The great and encouraging support of Charles II for Christian music at the Chapel Royal was important. He was perceptive to see that English composers needed experience and training in the continental styles.
Since the 13th century, the Royal Chapel has been in existence as a musical organization. It still exists today, as it did then, to provide the sovereign of the time with the facilities for worship, particularly in music. The Chapel moved from place to place as required, adorning the liturgy with a rich tapestry of music.
Although English was substituted for most of Latin after the Reformation, music continued to play a vital part in the Chapel's worship. Readings and prayers were intoned on a single note, and responses and psalms were sung to chants. These were the traditional plainsong of medieval times, often harmonized with three or four added parts.
Anglican Chant
The 16th century English composer, Thomas Tallis, had supplied such settings for psalms as far back as the mid-16th century. They appeared, along with others, in a compilation of cathedral music produced by John Barnard, a minor canon of St Paul's Cathedral. Gradually the plainsong melodies were forgotten and replaced by newly composed chants, referred to as "Anglican chant," sung to each half of the psalm-verse.
The choir stalls traditionally divided the choir into two, the decant (the south, the Dean's side) and cantoris (the north and cantor's, or precantor's side) and the psalm-verses were alternately taken by the two sides following the long-established Roman tradition.
Canticles
In 1633, a minor canon of St Paul's, James Clifford, published some 'brief directions' concerning the practice at St. Paul's Cathedral. These came to be called the Canticles which are straightforward in which the voice-parts tended to move through the text together, that is, homophonically, while alternating between decant and cantoris.
Some of the grander settings, so-called 'verse' Services, use the further contrasts possible between the full choir and solo voices. Through the 17th century, the settings by the composers William Byrd, William Mundy, Orlando Gibbons, William Child, Thomas Tomkins and Adrian Batten continued, and long after their death. The prominent place of solo organ music after the psalm is noteworthy and continued as a long-standing tradition. It was only abandoned during the 19th century.
Anthems
The anthems were said to be the central 'sacrifice of praise' at the Chapel Royal, even claimed to have overshadowed the sermon. James Clifford showed that the 'first' service contained one, the following Eucharist contained another, and at Evensong, a further two.
Anthems permitted the greatest artistry and invention of which the musicians of the Chapel were capable.
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Source:
Wilson-Dickson, Andrew. The Story of Christian Music. Oxford: Lion Publishing, 2003
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