O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note

Amanda Eubanks Winkler

Description

A multidisciplinary study of the uses of music in 17th-century English theater

In the 17th century, harmonious sounds were thought to represent the well-ordered body of the obedient subject, and, by extension, the well-ordered state; conversely, discordant, unpleasant music represented both those who caused disorder (murderers, drunkards, witches, traitors) and those who suffered from bodily disorders (melancholics, madmen, and madwomen). While these theoretical correspondences seem straightforward, in theatrical practice the musical portrayals of disorderly characters were multivalent and often ambiguous.

O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note focuses on the various ways that theatrical music represented disorderly subjects—those who presented either a direct or metaphorical threat to the health of the English kingdom in 17th-century England. Using theater music to examine narratives of social history, Winkler demonstrates how music reinscribed and often resisted conservative, political, religious, gender, and social ideologies.

Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on Transcriptions
Library Sigla

1. Music and the Macrocosm: Disorder and History
2. "Stay, You Imperfect Speakers, Tell Me More"
3. "Remember Me, But Ah, Forget My Fate"
4. "O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note"
5. Disorder in the Eighteenth Century
Epilogue

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Europe
• Music
• History
• General
• Musicology
• Musical theatre
• History of classical music traditions
• General officer
• Criticism
• Multiple signal classification
• Theatre
• Popular music
• Theater
• Musicals

