Now Is The Month Of Maying: A Song History
Thomas Morley, whom Britannica puts at the head of the line of great English madrigalists, was organist of St Paul's Cathedral by 1591 and was sworn in as a gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1592.[1] He had probably studied with William Byrd, and he later went into music printing and publishing as well.[2] "Now Is The Month Of Maying" first appeared in 1595 in his First Booke of Balletts to Five Voyces, printed in London by Thomas Este.[3] It stands third in that collection and is set for five voices.[4]
Gobelins Manufactory, workshop of Michel Audran, Month of May: Scene of May Day Festival, tapestry weave, linen warp, wool and silk wefts, 1723–1774. A French May Day festival, shown for the season the song celebrates; it has no connection to Morley.
Morley did not invent the piece from scratch: he based it on Orazio Vecchi's "So ben mi ch'a bon tempo."[5] Vecchi's original, for four voices with lute, had been printed in 1590 in his Selva di varia ricreatione.[6] Reworking Italian music without crediting its composer was not unusual then, and Morley did it often; his balletts as a group took Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi's balletti as their model while developing the material further.[1] Despite the dance-related name, this ballett is a kind of madrigal for five singers rather than dance music, and its "fa-la" refrain has an Italian ring.[2] Its subject is May Day, imagined as a time for young couples to enjoy the spring outdoors.[2]
The piece has been reworked many times since: an anonymous piano version was published in Warsaw in 1888, Archibald T. Davison arranged it for men's chorus in 1922, and Edmund H. Fellowes's version for three treble voices was issued by Stainer & Bell in 1933.[5] For mountain dulcimer, Ellen Pratt sets it in DAD tuning, with melody, harmony and bass parts plus a chord backup, in her self-published Ensemble Arrangements For The Mountain Dulcimer, Volume 4, a collection of duets and trios that runs "from Bach to barnyard songs."[7]
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Thomas Morley".
- Naxos Musicology Blog: "May in Names and Notions".
- IMSLP: "Balletts to Five Voyces, Book 1 (Morley, Thomas)".
- Choral Public Domain Library: "Now is the month of maying (Thomas Morley)".
- IMSLP: "Now is the Month of Maying (Morley, Thomas)".
- IMSLP: "So ben mi ch'a bon tempo (Vecchi, Orazio)".
- Ellen Pratt: "Ensemble Arrangements For The Mountain Dulcimer, Volume 4".
- Image: Gobelins Manufactory, workshop of Michel Audran, Month of May: Scene of May Day Festival, tapestry weave, linen warp, wool and silk wefts, 1723–1774. The Cleveland Museum of Art.