Did Anne Boleyn write this song while awaiting execution?

Circa 1535, King Henry VIII of England (1491 - 1547) and his second wife, Anne Boleyn (1507 - 1536). Photo / Getty Images

Forgotten for nearly 500 years, the sheet music owned by Henry VIII's second wife could shed new light on her life - and loves, says Ivan Hewett.

In 1536, Anne Boleyn, queen of England for only three years, is in the Tower of London awaiting execution on charges of adultery. She writes a letter to Henry VIII, protesting her innocence, and composes a doleful poem: "O Deathe rock me asleep / Bringe me to quiet rest / Let pass my weary guiltless ghost... For I must dye, there is no remedy." Someone then turns those words into a song, which has survived for five centuries.

There's no evidence the poem really is by Anne. But it's touching to think we have a song by a queen lamenting her own demise, and it might even be true. Anne was an educated woman, well able to compose a poem, and she was musically literate too. The proof of that is a leather-bound volume on the shelves of the Royal College of Music, known as Anne Boleyn's Songbook. It's a fascinating collection of 42 compositions, which is one of the most important sources of French Renaissance music anywhere. Remarkably, it's lain untouched for nearly 500 years. Now David Skinner, director of the choir Alamire, has picked out around 20 of the best pieces and recorded them.

Later this month, Alamire will perform the works and an album of their recording will be released soon afterwards. The book has an air of mystery, because there's no rubric inside to explain the choice of pieces, or even name them. Does it really have anything to do with Anne Boleyn? Why are some pieces only half written out? Why is the songbook of an English queen so full of music by French composers?

The most obvious clue to the book's ownership is an inscription in tiny writing which states "Mistres ABolleyne nowe thus." "Nowe thus" was the motto of the Boleyn family, and the word "mistress" is a sign that the book was put together before Anne became queen in 1533. This suggests that the Songbook is the musical equivalent of a commonplace book, which Anne started after she was sent to Europe in her early teens, to complete her education. After a year at the court of Margaret of Austria, who was a great patroness of composers, she spent many years at the French court. The book could well be a record of the music Anne encountered on her travels, and later in England.

The book's contents are in some ways just what you'd expect from a well-bred young woman of the time (she clearly had good taste as some of the works are among the masterpieces of Renaissance music). When she was queen, Anne employed a young commoner named Mark Smeaton as her personal lutenist. It didn't end well - Smeaton was later convicted of adultery with the queen, though the evidence against him was almost certainly trumped-up by Thomas Cromwell's agents.

But the other irresistible point about the book is what it might tell us about Anne herself. The overriding theme of the collection is love, though it's hard to know whether this shows Anne's amorous nature (which would fit with the accusations made that she was a man-eater), or simply the preoccupations of a woman who wanted to make a good match. There are songs praising the Virgin's love for her child, and secular songs hymning the joys of profane love. Some of the later pieces hint at Anne's long courtship with Henry VIII. A motet by the great Flemish composer Compere muses on the Immaculate Conception, and has the line "you will bring forth a son" - a meaningful sentiment, given Henry VIII's obsession with finding a wife who could give him a male heir. A secular song talks of the frustration of thwarted love, and has the line "Everything comes to he who waits," something Anne may often have had to repeat to the sexually frustrated king.

The new recording will take us close to the vocal sound Anne may have known. David Skinner is one of that breed of scholar-performers who knows how to decipher the mysteries of obsolete notation, and recreate the right vocal sound. The one liberty he's allowed himself is including the song based on Anne's poem. It isn't in the Songbook, and actually doesn't appear in any source until decades after Anne's death. But it makes a lovely mournful ending to the recording, which gives a bird's-eye view of a rich musical culture, as well as a glimpse into the mind of a queen.