Complete Works: I (Latin Motets) (review)

The launch of a new collected edition is always an occasion of particular interest, but when the composer concerned is as quintessential a maverick as one is likely to encounter in Jacobean England, the level of interest moves up a gear. Relatively little is known of the life or working circumstances of Martin Peerson (c.1572–1651). In his early years he moved in elevated social and literary circles, and his principal employment at that time may have been as a domestic musician within a private household (he is known to have been patronized at one time by the poet Fulke Greville). His surviving works are predominantly secular (only one of the twenty or so 'anthems' listed in New Grove ever found its way into liturgical use), and his purpose in composing these fifteen five-part (SSATB) motets is far from clear. The charge of recusancy levelled against him in 1606 need not necessarily suggest anything more sinister than a temporary flirtation with Catholicism, as would seem to be confirmed by his appointment as Master of the Choristers at St Paul's Cathedral (1625–50). The lack of any reference to him in Thomas Morley's A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597) and his omission from England's sixteen 'excellent musitians' named in Francis Meres's Palladis Tamia (1598) are undoubtedly explained by his youth, as he would have been only in his twenties at the time. It may be a reflection on Peerson's perceived lack of 'worth and excellency', however, that he was passed over without mention by Henry Peacham (The Compleat Gentleman, 1622), since Peacham manages to lavish praise on composers who were considerably less prolific and arguably less proficient than Peerson.

These motets owe their survival to their inclusion in Bodleian Library, Oxford, MSS Mus. f.16–19, four partbooks (lacking Cantus) which were compiled by the avid Suffolk collector Thomas Hamond, and which were completed in 1655–6. The motets appear consecutively in the source, and display some of the characteristics of a unified set. Although some of the texts are directly relevant to significant dates in the liturgical calendar (Christus factus est and O rex gloriae are obvious examples), the majority are free-standing. Hora nona and its second part Latus eius (nos. 8–9), for instance, while clearly deriving from the Gospel Passion narratives, have no identifiable liturgical function within Holy Week. There is thus little evidence that the collection as a whole was composed with liturgical performance in mind, and the strong likelihood is that these motets were intended for domestic use. How this material came into the possession of Hamond, well connected and influential though he was, is, for the time being, a mystery, and the possibility that Peerson sought to publish them on the Continent, perhaps with the Antwerp printing house of Phalèse, should not too hastily be dismissed.

Peerson was demonstrably acquainted with a wide spectrum of music by both English and Continental composers. The presence in the opening of Latus eius (no. 9, p. 46) of what Manfred Bukofzer described as 'contrast motives' immediately calls to mind the techniques exploited to effect in Giovanni Gabrieli's Sacrae symphoniae (1597), while Multa flagella peccatoris, especially from bars 48 to the end (pp. 93–4), provides unmistakable resonances of Monteverdi's Vespers (1610). Migrating in a northerly direction, the opening of O Domine Jesu Christe (p. 67) is palpably inspired by the impressive eight-part setting of the same words in Samuel Scheidt's Cantiones sacrae (1620). Closer to home, Peerson's setting of the penitential psalm Laboravi in gemitu meo and his Ascension antiphon O rex gloriae contain obvious—but presumably subliminal—references to Tallis's O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit (p. 75) and Gibbons's Glorious and powerful God (p. 54). Some of these influences suggest that Richard Rastall's proposed dating of these works in the 'first...