantha wrote the entry on John Tavener for The Oxford

Encyclopedia of the Bible and the Arts (2015), and her article “The Origin of Fixed-Scale

Solmization in The Whole Booke of Psalmes,” which grew out of this dissertation research,

was published in Early Music in 2018. This project has been supported by a dissertation

completion fellowship from the Duke Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies,

research and conference travel awards from the Duke Graduate School and the

“Conversions: Medieval and Modern” working group, and several summer research

fellowships from the Graduate School.