Henry VIII on Tour from Ensemble Professional Victoria & Toby Ward

Henry VIII on Tour: music from Tudor Royal Progresses – William Cornysh, William Rasar, John Redford, Dionisius Prioris, Philippe Verdelot, Philip van Wilder, John White, William Extra, Robert Cowper, John Tavener, Henry VIII; Ensemble Professional Victoria, Toby Ward, Toby Carr, Aileen Henry, Magnus Williamson, New Vocal Ensemble; Delphian
Reviewed 10 June 2025

Counting on a valuable number of surviving sources, an imaginative exploration of the type of music, sacred and secular, that may have accompanied King Henry VIII on his progress round his kingdom

Medieval and early fashionable courts have been peripatetic as a result of they needed to be, the infrastructure couldn’t deal with so many individuals in a single place for an ideal size of time. In the course of the Summer time, Tudor monarchs developed this into the thought of the progress, a semi-ceremonial journey by the countryside designed to point out the monarch off, reinforce social bonds with courtiers and examine the monarch’s enterprise outdoors the capital. It was Queen Elizabeth I who raised the progress to its apogee, generally practically bankrupting the courtiers she stayed with, however her father, Henry VIII was additionally assiduous. His progresses have been usually about inspecting naval and navy fortifications, however there was one other side to them, recreation. Henry would take the chance to go looking.

The courtroom capabilities didn’t disappear throughout such journey, however issues have been readjusted, there was nonetheless music albeit on a unique scale. The disc Henry VIII on Tour: music from Tudor Royal Progresses from Toby Ward and Ensemble Professional Victoria on the Delphian label explores this repertoire, presenting a various mixture of sacred and secular music by William Cornysh, William Rasar, John Redford, Dionisius Prioris, Philippe Verdelot, Philip van Wilder, John White, William Extra, Robert Cowper, John Tavener and Henry VIII himself. And the ensemble is joined by lutenist Toby Carr, harpist Aileen Henry, organist Magnus Williamson and New Vocal Ensemble.

In the course of the Summer time progresses the vast majority of the thirty gents of the Chapel Royal and the ten boys have been stood down, however a choose group of musicians, round six males and 6 boys attended the clergymen to type the Driving Chapel. Because of this the sacred music was, inevitably, considerably much less elaborate. Nevertheless, practically all of the music books utilized by the Chapel Royal have been misplaced or exist solely in fragmentary type, and this disc arises from a mission, Henry VIII on Tour funded by the UK’s Arts & Humanities Analysis Council and involving researchers from Historic Royal Palaces, Newcastle College and the College of York together with collaborators together with Ensemble Professional Victoria. The result’s an eclectic disc, filled with names that aren’t well-known or hardly identified in any respect. And you’ll learn much more in regards to the mission on the Henry VIII on Tour web site.

Secular music comes from an necessary surviving supply, the so-called Henry VIII Ebook, which most likely belonged to Henry’s grasp of revels, Sir Henry Guildford and this offers an necessary window on the early and energetic reign of the King. Right here, we hear such delights as William Cornysh’s Ah, the sighs, fantastically performed as a solo tune by David De Winter and Toby Carr, together with a tiny Cornysh piece Trolly lolly most likely written for a bigger drama, in addition to music by Robert Cowper and Henry’s personal En vray amoure, extremely reliant on Continental examples.

One other vein of secular music is a gaggle of galliards by John White (Bishop of Winchester) performed by Magnus Williamson on an necessary reconstruction of a Tudor organ, and he additionally performs two brief sacred organ works, Felix namque by John Redford, the organist of the hospital of St Cross in Winchester on the time Henry VIII visited. One other Marian setting, Beate Viscera is nameless and from a manuscript that’s the earliest English supply for totally fledged organ music. Harpist Aileen Henry performs a few nameless instrumental items too. These are all comparatively brief items, valuable little home windows into an earlier time. 

The spine of the sacred music on the disc is the Missa Christe Jesu by William Rasar, a chorister at St George’s Windsor after which a lay clerk at King’s Faculty, Cambridge. Windsor, on the time, was not a serious royal residence, as an alternative Henry usually used it as a launch pad for progresses. Rasar’s mass mixes extra elaborate melismatic passages with full sections. Right here, in a convincing however speculative reconstruction the extra soloistic passages are sung by members of Ensemble Professional Victoria with the total ones by the New Vocal Ensemble, Newcastle College’s principal a cappella ensemble. The result’s to think about members of the King’s Driving Chapel becoming a member of forces with the choir of host establishment. This brings an actual stage of curiosity to what’s an enchanting if reasonably standard work.

Elsewhere the disc casts its web broadly for sources for the music. Dionisius Prior was a singer within the chapel of King Louis XII of France (husband of Henry VIII’s sister), and his tiny motet Duclcia amica Dei happens within the Henry VIII Ebook, while a motet by Philippe Verdelot discovered its manner right into a set of part-books copied for the Earl of Arundel. Composer Philip van Wilder served as Privy Chamber musician and grasp of the king’s music, during which position he directed each sacred and secular, his Sancte Deus survives in one other set of part-books.

Additionally a part of the king’s privy musicians was William Extra, the ‘blinde harpist’ and although he presumably carried out ballads and songs, right here we have now one in every of his motets, Levavi oculos meos. The disc ends with the choristers again on dwelling turf, singing one of many showpieces from their repertoire, John Tavener’s setting of the responsory Audivi vocem.

This disc is one thing of an antidote to these discs of refulgent early Tudor polyphony. Right here, every thing is extra intimate, extra private, merely one or two musicians entertaining the king or the dozen or so singing males and boys of the Driving Chapel offering music at mass. As is likely to be anticipated from Toby Ward and Ensemble Professional Victoria, performances are trendy and fascinating. The music is introduced as it’s, with no try to inflate the importance. Loads of that is helpful music written by sensible musicians and the result’s a disc which provides us a useful window onto the sound world of the Tudor Court docket on tour.

Henry VIII on Tour
Ensemble Professional Victoria
Toby Ward (conductor)
New Vocal Ensemble
David De Winter (tenor)
Toby Carr (lute)
Aileen Henry (harp)
MAgnus Williamson (organ)
Recorded 5-7 March 2024, Lyddington Parish Church, Rutland, 12 April 2024, St Nicholas’ Cathedral, Newcastle
DELPHIAN DCD34335 1CD [63.09]