In Thomas Tudway’s (d. 1726) prefaces to his volumes of Services and Anthems, presented to Lord Edward Harvey between 1715 and 1717, give accounts (and opinions) on the state of church music after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 (see appendix 4). Tudway describes how, along with the monarchy being restored after the Commonwealth period, so too was ‘the Church of England to its Ancient use and discipline [sic]’. Tudway was one of the first children of the Chapel Royal (and a contemporary of John Blow) after the Restoration, and he talks of how the Chapel Royal became a model for cathedrals across the Kingdom to establish their own divine services and worship.
Tudway describes the puritanical interregnum as ‘dark and gloomy days, the Church of England was sad… and robb’d of its melody’ and tells of how cathedrals had been ‘disfurnish’d..of their Organs… in the singing of Hymns, & Psalms [sic]’. Therefore, with the revival of the Chapel Royal would also come the revival of music in the church, and it was Henry Cooke who was tasked with creating the Chapel Royal. Whilst the Gentleman of the Chapel Royal had been easily reinstalled, the boys of the Chapel Royal had to be sought from all over the country, and the young John Blow was most likely one of ‘the five boys from Newark and Lincoln’, having been born in Nottinghamshire in either 1648 or 1649.
Blow was fortunate enough to have lived in close proximity to Newark, which was in the possession of a song school, founded in 1530 by Thomas Magnus, Archdeacon of the East Riding of Yorkshire. If it wasn’t for the philanthropy of Thomas Magnus, then John Blow would have not had the opportunity to be taught ‘plainsong, pricksong and to play the organs’ . Five years after the death of his father in 1655, Blow was sent to the Chapel Royal. This would have doubtless turned Blow’s life around, from being fatherless and living in the impoverished Royalist stronghold of Newark, to working in the Royal Court. Whilst at Newark John Blow succeeded in becoming a skilled musician. It was in the Chapel Royal where he thrived- not least because musical encouragement came from the highest authority, the king himself.
Some of the forwardest, & brightest Children of the Chappell, as Mr. Humfeys, Mr. Blow, &c, began to be Masters of a Faculty of Composing; This, by his Majesty greatly encourag’d, by indulging their youthfull fancys, so that ev’ry Month at least, & afterwards oft’ner, they produc’d something New, and of this Kind; In a few years more, several others, Educated in the Chappell, produc’d their Compositions in this style, of otherwise, it was in vain hope to please his Majesty [sic].
Of course, this is not to belittle Cooke’s achievement at the Chapel Royal, who we should still be indebted to, for not only did these choristers possess a superior vocal ability, but many went on to become influential composers in the English church music sphere (e.g. Humfrey, Blow, Wise and Turner). This encouragement has seen Blow compose works such as I will magnify thee, Lord, rebuke me not and Lord, thou hast been our refuge, before his voice broke in 1664.
It is perhaps his accomplishment that had kept him at the Chapel Royal long after his voice broke as ten years later, he was sworn in as the Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal and a composer-in-ordinary to the private music for voices. He took over these roles from long-standing colleague, Pelham Humfrey. In 1668, Blow had taken up the role of Organist at Westmister Abbey, however, in 1679 he moved aside to allow the younger but more masterful Henry Purcell to take over. Blow continued to acquire work right up until to his death in 1708, acting as almoner at St. Pauls cathedral from 1687, organist at Westminster Cathedral for a second time in the 1690s, and gaining the newly created title of ‘Composer of the Chapel Royal’ in 1699.
John Blow was arguably a better composer of church music than Purcell, who had a far smaller output of this kind, and Purcell became better known for his Secular works. This is not to say that John Blow was not a versatile composer; his opera Venus and Adonis was the first English-language opera with music throughout was written in 1683, and most certainly served as inspiration for Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. This versatility would have proven extremely useful for Blow, who would have needed to compose music that was appropriate for the liturgy whilst also pleasing to the King. whom Tudway describes Charles II as being:
…a brisk, & Airy Prince, comeing to the Crown in the Flow’r, & vigour of his Age, was soon, and if I may so say, tyr’d with the Grave and Solemn way, And Order’d the Composers of his Chappell, to add Symphonys &c with Instruments to their Anthems; and thereupon Establish’d a select number of his private music, to play the Symphonys, & Retornellos which he had apppointed
Thus Blow was required to compose for the private music of the King, which although not a secular composition, it was a composition that was non-liturgical, requiring expert and idiomatic writing for the string ritornellos. Tudway described it as ‘a secular style’.
