MADRIGALS from ' THE TRIUMPHS OF ORIANA'
Sung by The WIRELESS
SINGERS
Chorus-master, STANFORD
ROBINSON
Songs of five voices
WE always speak with patriotic pride of tho days of ' Good Queen Bess,' and we have very good reason to do so. Everyone knows that Drake, Raleigh, and their fellow - adventurers did great deeds of valour, and that Shakespeare, one of the two or three greatest geniuses of the World, Jived then, and lived in very good literary company in England.
But that is by no meana all. In the sixteenth century there arose an amazing number of English musicians, composers who carried the young art of music up to its first great pinnacle, a pinnacle which, at any rate for rarity of atmosphere, has never been overtopped since, in this country or any other.
The Church had been responsible for practically all music's real artistic development up to this time, and it was church music, hand in hand with secular unaccompanied vocal music, that scaled this height. One of the outstanding qualities of this music is its subtlety, and one notices the wonderful freedom of the voices, music woven of many strands of melody.
In 1601 the leading British composers of madrigals joined in a tribute to Queen Elizabeth -a book of twenty-five madrigals (twenty-nine, with some late contributions), which was entitled The Triumphs of Oriana-Oriana being the Queen. Every madrigal ended with this joyful refrain, or some slight variation of it : * Then sang the shepherds and nymphs of Diana, " Long live fair Oriana ! " ' Thomas Morley collected and edited the set, which was for five and six voices. Among the' contributors were Morley, East, Bennet, Wilbye, Weelkcs, and John Milton (father of the poet), with a score of others—the best men we had.
There is here some of the finest vocal music ever written, though we do not get a full idea of the emotional range of the madrigal, since the celebratory mood prevails throughout.