Robert Stuart Shay, Ph.D. 1991

Advisor: James Haar

Dissertation Title: Henry Purcell and ‘Ancient’ Music in Restoration England

Find it in the library here.

Dissertation Abstract:

In the early 1680s Henry Purcell turned his attention toward older polyphonic music, copying anthems by Tallis, Byrd, and Gibbons, among others, and composing new anthems using older polyphonic techniques, all within a single manuscript volume, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, MS Mus. 88. This dissertation examines this seldom-explored part of Purcell’s career, concluding that the study of old polyphony was an important force in Purcell’s musical maturation, a force that made its impact felt throughout his career.

Views of Renaissance music in writings from seventeenth-century England are given in Chapter 1 as a backdrop to this study. These writings indicate that the rules of old polyphonic composition—the stile antico—were never codified in England and that old polyphony was regarded with increasing veneration as the century progressed. By Purcell’s time a number of older polyphonic masterworks were still held in high esteem, but their style was not easily reproduced. Purcell is thus seen as pursuing a relatively untrodden path in trying to recapture this style in his compositions. Additional context for Purcell’s activities is given in Chapter 2, in which the sources of sacred music from his time are examined to show what proportion of the repertory was still based on older music. A core group of old polyphonic pieces, closely reflecting the contents of John Barnard’s First Book of Selected Church Musick (1641), was carefully maintained in the sacred repertory of Purcell’s time, and it is from this core that Purcell copied works into Fitzwilliam 88.

The next two chapters are devoted to Fitzwilliam 88 itself. Chapter 3 provides a full manuscript analysis of this source, in order to reveal Purcell’s methods of copying older works and to shed light on the resulting didactic process. Chapter 4 examines Purcell’s own anthems from Fitzwilliam 88 in detail, showing their indebtedness to older polyphonic models. The final chapter indicates that Purcell’s study of the past remained a significant stylistic influence throughout his oeuvre. The viol fantasias, created around the same time or slightly before the Fitzwilliam 88 anthems, are investigated to show their relationship to Purcell’s vocal polyphony. And finally, some of the later dramatic music is explored to demonstrate that Purcell’s polyphonic techniques continued to wield their influence throughout his career and were sometimes used for specific and meaningful dramatic connotations.

Robert Shay is currently a Professor of Musicology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he previously served as Dean of the College of Music. His primary research interest is in the subject of his dissertation: the music of Henry Purcell. With Robert Thompson, he published the book Purcell Manuscripts, a bibliographical resource that won the Vincent H. Duckles Award of the Music Library Association. He is also a founding member of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music. You can access his Colorado faculty page here.