[John Blanke performing at Westminster Tournament in 1511. He is featured at AfriClassical.com]
November 1, 2012
Last Tuesday, I headed for Peckham Library to give a talk billed as "African musicians and Renaissance royal celebrations".
This consisted of an exploration of what is known of the lives of John
Blanke, pictured here playing at the Westminster Tournament of 1511,
and the 'More taubronar', a drummer at the court of James IV of Scotland
in the early 1500s.
The Southwark Council theme for this
year's Black History Month was "Celebration" and in line with that, I
showed the role these musicians played in royal celebrations.
John
Blanke performed at Henry VIII's coronation in 1509, and in 1511 at the
Westminster Tournament, a huge celebration organised in honour of the
new prince, Henry. This child was born to Katherine of Aragon on 1st
January 1511, but sadly died only ten days after the Tournament in
February. I wonder if the 60 ft long Tournament Roll, (which depicts
John Blanke twice, in the procession of people coming to and from the
jousting event shown in the centre), was completed in that brief time,
or whether they carried on painting it after the prince's death? The
Royal Exchequer accounts show that Blanke was paid ten times his usual
wage for the Tournament, so he had cause for celebration too! And the
following year, he had a personal celebration, as we know he married in
1512 and that Henry VIII gave him a wedding present!
Up in
Scotland, we find the More taubronar playing alongside four Italian
minstrels at the court of James IV. He might have sounded something
like this.
They travelled around Scotland with the court- and at one point the
king bought him his own horse. Not just a drummer, the taubronar was
also a skilled choreographer who devised a dance to celebrate Shrove
Tuesday in 1505. He was also paid wages and was married, with a child.
Though he seems to have been injured, possibly fatally in 1506: the
royal payments to a doctor survive. Nor was he the only African at the
Scottish court at that time- but that's another story.
Both men are part of a much longer tradition of black musicians in European royal courts -
going back to at least 1194 when Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI was
preceded by black trumpeters in his entry into Palermo, Sicily (see
below). Valued for their skill and paid wages, we can still only guess
at the daily details of these men's lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment