5 - Theatrical culture 2

Summary

The political turmoil that drove English theatre underground between 1641 and 1660 had a similarly devastating effect on English music. Puritan reformers disbanded cathedral choirs; Parliamentary soldiers smashed priceless organs; foreign court musicians, fearful of reprisals against Roman Catholics, returned to the Continent. But music was not utterly silenced. Oliver Cromwell's court, mindful of the need for pomp, maintained a reduced version of the royal band; at the wedding of Frances Cromwell on 11 November 1657, forty-eight violins accompanied “mixt dancing (a thing heretofore accounted profane) till 5 of the clock.” There was even one occasion involving musical theatre: the Protector presented Cupid and Death, a masque by James Shirley, as an entertainment for the Portuguese ambassador in 1653.2 Matthew Locke, who may have written the music for that performance and certainly wrote the music for a second performance in Leicester Fields in 1659, lost his position as a boy chorister at Exeter Cathedral in 1641, but managed to continue his musical development during the Interregnum, traveling abroad and seizing what limited opportunities were available in England; he became one of the most important theatre composers of the Restoration period.