Essays on the Origins of Western Music
by
David Whitwell
Essay Nr. 195: Music in English Prose
The first half of the 17th century in England, with its civil wars and the aggressive influence of the Puritans, offered a poor climate for fine fiction. This is not to say great numbers of works were not published, but prose by fine writers was not abundant. Although the writers we quote here make philosophical comments, they are not by real philosophers. They are rather reflections on contemporary Jacobean life, made by doctors, preachers, playwrights and writers of prose.
Jacobean Prose
Sir Thomas Browne, in his “Religio Medici,” reminds us of some of the ancient philosophers when he offers the personal perspective that all music has something of the divine in it.
For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain “the music of spheres” for those well-ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony, which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all church music. For myself, not only from my obedience but my particular genius I do embrace it: for even that vulgar and tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first composer. There is something in it of divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world, and creatures of God, -- such a melody to the ear, as the whole world, well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of God. I will not say, with Plato, the soul is an harmony, but harmonic, and has its nearest sympathy with music....[1]
Izaak Walton reminds his readers that one’s experience as a listener has a very direct relationship with the kind of music one enjoys.
What musick doth a pack of dogs then make to any man, whose heart and ears are so happy as to be set to the tune of such instruments?[2]
In this strict Puritan environment stories such as Noah and the Flood, and the subsequent necessity of rebuilding the human species, were taken quite seriously. Someone must have wondered, what happened to the accumulated knowledge of music before the flood? Walton offers an explanation for how the early knowledge of music survived the Flood. “Others say,” he reports, that Seth, one of the sons of Adam engraved the knowledge of mathematics and music, and the rest of previous knowledge, on pillars.[3]
Modern philologists believe that vocal music, as a form of communicating feeling, must have preceded even the most primitive of languages. It is from this perspective that our eye was drawn to Thomas Dekker’s essay on lowlife in London, in which he discusses a slang speech of the underworld, of which little is known today, called canting. In this passage we get little more than a kind of etymology of the word.
This word canting seems to be derived from the Latin verbe (canto) which signifies in English, to sing, or to make a sound with words, that is to say to speake. And very aptly may canting take his derivatio a cantando, from singing, because amongst these beggarly consorts that can play upon no better instruments, the language of canting is a kinde of musicke, and he that in such assemblies can cant best, is counted the best Musician.[4]
The familiarity of the general English society with music was such that one finds in ordinary discussion an extraordinary range of musical metaphors. Consider, for example, the broad variety of such metaphors by a single writer, Thomas Dekker:
To represent the well-together person,
...what monsters they please to set [on] all the world and all the people in it out of tune, and the worse Musicke they make, the more sport it is for him.[5]
As a metaphor for the four winds,
East, West, North, and South, the foure Trumpetters of the Worlde, that never blow themselves out of breath....[6]
To describe a papal representative who tries to be all things to all people,
He’s like an Instrument of sundry strings,
Not one in tune, yet any note he sings.[7]
To describe “cooperation” between two people,
As strings of an instrument, though we render several sounds, yet let both our sounds cadence [close up] in sweet concordant Musicke.[8]
To represent the Spanish and French conspiring against the English.
To be short, such strange mad musick doe they play upon their Sacke-buttes....[9]
On the reader’s sympathy with his writing.
If the Notes please thee, my paines are well bestowed. If to thine ear they found untuneable, much are they not to be blamed, in regard they are the melodies [Aires] of a Sleeping Man.[10]
Other writers were equally creative in their use of music in figures of speech. Thomas Fuller, in warning the reader to beware of “boisterous and over-violent exercise,” writes,
Ringing oftentimes has made good musick on the bells, and puts mens bodies out of tune.[11]
Thomas Overbury uses music as a metaphor to characterize the duties of the lawyer, a profession associated with amateur music making in 17th century England.
He knows so much in Musique, that he affects only the most and cunningest discords; rarely a perfect concord, especially sung, except in fine.[12]
Finally, we don’t know what else it could be but a nice pun, when John Earle describes a Puritan mother who would not allow her daughters to study the virginals, “because of their affinity with organs....”[13]
On the Purpose of Music
Thomas Browne offers, as an example of the frequently mentioned capacity of music to soothe, a strange and modern interpretation of the myth of Orpheus.
There were a crew of mad women retired unto a mountain, from whence, being pacified by his music, they descended with boughs in their hands; which, unto the fabulosity of those times, proved a sufficient ground to celebrate unto all posterity the magic of Orpheus’s harp....[14]
Thomas Dekker also mentions this purpose of music in one passage where he writes of “Musicke charming thine ear....,”[15] but in another place he refers to the absence of music to soothe those in prison.
What musicke hath he to cheer up his Spirits in this sadness? none but this, he hears wretches (equally miserable) breaking their heart-strings every night with groans, every day with sighs, every hour with cares....[16]
Thomas Browne is perplexed by the strange nature of dreams and points to music as soothing means of preparing for trouble-free sleep.
Half our days we pass in the shadow of the earth; and the brother of death exacts a third part of our lives. A good part of our sleep is peered out with visions and fantastical objects, wherein we are confessedly deceived. The day supplies us with truths; the night with fictions and falsehoods, which uncomfortably divide the natural account of our beings. And, therefore, having passed the day in sober labors and rational enquiries of truth, we are fain to betake ourselves into such a state of being, wherein the soberest heads have acted all the monstrosities of melancholy, and which unto open eyes are no better than folly and madness.
