Composing career

The treble line of “Parsley’s Clock” (BM Add. MSS 30480, British Library)

English composers of the late 15th century and early 16th century set a limited number of types of sacred music, each with a clear place in the liturgy.^[24] Until the Reformation of 1534, when Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church, English composers based their works on the Sarum rite, abolished in 1547.^[25] During the decades following the Reformation, the lives of English church musicians changed according to the policies of the reigning monarch. Henry allowed church music in England to continue to be written in a florid style, and use Latin texts, but during the reign of his son and successor, Edward VI, highly polyphonic music was no longer permitted, and the authorities destroyed church organs and music, and abolished choral foundations. These changes were never completely restored by Edward’s successor Mary during her brief reign; their half-sister Elizabeth, who succeeded Mary in 1558, confirmed or reinstated some of Edward’s work.^[26]

Parsley’s compositional career spanned the reigns of all four monarchs. He wrote church music for both the Latin and English rites.^[23] His Anglican church music for the Daily Office included a morning service, involving the Benedictus canticle and the Te Deum, and an evening service that involved the singing of two canticles, the Magnificat and the Nunc dimittis.^[27]

The musicologist Howard Brown noted that Parsley belonged to a group of outstanding composers from the middle period of the 16th century—William Mundy, Robert Parsons, John Sheppard, Christopher Tye, Thomas Tallis, and Robert White—who together produced a body of high quality music.^[28]

According to the scholar John Morehen, Parsley was less at ease when working with English texts, a trait Morehen finds Parsley had in common with similar Reformation composers.^[23] His Latin music is fluent and attractive, with extended phrases that become increasingly melismatic as they progress. The parts in Latin are characteristically independent in a way that was typical of sacred polyphony in England before the Reformation.^[29] The expressive psalm Conserva me, domine has an elegant polyphonic style.^[5] The technique shown in his English church music is less assured than his compositions for the Latin rite.^[29] His five-part Lamentations, which differs from settings by his contemporaries Tallis and White in that a treble line (notable for the difficulty in singing the highest notes of the part) is maintained throughout, was probably intended for domestic devotional use.^[7] During the 1920s, the musicologist and composer W. H. Grattan Flood described Parsley’s Lamentations as being “of particular interest”.^[7] One piece, a well-crafted three-part canonic setting of the Salvator Mundi, was printed by Morley in 1597. Morley described Parsley’s arrangement of this Gregorian hymn as a model of its kind,^[1] and alluded to him as “the most learned musician”.^[7]

Some of Parsley’s instrumental music, nearly all for viols, survives, including six consort pieces;^[30] both his Latin and English vocal styles can be found in his instrumental style.^[29] The composition known as “Parsley’s Clock” is similar to both Charles Butler‘s “Dial Song”, and “What strikes the clocke?” by the English choirmaster and composer Edward Gibbons and a second anonymous piece, which were built around a line that counts the hours.^[31]

Peter Phillips, writing in The Musical Times, in commending Conserva me, domine, noted that “Parsley can be remembered as one of those men who just once conjured up a masterpiece, as it seems to us now, from nowhere.”^[32]