‘To Glorify Your Choir’:The Context of Jenkins’s Sacred Vocal Music

abstract The latter part of the twentieth century has witnessed a distinct pattern of research and publication of scholarly and practical editions of mid-seventeenth-century instrumental music, yet a parallel interest in contemporary vocal music has been less visible. Consequently it is not surprising that the vocal music of John Jenkins, highly regarded as an instrumental composer, should languish in obscurity. The primary source for Jenkins’s surviving vocal works is Mus. 736-8 at Christ Church, Oxford. Apart from an article by Vincent Duckles focusing on Jenkins’s settings of poetry by George Herbert, this manuscript set of three partbooks containing fifty-five threepart vocal works (seventeen of them by Jenkins) has received little attention.1 Undoubtedly one reason for its neglect is its three-part scoring: vocal ensembles have tended to seek out music in four or more parts. This is unfortunate, because the three-part repertoire in England during this and the earlier Elizabethan and Jacobean periods deserves frequent performance. For important examples, one need only look to settings of the seven Penitential Psalms by Byrd and Tomkins, which may have served as inspirational models for Jenkins.