Another post this week on the topic of musical visitors to Scotland from Europe, intersecting this time on the strand of Soundyngs’s posts about psalms.
Jean Servin (1529-1609) was a French Huguenot musician born in the vicinity of Blois in France, who experienced persecution for his faith during the Wars of Religion, eventually leaving France for the Protestant stronghold of Geneva. In autumn 1579 he visited Scotland, bringing with him new musical settings of the psalms along with letters from Theodore de Bèze to Peter Young, tutor to James VI. In his bags he also brought a significant gift of music, which he presented to the King himself in beautifully tooled leather-bound volumes marked with the royal coat of arms. James Porter has been working on Servin’s music for the last two decades, and this post provides a summary of further reading and resources from Porter on this Franco-Scottish musical exchange.
The Scottish Reformation of 1560 very rapidly changed the kinds of music that might be heard in Scottish churches, changing the emphasis from elaborate polyphony to congregational psalm singing. Moreover, in removing the infrastructure of cathedrals and monasteries, the Reformation also removed the institutions that had run Scotland’s song schools, in one sweep impacting both music education and literacy more generally. In November 1579, the young King James VI issued his ‘Act of Timeous Remeid’ to re-establish the song schules on the changed basis of funding from local parishes and burghs. Some, but not all, were restored, of which the school in Aberdeen was probably the most successful in maintaining a curriculum into the 17th century.
Servin’s musical gift comprised five part books with new musical settings of the psalms, using texts which James’s former tutor, the formidably learned George Buchanan, had published in classical Latin translations. The style of the music reflects a range of fashionable styles from Servin’s contemporary Netherlands, France and Italy, even, according to Porter, ‘a newer, word-orientated style that anticipates Monteverdi’ (Porter, 2009). This was not music intended for church use; the Church of Scotland already had its metrical vernacular psalms for that purpose. Servin’s hope must have been to persuade the King that singing scriptural texts in Latin should play a role in court recreational culture, and to find employment that might allow him to lead such work in Scotland. James is known to have found Buchanan’s educational regime somewhat severe, although this grounding in classical languages set him up to understand the importance of careful Biblical translation; throughout his reign he felt confident in discussing matters scriptural and theological with his clergy.
Alas, Servin did not find employment in the Chapel Royal in 1579. Servin found James under the spell of newly-arrived Esmé Stuart, Sieur d’Aubigny, who had brought with him a substantial cash gift from Catholic France. In this atmosphere, learned Huguenot music might have found it hard to get much headway, while singing psalms in Latin possibly ran against the Scottish preference post-1560 for vernacular settings. Nevertheless, while the song books probably may not have found a regular audience with the King, the decision to restore the sang schules in November may, Porter has argued, have been brought into focus by some of the musical conversations had in court that autumn.
In 1578, the year before he came to Scotland, Servin also published 3 volumes of secular chansons in French, including material on spiritual themes, and in the secular repertoire, a humorous fricasée that weaves together Parisian street songs. A new project will bring Porter’s editions of the French chanson part-books online, hosted from the University of Tours with funding support from the British Academy. This will help this body of work to find a new audience, and potentially shed light on some of the musical influences of early modern Scottish courtly songs. Servin’s themes of exile and loss, in particular, may resonate with our modern times
Further Reading
- James Porter, ‘Psalms for King James: Jean Servin’s Music for George Buchanan’s Latin Psalm Paraphrases (1579)‘, British Academy Review 12 (2009), uploaded 25 June 2017: 44-4
- James Porter, ‘“Les Tons Bruyans, graves, doux et divers:” Piety, Passion, and Musical Poesis in the Chansons of Jean Servin (1578)’, in Revue de musicology, 97(2) (2011): 291-268
- James Porter (ed.), Jean Servin: Psalmi Davidis 1579 (Brepols, 2015)
- James Porter, ‘A Frenchman at King James’s Court’, The Early Music Show on Radio 3, Sunday 22nd April 2018
- COMING SOON: a new online edition of the Chansons of Jean Servin – University of Tours (Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance, CESR) with support from the British Academic. Watch their website for more information.
Further Listening
- Sing Psalms, The Choir of St Giles Cathedral dir. Michael Harris, organ Jordan English (Aegidius, catalogue AGD005, 2023) – psalms by Jean Servin include Psalm 8 and Psalm 12, and the album also includes work by Andro Blackhall and David Peebles as well as contemporary composers.
- The Ear of the Huguenots, The Huelgas Ensemble dir. Paul van Nevel (Deutsche Harmonia Musica, catalogue DHM 88985411762, 2017) – Servin’s Psalm 15 for 8 voices (Stellata coeli)
- L’écrit du cri, Ensemble Clément Janequin dir. Dominique Visse (Harmonia Mundi cata;pgie HMC902028, 2009) – see ‘La Fricassée des cris de Paris’.