Both from the Ears and Mind: Thinking about Music in Early Modern England

393 Pages·2020·23.138 MB·English

by  Linda Phyllis Austern

Both from the
ears & mind

Both from the
Ears & Mind
thinking aBout music in
early modern england
Linda Phyllis Austern
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2020 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in
the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more
information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St.,
Chicago, IL 60637.
Published 2020
Printed in the United States of America
29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20  1 2 3 4 5
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 70159- 2 (cloth)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 70467- 8 (e- book)
DOI: https:// doi .org /10 .7208 /chicago /9780226704678 .001 .0001
This book has been supported by the Martin Picker Fund
of the American Musicological Society, funded in part by
the National Endowment for the Humanities and the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Austern, Linda Phyllis, 1957– author.
Title: Both from the ears and mind : thinking about music
in early modern England / Linda Phyllis Austern.
Description: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2020. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019045110 | ISBN 9780226701592 (cloth) |
ISBN 9780226704678 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Music—England—16th century—History and
criticism. | Music—England—17th century—History and
criticism.
Classification: LCC ML286.2 .A98 2020 | DDC 780.942/0903—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019045110
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992
(Permanence of Paper).
For Tony, who helps me keep everything in perspective

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1. Praise, Blame, and Persuasion: “Of Musicke by Way of Disputation” . . . 7
Praise and Dispraise (of Music): Discourse, Dialectic, Disputation . . 10
Knowledge of Music “by Witt and Understanding” . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Reading as Creative Process: Toward “Places of Invention” . . . . . . 25
Constructing Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Materials for Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2. Debating Godly Music: Sober and Lawful Christian Use . . . . . . . . . 41
“Musica, serva Dei”: (Textual) Places for God’s Handmaid . . . . . . . 44
Music to the Praise and Glory of God: “A Methodicall Gathering
Together of Authorities” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Anxieties of Aurality and Homonymies of Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Codetta: The Prosecution Rests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
3. Harmony, Number, and Proportion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Art and Science Abstracted from Bodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Between Sense and Intellect: Music as Conceptual Tool . . . . . . . . 98
“The Worlds Musicke” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
“A Simbolisme between the Elements”: (Re)appropriation
across Domains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
“Profound Contemplation of Secret Things”: Magic, Occult Doctrines,
and Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Hidden Harmonies of Earth and Heaven: Alchemy and Astrology . . 136
“Divine Consent”: Holy Matrimony as Harmony . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
4. To Please the Ear and Satisfy the Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Explaining Musical Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Sound, Soul, and Sense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
To Captivate the Mind: Music and Interior Process . . . . . . . . . . . 193
5. “Comfortable . . . in Sicknes and in Health”: Music to Temper Self
and Surroundings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Music and Medicine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Music “to Preserve the Health” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Music and the Humors: Balancing the Self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Beyond Black Bile: Sorrow, Grief, and Musical Remediation . . . . . 247
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Selected Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
Introduction
Patience exceedeth knowledge, & musick begetteth patience.1
In 1597, six landmarks of early modern English music first appeared from Lon-
don printer Peter Short, among them John Dowland’s First Booke of Songes or
Ayres, Antony Holborne’s The Cittharn Schoole, and Thomas Morley’s Plaine
and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke.2 The same year, other London
printers issued quartos of William Shakespeare’s Richard II and Romeo and
Juliet and the premier edition of Francis Bacon’s Essays. Each of these refer-
ences music in a different way.3 All but forgotten by modern scholars is an-
other mass- market tome from the same city and year, intended, like Richard
II, to be sold at one of the many bookstalls around St. Paul’s: Politeuphuia.
Wits Common wealth by stationer, bookbinder, and bookseller Nicholas Ling
(fl. 1580–1607). This small, duodecimo- size volume of 277 pages is a collec-
tion of proverbs, aphorisms, and other sententiae organized along the com-
monplace model by which writers and orators collected incisive snippets of
information by topic for future speech and writing. Ling is obscure enough
to be omitted from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and, in con-
trast to these other nine books, Politeuphuia remains only of historical inter-
est. Yet it proved most popular at the time, going through dozens of editions
between 1598 and 1722, thirteen already by 1612. It also inspired an entire
series of pocket- size anthologies of wise sayings on culturally significant top-
ics, including music.4 Ling’s original epistle “To the Reader” emphasizes that
the book’s contents, gathered into “certaine heads or places,” will not only as-
sist eloquent persuasion and civil conversation but provide moral edification
and something resembling physiological sustenance as it moves from autho-
rial pen to recipient’s ear to interior faculties. Its first revised edition is even
1