Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England: John Merbecke the Orator and The Booke of Common Praier Noted (1550) (review)

An exact contemporary of Thomas Tallis, John Merbecke was born in c. 1505 and was last noted as living in 1584. He spent all his professional life as a member of the illustrious choir of the collegiate church of St. George in Windsor Castle. For the Latin rite he became a solidly workmanlike composer of the extended and elaborate vocal polyphony of the 1520s and 1530s, leaving one substantial Mass and two long votive antiphons. An early admirer of Protestant objectives of reform, he also made a unique contribution to the vernacular Edwardian liturgy. The compilers of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer had no wish gratuitously to alienate its parish hearers by denying a role to those parish clerks and, in some churches, volunteer laity who formed an elementary choir to help the priest to sing the plainsong of the services; consequently, its rubrics allowed for continuation of the rendering of numerous appropriate passages by “the Clerks.” Merbecke thereupon took it upon himself to provide music for the resulting sung service. For much of the Office he was content to make a selection from the variety of plainsong chants available for each corresponding component in the traditional Salisbury Use, but for the Communion services he suppressed tradition and composed melodies of his own. For each text not delivered in a plain monotone he created a simple rhythmicized monody and for both styles engaged an orthochronic notation based on the plainsong symbols that alone were familiar to such amateur enthusiasts (rather than the mensural notation familiar to professionals).A volume of eighty-four octavo leaves, it was printed by Grafton and published as The Booke of Common Praier Noted (BCPN, 1550).

For Merbecke as composer the author makes bold assertions. It is claimed that analysis of his melodies discloses that they were so crafted as to incorporate optimum features both of oratorical delivery in terms of accentuation and melodic contour, and of inherent meaning in terms of deployment of the period’s most advanced modal theory. It is thus her contention that Merbecke’s compositional inspiration was informed primarily by a thorough understanding and absorption of the ideals of Erasmian humanism. Necessarily a man of much refined learning, he is depicted as widely read not only in the Latin of Erasmian thought but also the Italian of the finest contemporary musical treatises. His BCPN thus deserves recognition as a masterwork not just of clarity and cogency in musical expression but also in the synthesis of Renaissance oratorical eloquence and Reformation theological rectitude.

Regrettably, the presentation of these contentions fails utterly to convince; its premise is undermined on numerous grounds. The characterization of Merbecke himself appears wholly improbable, for there is plentiful evidence that he never attained the level of refined education predicated by these contentions. He enjoyed no university education; although, as a chorister-boy of St. George’s, he would have gained some elementary Latin, he did not even follow his brighter colleagues across the river to Eton College. In addition, it was reported in 1543 that the Latin he possessed was barely serviceable. Indeed, he acknowledged himself to be but a musical artisan of only meager learning, reporting himself in a dedication addressed to King Edward VI (1550) as

one of your highness’most poor subjects, destitute both of learning and eloquence, yea and such a one as in a manner never tasted the sweetness of learned letters, but altogether brought up in your highness’ College at Windsor, in the study of Music and playing on Organs, wherein I consumed vainly the greatest part of my life.

None of that was false modesty.

Further, the author has not undertaken the research in the St. George’s Chapel archives manifestly...