About The Mulliner Project

The Mulliner Book – a small oblong quarto for domestic use – includes a substantial amount of pre-Reformation liturgical organ music… But Mulliner did not copy these pieces in order to play them in the Latin liturgy: they are instead an early instance of the preservation of music for historical or educational purposes.[1]

[1] Thomas Mulliner, The Mulliner Book, edited by John Caldwell (London: Stainer & Bell, 2011), xxi.

Prefacing Musica Britannica’s authoritative edition of The Mulliner Book is this simple description of Thomas Mulliner’s assumed intention for his hand copied tome of Tudor keyboard and choral music. For me, this description seems too presumptive and unimaginative for such an auspicious collection of early keyboard music. The suggestion that The Mulliner Book, Britain’s equivalent of Genesis for keyboard music, is simply a teaching aid or historical compilation is needlessly dogmatic. Such a designation relegates this important manuscript to the reference shelves of libraries, rather than promoting it into the concert halls and core repertoire of keyboardists.

While my description of and reaction to John Caldwell’s introduction to this volume may be slightly dramatic, I am nevertheless still disappointed that The Mulliner Book is assigned the “educational and historical purposes” only labels. The educational label suggests that Mulliner was only interested in the music as a means to an end; that being, as a way for him to teach students how the great composers of the day wrote music. Caldwell’s description of it being a “historical” collection implies that it is an antiquated collection – a “greatest hits” of a bygone era, being collected by someone who was fascinated by the past. However, this could not be further from the truth; the music contained within this manuscript was all written during Mulliner’s life, or a couple of decades preceding his birth.[1] The Mulliner Book was, for Thomas Mulliner, a contemporary collection of music, not necessarily a reliquary of the past. Finally, both of the labels Caldwell assigns The Mulliner Book fail to suggest that Mulliner compiled this collection for performance, either in public or private. Music was one of the key social activities of Tudor life, both at court and for personal entertainment.[2] Therefore, it is completely reasonable to suggest that The Mulliner Book was possibly used as a performance medium.

My disappointment in the incomplete and unfortunate labelling of The Mulliner Book ultimately inspired me to develop this project, titled:

The Mulliner Project: The rich repertoire of The Mulliner Book explored and reimagined on a multitude of instruments.

I believe that Caldwell’s labelling this manuscript unhelpfully diminishes the important space The Mulliner Book should occupy in keyboardists’ core repertoire. I completely accept Caldwell’s view that the manuscript may have been complied for historical or educational purposes. However, the omission of the manuscript’s use as a performance medium is a thoroughly disappointing oversight by the editors of Musica Britannica. The evidence for any of The Mulliner Book’s suggested uses is completely speculative; we simply do not know how the manuscript was originally used or what its definitive purpose was.[3] The most openminded conclusion regarding the manuscript’s possible uses is that it was probably used for a combination of all three activities: performance, education, and as a historical document. However, the performer within me wants to say, “what is a musical score for, if not to be played – especially when it is compiled by a practising musician, not a historian?”

[1] Mulliner, The Mulliner Book, ed. Caldwell, xxix-xxxi.

[2] Melita Thomas, “Music in the Royal Courts,” Tudor Times, accessed September 21, 2021, https://www.tudortimes.co.uk/daily-life/music-in-the-royal-courts.

[3] Mulliner, The Mulliner Book, ed. Caldwell, 221-223.

Further background to The Mulliner Project

As previously described, The Mulliner Project was born out of my dislike for Caldwell’s labelling of The Mulliner Book as merely for educational and historical purposes. Alongside this reason, the lack of appreciation for The Mulliner Book, particularly in the recording market, has been an important source of motivation throughout this project. Of the many discs of early English keyboard music, you rarely find the works of The Mulliner Book in the tracklists. When one does find a work from The Mulliner Book on a disc, it seems to have been included in a rather tokenistic manner; usually as the sole representative recording from the entire manuscript. Discs which include this repertoire in such a manner will never begin to scratch the surface of the rich repertory offering contained within The Mulliner Book.

In conjunction with this problem of tokenistic inclusion of repertoire from The Mulliner Book, the question of appropriate disc programme seems to have been an issue for recording companies and artists. Many discs dedicated to the presentation of early English keyboard music seem to have a common, reoccurring problem; they usually programme music from The Mulliner Book alongside the music of composers from music later periods, such as Tomkins or even S.S. Wesley. Such programming seems rather strange to me, especially when other discs in the series manage to successfully pair composers of the same period, or similar compositional style.

To me, it also seems as though most performers include a piece from The Mulliner Book for sheer novelty. Performing and recording unknown and underappreciated works does have some level of appeal. Performers and listeners alike love to rediscover music that has otherwise been lost to time; there is a thrill or rush when one is on such a journey of musical discovery. However, in my opinion, some performers include such pieces in discs and recital programmes to add an extra level of perceived faux sophistication. I found this to be particularly common in recordings around the genesis of the historical performance revival movement. The misconceived practice of performing and recording unknown works for the sheer sense of novelty only degrades these underappreciated and little-known pieces. It is in this context that I believe the repertoire of The Mulliner Book has been treated as an early keyboard novelty– keyboardists seem to play it to show off their breadth of knowledge, rather than playing because it is genuinely great music.

