| Contents |
Before the invention of composition. The respective attitudes of the Anglo-Saxon and the Keltic races towards the arts ; The intimate connection between poetry and music in all ages till the invention of counterpoint, and even later ; Early allusions to Keltic skill ; Ecclesiastical music during the Anglo-Saxon period ; Instruments delineated ; Proofs of the high advance of music in the twelfth century ; 'Sumer is icumen in' ; Other remains of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ; Medieval theorists ; Popular music -- Invention of composition (1400-53). John Dunstable solves the problem of composition ; The fundamental novelty of his works ; A new art ; Henry V's chapel royal ; Renown of the English musicians on the Continent ; The treatise of Gulielmus Monachus ; Faulxbourdon and Gymel ; Lionel Power's treatise ; This earliest school of composition rediscovered in the nineteenth century ; The known remains ; Chief composers: Dunstable, Power, Benet, Hothby -- The period of the invention of instrumental composition (1453-1536). After Dunstable ; The chapel royal ; Musical degrees ; The Flemings surpass the English in ecclesiastical music ; Account of the existing MSS ; Biographical notices of the Fayrfax school ; Instrumental composition invented by Hugh Aston ; Representative composers: Banester, Fayrfax, Aston, Taverner -- The reformation: from the dissolution of the monasteries to the defeat of the Armada (1536-88). Immediate effects of the dissolution of the monasteries and the religious changes after Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth ; Concentration of talent in the chapel royal ; The earliest English Psalters ; The Anglican prayer books ; Establishment of the English form of 'Service' ; The principal existing MSS ; Great advance in instrumental music ; Appearance of the English madrigal ; Publications ; Biographical notices ; This period the greatest in our ecclesiastical music ; Representative composers. Instrumental: Redford and Blithman ; Vocal: Tye, Shepherd, Edward, Whyte, Tallis, Byrd -- The madrigalian period (1588-1630). Thomas East begins printing music ; List of the madrigal collections published ; The principal MSS ; The distinction between 'Madrigals' and 'Ayres' ; Instrumental music; invention of the fugue ; English performers on the Continent ; The masques ; Theoretical treatises ; A new school of sacred music ; Rise of the monodic school of songs ; The Shakespearian age the culminating period of English music. Representative composers: Byrd, Philipps, Dowland, Morley, Bull, Wilbye, Gibbons, Coperario, Lanier, Peerson -- The age of the declamatory songs, of the fancies for viols, and the suppression of ecclesiastical music (1630-1660). Disappearance of polyphonic vocal writing ; The connection of the monodic school with the song-poets ; The Puritan Archbishop Abbot succeeded by Laud ; The Laudian Sacerdotalism ; Barnard's 'Selected church musick' ; Outbreak of the Civil War and suppression of organs and choirs ; The exaggerated accusations of later musical historians ; Refutation of these slanders upon the Puritans ; Brilliant period of secular music during the Commonwealth ; Playford sets up as music-publisher ; Cromwell's patronage of the art ; The instrumental 'Fancies' ; Introduction of opera and of violin-execution ; List of the collections published during the Commonwealth ; Pride of the English at this time in their instrumental music ; The Quakers abjure all music ; Eccles's testimony ; A challenge to objectors -- The period of foreign influence and of dramatic music (1660-1700). Restoration of ecclesiastical music ; The organ-builders ; Organist-composers of the older generation ; Charles II changes the character of both sacred and secular music ; Fancies and contrapuntal anthems disused ; French models followed ; Concerts ; Celebrations of St. Cecilia's day ; Sacred music ; Catches ; The dramas with music, or English operas ; Purcell follows Italian models and unites contrapuntal writing with intellectual declamation and melodic beauty, thus becoming the greatest English composer ; The age of the restoration especially the greatest in English music ; Representative composers: Child, Rogers, Lock, Humfrey and Purcell -- The period of patriotic songs (1701-1800). After Purcell ; Ruinous effects of centralization ; Ecclesiastical composers of Queen Anne's reign ; Establishment of Italian opera ; Arrival of Handel: his English life, and invention of the concert-oratorio ; The Academy of Ancient Music, and the madrigal society ; The ballad operas ; Handel's successors ; Arne and his contemporaries ; Evolution of the glee ; Historians, and editors of old music ; The Handel commemoration ; Folk-tunes written for by the Scotch and Irish poets ; The only enduring eighteenth-century secular music an outcome of the patriotic enthusiasm -- The nineteenth century. Infant prodigies ; Samuel Wesley ; Field and his nocturnes ; Song-composers ; The philharmonic society ; Choral societies ; Hullah's classes ; Tonic sol-fa ; The Handel festivals ; Choral services become general ; English opera ; Sterndale Bennett and Macfarren ; A dull period ; Organist-composers ; Performers ; Concert institutions ; Sullivan ; Fresh activity ; Defects to be amended -- Recent musical history. Changes in public taste ; Advances in the study of musical literature and science ; The present social position of the art and its professors ; The alterations and developments in surroundings ; Choral concerts and church oratorio ; Orchestral concerts ; Chamber music ; Opera and operetta ; Great performers, vocal and instrumental ; Composers and compositions. |
| Abstract |
The author was a noted scholar of the manuscript sources of Tudor music. He published the first edition of this book in 1895 with the aim of providing his fellow-musicians with the first clear scholarly account of the full range of English musical achievements. His main focus is the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which he considered the heyday of English music, and he claims that the earliest known free instrumental compositions, as well as the polyphonic style, originated in England during the fifteenth century. In Davey's view, these controversial findings were his most important contribution to general musical knowledge. His work was widely discussed in his own time, attracting both praise and aggressive criticism, and continues to be read with great critical interest today, not least because of its parallels with the socialist utopianism of Ruskin and Morris. |
