Thirty–five Compositions

The early Tudor songbook is the chief surviving monument of secular music at the court. The original, housed in the British Museum, is a beautifully, though not sumptuously, produced vellum manuscript measuring twelve inches by eight and a quarter. The songbook has been entitled for convenience Henry VIII’s Book. This handy label will not, it is hoped, be used to perpetuate the legend that the songbook belonged to the king himself. It is intended chiefly to acknowledge the fact that it contains many of the king’s own compositions. The book is indisputably a document of court-music in the early years of the king’s reign and only occasionally recalls the styles of earlier times.

For this volume, John Stevens has extracted Thirty-five compositions by King Henry VIII from the popular Musica Britannica edition Music at the Court of Henry VIII. (Ref MB18)