Music For Henry V And The House Of Lancaster - Andrew Kirkman, Binchois Consort (2011)

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Music For Henry V And The House Of Lancaster - Andrew Kirkman, Binchois Consort (2011)

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The Binchois Consort presents a disc which demonstrates the beauty and grandeur of the music performed daily in princely chapels of fifteenth-century England. It illustrates the sheer variety of types of singing, some of it virtuosic in its brilliance. Specifically it offers sacred ceremonial pieces written either for Henry V himself, as King, or to invoke the saintly patron of the House of Lancaster, John of Bridlington, as well as a selection of intricate motets.

Scholarly notes by Philip Weller place this music firmly in its historical context, and the Binchois performances represent the highest standard of early music singing of the present day. Every nuance is considered and each phrase is relished in this immaculately polished disc.

Composer: King V Henry, Anonymous, Leonel Power, ?Thomas Damett, …
Conductor: Andrew Kirkman
Orchestra/Ensemble: Binchois Consort

Reviews: A few issues back I reviewed a new release by Stimmwerck devoted to the St. Emmeram Mensural Codex (Aeolus 10023), part of the celebrations surrounding a symposium on the manuscript that is currently held at the Bavarian State Library. This disc takes its start from similar recent events surrounding the Wollaton Antiphonal, compiled for the extremely wealthy and zealously Lancastrian Sir Thomas Chaworth in the first half of the 15th century. Numerous selections were added from the Old Hall Manuscript, as it is now known, to provide a greater range of sacred music particular to the chapels of Henry V and Henry VI. The result is an overview of several sacred musical styles fostered by the Lancasterian princes during the early 15th century, shortly before the pan-consonant approach often associated with Dunstable became more common.


The Missa Quem malignus spiritus is based on a responsory chant (also included on the disc) that the Wollaton Antiphonal preserves from the Bridlington Office. The anonymous three-voiced Mass supplies the virtues of clarity, inventive imitation, and clever rhythmic interplay between its two upper parts. Interspersed around its movements is a fascinating variety of roughly contemporaneous material. There’s the polished Ave regina caelorum a 4 by Walter Frye—possibly a contrafactum, derived from a now-lost secular ballade—and the chant Asperges me , with faburden (second voice a fifth below the plainchant) applied to excellent effect. John Cooke’s combinative motet Alma proles/Christi miles sings across the ages with its vigor—presumably celebrating one of Henry V’s military victories—while the Gloria by “Roy Henry,” who was Henry IV, Henry V, or someone else, is competent in its handling of textures. Pride of place, though, must be given to two four-voiced motets by Leonel Power, displaying his typically rich triadic approach, a lack of concern with standard mensuration, and asymmetrical phrasing. The effervescent Ave regina caelorum with its English discant style is probably the earlier of the two, as it demonstrates a level of dissonance between voices that was toned down in his later work. Both pieces are inordinately inventive, and as is often the case with extremely fine music, seems to pack more content into a short duration than logically should fit.


The performances are typical of the six-voiced Binchois Consort: perfect intonation, great clarity between the parts, excellent enunciation, and a more full-blooded exuberance (where required) in this music than is standard in some other British early-music vocal ensembles. Andrew Kirkman’s ear for phrasing and blend is everywhere evident. The venue is perfect, possessing just enough churchly reverberation to let the voices bloom, with none of the cavernous effect that exaggerates lower frequencies and dulls the boundaries between vocal lines. In short, highly recommended.