Music and Society in Early Modern England
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Reprint, 5/2/2013
EAN 9781107610248, ISBN10: 1107610249
Paperback, 624 pages, 24.4 x 17 x 3.2 cm
Language: English
Music and Society in Early Modern England is the first comprehensive survey of English popular music during the early modern period to be published in over one hundred and fifty years. Christopher Marsh offers a fascinating and broad-ranging account of musicians, the power of music, broadside ballads, dancing, psalm-singing and bell-ringing. Drawing on sources ranging from ballads, plays, musical manuscripts and diaries to wills, inventories, speeches and court records, he investigates the part played by music in the negotiation of social relations, revealing its capacity both to unify and to divide. The book is lavishly illustrated and is accompanied by a website featuring forty-eight specially commissioned recordings by the critically acclaimed Dufay Collective. These include the first ever attempts to reconstruct the distinctively early-modern sounds of 'rough music' and unaccompanied congregational psalm-singing.
Introduction
1. The power of music
2. Occupational musicians
denigration and defence
3. Occupational musicians
employment prospects
4. Recreational musicians
5. Ballads and their audience
6. Balladry and the meanings of melody
7. 'The skipping art'
dance and society
8. Parish church music
the rise of the 'singing psalms'
9. Parish church music
bells and their ringers
Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliography.
Review of the hardback: 'A real ear-opener of a book. Chris Marsh's wonderfully engaging panorama of the musical culture of early modern England reconnects us to a vital lost dimension of lived experience. A superb achievement.' Peter Marshall, University of Warwick