I met the York Waits – aka William Marshall, Roger Richardson, Tim Bayley and John Peel -when they were leading the procession for the York Mystery Plays. They had with them an impressive selection of instruments, including woodwind, brass, drums, and bagpipes. Despite having no modern amplifiers, they made a powerful sound, performing to a considerable crowd.
All four of Waits confessed to an enthusiasm for Tudor music, for it trademark mingling harmonies and melodies.
They wore carefully-researched and reconstructed uniforms of red wool, with ‘Breughel boots’ – Mediaeval leather shoes.
Today’s mega bands would envy the longevity of the Waits as a band. Player John Peel says, “They played for the best part of 500 years.”
Today, the band plays mainly 16th century music, which they have researched comprehensively. One of their main instruments is the shawm, a reeded wooden wind instrument reminiscent of the oboe.
The Mystery Plays are a series of plays illustrating stories from the Bible. They are ‘Mystery’ plays because they are performed by members of York’s Guilds – initiates into the ‘mysteries’ of their particular trade. Each Guild acted out a story, using a wagon as a stage. The wagons were pulled around the city, and the plays performed over and again at multiple stops.
The Mystery Plays were performed in Mediaeval times every summer on Corpus Christi day, but were, like many popular customs, suppressed by the Reformation.
They were revived for the Festival of Britain in 1951, and are now staged every four years. They are a major spectacle, and involve Guilds that have survived for centuries.
Read the full article, in print only, in Dalesman Magazine, December 2010, www.dalesman.co.uk
The York Waits, York’s Tudor band