Hugh Aston

Hugh Aston (c. 1485 – buried 17 November 1558) was an English composer of the early Tudor period. While little of his music survives, he is notable for his innovative keyboard writing.

Life

Little is known about the early life of this important early Tudor composer, and his date and place of birth are currently unknown. However, on 27th November 1510 he applied for the degree of BMus at Oxford University, submitting a mass and an antiphon for examination, and stating that he had studied music in the University for eight years (suggesting that he must have been in his mid-20s by that date, hence the estimated date of birth of around 1485). Though the result is not formally recorded this application for the degree was presumably successful as the University ordered the retention of the two submitted manuscripts. It seems most likely that these are the six part Missa Te Deum Laudamus and the clearly associated antiphon Te Deum Laudamus, both still in the University’s collection of musical manuscripts, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Between 1510 and 1522 or later he may have lived in London, and it is suggested that he may have had some association with the court of Henry VIII, such as the Chapel Royal. In 1520/21 he was working in Coventry and was paid by the Dean and Chapter of the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick, for travelling from Coventry to Warwick to advise on the purchase and installing of a new organ. By 1525 Aston was settled and working in Leicester, as a verbatim record of his evidence given to a Bishop’s Visitation on 27th & 28th November 1525 is preserved in the Lincoln Diocesan Records, and he seems to have stayed in Leicester for the rest of his life. His appointment in Leicester was that of Magister Choristerorum (Master of the Choristers) at the major Royal foundation, the Hospital and College of St Mary of the Annunciation, established by Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster in 1330, and re-endowed and substantially enlarged by his son Henry, 4th Earl and later 1st Duke of Lancaster under a Charter of 24th March 1355/6. Later known as The Newarke, the institution had a Dean and twelve Canons (later termed Prebends), thirteen Vicars-Choral, four Lay Clerks and six (boy) choristers. By the late 15th century it had achieved a high status and musical reputation and had acquired the privilege, apparently shared only with the Chapels Royal, of having the right to recruit outstanding musicians and singers from other institutions without their consent, in other words to poach the very best musicians of the country. Perhaps the already highly regarded Aston was himself recruited by The Newarke using this privilege, but there seems to be no surviving documentary evidence of exactly how or when he came to be engaged by the Leicester Choral College.

The Charters required among many other things the use of the Salisbury (“Sarum”) Rite, a daily sung Mass in honour of Our Lady, and also the singing of a Matins, a High Mass and Vespers on more than two dozen high feasts, led by the Dean in Choir, so there would have been a heavy musical programme for the choir of around sixteen (including at least some of the Vicars) and its musical director. His initial salary was £10 a year (only £2 a year less than that of the Dean) and by 1540 this had increased to £12 a year. In addition Aston, also referred to in some documents as a singer and organist, was entitled to receive further significant payments for additional services such as funerals. In 1525 he had been recommended to Cardinal Wolsey as the founder director of music at his new Cardinal’s College, Oxford, (now Christ Church College and Cathedral) but Aston seems to have declined the offer and in any event Wolsey appointed John Taverner instead. Aston continued at The Newarke until shortly before the final dissolution of the Foundation at Easter 1548, and on retirement he received a £12 a year state pension in respect of his Newarke College office. By this time he must have been holding at least advisory positions at a number of other important Midlands choral institutions, since he also received further state pensions totalling £6 13s. 4d. in respect of loss of office at six other suppressed choral institutions: Sully and Pipewell in Northamptonshire, Coventry and Kenilworth in Warwickshire, and the Leicestershire abbeys of Launde and St Mary de Pratis (= Leicester Abbey).

