Sturgeon, N. [?Nicholas]

(d between 31 May and 8 June 1454). English composer. The unusual name allows some (if not complete) confidence that a single person is involved in this exceptionally well-documented career. Details are given in A.B. Emden: A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500 (Oxford, 1957). Numerous references appear in the Close, Patent and Norman rolls of the period. At various times he held canonries at Exeter, Wells, St Stephen’s, Westminster, Hastings and Kirkby Castles, Windsor (from 1440) and St Paul’s Cathedral (from 1440, precentor from 1442). In 1442 the Privy Council commissioned him to select six English singers for the imperial chapel of Friedrich III. Sturgeon was a member of the Royal Household Chapel (continuously between 1413 to 1452, including the expedition to Harfleur in 1415 and a designation as sub-dean in 1428). The earlier part of this period was contemporaneous with the royal chaplaincies of Damett and Burell, though neither his canonries at Windsor nor those at St Paul’s coincide with the dates of Damett’s tenure of prebends at these institutions. Detailed payments to Sturgeon are recorded in the Windsor archives between 1441 and 1451, during which period he held office variously as treasurer and steward. By a will of 4 May 1430, Thomas Salmon, formerly esquire to the Earl of Arundel, named Nicholas Sturgeon, clericum, as executor and legatee. Salmon was to have a grand burial and a perpetual chantry in the Lady Chapel at Arundel College. This could mean that Sturgeon was associated with Arundel, later renowned for its music (D. Skinner: Musical Life in Late Medieval Arundel, Oxford, forthcoming). His name appears as a founder member of the Gild of Parish Clerks in 1449, whose Bede roll (GB-Lgc 4889/Pc) records him as a deceased member in 1455, varying his designation between Dominus and Magister. His will, written in English, is dated 31 May 1454, when he was alive, and was proved on 8 June of the same year, by which time he was presumably dead. It is printed in Furnivall: The Fifty Earliest English Wills (London, 1882), pp.131ff, and supplies several names of relatives, none of whom (where identifiable) advances our knowledge of Sturgeon himself. There is however a Richard Sturgeon whose will of 1456 shows him to have been living, as did Nicholas in 1440–02, in the precinct of St Bartholomew's Hospital (close to St Paul's but outside the walls). Although it refers extensively to other benefices and allegiances, there is no reference to music.

His seven surviving compositions are known exclusively from the second layer of the Old Hall Manuscript, and may possibly be autograph. No personal features of style emerge sufficiently strongly to permit the ascription of further, anonymous, works to him. No use of plainchant has been traced except for the tenor of his only motet, which continues the Sanctus chant used by Damett for his motet. This compositional relationship can only be deliberate, and it has been suggested that both motets marked the triumphal return to London of Henry V after the Agincourt victory. Bukofzer (Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music, New York, 1950, pp.67–70) has proposed that both motets can be seen as elaborately troped settings of the Sanctus, a view supported by their position in the manuscript, the opening syllable of both of Sturgeon’s texts and one of Damett’s, as well as the use of a Sanctus plainchant melody. Salve mater is a felicitous and very English work that wears the ingenious sophistries of its isorhythm unobtrusively.

All of Sturgeon’s compositions make considerable use of coloration, often with slight syncopation. All except a Gloria (no.15) and a Credo (no.69) have at least one change of mensuration. The pieces written in score (Gloria, no.9; Credo, no.64; Sanctus, no.114) are not sharply distinct in style from those in separate parts, though the latter tend to have relatively more movement in the topmost part. The Sanctus and two of the Glorias (nos.40 and 64) have extensive duet writing, and in nos.40 and 114 the contratenor crosses above the discantus as well as below the tenor. The melodic style is smooth and shapely; harmonic and rhythmic roughnesses are minimal.

Old Hall Manuscript

WORKS

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

MARGARET BENT