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.
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.
Über den Autor
Christopher Marsh is a Reader in Early Modern History at Queen's University Belfast. His previous publications include The Family of Love in English Society (Cambridge University Press, 1994) and Popular Religion in Sixteenth-Century England (1998). He is also the author of the satirical novel A Year in the Province (2009).
Inhaltsverzeichnis
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.
