download.pdf - 6.3Mb - Viola da Gamba Society

Chelys 7 (1977), article 4
pieces may have had a similar origin. Indeed Sir Philip Wodehouse’s little
verse ‘upon Mr J o Jenkins, the rare Musitian’ 9 says as much
This rare Amphyon of Our tymes
Is toul’d to Heavn by his own chymes* *his Bells
Poetic licence perhaps? The Bell Pavan as a whole has an elegiac quality,
notwithstanding the major key episode before the bells. The bells
themselves call to mind that passage in Vautor’s madrigal ‘Sweet Suffolk
Owl’ setting the words ‘and sings a dirge for dying souls’, and are clearly
derived from the so-called ‘Whittington Chimes’ (Example XVII)
Ex. XVII. The Whittington Chimes
In their oldest form those chimes were played on six bells and based on the
ancient tune `Turn again, Whittington. . . . ‘ It is with Bow Church that the
Whittington tradition is connected. If the chime was played by the clock, it
must have been in existence before the great fire of 1666, as the six-bell tune
has not been played since that date. 10
Whatever the origin or inspiration behind the Bell Pavan, it is surely
intriguing to note that St. Mary-le-Bow stands opposite the south end of
Milk Street. Here for a time lived Baldwin Derham, mercer (d. 1610)—the
progenitor of the seventeenth century Norfolk Derhams (supposedly
Jenkins’s patrons). Perhaps the church was also for a time a focal point in
the life of the young composer.
9 Quoted in Roger North on Music, p. 348.
10 Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, (5/1953).