The skills and talents of the nobility – Hype or reality?

Last week there was a mean little news snippet in the UK media about Sarah Ferguson – Sarah, Duchess of York – the former wife of Prince Andrew. Someone had found the record of her GCSE (final high or secondary school exams) results, and they’re not outstanding. This has obviously had no effect on her career as the author of best-selling children’s books. Following on that, the GCSEs of other members of the British royal family were made public as well. Honestly, the whole thing smacks of maliciousness and a puerile mentality. Who cares, really?

Who cares about the credentials of royals?

Oddly, though, people do care, so it seems from the tabloid media. (I don’t, personally.) It has to do with the fact that people place celebrities, famous figures, leaders, and anyone who they think are above them in the social strata, on pedestals. The pedestal is built on the supposed exceptional qualities of these people, including something of which members of royal families have no control, the accident of their birth. Their appearance, private lives, education, qualifications, and successes all form part of this pedestal. We like to think that those we admire are practically perfect in every way, like Mary Poppins. Of course they’re not, no-one is.

Does fame equate to artistry?

Yet, through the ages all sorts of outstanding artistic skills and achievements have been attributed to people who might be least likely to have them, such as political leaders, and members of the aristocracy and royalty. There is a book of poetry about exactly this – poems written by Presidents of the United States: Poems by Presidents: The First-Ever Anthology, by Michael Croland.

I’m not saying anything about the quality of the Presidents’ poetry, though. One should not expect a painter to be as good at writing novels, or a writer to be as good at sculpting, or a politician to be good at love poems. They’re completely different skills and talents and are rarely found combined in an individual.

Royals and leaders with arty strings to their bows

In certain cultures, it is (or was) a sign of education and distinction to be artistically accomplished. In Japan, in the Heian Period, as I found out when researching Murasaki Shikibu, writing haiku was something all members of the elite had to be able to do, and do well. In China, the last Empress, Cixi, also wrote poetry, apparently better than average, and also painted. And, when I was immersed in the Wolf Hall saga of Hilary Mantel, I found out that King Henry VIII was also a musician and a songwriter.

As for the British Royal family and political leaders, King Charles II has been painting for most of his life, mostly ethereal, expressionist water-colours of landscapes – and he is actually quite good at it. So was Winston Churchill. Catherine, Princess of Wales, took piano lessons for many years, and has a talent for playing piano. In royal circles, she’s in good company: in her youth, Queen Elizabeth II played piano and sang madrigals at Windsor Castle. Princess Diana studied piano, and enjoyed playing Rachmaninov. And King Charles studied the cello in his younger years.

In Canada, we have recent memories of former Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, singing and playing the keyboard with his band, the Van Cats. No comments about how good they were. And then we have former Drama teacher, and current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who probably had aspirations for an acting career. Who knows if he would have been any good.

Seriously though, could King Henry VIII write music?

Dabbling in music and poetry is one thing. Writing music (proper music notation and all), and lyrics, and then combining these to produce a song that can be performed, is a different kettle of fish. But this is apparently what King Henry VIII could do. He might not have been first in line to the throne, but at the time of his coronation, he was good-looking, healthy, vigorous, brave and what’s more, creative. The music works attributed to him were indeed written by him. The documentation is in the British Library in London. His best-known work is “Pastime with Good Company”, also called “The Kyngs Balade” (The King’s Ballad). The original score, dating from c. 1513, is in the British Library, manuscript #31922.

The lyrics of King Henry VIII’s song

So, what are the lyrics of this famous song? It’s written in Early Modern (or Tudor) English. To most people, it doesn’t even look like English, with all sorts of letters that modern English doesn’t have. King Henry VIII wrote this as an English folk song shortly after his coronation. It is regarded as the most famous of his compositions, and it became a popular song in England and other European countries during the Renaissance. It is thought that King Henry wrote it for Catherine of Aragon, who became his wife – one of the six he had. Below is the literal translation of the song’s lyrics into modern English:

What does the song sound like (originally)?

What did the King mean?

I figured that King Henry meant that loose hands do the devil’s work (“…idleness is chief mistress of vices…”), and if you mix with bad people you’ll get into trouble. The “pastime” to which he refers is not the “pastimes” that today means leisure, a hobby, or a sport. It meant, in those days, an occupation or activity – less fun, more work. The King, as someone with divine rights, and the future head of the Church of England, wanted – from his lofty moral position – to give guidance to his people.

Although he acknowledges in the lyrics that young people are free to choose how they behave, he says that since good behaviour pleases God, it also pleases him, ergo, young people had better do as he does.

Well, the King was a fine one to talk in those days, before his love life and reputation went down the tubes.

Updating “Pastime with Good Company”

When I decided to write a modern version of “Pastime with Good Company” for my album, “Divan”, I was challenging myself. I modernized the lyrics, and set them into verse form, and of course wrote a new, modern, trip-hop style composition. The lyrics were a little short, because I left out some of the less clear, or repetitive, parts. So, thank you, William Shakespeare, for giving me some suitably danceable poetry from “The Tempest” to add to the song. The result could be called Bardcore. I was sorely, sorely!, tempted resort to revisionism and change the meaning of the lyrics to be more relevant to today. But I restrained myself.

Lyric video of my modern version

Here is the lyric video of the song, and you can see in the vintage movie clips that I used, that the characters are doing a courtly dance, like the pavan, and one of the characters is playing what looks like a lute.

What did I learn from this? For the time, the King did indeed write decent music, and the fact that, to this day, this song is still being performed as it was originally written, testifies to its success. I mean, Tudor music is not easy to listen to and not what I’d call “pretty”. But even so, the song has endured. Secondly, it is a real pain in the butt to work with the rhythms and instruments of those days. The end result is palatable only because Luke Garfield managed to sort out the hemiolas in the arrangement. And heck, I didn’t even know there is a thing like a hemiola, and that I’d written a piece with hemiolas!

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