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Domestic Music Under the Stuarts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

J. A. Westrup
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Extract

“Qu. Elizabeth,” wrote Roger North, “was a lover of musick, and used the Harpsicord & organ herself, and it is not likely that musick was under any discouragement in her time. But reg° Jas. I it flourished very much … & suerly in that reigne musick was notably courted wch encouraged Mr. Morley to publish his operose tract of musick by way of dialogue.” This is not the language of a modern text-book.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Musical Association , Volume 68 , 1941 , pp. 19 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1941

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References

1 The Musicall Gramarian, pp. 4–5. ‘Operose’=laborious, elaborate.Google Scholar

2 Pepys, March 10, 1667.Google Scholar

3 A Plaine and Easie Introduction, p. 1.Google Scholar

4 Dedication to Second Set of Madrigals (1609).Google Scholar

5 Dedication to The First Set of English Madrigalls (1597).Google Scholar

6 The Compleat Gentleman, pp. 98–100. I quote from the second edition (1634).Google Scholar

7 Bulstrode Whitelocke, A Journal of the Swedish Ambassy in the Years 1653 and 1654 (1772), vol. ii, p. 156.Google Scholar

8 The Compleat Gentleman, p. 96.Google Scholar

9 Anthony Weldon, Court and Character of James I (1650).Google Scholar

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11 Dedication to Musica Transalpina.Google Scholar

12 The Long Parliament in 1645 ordered: “Every one that can read is to have a Psalm-Book, and all others, not disabled by age or otherwise, are to be exhorted to learn to read. But for the present, where many in the Congregation cannot read, it is convenient that the Minister or some fit person appointed by him and the Ruling Officers, do read the Psalm line by line, before the singing thereof” (Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660, vol. i, p. 607).Google Scholar

13 Cf. Pepys, Apr. 12, 1667: “I tried my girles Mercer and Barker singly one after another, … and I do clearly find that as to manner of singing the latter do much the better, the other thinking herself as I do myself above taking pains for a manner of singing, contenting ourselves with the judgment and goodness of eare.”Google Scholar

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20 Pepys, Sept 15, 1667. Wallington was one of the principal performers at the informal concerts held near St. Paul's Cathedral shortly after the Restoration. North, Memoirs of Musick, pp. 108–9: “One Ben Wallington got the reputation of a notable base voice, who also set up for a composer, and hath some songs in print, but of a very low excelence.” He was one of the “endeared Friends of the late Music-Society and Meeting in the Old-Jury, London” to whom Playford dedicated his collection Catch that Catch can, or the Musical Companion (1667).Google Scholar

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24 This, or its equivalent, occurs in Alison's An Howres Recreation (1606), Bateson's second set of madrigals (1618), all the volumes by Michael East, Gibbons's Madrigals and Motets (1612), Lichfield's madrigals (1613), Peerson's Private Musicke (1620) and Mottects (1630), Pilkington's second set of madrigals (1624), Vautor's madrigals (1619), Ward's madrigals (1613), Weelkes's two sets of madrigals (1600), Wilbye's second set of madrigals (1609). Forbes's collection of Songs and Fancies (Aberdeen, 1662) uses a similar phrase.Google Scholar

25 It is worth noting that several of Byrd's Psalms, Sonnets and Songs (1588) were originally composed as solos with instrumental accompaniment. The composer in his preface speaks of “divers songs, which being originally made for Instruments to expresse the harmonie, and one voyce to pronounce the dittie, are now framed in all parts for voyces to sing the same.” But he accepts as a matter of course the possibility that they may be performed with instruments. “In the expressing of these songs,” he says, “either by voyces or Instruments, if ther happen to be any jarre or dissonance, blame not the Printer.”Google Scholar

26 Cf. the dedication to Morley's Canzonets (1597), quoted above.Google Scholar

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62 Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers, vol. ii, p. 109. Cf. his impressions of the wind music in The Virgin Martyr, which was “so sweet that it ravished me, and indeed, in a word, did wrap up my soul so that it made me really sick” (Feb. 27, 1668).Google Scholar

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65 Preface to the full score of Purcell's Dioclesian. In the first edition of my Purcell (p. 69) I followed the conventional view that this preface was Purcell's own work. But a draft of it in Dryden's handwriting (Brit. Mus., Stowe 755, fo. 34–35v) suggests the poet's authorship. This is the more probable since Dryden wrote a prologue for Dioclesian, and on his own admission (in his preface to Amphitryon) it was this work which opened his eyes to Purcell's excellence as a composer. Note that Dioclesian was Purcell's first substantial work for the public stage.Google Scholar

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137 Pepys, Oct. 15, 1665.Google Scholar

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