download.pdf - 6.3Mb - Viola da Gamba Society

Chelys 7 (1977), article 4
There is a ‘family relationship’ between several of the themes in these
six-part works, ‘wrought with no small industry, yet easy and familiar’ as
North tells us. Apart from the familiar canzona trademark in works such
as Fantasias nos. 10, 11 and In Nomine no. 2, there is also a striking
similarity between the initial themes of Fantasias nos. 1, 4 & 9 (Example
XVI):
[67]
Ex. XVI
Initial themes from (a) Fantasia no. 1; (b) Fantasia no. 4; (c) Fantasia no. 9
The countersubjects shown in Example XVI are soon discarded, though
their independent rhythms add considerable interest to the opening bars of
their respective pieces. The fugal opening of Fantasia no. 4 concludes with
imitative entries over a dominant pedal, almost a separate episode, preparing
for extended music in the tonic major: first `Grave and Harmonious
Musick’, and then the episode referred to earlier. This is answered by a
rising phrase for the three lowest instruments before a marvellous twist back
to the minor (which always reminds me of the similar moment at the
conclusion of the first song in Schubert’s Winterreise), a further dominant
pedal and more ‘Grave and Harmonious Musick’ to conclude.
It is perhaps most fitting to conclude with the ‘Bell Pavan’, not to be
confused with the ‘Six Bells’, ‘Lady Katherine Audley’s Bells’, ‘St. Peter’s
Bells’, ‘Bow Bells’, or Bells in F—all of which are attributed to Jenkins
somewhere in seventeenth century sources. I believe it was Thurston Dart
who first suggested that named pavans like Byrd’s and Gibbons’s ‘Earl of
Salisbury’ may have been memorial pieces for the person mentioned in the
title. It is difficult to escape the belief that at least some of Jenkins’s bell