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Chelys 7 (1977), article 2
We can probably go further, and suggest that well over half of Mico’s consort
music, perhaps more, is likely to have been written during his long service in
Essex before 1630. Statistically this would [45] follow anyway, assuming a
reasonably steady rate of composition during a productive life of say 30 years c.
1610-1640. Moreover the evidence shows that viols were cultivated in the Petre
households (although Mico played the other household instruments too),
whereas viols are not mentioned during his London years, which apparently
concentrated on the organ. The absence of compositions for more than five
viols recalls that the 1608 Petre chest lacked a second bass.
Stylistic considerations point the same way. Richard Mico’s consort music
stands between that of the Jacobean masters and John Jenkins (almost an exact
contemporary, b. 1592), much of whose consort music for viols is now thought
to date from the early part of his life, probably the 1620s. 111
There is some ambiguity between Richard Mico as composer and as
performer. His selection as the Queen’s organist shows that by the age of about
40 he excelled at the keyboard. Yet he wrote only for viols, and in a manner
suggesting that he was fully at home on those instruments too. Less than one in
three of his works for viols have organ parts, and the autograph set has none.
The absence of Byrd’s keyboard works at Thorndon, among so much of Byrd’s
other music, would seem surprising if in youth Mico had been primarily a
keyboard player. After his death he was remembered (if at all) as a consort
composer, forgotten as an organist. Perhaps Mico’s musical life should be seen
in two phases, dividing at 1630: first the years of fruitful isolation running the
music of a big country house, during which he probably wrote and helped
perform much of his consort music (does this remind us a little of Haydn at
EsterhAz?; then the decade of dangerous eminence at court, when the organ
monopolised his attention, and he gradually ceased to compose. Afterwards his
achievements were soon forgotten in the eclipse of the politico-religious causes
he served.
Nevertheless there remains a mystery. Performance at mass (on whatever
instruments) must have been a regular part of Mico’s duties in Petre service and
was apparently his main duty in the Queen’s service. Why have we no
compositions of his for the church? His predecessors Byrd and Deering point
the contrast. Did their church music overshadow him? Was his vein of
inspiration purely instrumental and secular? Or are there lost church works of
Richard Mico’s yet to be recovered, if all did not perish in the Civil War? 112
111 Editorial introductions to John Jenkins: Consort Music in Five Parts (ed. Richard Nicholson,
London, 1971), and Consort Music in Six Parts (ed. Nicholson and Andrew Ashbee. London,
1976).
112 Somerset House Chapel was ‘sacked’ in March 1643 (Clarendon: History of the Rebellion
(Oxford, 1888), iii, p.11) and Thorndon Hall was virtually looted in June 1645 (Clay, op. cit., p.
99), both under Parliamentary authority.