C 9407-8 JOHN WARD: MADRIGALS, FANTASIAS, PSALMS & ANTHEMS (2 CDs) [13,99 Euro]

Qobuz - C 9407-8 John Ward: Madrigals, Fantasias, Psalms & Anthems

The silken weave of John Ward's music would probably conjure up a more familiar figure to us today had it not been for one mischance, one of those minor turning-points in history which provoke incalculable consequences. Ward came from the minor gentry, from a family that could boast links, as lay-clerks, with Canterbury Cathedral and St Paul's, London. The first decade of the reign of James I saw him employed as a musician in the household of Sir Henry Fanshawe of Ware Park, Herts (1569-1616), of whom no authenticated portrait has come to light as yet, the king's Remembrancer of the Exchequer, and apparently set to profit from his patron's intimacy with the heir to the throne, Prince Henry Frederick Stuart, since Fanshawe, according to his daughter-in-law Anne (married to Richard, his youngest son) 'had ye Prince lived to be King, had been secretary of estate, as he would often tell him'. But alas it was not to be! Was it the sampling of unwashed fruit (or even poison; rumour proliferated), or failing to rub himself down after a set of tennis? Either way, one careless moment brought fever and rapid death to the Prince of Wales in November 1612. The ensuing deluge of musical grief implies that thwarted career courtiers were not alone in scenting a radical shift in the air. Where music was concerned, the vacuum left by the decline of interest in the madrigal allowed instrumental genres such as the fantasia to usurp its pride of place. Not only that, but with hindsight we can see a retreat from the late-Elizabethan cosmopolitan awareness of progressive Italian music (a sign of breeding, up to that moment, among the liberal Protestant nobility) to a more introspective and a more parochial culture. Quite how England and Scotland would have fared with an abrasive warrior prince at the helm, eager to defend the Protestant north against the wiles of the Counter-Reformation, is hard to see: but in its musical side-show, all the signs are that John Ward would have been closer to centre-stage.

Having celebrated the investiture of Henry as Prince of Wales in 1610, Ward would have been a highly probable choice for inclusion in the roll of elegists. His two laments for the Prince (one of which, Weep forth your tears, he printed in his First Set of Madrigals (1613), while the second, included in this recording, No object dearer, remained in manuscript) were possibly both commissioned for the lengthy lying-in-state which seems to have demanded extensive music and could partially account for the flurry of laments by associates of Ward (Cranford, Dering, Ford, Tomkins), all seeking to propitiate the 'wrath of heaven'. This was to fall again, in 1616, on Sir Henry, though less prematurely and provoking a more resigned expression of loyal grief. The lament for Sir Henry Fanshawe, If heaven's just wrath, more closely reflects existing norms for the epicedium by contrasting the joys of the celestial choir with the grief of the mourners below; the lament for the prince, on the other hand, hardly escapes from frozen disbelief at the unfathomable dictates of providence, despite a token madrigalian roulade or two on the word “joy”.

Anthony Rooley, leading his soloists and vocal and instrumental ensembles, takes us on a fascinating journey through the melodious, beautiful and exciting music of John Ward in the four genres he most cultivated: His bold madrigals, influenced by both Italian and Elizabethan music; his extraordinary and harmonious fantasies for viol consort; his psalms, again influenced by Mannerist and madrigal music; and finally, his anthems, some domestic and others liturgical (with organ accompaniment), ranging from the reflective to the truly celebratory, enhanced by their great melodic charm and skilful instrumental writing. In all cases, these wonderful versions will transport us to a lost world of sounds of unrepeatable and pure beauty.

Qobuz - C 9407-8 John Ward: Madrigals, Fantasias, Psalms & Anthems