Come Blessed Bird by Edward Johnson
In the spirit of the sadness many of us have been feeling at the recent loss of two of our Sonoma Bach friends and colleagues, I offer today--this may sound surprising--one of the madrigal's from Thomas Morley's 1601 collection, the 'Triumphes of Oriana'. As many of you know, this is a festive compendium of songs by many composers in honor of Queen Elizabeth I. The thread that ties them all together is a closing couplet: 'Then sang the shepherds and nymphs of Diana:
Long live fair Oriana!' (Oriana was one of the appellations of the queen, though that story is actually more complex
than we have been led to believe.)
As expected from such an anthology, almost all of the songs are bright and celebratory. But not all. A case in point is today's madrigal, Edward Johnson's 'Come, blessed bird'. Johnson was born in ca.1549. Nothing is known of him after 1603. He was apparently a prolific composer, but sadly, few of his works survive.
One that does--and that shows a fine composer at the top of his form--is the present piece. In the midst of the ebullient celebration and frivolity of the 'Triumphes', it is a lament for a lost colleague, Bonnyboots, apparently a singer (and possibly a recorder player) in the queen's music establishment. He seems to have had excellent high notes. The madrigal invites a bird--this may be a coded reference to another musician, though probably not to William Byrd--to replace the lost Bonnyboots in the choir, joining the others as they mourn.
Johnson's madrigal is a vivid setting of its text. The composer deploys his six voices masterfully, using all available combinations in madrigalian gestures which bring the text to life. For example: 'Help our declining choir now to embellish; 'O, he is dead'; the rising lines of 'Then tune to us, sweet bird, thy shrill recorder'; the full texture at 'for fault of better, will serve in the chorus'; and, perhaps most moving, the closing couplet (the first line is altered to the more intimate 'Then sang the woodborn minstrel of Diana'), with its soaring long notes on 'Long live' above the ascending quarter-note lines.
It's a small masterpiece. Who knows what other gems from the pen of Edward Johnson have been lost?
In the spirit of the sadness many of us have been feeling at the recent loss of two of our Sonoma Bach friends and colleagues, I offer today--this may sound surprising--one of the madrigal's from Thomas Morley's 1601 collection, the 'Triumphes of Oriana'. As many of you know, this is a festive compendium of songs by many composers in honor of Queen Elizabeth I. The thread that ties them all together is a closing couplet: 'Then sang the shepherds and nymphs of Diana:
Long live fair Oriana!' (Oriana was one of the appellations of the queen, though that story is actually more complex
than we have been led to believe.)
As expected from such an anthology, almost all of the songs are bright and celebratory. But not all. A case in point is today's madrigal, Edward Johnson's 'Come, blessed bird'. Johnson was born in ca.1549. Nothing is known of him after 1603. He was apparently a prolific composer, but sadly, few of his works survive.
One that does--and that shows a fine composer at the top of his form--is the present piece. In the midst of the ebullient celebration and frivolity of the 'Triumphes', it is a lament for a lost colleague, Bonnyboots, apparently a singer (and possibly a recorder player) in the queen's music establishment. He seems to have had excellent high notes. The madrigal invites a bird--this may be a coded reference to another musician, though probably not to William Byrd--to replace the lost Bonnyboots in the choir, joining the others as they mourn.
Johnson's madrigal is a vivid setting of its text. The composer deploys his six voices masterfully, using all available combinations in madrigalian gestures which bring the text to life. For example: 'Help our declining choir now to embellish; 'O, he is dead'; the rising lines of 'Then tune to us, sweet bird, thy shrill recorder'; the full texture at 'for fault of better, will serve in the chorus'; and, perhaps most moving, the closing couplet (the first line is altered to the more intimate 'Then sang the woodborn minstrel of Diana'), with its soaring long notes on 'Long live' above the ascending quarter-note lines.
It's a small masterpiece. Who knows what other gems from the pen of Edward Johnson have been lost?