Invented Plainsongs in Keyboard Settings Ascribed to Tomkins and Gibbons

Abstract

Three keyboard plainsong settings found in Oxford, Christ Church Mus. 1113 have unidentified cantus firmi. One of the pieces is ascribed to Tomkins, the other two to Gibbons. The three cantus firmi have many reiterated pitches, stated between two and five times. If each pair or group of three is reduced to a single note, three self-contained melodies emerge, carefully constructed and of equal, or very nearly equal, length. These reduced versions presumably were the basis for the keyboard settings. In his edition of Gibbons’s keyboard music (Musica Britannica, 20) Gerald Hendrie regards the two Gibbons ascriptions respectively as doubtful (perhaps by Bull) and spurious. However, it is proposed here that both attributions to Gibbons are correct (as is that to Tomkins), and that the piece previously regarded as spurious is a youthful work from c.1600. More tentative is the concluding suggestion that Tomkins, advising Gibbons as a student, created at least two of the concise tunes and devised the permissive method for expanding them. The psalm-tune-like melody concealed within the more mature of the two Gibbons works may have been the composer’s own.

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