Motets and Anthems by Richard Dering (review)

This second volume of music by Richard Dering, edited by Jonathan Wainwright for Musica Britannica, maintains the very high standards of music scholarship set by MB 87 (2008), which I also reviewed for Music & Letters (92 (2011), 282–5). The contents are divided into three sections, the first comprising eighteen Latin motets from Dering’s Cantiones Sacrae Quinque Vocum cum Basso Continuo ad Organum (Pierre Phalèse, Antwerp, 1617), the second comprising two contrafacta (Lord, thou art worthy and Therefore with Angels and Archangels), and the third comprising three English anthems: two verse anthems (Almighty God, which through thy only-begotten Son and Unto thee, O Lord), and a full anthem (And the king was moved). For the present writer it is the Latin motets which are by far the most interesting and intriguing works, not only by virtue of their superb musical quality, but also because aspects of their possible early performance contexts, as well as the circumstances which led to their publication, prompt a great deal of explorative discussion.

Richard Dering (c.1580–1630), as Wainwright’s preface helpfully points out, was an important identity in the English recusant communities in the Low Countries, chiefly through his activity as organist to the Benedictine nuns of the Convent of Our Lady of the Assumption in Brussels. An undated document, probably from around 1620, lists his annual salary at a generous 120 florins, on top of which he received extra payments for special services. We do not know precisely when Dering took this post, but it seems likely that it occurred soon after his return to northern Europe from travels in Italy, perhaps around 1612–13. Wainwright makes it clear that Dering had been quick to assimilate current Italian styles of sacred music, consummately demonstrated in the motets of the 1617 Cantiones, and in three further publications: Cantica Sacra … Senis Vocibus (1618), Canzonette a Tre Voci (1620), and Canzonette a Quattro voci (1620), all published by Phalèse in Antwerp. Although much of Dering’s activity before 1625 is unknown, in that year he was catapulted to stardom with an appointment as organist to Queen Henrietta Maria in London.

The 1617 Cantiones Sacrae, written, according to Dering, in the ‘chief city of the world’ (Rome), were dedicated to the English Catholic soldier and ‘Spanish partisan’ Sir William Stanley (1548–1630), who is described on the dedication page as the ‘most powerful and invincible loyal counsellor on military matters to the King’ (Philip III of Spain). Wainwright’s assertion that, with a patron such as Stanley, Dering was showing off his ‘Roman Catholic credentials’, is certainly true, but it also tends to suggest that the composer somehow felt the need to make a point of his Catholic identity. However, if Stanley’s connections with Dering (and other English musicians working in the Low Countries) had been more fully explained, there would have been no need for the justification of Stanley’s patronage, either on the part of the composer or his later interpreters. Wainwright includes Paul Arblaster’s landmark article on the Convent of Our Lady of the Assumption in his footnotes, but draws upon it mainly for the reference to the fact that Dering undoubtedly came into contact with Peter Philips there, because the latter’s daughter Mary was received into the convent in 1614. Arblaster, however, outlined several important facts concerning Stanley and his relationship with the convent. Their inclusion would not only have broadened the contexts of the motets, as well as Dering’s role at the convent, but might also have inspired other scholars to explore the origins, processes, and reasons for musical patronage in the still-obscure Low Countries recusant environment.

We know, for example, that Stanley (a controversial mercenary who, by the early 1590s, had been effectively outlawed for his open support for the assassination of Queen Elizabeth I) was a second cousin of Dorothy and Gertrude Arundell. These two sisters co-founded the Convent of Our...