Robert Parsons is first found in a
Teller’s Roll for 1560/1 which refers to him co-ordinating payments to
Richard Bower, Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal. The Cheque
Book of the Chapel Royal records Parsons’ appointment as a Gentleman on
17 October 1563:
Merton died 22nd of September, and Roberte Parsons sworne in his place the 17th October, Ao 5to.
Unusually there is no note of the place where he had previously been
employed and this, together with the references in the Teller’s Roll,
suggests that Parsons was connected with the Chapel before he became a
Gentleman. On 30 May 1567 he was granted a Crown lease for twenty-one
years on three rectories near Lincoln (‘Sturton, Randbie and Staynton’)
and in 1571 an annual tax certificate issued to court servants confirms
his residence as being in Greenwich. The next mention is a further
emotionless reference in the Cheque Book of the Chapel Royal:
Robt. Parsons was drowned at Newark uppon Trent the 25th of Januarie,
and Wm. Bird sworne gentleman in his place at the first the 22d of
Februarie followinge, Ao 14o Lincolne.
Quite why he was
travelling near Newark is unclear. He may have been visiting his
rectories or attending to other business but it is clear that he died in
1572, the fourteenth regnal year of Queen Elizabeth I. His only epitaph
is a couplet found in the partbooks prepared by the copyist Robert Dow
in the 1580s which suggests that Parsons was highly esteemed and
suffered an early death:
Qui tantus primo Parsone in flore fuisti
Quantus in autumno ni morere fores.
[Parsons, you who were so great in the springtime of life,
how great you would have been in the autumn, had death not come.]
Parsons lived through some of the most tumultuous years of the
sixteenth century as the four religious settlements loosely termed the
English Reformation tore society apart. After Henry VIII’s break with
Rome and his relatively conservative reforms, the baton was then passed
in 1549 to his son Edward VI who, steered by his Protestant advisors and
then later developing his own agenda, pursued a more radical path. This
course was halted by Edward’s half-sister, Mary I, eldest daughter of
Henry VIII and devout Catholic, in 1553. She returned England to
communion with Rome and met with much support for her policies until the
economic downturn of the late 1550s and her own increasing personal
instability. Then in turn her death in 1558 and the accession of
Elizabeth I, her half-sister and Henry’s second daughter, led to a new
English settlement which drew on Edward’s reforms but with considerably
more artistic and liturgical sensitivity than had been allowed by the
young king.
The surviving music by Parsons consists of nine
pieces in Latin, two Services in English, two anthems in English, a
handful of secular songs and some instrumental pieces including five In
nomines. The lack of small-scale English sacred music seems to suggest
that Parsons was not active as a composer during the reign of Edward VI.
His earliest work is probably the opulent setting of the Magnificat
which harkens back to a tradition seen clearly in the Eton Choirbook and
which was developed by Robert Fayrfax, Nicholas Ludford and John
Taverner. Five Magnificats in the Forrest-Heyther Partbooks and the
Office Hymns by Tallis and Sheppard seem to suggest that Mary was keen
to reinstate large-scale music at the Office of Vespers. The lack of
accompanying Nunc dimittis settings suggest these Magnificats were
designed specifically for Vespers rather than the reformed Evensong when
both Canticles would be required.
Parsons’ setting uses a
traditional alternation of plainsong and polyphony and is scored for six
voices, sometimes with lengthy divisions or
gimells, but this is no
mere exercise by a young composer trying to find his feet. That Parsons
has a sophisticated grasp of compositional techniques is seen most
clearly in his use of canon (where one or more parts will repeat exactly
a melody sung by an opening voice). These can be found in the sections
Quia fecit mihi magna (at the octave between
triplex and
contratenor
II),
et sanctum nomen eius (at the ninth between
tenor and
medius),
et semini eius in saecula (at the tenth between
bassus and
medius) and
at
Sicut erat in principio (a three-part canon at the unison between
the two contratenors and at the octave with the
triplex). Although
Parsons is obviously drawing on older models, his setting seems less
archaic than that by Robert White. There is no reliance on
cantus firmus
and the plainchant melody is given only slight attention in the
polyphonic verses. Parsons does however preserve the use of melismatic
writing for the solo lines and contrasts these with more massive
full-choir sections.
Ave Maria has become Parsons’ most famous
and well-loved motet since it was included in the
Oxford Book of Tudor
Anthems in 1978. Settings of the
Ave Maria are not frequent in
England—even William Byrd only set them as required by the liturgy in
his two books of
Gradualia (1605 and 1607) rather than as stand-alone
pieces. Parsons simply sets the lines found in the Gospel of St Luke and
has no invocation for the dead (authorized by Pope Pius V in 1568).
This is a magical setting and it is not surprising that there is a
beautiful
Amen coda. Initially the piece gives the impression of using
a cantus firmus in the top part but it is in fact free-composed
throughout. Parsons starts each medius phrase one note higher than the
previous one, beginning on F and then moving up to D with long slow
notes before reaching
benedicta tu when it joins the other voices in
equal importance. Paul Doe has suggested that this piece might have been
prompted by the early promise or subsequent plight of Mary, Queen of
Scots. There is no direct evidence for this but it is not unreasonable
to consider Parsons and indeed most of the mid-sixteenth-century
writers—Sheppard, Tallis, White, Mundy and Tye—as Catholic sympathizers.
They seem more free, more expressive, more expansive and more brave in
their Latin compositions and it is tempting to speculate that in setting
words from Psalms 15 and 119, the Lamentations and the Funeral
Responds, they were consciously producing music with a Catholic slant.
In comparison their English works tend to be shorter and less virtuosic
and even the fledgling Great Services are short on excellent material,
but then these mid-sixteenth-century composers were creating a new genre
not previously explored and were probably writing to fulfil a set of
rules which were not entirely clear. England had to wait for another
generation—headed by William Byrd, Thomas Weelkes and Thomas
Morley—before writing in English could achieve greatness."
For me, this is one of the most beautiful pieces in the Renaissance music. Its evocative power is simply wonderful.
Here are some of the most beautiful lines ever written. In addition,
the amazing "amen" is one of the most melismatic and overwhelming parts
of all English Renaissance repertoire.