Examples of discs which are representative of the kinds of problems I have raised above include Naxos Early English Organ Music Volumes (Joseph Payne), A Fantasy Through Time (Kimberly Marshall), The Glory of Early Music (various artists), and 500 Years of Organ Music, Vol. 1 (various artists). In Volume 1 of the Naxos Early English Organ Music series, a significant amount of repertoire from The Mulliner Book is set alongside music by Purcell and Boyce. This is a rather surprising grouping of composers: there is over a century between The Mulliner Book and Purcell and Boyce. Stylistically, there are many ages between the works of Purcell (and even more so Boyce) and the repertoire of The Mulliner Book. As a listener, the experience of journeying through this disc is a really odd experience; there is a distinct lack of narrative.

Discs such as A Fantasy Through Time (Kimberly Marshall), The Glory of Early Music (various artists), and 500 Years of Organ Music, Vol. 1 (various artists) are all representative of tokenistic inclusion of repertoire from The Mulliner Book, and poor programmatic planning. All of these discs at best include two pieces of repertoire from The Mulliner Book and are in turn paired (in some extreme cases) with the organ music of César Franck. Rather surprisingly, the repertoire from The Mulliner Book recorded on these three discs is all performed on almost the same organ registration, despite being stylistically different pieces recorded on three very different organs. This almost seems to suggest that amongst organists there is the general belief that this repertoire would have, and should have been, registered in the exact same way for every piece. It appears as though these artists have approached the repertoire from The Mulliner Book, and the Tudor period more broadly, in a completely sanitised and academic way. Why is it acceptable to treat Tudor repertoire this way, but not Bach, or Widor? To me, it is indicative of a lack of appreciation and enthusiasm for Tudor repertoire.

Recordings of repertoire from The Mulliner Book played on the harpsichord and lute appear to manage the programming of repertoire more successfully. Friederike Chylek’s disc of harpsichord music Time Stands Still pairs the Galliard (from The Mulliner Book) with music by Byrd, Dowland, Farnaby, and Johnsons – all of whom are at least from a relatively similar time period. Likewise, the disc Tudor and Stuart Spirit (various artists) successfully pairs many works from The Mulliner Book with other Tudor composers, and even features performances of repertoire from The Mulliner Book on different instruments such as harpsichord and lute. However, these discs (and others like them) don’t manage to venture beyond only the most well-known pieces from The Mulliner Book: pieces such as the Galliard, Pavan, La Bounette, and The Old Spagnoletta. Sadly, other excellent pieces from the manuscript never seem to be featured in the wider selection of early English keyboard discs.

In addition to this, of the repertoire from The Mulliner Book that has been recorded, the pieces are always performed on their perceived native instrument. This naturally results in all the sacred music only being performed on the organ., and all the secular and dance music being performed on the harpsichord or lute. I am yet to find a disc where these artificial boundaries of assumptive instrumentation have been crossed, and works were performed freely on any instrument. I cannot find a reason why performers are limiting themselves in this way with the repertoire from The Mulliner Book, and the wider Tudor period. Thomas Mulliner never gave any indication of which instrument each piece was written for, so why should we?

The recording market of repertoire from The Mulliner Book has been greatly affected by a general ignorance of the musical diversity of the Tudor period, amongst keyboardists in particular. This ignorance has ultimately clouded the artistic decisions that musicians have made when performing and recording this kind of repertoire. This is particularly the case in regard to instrument selection, and performance practice. The musicians of Henry VIII’s court were some of the most fortunate musicians in Europe. Henry had an exhaustive collection of musical instruments in his collections at his various palaces. These collections included cornets, bagpipes, viols, lutes, flutes, shawms, recorders, harpsichords, regals, virginals, organs, and spinets.[1] Composers, whose music is copied in The Mulliner Book, would have had access to most of these instruments thanks to their involvement in Henry’s Chapel Royal.[2] Due to their access to Henry’s vast collection of musical instruments and their duties to provide music at religious and courtly moments, it would be naive to suggest that the composers of Henry’s would not have played their music on many different instruments. It would also be naïve to suggest that this diverse musical experience would not have influenced how they interpreted their compositions; it must have had an enormous impact on the music they wrote, and all aspects of their work as performing musicians. Surely the musical possibilities would have been limitless for these composers. Therefore, why would modern musicians so freely limit themselves (in instrument choice and interpretation) when performing repertoire from The Mulliner Book?

[1] Melita Thomas, “Tudor Tunes: music at the courts of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and James VI and I,” Historyextra, accessed September 10, 2021, https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/tudor-tunes-music-at-the-courts-of-henry-viii-elizabeth-i-and-james-vi-and-i/.

[2] Thomas, “Tudor Tunes.”