Musical Monarchs and Music Distribution During Renaissance Times
Pictured with Will Sommers- Royal MS. 2 A XVI, Henry VIII’s Psalter, British Library-London.
Apparently I answer Tudor and Shakespeare questions in way too much depth on Reddit for fun now. I’ve had trouble writing or revising fiction since the pandemic and self-isolation began, but researching and writing about history calms me down in a way nothing else does. And AskHistorians on Reddit has a wonderful supply of various questions that haven’t been answered yet.
So here ya go.
Original source of the question, which had several parts, indicated in italics below.
Christian and Muslim playing lutes in a miniature from Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso X
Was composition an expected skill of a monarch?
Musical knowledge, at least, was an important part of every noble's education in late medieval and renaissance England; royal children would have been given private lessons in various instruments, singing, and musical theory from a fairly early age. All of the Tudors, in particular, were interested in music and were highly trained. There are numerous records of Henry VII and his wife Elizabeth of York purchasing musical instruments both for themselves and their children. Henry VIII's children Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward were all described as excellent musicians during their lives. Mary and Edward were proficient at the lute, while Elizabeth was apparently quite good at playing the virginals.
At least two of the King Henrys were definitely musical composers, as we have some of their surviving music!
-There are two pieces in the collections of the British Library attributed to "Roy Henry"; scholars now seem to think this author was actually Henry V.
-Henry VIII's love of music stood out even among all the music lovers of his family. He played numerous instruments - at one point, records of his property showed that he owned 78 flutes, 76 recorders, 10 trombones, 14 trumpets, and 5 bagpipes! We also know that he played the organ, other keyboard instruments, viols, and lutes.
p 161 of the Old Hall Manuscript, ~1410-1420
The Henry VIII Songbook from ~1518.
"Twenty songs and thirteen instrumental pieces" attributed to "The Kynge H. viij" were compiled in the 1518 Henry VIII Songbook, which also included 76 pieces from other court musicians. Although some of the songs by Henry were arrangements of previously existing pieces, many of them are originals.
However, despite popular belief, Henry VIII did NOT write Greensleeves, which was partly based off of a romanesca, an Italian style of musical composition that did not reach England until after Henry VIII's death.
His daughter Elizabeth I was also a composer, although only one of her songs has survived to this day. This paper explores Henry and Elizabeth's compositions and musical education more in depth.
Detail of the Ghent Altarpiece, Chapel Cathedral of Saint Bavo, Ghent, Belgium, Hubert and Jan Von Eyck
What's more, how did the song become popular? Did the King simply compose it, order every musician to have a copy of the manuscript and play it a certain amount of times a week? How did compositions from the royal court reach the masses?
- Although Henry had at least 60 musicians on his staff when he died, he couldn't possibly have ordered every musician in the country to play it, and the fact that not of all his songs were big hits seems to support this. Based on the information I've already shared about the Henry VIII songbook, it seems likely that "Pastime with Good Company" was distributed around the country in written form. There are records indicating that it was actually popular in Scotland and even long after his death.
Finally, say I am at the median of medieval class society - your average joe - what would have been my likely interaction with this song, if any? Was music mostly an indulgence of the elites at that time?
Everything I've read and referenced throughout this answer so far indicates that music was popular at every level of society, although the level of musical education and the specific form of the music, of course, varied. While "Pastimes" may have been performed in Henry VIII's court by 60 musicians and a choir in four part harmony, it was also likely performed in villages and at fairs by solo minstrels accompanied only by a single instrument or small groups.
In addition, under Henry VIII, with further development of the printing press, more and more printers began to publish music, often in the form of single sheet broadsides that could be sold very cheaply.
(SIDENOTE: jstor is now offering free accounts that allow you to read up to 100 articles a month, due to COVID-19 shutting down all the libraries. This makes me SO HAPPY)
These single sheets continued in popularity through to Elizabethan times, and even make an appearance in Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale," Act 4, Scene 4 - in which the con artist/minstrel Autolycus touts various ridiculous sounding ballads for sale at a local festival.
And even apart from the printing press, people regularly wrote down any songs they liked and passed them around, much as you might have written down song lyrics to songs you heard on the radio so you and your friends could sing them together later back in the 80s or earlier. :)
FINAL NOTE: The best thing I learned while researching this whole answer was that Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey had rival in-house choirs and had a competition to see who had the best one. When Cardinal Wolsey’s choir won, he wisely “gave” one of his best singers to the king for his choir.
Hope y’all enjoyed that!