Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
William Cornysh
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
==Musical works== The ''[[Eton Choirbook]]'' (compiled c. 1490β1502) contains several works by Cornysh: ''Salve Regina'' (found in several other sources as well), ''Stabat mater'', ''Ave Maria mater Dei'', ''Gaude virgo mater Christi'', and a lost ''Gaude flore virginali''. The ''[[Caius Choirbook]]'' (c. 1518β1520) contains a ''Magnificat''. Other sources refer to lost works: three Masses, another ''Stabat mater'', another ''Magnificat'', ''Altissimi potentia'', and ''Ad te purissima virgo''. He also produced secular vocal music and the notable English sacred anthem ''Woefully arrayed''. There is also an extended and somewhat erudite three-part instrumental work based on steps of the [[hexachord]] and its mutations, ''Fa la sol'', and another untitled piece. These secular works are found in the so-called ''Fayrfax Book'' (copied in 1501). If all the earlier sacred music is by the same Cornysh (junior) as the secular music then he was a composer of some breadth, although not without parallel. The works by "Browne" in the ''Fayrfax Book'' display a similar difference in style to those by the [[John Browne (composer)|John Browne]] of the ''Eton Choirbook'', but are probably the same composer nonetheless. The occurrence of Cornysh's ''Magnificat'' (in the same style as the Eton works) falls nearly two decades after the death of the older Cornysh, and thus is far more likely the work of the younger Cornysh, by then by far one of the country's most important musicians. Furthermore, the works by Cornysh in the ''Eton Choirbook'' seem to be amongst the most "modern" in that collection. While they do not pursue the simplifying approach of [[Robert Fayrfax|Fayrfax]] (an almost exact contemporary of Cornysh junior, and fellow at Court and Chapel), and remain in a more old-fashioned florid melodic style, they adopt proto-[[madrigal]]ian manners (for example in the setting of words like "clamorosa", "crucifige" and "debellandum" in the ''Stabat mater'') and have a particularly developed sense of tonal movement (for example, in the ''Stabat mater'', the closing "Amen" features deliberate use of F sharps as leading notes to give a sense of tonal cadence into G, or employing E flats at "Sathanam" to give a tonal cadence onto B flat, emphasizing the "strong" nature of the text at that moment, employing the bass-movement V-I), as well as adopting a more modern sense of the expressive ''[[appoggiatura]]'' in melodic shapes and in bringing out the stresses of the Latin by such devices (for example, again the ''Stabat mater'', the use of ''appoggiaturas'' in the Bassus part to express "ContriSTANtem et doLENtem" in the first few measures, and again at "Contemplari doLENtem cum filio?"), and the use of purely rhetorical gestures (such as the exclamation "O" by full choir in the middle of the soloists' section starting the ''Stabat mater''). It is not impossible to see in these mannerisms the work of a great dramatist. The works of John Browne are given pride of place in the Eton manuscript. It seems that in the examples given above that Cornysh may have been emulating Browne (his own ''Stabat mater'' features a celebrated madrigalian setting of "crucifige", and his ''O Maria salvatoris Mater'' features the exclamation "En" (="Oh") in a similar way to Cornysh's interjection in his ''Stabat mater''). Thus it seems that the Eton Cornysh was writing after Browne, and this would place his work amongst the later ones of the ''Eton Choirbook'': additionally the approaches do not seem to be those of an older man, being much more suggestive of a young and original composer. The traditional ascription of all the works to Cornysh junior is the one more generally accepted. However, the possibility that the Eton works are the works of a generation earlier remains, and has interesting implications if true. The musicologist [[David Skinner (musicologist)|David Skinner]], in the booklet to [[The Cardinall's Musick]]'s CD ''Latin Church Music'',<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.cardinallsmusick.com/recordings/cornysh.asp |title=The Cardinall's Musick {{!}} Recordings {{!}} William Cornysh |website=www.cardinallsmusick.com |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070428224843/http://www.cardinallsmusick.com/recordings/cornysh.asp |archive-date=2007-04-28}} </ref> puts forward the proposition that the pre-Reformation Latin church music (including the works in the Eton manuscript) was composed by the father, whilst the son is the composer of the pieces in English and the courtly songs.
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)