Damett [?Thomas]

(b ?1389–90; d between 15 July 1436 and 14 April 1437). English composer. His name is always spelt thus in both musical sources, though archival records show variations. He was evidently the illegitimate son of a gentleman (according to Papal dispensations allowing him nonetheless to take orders and hold benefices); a 15th-century coat-of-arms for ‘domett’ survives. He seems to have taken his father’s name, since his niece (? and therefore his brother) was named Damett. He was a commoner at Winchester College (possibly overlapping with Sturgeon) from some time after 1402 until 1406–7, when he cannot have been older than 18. There is no record of the university career which probably ensued, though he was described as ‘Dominus’ in 1421. In 1413 he was presented to the rectory of Stockton, Wiltshire; if we can presume him to have been 23 by this date, we can estimate his date of birth fairly accurately as 1389 or 1390. Also in 1413 his name appears in the accounts of the royal household, and thereafter in 1415 (at Harfleur), 1421 and 1430–31. Since successors to his prebends in St Paul’s (held from 1418, residency canon from Easter 1428 until his death) and St George’s Chapel, Windsor (held from 1431), were appointed on or by 5 August 1436, he may have died by that date, though he attended a chapter meeting at St Paul's on 8 July.

His will survives and is printed in translation in J. Harvey: Gothic England (London, 1947, 2/1948), pp.181ff. Damett’s mother was still alive when he wrote his will on 15 July 1436 (proved on 14 April 1437). Music is not mentioned, but there are bequests of books, including a missal, and one other item is ‘a silver cup chased and covered with writing and “Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini”’. This invites the observation that his only apparent use of plainchant is in the tenor of his one isorhythmic motet, which uses ‘Benedictus qui ve-’ of the Sarum Sanctus chant 3 transposed down a tone (continued untransposed by Sturgeon as the tenor of his motet). Reasons have been given for associating this motet with the London celebrations which followed the Agincourt victory. The regular text of the sequence Salvatoris mater pia includes some substituted lines uniquely appropriate to Henry V. The texts of both Damett’s other non-Ordinary compositions, both in score, as are two Gloria settings, show slight deviations from the standard forms: Salve porta is the second stanza of the sequence Salve virgo sacra parens, but is modified at the end, and the psalm antiphon Beata Dei genitrix adds an alleluia which renders it appropriate to the Easter season.

Nine works survive, all in the second layer of the Old Hall Manuscript, and possibly autograph. The two fragmentary concordances in GB-Ob University College 192 are from a royal choirbook similar to and slightly later than Old Hall (see Bent, 1984), and where they were part of the main body of the manuscript (for an illustration see Sources, MS, fig.12a). The paired Gloria and Credo are unified by the use of the same Square in the tenor of each (the only Old Hall compositions, apparently, to make free use of an existing square, found also in Ludford’s mass for feria iv, rather than being the source of a square melody), despite the discrepancy in ranges. Andrew Hughes has demonstrated their close structural and motivic unity (RBM, xix, 1965, pp.15–27, esp. 22–3); both have extensive duets. Similar melodic and harmonic parallels are found in Old Hall nos.37 and 72, though the clinching evidence of an identified tenor is not available in this case to overcome the same disparity of ranges (the Credo of each ‘pair’ being a 5th higher than its Gloria). Damett had mastered the techniques of proportional writing (specifying subsesquitertia even for part of a descant composition in score), and he used several specialized signatures and colorations. The contratenor of the Credo (no.72) is to be sung in augmentation, a feature common in the works of Power. Damett showed a fondness for notation in low tessitura with partial signatures of up to two flats. (The Gloria, OH no.13, is illustrated in Sources, MS, fig.38).

Old Hall Manuscript

WORKS

Edition: The Old Hall Manuscript, ed. A. Hughes and M. Bent, CMM, xlvi (1969–73) [OH]

MARGARET BENT