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253027948
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note
O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note
Music for Witches, the Melancholic, andthe Mad on the Seventeenth-CenturyEnglish Stage
___________________________
Amanda Eubanks Winkler
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA
http://iupress.indiana.edu
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© 2006 by Amanda Eubanks Winkler All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in anyform or by any means, electronic or mechanical, includingphotocopying and recording, or by any information storageand retrieval system, without permission in writing from thepublisher. The Association of American University Presses’Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimumrequirements of American National Standard for InformationSciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,ANSI Z39.48-1984.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Winkler, Amanda Eubanks. O let us howle some heavy note : music for witches, the melancholic, and themad on the seventeenth-century English stage / Amanda Eubanks Winkler. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-253-34805-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Dramatic music—England—17th century—History and criticism. 2. Operas—England—Characters. 3. Theater—England—History—17th century. 4. Purcell, Henry, 1659–1695. Dido and Aeneas. I. Title. ML1731.2.W56 2006 782.10942’09032—dc22
2006008072
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For my family
Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on Transcriptions
Library Sigla
1 Music and the Macrocosm: Disorder and History
2 “Stay, You Imperfect Speakers, Tell Me More”
3 “Remember Me, But Ah, Forget My Fate”
4 “O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note”
5 Disorder in the Eighteenth Century
EPILOGUE
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
This book benefited tremendously from astute and probing commentary by Louise Stein, Naomi André, Richard Crawford, Valerie Traub, and Steven Whiting. At a pivotal moment in developing the manuscript, I was honored to receive a long-term fellowship, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, to conduct research for this book at the Folger Shakespeare Library. During my year at the Folger I benefited from having access to the library’s rich resources (the reader will note the various illustrations I have gleaned from the Folger’s ample collections). Thanks are due to Werner Gundersheimer, the former head of the Folger, the helpful library staff, and particularly Sarah Weiner, assistant to Werner, and an excellent early-music oboist who became a good friend during my tenure at the library. While at the Folger, I was pleased to work side by side with a wonderful and distinguished group of scholars. In particular, I thank Anna Battigelli, Vincent Carey, Marika Keblusek, Stephen May, Gail Kern Paster, and Linda Woodbridge for their interest in my work and their helpful suggestions. In addition, I must also warmly thank the staffs of the following research institutions for their assistance and, in some cases, permission to publish materials from their collections: the British Library; the Bodleian and Christ Church Libraries, Oxford; the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; and the Huntington Library. I must also thank Novello and Company for permission to reproduce excerpts from the Purcell Society edition of Dido and Aeneas .
My institutional home as I completed this project has been the Department of Fine Arts at Syracuse University. I wish to thank my department chair Wayne Franits, Dean Cathryn Newton, and Frank Macomber, trustee of the Fleming Fund, for their financial support; Stephen Meyer, who read and commented upon this manuscript in its early stages; and Laurinda Dixon for her helpful suggestions. All of my colleagues in the Department of Fine Arts have been supportive of this endeavor and I appreciate their friendship. Outside the Syracuse community, I must give special thanks to my dear friend Rose Pruiksma for her careful reading of my manuscript and to Linda Austern, Michael Burden, Kathryn Lowerre, Anthony Rooley, and Andrew Walkling—I have learned a tremendous amount from all of you.
The suggestions of Steven Plank and the anonymous reader who commented on the project for Indiana University Press strengthened this book immeasurably. Finally, a word of gratitude to the wonderful people at IU Press: editor Suzanne Ryan and assistant editor Donna Wilson, who shepherded this project to timely completion, and my first editor, Gayle Sherwood, who supported this project from a very early stage.
On a personal note, I am extremely fortunate to have a wonderful, understanding husband, Jason Winkler, and daughter, Emma, who, during the first year of her life, had to cope with her mother completing a book manuscript. I am also blessed with a mother, father, and sister who offered to provide childcare during this crucial time and in-laws, the Winklers, who have been a constant source of steadfast love and support. For these reasons, I dedicate this book to my family
Note on Transcriptions
When transcribing quotations from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English texts, I have retained original spellings, capitalization, and punctuation. I have, however, changed the y used as a thorn to th , and i , j , u , and v have been modernized as necessary for ease of reading. Readers should be aware that the orthography of quotations from modern editions of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts has sometimes been updated.
In the musical examples I have also retained original spellings, note values, time signatures, and figured basses unless otherwise stated in the text. Punctuation has sometimes been lightly adjusted for clarity. Clefs have been modernized where indicated. All added barlines are notated with dotted lines, and other editorial additions are indicated with brackets. For ease of reading, I have removed slurs indicating melismas and have replaced them with protraction lines.
Library Sigla
GREAT BRITAIN (GB) Cfm. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum Lbl. London, British Library Ob. Oxford, Bodleian Library Och. Oxford, Christ Church Library
UNITED STATES (US) NYp. New York, Public Library at Lincoln Center, Music Division
O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note
            1            
Music and the Macrocosm:Disorder and History
For Musicke is none other than a perfect harmonie, whose divinitieis seene in the perfectnesse of his proportions, as, his unisonsheweth the unitie, from whence all other, (concords, discords,consonancies, or others whatsoever) springeth, next hisunitie, his third: (which is the perfectest concord that is in allMusicke) representeth the perfect, & most holie Trinitie; his fift,(the most perfect consonance in all Musicke, for that it is theverie essence of all concords) representeth the perfection of thatmost perfect number of five, which made the perfect atonement,betweene God, and man. 1
Although Thomas Robinson, in his didactic The Schoole of Musicke (1603), finds analogies between concords (the unison, third, andfifth) and the deity, he also recognizes that music is not all aboutorder and consonant harmonies. From the “unitie” springs all music,including the less aurally pleasant intervals. What of this discord?How can we understand its meaning within seventeenth-centuryEnglish culture? In 1605 playwright Samuel Rowley,
reflecting the thinking of many of his contemporaries, compareddiscordant music to society:
Yet mong’st these many stringes, be one untun’d
Or jarreth low, or hyer than his course,
Not keeping steddie meane among’st the rest,
Corrupts them all, so doth bad men the best. 2
For Rowley, musical dissonance was analogous to “bad men”—andin both cases these disorderly elements were dangerous, as theycorrupted.
Little systematic analysis, in either musicology or literary studies,focuses specifically on the fascinating ways those in the seventeenthcentury understood music and disorder: thus, this volumeconsiders the theatrical music for those who disrupted the fabricof the kingdom, those who were neither harmonious nor obedient,those who did not keep a “steddie meane.” The seventeenth centuryproves to be fertile ground for a study of disorder, as chaosreigned supreme throughout Europe. Even a brief summary oflarge-scale political events in England provides a clear sense of theupheavals that characterized the era: the end of Elizabeth’s reignand the anxieties about the Virgin Queen’s successor, whispersabout the immoral activities at James I’s court (r. 1603–25), CharlesI’s disastrous rule (which began in 1625 and ended with his executionat the hands of his subjects in 1649), the closing of thepublic theaters by Parliament in 1641, Civil War (1642–49), thepuritanical Commonwealth and the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwelland his son Richard (1649–60), the restoration of the monarchywith Charles II (r. 1660–85), the reopening of the publictheaters in 1660, the problematic kingship of Charles’s Catholicbrother, James II (r. 1685–88), the Glorious Revolution (1688–89),and the concomitant accession of William and Mary to the throne(r. 1689–1702). Furthermore, as cultural theorist José Maravallclaims,
individuals acquired relative consciousness of the phases of crisisthat they were undergoing. They also showed a difference intheir attitude … toward the events they were witnessing: an attitudenot limited to passivity, but postulating an intervention. 3
Given this proactive approach, it is not surprising that culturalproducers during this era were preoccupied with the question ofdisorder and how it might be mediated and contained.
To enact my own order upon the potentially limitless