A valuable window onto the sound world of the Tudor Court on progress: Henry VIII on Tour from Ensemble Pro Victoria & Toby Ward

Henry VIII on Tour: music from Tudor Royal Progresses – William Cornysh, William Rasar, John Redford, Dionisius Prioris, Philippe Verdelot, Philip van Wilder, John White, William More, Robert Cowper, John Tavener, Henry VIII; Ensemble Pro Victoria, Toby Ward, Toby Carr, Aileen Henry, Magnus Williamson, New Vocal Ensemble; Delphian
Reviewed 10 June 2025

Relying on a precious selection of surviving sources, an imaginative exploration of the sort of music, sacred and secular, that would have accompanied King Henry VIII on his progress around his kingdom

Medieval and early modern courts were peripatetic because they had to be, the infrastructure could not cope with so many people in one place for a great length of time. During the Summer, Tudor monarchs developed this into the idea of the progress, a semi-ceremonial journey through the countryside designed to show the monarch off, reinforce social bonds with courtiers and inspect the monarch’s business outside the capital. It was Queen Elizabeth I who raised the progress to its apogee, sometimes nearly bankrupting the courtiers she stayed with, but her father, Henry VIII was also assiduous. His progresses were often about inspecting naval and military fortifications, but there was another aspect to them, recreation. Henry would take the opportunity to go hunting.

The court functions did not disappear during such travel, but things were readjusted, there was still music albeit on a different scale. The disc Henry VIII on Tour: music from Tudor Royal Progresses from Toby Ward and Ensemble Pro Victoria on the Delphian label explores this repertoire, presenting a diverse mix of sacred and secular music by William Cornysh, William Rasar, John Redford, Dionisius Prioris, Philippe Verdelot, Philip van Wilder, John White, William More, Robert Cowper, John Tavener and Henry VIII himself. And the ensemble is joined by lutenist Toby Carr, harpist Aileen Henry, organist Magnus Williamson and New Vocal Ensemble.

During the Summer progresses the majority of the thirty gentlemen of the Chapel Royal and the ten boys were stood down, but a select group of musicians, around six men and six boys attended the priests to form the Riding Chapel. This means that the sacred music was, inevitably, somewhat less elaborate. However, nearly all the music books used by the Chapel Royal have been lost or exist only in fragmentary form, and this disc arises from a project, Henry VIII on Tour funded by the UK’s Arts & Humanities Research Council and involving researchers from Historic Royal Palaces, Newcastle University and the University of York along with collaborators including Ensemble Pro Victoria. The result is an eclectic disc, full of names that are not well-known or hardly known at all. And you can read a lot more about the project at the Henry VIII on Tour website.

Secular music comes from an important surviving source, the so-called Henry VIII Book, which probably belonged to Henry’s master of revels, Sir Henry Guildford and this provides an important window on the early and lively reign of the King. Here, we hear such delights as William Cornysh’s Ah, the sighs, beautifully done as a solo song by David De Winter and Toby Carr, along with a tiny Cornysh piece Trolly lolly probably written for a larger drama, as well as music by Robert Cowper and Henry’s own En vray amoure, highly reliant on Continental examples.

Another vein of secular music is a group of galliards by John White (Bishop of Winchester) played by Magnus Williamson on an important reconstruction of a Tudor organ, and he also plays two short sacred organ works, Felix namque by John Redford, the organist of the hospital of St Cross in Winchester at the time Henry VIII visited. Another Marian setting, Beate Viscera is anonymous and from a manuscript that is the earliest English source for fully fledged organ music. Harpist Aileen Henry plays a couple of anonymous instrumental pieces too. These are all relatively short pieces, precious little windows into an earlier time. 

The backbone of the sacred music on the disc is the Missa Christe Jesu by William Rasar, a chorister at St George’s Windsor and then a lay clerk at King’s College, Cambridge. Windsor, at the time, was not a major royal residence, instead Henry often used it as a launch pad for progresses. Rasar’s mass mixes more elaborate melismatic passages with full sections. Here, in a convincing but speculative reconstruction the more soloistic passages are sung by members of Ensemble Pro Victoria with the full ones by the New Vocal Ensemble, Newcastle University’s principal a cappella ensemble. The result is to imagine members of the King’s Riding Chapel joining forces with the choir of host institution. This brings a real level of interest to what is a fascinating if rather conventional work.

Elsewhere the disc casts its net widely for sources for the music. Dionisius Prior was a singer in the chapel of King Louis XII of France (husband of Henry VIII’s sister), and his tiny motet Duclcia amica Dei occurs in the Henry VIII Book, whilst a motet by Philippe Verdelot found its way into a set of part-books copied for the Earl of Arundel. Composer Philip van Wilder served as Privy Chamber musician and master of the king’s music, in which role he directed both sacred and secular, his Sancte Deus survives in another set of part-books.

Also part of the king’s privy musicians was William More, the ‘blinde harpist’ and though he presumably performed ballads and songs, here we have one of his motets, Levavi oculos meos. The disc ends with the choristers back on home turf, singing one of the showpieces from their repertoire, John Tavener’s setting of the responsory Audivi vocem.

This disc is something of an antidote to those discs of refulgent early Tudor polyphony. Here, everything is more intimate, more personal, simply one or two musicians entertaining the king or the dozen or so singing men and boys of the Riding Chapel providing music at mass. As might be expected from Toby Ward and Ensemble Pro Victoria, performances are stylish and engaging. The music is presented as it is, with no attempt to inflate the significance. A lot of this is useful music written by practical musicians and the result is a disc which gives us a valuable window onto the sound world of the Tudor Court on tour.

Henry VIII on Tour
Ensemble Pro Victoria
Toby Ward (conductor)
New Vocal Ensemble
David De Winter (tenor)
Toby Carr (lute)
Aileen Henry (harp)
MAgnus Williamson (organ)
Recorded 5-7 March 2024, Lyddington Parish Church, Rutland, 12 April 2024, St Nicholas’ Cathedral, Newcastle
DELPHIAN DCD34335 1CD [63.09]