Shakespeare's Musical World
Notes on the Program
A typical day in Shakespeare's England offered a variety of musical experiences, from before first light to well
after bedtime: the cries of street-sellers, tradespeople and boatmen; the sounds of the hunt; hymns and psalms
sung in worship; craftsmen singing in their shops; popular tunes at the barber's; serenades of courtly love sung
to the lute or viol; consorts of instruments playing for the dance, the theater or for amusement. In bringing
verisimilitude onto the stage, Shakespeare in his plays includes many musical references occurring in everyday
life, and sometimes introduces actual musicians and musical instruments.
Most cities and towns in Shakespeare's day employed municipal musicians, or 'waits', who specialized in wind
instruments like shawms, sackbuts, dulcians and recorders. They were often also charged with keeping watch
and order through the night, and Anthony Holborne's almain 'The Night Watch' may refer to this practice.
Shakespeare's Dogberry and his constables in Much Ado About Nothing give us a vivid example of pragmatic
night-watching: "Let us go sit here upon the church-bench till two, and then all to bed."
Even if one managed to sleep through the shawms of the waits, the cries of the street vendors would accompany
one's morning ablutions. Several musicians used the famous London street cries in rounds and catches, and also
in compositions of sophisticated polyphony. Orlando Gibbons (whose father was the leader of the Cambridge
waits) weaves into his cries an 'In nomine', a slow-moving cantus firmus melody popular in Tudor chamber
music.
Another conventional morning piece was the 'hunts-up', a rousing song or melody associated with early
morning excursions into the woods and fields. Queen Elizabeth was quite fond of hunting and hawking, and
was once reported to have killed "six does" with her cross bow. Hunting was quite an event, and would take
several hours, so the Queen and her courtiers would often have a picnic in the forest. Theseus, in A Midsummer
Night's Dream, recalls the excitement of the sounds of the hunt: "I never heard so musical a discord, such sweet
thunder." These two hunting songs are from Thomas Ravenscroft's music treatise A Briefe Discourse, published
in 1614. The Scottish Hunts Up was arranged by Tom Zajac from an early 17th century lute book.
The Anglican Morning Prayer service dates from the middle of the 16th century, and includes the Preces
(responses) and the singing of the ninety-fifth psalm, Venite exultemus, 'O come let us sing unto the Lord'.
Orlando Gibbons was organist at the Chapel Royal from at least 1615 until his death, and was said to have "the
best hand in England," and ". . . the organ was touched by the best finger of that age, Mr. Orlando Gibbons."
Dance was an important part of court life in the Renaissance, and a necessary skill for courtiers and ladies. In
his dancing manual of 1589, Thoinot Arbeau states that dancing can "contribute greatly to health, even to that of
young girls, who, leading sedentary lives, intent upon their knitting, embroidery and needlework, are subject to
a variety of ill-humors which have need to be dispelled by some temperate exercise." For her morning exercise,
Queen Elizabeth would dance as many as seven strenuous galliards, a workout she continued into her fifties. In
Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice references a Scots jig, an old stately 'measures', and the sinkapace galliard
(from the French cinq pas 'five steps') as metaphors for wooing, wedding, and married life. The 'volta' is a
sprightly kind of galliard, and a favorite of the queen's.
Robin Hood, Maid Marian and Little John were popular characters in May Day festivals in Shakespeare's time.
Thomas Weelkes' three-part song mentions one of Shakespeare's clowns, the actor Will Kempe, laboring "after
the tabor," a reference to his prowess at both morris dancing and playing the 'pipe and tabor'. Arbeau's dance
treatise features this combination of a pipe and tabor (drum) played by one musician, which is still used today to
accompany folk dance in Europe and Latin America. A Maypole dance featured in a court entertainment in
1613 was probably inserted into The Two Noble Kinsmen, which Shakespeare seems to have had a hand in
writing.
In the famous lines that open Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (If music be the food of love, play on!), Duke Orsino
is transported by the music's 'dying fall'. The most well-known 'dying fall' of the time was the opening motive
of John Dowland's pavan 'Lachrimae', its poignant four-note descending phrase becoming a symbol of
melancholy and lament throughout Europe. In As You Like It, two pages sing 'It was a lover and his lass',
probably in this setting by Thomas Morley, published in 1600. Morley's version is for solo voice and lute, but
the polyphonic texture of the lute accompaniment easily suggests a countermelody that a second boy could have
sung. Shakespeare and Morley were neighbors at the time that the play was produced and the song was
published, and it is tempting to imagine that the song was a collaboration between the two.
