Wolsey and music from Richard Wilson

I greatly enjoyed your excellent piece on Wolsey and the 1520 Field of the Cloth of Gold. As we are in the midst of celebrating Wolsey 550, perhaps I might add some more colour by outlining just how important music was to that glittering occasion?

Wolsey was indeed the chief architect of the drama and spectacle at The Field of the Cloth of Gold, sparing no expense in building magnificent temporary chapels and lavish banqueting halls. But music also played a key role in what David Starkey has called ‘this exercise in the politics of splendour’, accompanying the many entertainments, feast, jousts, public encounters and religious services. No doubt the promise of unlimited free wine for the duration of the trip sweetened the deal for certain members of Wolsey’s household choir who were shipped across the Channel alongside the singers of the Chapel Royal and an array of minstrels. 

The centrepiece of this elaborate summit meeting was the service begun at noon on the penultimate day, which has been called one of the period’s most spectacular displays of liturgical theatre. Overnight, a grand chapel had been erected on the jousting ground, the galleries converted into pews. It glittered with gold: ten large silver gilt images stood on the altar alongside two gold candlesticks and a large, jewelled crucifix, the whole structure symbolising the triumph of religion and peace over war. Wolsey sat in prime position beneath a canopy by the altar, and between him and the royal pews were the organists, the musicians with their trombones, sackbuts, fifes and cornets, and the massed British and French choirs. The latter was almost certainly the choir from the Sainte-Chapelle, which despite recruiting from all over the continent struggled to find suitably qualified musicians: in 1511 a Master of Singing had been dismissed for his inability to sing, failure to read at sight, drunkenness and sedition...

Wolsey, dressed in vestments brought over from Westminster and wearing sandals covered with jewels, began by singing the Mass of the Trinity. The music was elaborate – ‘a heavenlie hearing’. The English and French sang alternately, and according to a contemporary report ‘Now sweet songs spring from the mellifluous throats of the singers, now the organ makes heard its pleasing sounds; now the honey-sweet song of the singers joins with the sound of the organ, so that you might say angelic music intermingles.’ The lengthy service concluded with Wolsey blessing the assembled company.

The sumptuous banquet that followed was punctuated by yet more music: 24 trumpeters announced the arrival of gentlemen dressed in gold brocade bearing golden platters laden with food. Strident clarion calls announced each course and softer music, both instrumental and vocal, accompanied the four-hour feast. The parties afterwards adjourned to another pavilion for more music and dancing. 

The whole event was hailed as a triumph, though soon the two nations were at each other’s throats again – but as a cultural exchange it was a great success. It inspired composers on both sides of the Channel, and brought several new dances to England, including a novel form called a pavanne that was soon to become one of the staples at Court. 

When Wolsey and his retinue returned to France in 1527 his minstrels played so well at a feast he laid on for the French Queen Mother that Francis asked if he could borrow them for a dinner of his own the next night. But things went badly for one particular wind-player: according to Cavendish, Wolsey’s biographer, he was either injured ‘with extreme labor of blowing’ or he was poisoned by a jealous French rival, and within a couple of days the poor chap was dead. Nonetheless, later that same year Wolsey hosted the French Embassy, who arrived in London ‘supported by a host of gentlemen, archers, wrestlers, musicians and tennis-players.’ The banquet held in their honour was, according to Cavendish, accompanied ‘with syche a pleasaunt noyce of dyvers Instrumentes of musyke’ that the visitors ‘were rapte into an hevenly paradice'.

Not bad for a lad from Ipswich whose musical education probably began at his school in what is now the south aisle of St Mary-le-Tower church...

Thanks to this contribution from Richard we can now pile superlative upon superlative regarding the sumptuous festival on the edge of the Pale of Calais in 1520. Of course, peasants in England had little or no knowledge of what was going on across the Channel. One can hardly blame the poorer French citizens in the area for sneaking into the site and partaking of those wine fountains. Thomas Wolsey made his mark, but at the expense of those short of a crust of bread.

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