by

Katherine Howard- “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”

By Brooke C. Little

The sixteenth-century portrait Mary Magdalene Playing A Lute shows a finely dressed Renaissance woman playing the lute and reading the musical notation portrayed with her in the painting. The song, in French, is Jouissance Vous Donneray and was composed by Claudin de Sermisy (1490-1562). The basse danse, Jouissance Vous Donneray, was a popular dance at many of the Burgundian courts of northern Europe, and in England as well. The painting also alludes to the dichotomous nature of female musical involvement in the Renaissance. On the one hand, the image declares the woman’s intriguing beauty, but on the other hand, as the title suggests, the woman’s alluring nature is compared to that of Mary Magdalene, a biblical harlot.

For Katherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII, musical education would prove, much like this painting, a scandalous dichotomy from which she would inevitably be unable to separate. Katherine’s musical involvement brought her the prestige needed in her rise to power, but it also associated her with whoredom, especially in light of accusations that she had alleged sexual relationships with her music tutor, Henry Mannox.

In addition to religion, etiquette, household management, embroidery, and training in social graces, Katherine received extensive musical training through private instrumental instruction. There are several reasons why Katherine would have received a musical education. First, and foremost, for the Howard family especially, Katherine’s music education prepared her to serve in the household of her cousin, Queen Anne Boleyn. Conor Byrne points out the lack of evidence that any of the other girls received music lessons, suggesting that the Duchess may have singled Katherine out to receive such education. Perhaps she was chosen because of her character and looks, which were meant to please the queen. Katherine may have been selected for her beauty, grace, or pleasing manners, valuable assets enhanced by musical education. The duchess needed to ensure that, in addition to pleasing countenance and behavior, Katherine would have the musical skills necessary to entertain the famously musical queen. Giving Katherine musical skill was also possibly a ploy to heighten Katherine’s sexual allure, which in turn may have enhanced her prospects of finding an advantageous marriage. Her music lessons would have represented a considerable financial investment on the Duchess’s part, as she would have supplied not only the instruments necessary for Katherine’s instruction, but also music books.

Like the basse danse portrayed in Mary Magdalene Playing the Lute, the allemande was a fashionable popular dance at Renaissance courts throughout continental Europe, including England. In fact, one such allemande called “Allemande Prince,” composed anonymously, is featured on the early music group Music Reservata’s 1968 album Music to Entertain Henry VIII and was a well-known dance at Henry’s court. Therefore, Katherine herself may have learned such a dance in private music instruction so that she might have been in a better position to gain notoriety at court. Featured below is the same “Allemande Prince” that was transformed into a pedagogical virginal exercise for young female students.

Typically, when women of this period married, their musical roles shifted from performer to appreciator, and for queens especially, to musical patroness. In the case of Katherine Howard, there seems to be little evidence of this transition. Although Katherine was equipped in dress, looks, behavior, and the music-making of Tudor court life, because of her youth and very short experience in Anne of Cleves’s household, she had virtually no practical experience or skills necessary for the duties of queen. While there are accounts of Katherine advancing family members by giving them court positions and patronizing a new chaplain, there are no accounts of Katherine patronizing musicians. Failing to make the behavioral transition from single woman to wife was true of both her musical and personal life, and would lead eventually to her downfall. Lacey Baldwin Smith points out that, “[u]nfortunately, Catherine did not see fit to spend her days in the sober administration of her house and in duties becoming her wifely station. Instead, she was ‘the most giddy’ of the King’s wives and spent her time dancing, rejoicing, and enjoying the riches of the moment”. While many of the instances of Katherine’s love of dance occurred in the privacy of her own apartments where she “did nothing but dance and rejoice,” she also danced in the public sphere of the greater court—an inappropriate space for a queen to so exhibit herself. As a married woman of the nobility, Katherine was expected to retire from public display so that she could focus her efforts on the private sphere of domestic, family life.

Recording of Allemande Prynce performed by Musica Reservata

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk8kiaNa7Ks

NOTES

Master of the Female Half Lengths, Mary Magdalene Playing a Lute, c. 16th Century, oil on panel, Private Collection. Found in H. Colin Slim, Painting Music in the Sixteenth Century: Essays in Iconography (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 126.

John Ward ed. Almande prynce, from British Library MS 29485, no. 14 and VIII. Allemaigne from Het derde muskyck boexken (Antwerp, 1551). Found in The Dublin Virginal Book, rev. ed. (New York: Schott, 1983).

Purcell Consort & Grayston Burgess & Musica Reservata & Michael Morrow. 1968. “Music to Entertain Henry VIII,” Decca Music Group B0018NQ1E2. CD.

Retha Warnicke, Wicked Woman of Tudor England: Queens, Aristocrats, and Commoners (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 50.

Theodore Dumitrescu, The Early Tudor Court and International Music Relations (New York: Ashgate Publishing, 2007), 23

Lacey Baldwin’s Smith’s Catherine Howard: A Tudor Tragedy (London: Pantheon Publisher, 1967).

Conor Byrne’s Katherine Howard: A New History (Great Britain: Made Global Publishing, 2012).

Josephine Wilkinson’s Katherine Howard: The Tragic Story of Henry VIII’s Fifth Wife (Great Britain: John Murray Publishers, 2016).

Gareth Russell’s Young and Damned and Fair: The Life and Tragedy of Catherine Howard at the Court of Henry VIII (Oxford: Harper Collins, 2017).

