Poetry And Music In Seventeenth-Century England

Diane Kelsey McColley

This study explores the relationship between the poetic language of Donne, Herbert, Milton and other British poets, and the choral music and part-songs of composers including Tallis, Byrd, Gibbons, Weelkes and Tomkins. The seventeenth century was the time in English literary history when music was most consciously linked to words, and when the mingling of Renaissance and ‘new’ philosophy opened new discovery routes for the interpretation of art. McColley offers close readings of poems and the musical settings of analogous texts, and discusses the philosophy, performance, and disputed political and ecclesiastical implications of polyphony. She also enters into the discourse about the nature of language, relating poets’ use of language and composers’ use of music to larger questions concerning the arts, politics and theology.

Bibliographic Details

10 music examples

Contents

• List of musical examples
• Acknowledgements
• Editions and abbreviations
• Note on musical editions
• Note on orthography
• Introduction
• 1. Natures voice: concent of words and music
• 2. The concinnity of the arts and the church music controversy
• 3. Tuning the instrument: Donnes temporal and extemporal song
• 4. The choir in Herberts temple
• 5. Sole, or responsive: voices in Miltons choirs
• 6. Empire of the ear: the praise of music
• Appendix I. Music, poems and iconography for the liturgical year
• Appendix II. Chronology
• Appendix III. Glossary of musical and liturgical terms
• Notes
• Discography
• Bibliography
• Index.

Language	English
ISBN	9780521593632 (0521593638)