Petrus Alamire

The Telegraph has reported that a gift of choral music to Henry VIII has just been uncovered in the vaults of the British Library. It has just received its first performance in 500 years.

The composition was a gift to Henry and Catherine of Aragon. The manuscript was a lavish affair produced by Petrus Alamire.

Alamire is an interesting fellow. Not only was he a skilled musician, many great works of Renaissance music owe their survival to his illuminated copies. However, he was also a man of intrigue and an active spy for Henry.

Alamire was not his given name. It wasn’t his spy name either. Alamire is the musical pitch “a” and the solfege syllables “la,” “mi,” and “re,” which is a distinctively unresolved tune if we put it in the key of A.

So far as his spying goes, Alamire used his — or should I say Henry used — Alamire’s reputation as the leading music scribe in Europe to gain access to Richard de la Pole. Pole was a pretender to Henry’s throne and therefore very interesting to Henry and his Chamberlain Cardinal Wolsey.

As it turns out, Alamire was a double spy and was working more for Pole than for Henry. Once this was discovered, Alamire did not return to England. I’m guessing he valued his head too much.

This discovery in the British Library makes me wonder how much music we’ve forgotten.