Christopher Marlowe's famous poem The Passionate Shepherd to his Love was published as a broadside ballad
in 1603, to be sung to Live with me, and be my Love. The tune survives in a setting for lyra viol (1610), and its
popularity is attested by Sir Hugh Evans singing a bit of Marlowe's song in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of
Windsor. Sir Walter Raleigh wrote The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd in the same meter as Marlowe's poem;
they are presented here as a dialogue.
Books of music had been printed in Italy for almost a hundred years before the practice was taken up in
England, but a market quickly developed for madrigals, lute songs, and instrumental collections to play and sing
at home. In his Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practical Musicke (1597), Thomas Morley states that the
ability to read music at sight was expected of a cultured person. Viol, lute, and harpsichord were taken up by
men and women, and Hamlet gives Guildenstern one of the first recorded lessons on the recorder: "Govern
these ventages with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent
music."
The Anglican Evening Prayer service usually includes the Magnificat, here set by Gibbons as a verse anthem.
Tallis' remarkable setting of 'Miserere nostri' features not only the two upper voices in canon (singing the same
melody two beats apart), but four of the five remaining voices are also in canon, singing the same material at
different speeds and in inversion. The English were noted for their enthusiasm in psalm-singing; in Henry IV,
Part Two, Falstaff complains: "For my voice, I have lost it with halloing and singing of anthems." Falstaff
features again in Merry Wives, when he is attacked for his adulterous inclinations by a gang of fairies, who
pinch him mercilessly. The same punishment is described in Ravenscroft's Fairies Daunce, and Holborne's
Fairie-round may have accompanied some such theatrical scene, likely played by the city waits.
Lorenzo's reflection on the Music of the Spheres in The Merchant of Venice matches well with Thomas
Tomkins' madrigal 'Music divine', whose lofty theme leads us into the world of the court masque. The best
musical talents were employed in creating entertainments, rich with mythological and classical characters,
dance, song, and fantastic sets and stage machinery, to pay homage to the monarch and the most powerful
courtiers. These masques, often celebrating a noble marriage, would include social dancing that would typically
last far into the night, at which time the waits might be heard sounding the hours as the revelers made their way
to their beds.
Grant Herreid
Program
RUDE AWAKENINGS
The Night Watch
Anthony Holborne (c. 1545-1602)
Pavans, Galliards, Almains and other short Aeirs (1599)
Speech from Much Ado About Nothing
The Cries of London (part 1)
Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)
British Library, Add. MSS 29372-7 (early 17th c)
THE HUNT
Speech from A Midsummer Nights Dream
The Scottish Hunts-up in memoriam Tom Zajac
A Hawks-up for a Hunts-up
A Hunts-up: The hunt is up
Anonymous
Jane Pickering Lute Book (c. 1615)
Thomas Ravenscroft (c. 1588-1635)
A Briefe Discourse (1614)
John Bennet (c. 1575-after 1614)
A Briefe Discourse
MORNING DEVOTIONS
Speech from Henry VIII
Second Preces
O come let us sing unto the Lord
MORNING EXERCISE
SPEECH from Much Ado
Jog on
The House Measure
La Volta
MIDDAY PASTIMES
Since Robin Hood, Maid Marian
The Maypole
Gibbons
Gibbons
Anonymous
The English Dancing Master (1651); arr. Grant Herreid
Anonymous
London, Royal College of Music, MS 11(1600); arr. Grant Herreid
Thomas Morley (1557-1602)
The First Booke of Consort Lessons (1600); arr. Grant Herreid
Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623)
Ayeres or Phantasticke Spirites (1608)
John Coperario (c. 1570-1626)
in William Brade, Newe Ausserlesene liebliche Branden (1621)
Speech from The Two Noble Kinsmen
Three Country Dances in One
Ravenscroft
Pammelia (1609)
LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON
Speech from Twelfth Night
Lachrymae Pavin
It was a lover
Come live with me and be my love
John Dowland
Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares (1604)
Morley
The First Booke of Ayres (1600); arr. Grant Herreid
Anonymous tune
Arr. Grant Herreid
EVENING DEVOTIONS
Speech from Henry IV, part 2
Miserere nostri, Domine
Magnificat
Thomas Tallis (c. 1505-1585)
Gibbons
WITCHING HOUR
Speech from The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Fayries Daunce
The Fairie-round
Ravenscroft
A Briefe Discourse
Holborne
Pavans, Galliards, Almains
MUSIC OF THE SPHERES
Speech from Merchant of Venice
Music divine
Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656)
Songs of 3, 4, 5 & 6 Parts (1622)
A MASQUE AT COURT
Speech from Coriolanus
Grays Inn Masque
Saylors Masque
Come ashore
Coperario
Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn (1613)
Anonymous (Coperario?)
Coperario
Thomas Campion, Squires' Masque (1613)