The Kings court musicians played a series of odes on New Year’s Day, royal birthdays and other special occasions, a tradition that lasted up until the nineteenth century. Little is known about how the Court ode’s were performed, but a few extant accounts of the ceremony give us an idea. A court ode was performed for a royal birthday during the Grand Duke of Tuscany’s visit to England in 1669, about which was written:
This day is no otherwise solemnized… by the king’s going to chapel with his court, and dining in public, with the princes of the blood, in the banqueting room at Whitehall, which is hung with tapestry in the more elevated part of it, under the canopy, and is traversed by a balustrade, to prevent the people who resort thither from flocking round the royal table. The dinner is enlivened with various pieces of music, performed by musicians of the king’s household
In this instance it seems that food was served at the music, although it seems there was no fixed time or even place for the performance of the Court ode within the ceremonies.
The form of the Court ode, as stipulated by Charles II, was not derived from the French music Charles would have been used to hearing whilst in exile, but is rather the marriage of the French string music and the English anthem as it was before theR eformation. According to Charles Butler in The Principles of Musik, the finest anthem was one ‘wherein a sweet melodious treble or countertenor singeth single and a full choir answereth [sic]’. This anthem, set in strophic form with antiphonal exchanges between solo sections and chorus sections, was named the verse anthem, and became a popular form of anthem in the pre-Reformation church. These verse anthems were derived from the metrical psalm. Archbishop Parker published a book of metrical psalms in 1567, in which we can see the antiphonal structure being used, making use of refrains as sung by the ‘Quire’, whilst the verses were to be sung by the ‘meane’ part – clearly a forerunner to the verse anthem.
The verse anthem’s derivation is not strictly a sacred one, as it was influenced by the consort song, a domestic secular work accompanied by four or more viols, and was a favourite secular work among the Chapel Royal composers Richard Farrant (c.1525 – 1580) and William Byrd (c.1539 – 1623).
Early manifestations of the consort song were still related to the church. Choirboys of the London churches not only sang for their church, but also played and sang these consort songs for London’s wealthy merchants and their banquets. Diarist Henry Machyn wrote that at one feast, ‘the singing children of St. Paul’s played upon the viols and sung very pleasant songs’. This was for the boys’ musical education, as the Duke of Stettin-Pomerania wrote of the Chapel Royal Choristers that:
As part of their education in courtly manners they are required to put on a play once a week. …For a whole hour before the play begins there is a concert of organs, lutes, pandoras, citterns, viols and recorders. …When we were there, a boy … sang so charmingly to the accompaniment of a Bass viol…
Transferring the form back to the church was a case of simply replacing the viol accompaniment with the Organ, as there is little evidence that the viol was used in church. The verse anthem evolved with composers such as Orland Gibbons in the 1630s, and the chorus sections became more florid, and the text was no longer repeated, becoming verses in their own right with greater textural diversity, albeit sang by the full chorus. Gibbon’s verse anthems, such as the famed This is the Record of John, which exists in both a liturgical format with organ accompaniment, and as a consort song with viol accompaniment.
During the Commonwealth period, with churches having their organ removed, the verse anthem became a thing of antiquity, but with the Restoration of the monarchy, the form saw a revival. Charles II would have very likely been accustomed to the music of Lully from his time in France, and would have known the French string style. Back in home territory, Henry Cooke would have been more than proficient in writing consort anthems with viol accompaniment, so transferred these skills to writing anthems with string accompaniment to please the new monarch. This type of verse anthem became known as the ‘symphony anthem’, and was characterised by an opening symphony in common time, followed by a verse in three time. The King’s desire for ‘the French sound’ could perhaps be shown by his giving of £200 from the secret service fund in 1665 to Pelham Humfrey, ‘to defray the charge of his journey into France and Italy’. It is highly likely he was taught under Lully during that time, and even visiting the cultural and musical hub of Venice. Humfrey’s instrumental passages are more idiomatic than Cooke’s, and are of a style and formality that are reminiscent of the French ouvertures and ritournelles of Lully’s court ballets, whilst the vocal passages are inspired by the works of his Italian contemporaries. Blow(and Purcell too), as a contemporary of Humfrey, would have mimicked the sound world that Charles II had become so enamoured with that he would have demanded it from his own court.
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