A lively history celebrates the sheer pleasure of raising a joyful sound to the Lord
In 1544 Thomas Cranmer wrote to his boss Henry VIII with a blueprint for church music in the newly Reformed age. It should “not be full of notes, but as near as maybe a syllable for every note; so that it may be sung simply and devoutly”. Cranmer had put his finger on a dilemma that had been inherited from the medieval period and would remain unresolved 400 years hence. Is it the primary job of church music to clarify the word of God or refresh faltering souls? Which matters most: meaning or sound?
Again and again the solution has been what Andrew Gant affectionately calls the “fudge”. The first fudge occurred under Elizabeth I. After the short but awful sectarianism of her half-siblings, Edward VI and Mary I, during which singing the wrong tune could cost you your life, Elizabeth opted for “reverent mediocrity”. Archbishop Parker’s approving phrase doesn’t sound remotely attractive, but something has probably got lost in translation. Although Elizabeth’s Act of Uniformity of 1558 was designed to entrench Cranmer’s prayer book at the heart of divine service, it still left sufficient leeway for those stars of the Chapel Royal, Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, to get on with creating the kind of glorious music they always had. The two unreformed Catholics could even set Latin texts to music if they wanted and the results are still part of the repertoire today: Spem in Alium (Tallis), and Justorum Animae and Haec Dies (Byrd).
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