Happy are they that go to bed with grand music, like Pythagoras, or have ways to compose the fantastical spirit, whose unruly wanderings take off inward sleep....[17]
Another traditional purpose of music is to attract the ladies, as we see in Thomas Overbury, in a character sketch of a Lover, where he suggests the lover’s education must include music. It is important to note, as well, his point here, that through music you reveal yourself, because music is a form of truth.
His fingers are his Orators, and he expresses much of himself upon some instrument.[18]
We find one interesting reference to music therapy, where Sir Thomas Browne, a physician as well a writer of prose, could find no reason to question the folk legends of the use of music to cure bite of the Tarantula.
Some doubt many have of the tarantula, or poisonous spider of Calabria, and that magical cure of the bit thereof by music. But since we observe that many attest it from experience; since the learned Kircherus has positively averred it, and set down the songs and tunes solemnly used for it; since some also affirm the tarantula itself will dance upon certain strokes, whereby they set their instruments against its poison, we shall not at all question it.[19]
Restoration Non-Fiction
Some of the most important discussions of music representative in Restoration non-fiction prose will be found in works on philosophy and the journals. Here we include a few comments on music from treatises and essays.
Jonathan Swift, in a fragment of a treatise on the spirit, makes some interesting comments. First he tries to explain why it is that a poet, like a composer, in creating a work that sings will find little use for the rules of grammar. The final comment on this subject is a classic observation!
The second subject he addresses is again canting. His attempt to describe the musical effect of canting only makes us wish for a 17th century recording!
It is to be understood, that in the language of the spirit, cant and droning supply the place of sense and reason, in the language of men Because, in spiritual harangues, the disposition of the words according to the art of grammar, has not the least use, but the skill and influence wholly lie in the choice and cadence of the syllables. Even as a discreet composer, who in setting a song, changes the words and order so often, that he is forced to make it nonsense, before he can make it music....
Now, the art of Canting consists in skillfully adapting the voice, to whatever words the spirit delivers, that each may strike the ears of the audience, with its most significant cadence. The force, or energy of this eloquence, is not to be found, as among ancient orators, in the disposition of words to a sentence...but agreeable to the modern refinements in music, is taken up wholly in dwelling, and dilating upon syllables and letters. Thus it is frequent for a single vowel to draw sighs from a multitude; and for a whole assembly of saints to sob to the music of one solitary liquid.[20]
In a more humorous vein, Sir Charles Sedley, in “An Essay on Entertainments,” discusses how to plan a supper. Don’t invite just old men, he advises, they talk only of the past; and don’t invite just young men, for they talk only of their “debauches.”
The conversation should not dwell upon state affairs, private business, or matters of interest, which men are apt to dispute with more heat, concern and animosity, than is consistent with the good humor and mirth principally intended at such meetings; in which we should rather talk of pleasant, cheerful and delightful subjects, such as Beauty, Painting, Musick, Poetry, and the Writers of the past and present Age; whereby we may at once improve and refresh our Wits....[21]
In the opening remarks of a proposal to create a music academy in London, Defoe speaks of the meaning of music to him, in particular its ability to soothe and its positive influence on manners. It seems odd to us that in 17th century England there were people still talking about music as a branch of mathematics.
I have been a lover of [music] from my infancy, and in my younger days was accounted no despicable performer on the viol and lute, then much in vogue. I esteem it the most innocent amusement in life; it generally relaxes, after too great a hurry of spirits, and composes the mind into a sedateness prone to everything that is generous and good; and when the more necessary parts of education are finished, it is a most genteel and commendable accomplishment; it saves a great deal of drinking and debauchery in our sex, and helps the ladies off with many an idle hour, which sometimes might probably be worse employed otherwise.
Our quality, gentry, and better sort of traders must have diversions; and if those that are commendable be denied, they will take to worse; now what can be more commendable than music, one of the seven liberal sciences, and no mean branch of mathematics?[22]
Matthew Prior, in writing of the purpose of music, reaches back to the ancient Greek belief regarding the influence of music on behavior.
If six bells, as John Keil tells me, can make more than a thousand millions of changes, what must be the result of the jangling of ten or twelve passions sustained by an infinite variety of objects in minds upon which every thing can operate. The dawning of light excites us into cheerfulness, the approach of night depresses us into melancholy; a different weight of air raises or depresses our spirits, a trumpet alarms us to an ardor and action of war, and a flute softens us again into thoughts of love and delight.[23]
Restoration Fiction
It is only at the end of the English Baroque that the full-length novel first appears. Earlier efforts tended to be prose-romances, by such writers as Sidney, Greene and Nashe. These later novels, reflecting as they do real life in English society, offering interesting insights regarding musical practice. Indeed, Samuel Richardson, in the preface to his novel, Clarissa Harlowe, states that an important purpose in his novel is that it is “addressed to the public as a history of life and manners.”[24] At the end of thie novel, Richardson again reminds the reader that the various letters and conversations he has created “are presumed to be characteristic.”[25]