In Leicester the College provided him with a rent-free house just outside the South Gate of the Borough and more or less directly opposite the main gate of The Newarke in Hangman’s Lane (now Oxford Street) in the Borough’s First (soon to be renamed Southgates) Ward. It seems likely that some time later he bought or leased the house at or before the dissolution of The Newarke, and what was presumably the same property seems to have remained his family’s home to at least his grandson’s time in the early 17th century. Before 1530 a Hugh Aston, undoubtedly the musician as there are no others of the same name recorded in 16th century Leicester, was already representing the Southgates Ward in which he lived on as a Borough Alderman, and by 1550 the Ward was even being referred to in the Leicester Borough Records as “the Ward of Mr Hugh Aston”. From 1532 he was a Justice of the Peace, Coroner for two years, Auditor of Accounts for a total of 16 years, Mayor for 1541-1542, one of the two Members of Parliament for the Borough for the 1555 Parliament, and remained an Alderman to his death. The exact date of this is not known, but he was buried on 17 November 1558 in the parish church for the Southgates Ward, St. Margaret's. On 15th November 2008 a 450th anniversary Commemorative Service was held in St. Margaret’s, featuring two of Aston’s surviving antiphons, the two known keyboard pieces and much of the Sarum Rite plainsong music for the Requiem Mass of the pre-Reformation Sarum liturgy, which had been restored by Queen Mary.

Most of the buildings of the medieval Hospital and College of the Newarke, including the Collegiate Church much admired by Leland during his visit in ca. 1535, were demolished soon after the Dissolution, and the campus of De Montfort University, Leicester, today covers almost the whole site. On 17th March 2010 Patrick McKenna, founder and Chief Executive of Ingenious Media, declared open the University's Hugh Aston Building - De Montfort's new £35 million pound Faculty of Business and Law, adjacent to the great Gateway to The Newarke and only 100 metres or so from the site of Aston’s Hangman’s Lane house. The event was also marked by performances by singers from the choir of the Holy Cross Dominican Priory, New Walk, Leicester, Directed by David Cowen,of sections from Aston's Te Deum Mass and Te Deum, two of Aston's keyboard compositions, and some of the 'Sarum Rite' medieval plainsong for 17th March - St. Patrick's Day.

Music

Four sacred vocal compositions by Aston survive complete:

• Missa Te Deum (five voices)
• Missa Videte manus meas (six voices)
• Gaude mater matris Christe (five voices)
• Te Deum laudamus (five voices)

Other compositions survive in fragments.

In addition, he wrote keyboard music, most of which shows an unusually progressive use of idiomatic keyboard: his Hornepype in particular is often cited as an example of early idiomatic keyboard writing.Some other famous early keyboard pieces have been attributed to him on stylistic grounds, including the often-recorded and anthologized My Lady Careys Dompe.

Hugh Aston's Hornpipe (harpsichord)

Recordings

Music for Compline, Stile Antico, Harmonia Mundi USA HMU 907419. Includes Aston's Gaude, virgo mater Christi and works by Byrd, Tallis, Sheppard and White.

Two Tudor Masses for the Cardinal, Christ Church Oxford Cathedral Choir, directed by Stephen Darlington. Metronome UK 1998, MET CD1030. Disc 2 is Hugh Aston's Missa Videte Manus Meas.

Three Marian Antiphons : Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, directed by Scott Metcalfe. Blue Heron 2010, B003KWVNXS.

References and further reading

• Aston, Hugh (d. 1558), Nick Sandon. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004
• John Bergsagel. "Aston, Hugh", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), i, 661-662.
• Hugh Aston (ca. 1485-1558): Composer and Mayor of Leicester, Patrick J Boylan. Leicestershire Historian no. 44, pp.26-30, 2008.
• Another mass by Hugh Aston? Nick Sandon. Early Music, vol. 9(2), pp. 184 - 191, 1981.
• Hugh Aston's Variations on a Ground. Oliver Neighbour. Early Music, vol. 10(2), pp. 215 - 216. 1982.
• The History of the Hospital and the New College of the Annunciation of St Mary in The Newarke, Leicester, A. Hamilton Thompson. Leicester: Leicestershire Archaeological Society, 1937.
• Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln Volume 3, 1517 - 1531, edited by A. Hamilton Thompson. Lincoln Record Society vol. 37. 1947.
• Records of the Borough of Leicester Volume III, 1509 - 1603, M. Bateson. Cambridge University Press. 1905.
• Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0-393-09530-4
• F. Ll. Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain. London, 1958.

External links

• Free scores by Hugh Aston in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Ave Maria ancilla trinitatis (excerpt) performed by Blue Heron Renaissance Choir
• For new performing editions by Nick Sandon of five of Aston's choral works see Antico Edition, UK http://www.anticoedition.co.uk/]