Noyses, Sounds, and Sweet Aires: Music in Early Modern England

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Noyses, Sounds, and Sweet Aires: Music in Early Modern England, part of the Exhibitions at the Folger opened June 2, 2006 and closed on September 9, 2006.

Church bells ring the time, street vendors cry out their wares, ballad singers push the latest scandal, and music spills from tavern doors: these are the sounds of London in the seventeenth century. Amidst this cacophony, even the silence of the night is broken by the bellman's ringing and accompanying call, "Past one of the clock, and a cold, frosty, windy morning."

"Noyses, sounds, and sweet aires" explores these soundscapes of early modern England, leading you through streets, into taverns and theaters, to court masques, cathedral services, and individual homes for private entertainment and personal devotion. It tells the story of the noises echoing through the city; the sounds of worlds in collision in and age of political and religious turmoil; and the sweet airs of amateurs and professionals.

The only traces of these worlds are manuscripts, books, images, and musical instruments—the material remails of musical culture. The sounds themselves have long since vanished.

Exhibition materials

Sounds of Bells: "The Perpetuitie of Ringing"

Bells marked the passage of time, day and night, in early modern England. They signaled the beginning of religious services, recorded moments of civic celebration or alarm, and tolled the death knell. They were so prevalent that they must have faded into the rest of the background noise of everyday life.

This view of London by Dutch engraver Claes Visscher was originally printed in 1616. Taken from the south bank of the Thames, where the Globe and other theaters are situated, it looks northward, showing many of the dozens of church steeples inside the city walls. Each had its own distinctive bell sound: Bow Church, St. Lawrence Pultney, St. Dustan in the East, and St. Paul's Cathedral, destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666.

Items included

  • Claes Jansz. Visscher. Londinum florentissima Britanniae urbs. ca. 1625. GA795 L6 V5 1625 Cage. LUNA Digital Image.

Street Music: "Songs for Man, or Woman, of All Sizes"

There was no shortage of noise on the streets of early modern England. Amidst the sounds of bells ringing from steeples a pedestrian would hear street vendors shouting "cries" to hawk their wares; workmen calling out what services they offered; and everywhere ballad singers singing about the latest scandals and news. Vendors' voices needed to be loud and forceful to compete with other sounds of city life: the clop of horses' hooves, the creaking of carts, and the ringing of bells.

It’s hard to imagine a picture more clearly evoking the sound of a street crier than this engraving of roast chestnut seller. He flings one arm back, throws his body forward, and bellows a cry. In the poem, he claims his cry is unmatched—his voice shaking Pluto in the underworld.

Chestnuts were just one of the items sold on the streets of London by vendors. Large engravings of hawkers in books such as The Cryes of the City of London give today's readers a glimpse of some of the other common and unusual wares peddled: pins, baskets, singing glasses (a long glass cylinder fitted with reeds and a mouthpiece used as a horn), wigs, artichokes, brooms, knives, and combs.

Books containing engraved portraits of street criers, such as The Cryes of the City of London, become popular in the late seventeenth century; they evolved from individual broadsides filled with tiny figures in rows to publications of large individual portraits in book form. The brainchild of printseller Pierce Tempest, The Cryes of the City of London first appeared in 1687. This bestseller was expanded and reprinted many times until 1821.

Items included

Tavern Sounds: "Fidlers, Who are Properly Call'd a Noise"

Wild and raucous, English taverns were places to gather, drink, and celebrate. Amidst the laughter and occasional brawls, visitors would have heard a group, or a noise, of fiddlers playing, ballad singers crooning, and revelers singing catches and rounds while partaking of tobacco, ale, and sack (white wine imported from Spain).

It is not surprising that music books compiled for amateur use included a number of these humorous and even salacious tunes.

This collection, with words only and no music, contains ballads, songs, and catches—typical pub fare. The engraving on the title page juxtaposes upper-class and lower-class taverns.

In the top scene, Apollo dispenses "nectar" to five drinking and smoking gentlemen at an inn. In the lower, a bagpiper provides music for dancing in a tavern signed with a "rose."

Among the ballads, songs, and catches in An antidote to melancholy, there are a number that praise the virtues of carousing: "The exaltation of a pot of good ale"; "A glee in praise of wine"; "Three several songs in praise of sack"; and "The ballad of the brewer" are just a few.

Items included

  • N.D. An antidote against melancholy: made up in pills. London: Printed by Mer. Melancholicus, 1661. D66A; displayed title page.

Music on Stage: "Would You Have a Love Song?"

Patrons making their way through London's streets, down to a ferry-landing on the Thames, across the water, up the bank, and through the doors of the Globe Theatre would have heard cart wheels rumbling, peddlers selling their wares, ferrymen yelling for passengers, and dogs yelping. Entering the theater, they encountered another world of sounds, a world that included music.

Music played many roles in theatrical performances: interpolated songs added layers of meaning to dramatic conversations; set pieces evoked the role of music in the real world; instrumental interludes helped set or reflect the mood.

While much of the music for the Elizabethan stage has been lost, its existence is made clear through song texts found in the plays, cues indicating performance, and references to familiar ballads and songs.

Are you interested in learning more about the music heard and referenced in Shakespeare's plays? Here are some selected readings on Shakespeare and theatrical music in early modern England:

Duffin, Ross. Shakespeare's Songbook. New York: Norton, 2004.
Folger Call Number: ML80.S5 D85 2004
Finney, Gretchen L. Musical Backgrounds for English Literature: 1580-1650. New Brunswick N.J.: Rutgers University Press, [1962].
Folger Call Number: ML3849 .F55
Lindley, David. Shakespeare and Music. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006.
Folger Call Number: ML80.S5 L56 2006
Seng, Peter J. The Vocal Songs in the Plays of Shakespeare, a Critical History. Cambridge, Mass., 1967.
Folger Call Number: ML80.S5 S35

Additional titles for further reading can be found in the bibliography of readings related to Noyses, Sounds, and Aires: Music in Early Modern England.

Theater during the Commonwealth

Drolls, comic scenes often excerpted from plays, were performed in ad hoc settings during the Commonwealth when theater was prohibited. Marsh published this collection after the Restoration.

The frontispiece offers a glimpse of a seventeenth-century theater: characters from several drolls populate the stage; curtains cover a place that could be used as a musicians' gallery. It is the first illustration to show an English stage lit by chandeliers and candles in front.

Items included

Music Education: "To Sing Your Part Sure"

Being able to read music, to sing a part securely, and to play an instrument were regarded as important goals for the upper classes. Amateurs learned these skills from manuals teaching the rudiments of music, or they studied with professional musicians employed as tutors.

Instruction often began with the gamut, the musical scale comprised of letters and solmization or solfa syllables (similar to our do re mi ) designating the degrees of the scale. Students were advised to "Learne Gam-ut up and down by heart."

John Dowland (1562–1626) was the greatest English composer of his time for the lute, writing solos, songs, and music for five viols and lute. Folger MS V.b.280 is called "The 'Dowland' lutebook" because it contains signatures and other examples of Dowland's handwriting and just might have been in his family until sold to Henry Clay Folger in 1926. The manuscript contains many easy pieces, still used by lute teachers today, as well as some of the finest music for very skilled players. Dowland, the last of three main copyists in the book, entered only three pieces; the final one is incomplete.

The Compleat Gentleman

In this popular conduct book, The Compleat Gentleman, Peacham includes a chapter on music education (it falls between chapters on poetry and on painting and drawing).

Offering very practical advice, Peacham admits, "I desire no more in you then to sing your part sure and at the first sight, withall, to play the same upon your Violl, or the exercise of the Lute."

His list of composers worthy of emulation is interesting: William Byrd is included along with Peacham's Italian music instructor Orazio Vecchi. Italian music was particularly popular at the turn of the seventeenth century.

Items included

  • John Dowland. Collection of songs and dances for the lute. Manuscript, ca. 1594-ca. 1600. V.b.280. LUNA Digital Image.
  • Henry Peacham. The compleat gentleman fashioning him absolute in the most necessary & commendable qualities concerning minde or bodie that may be required in a noble gentleman. London, 1622. STC 19502 Copy 1; displayed f. A2.

Music Printing

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Playford and New Markets

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Viols

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Music at Court

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Worship in Times of Religious Strife

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Psalms in Church and at Home

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Sounds of Mourning

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Supplemental Materials

Noyses, Sounds and Sweet Aires: Music in Early Modern England children's exhibition

Bibliography of readings related to Noyses, Sounds, and Aires: Music in Early Modern England