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ISSN: 1089-747X
Copyright 2000 by the Society for
Seventeenth-Century Music
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Volume 6, no. 2:
Poetry and Music in Seventeenth-century England. By Diane
Kelsey McColley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. [xvii,
311 pp. ISBN 0-521-59363-8 $59.95.]
or as subject. Music can also manifest itself in the sound of poetry, directing
the rhythms and cadences of speech in order to infuse the text with greater
meaning or sensitivity. But, according to McColley, music can also play a
structural role in poetry, enhancing the semantic complexity of a text by
sounding partials of meaning and association to the fundamentals of the
words on the page. Like pitches, McColley argues, words are complex and
mutually responsive, (p. 173) noting that poetrys verbal harmonies, both
audible and cognitive, resemble the composition of Renaissance polyphony;
though reading linearly, one is conscious of an extraordinary density of verbal
resonances that form vertical harmonies (p. 78).
1.4 Carrying off such an enterprise requires considerable deftness and skill,
and different readers will find the books challenges more or less rewarding
according to their own interests and abilities. Because McColley comes to the
project with a distinguished career in literary analysis, supplemented by a
solid liturgical background and a good ear for music, she is well equipped to
guide non-specialists through her discussions of musical form and the early
seventeenth-century repertoire. What is perhaps less clear is how much
musicologists stand to benefit from her readings beyond a general
understanding of the musicality of English poetry. To that end, it seems
appropriate to explore how McColley configures and executes her readings,
what her perspective brings to an understanding of seventeenth-century
music, and to what specific considerations her material and critical
predilections may be attributed.
2. by thought, word, and deed
McColleys readings of Donne, Herbert, and Milton form the conceptual
heart of the book, and illustrate the variety of ways in which musical rhetoric
can be discovered in poetic texts. Chapter Three explores the polyphony of
John Donnes poetry, in particular Songs and Sonets and the multi-part poem
La Corona (1607). McColley creates sustained, polysemous readings of her
subject in order to show how, for example, the Songs and Sonets, by
combining lightness and seriousness, tenderness and tough wit, directness
and ironic allusion, incorporate the expressiveness and dramatic tension
supplied by multiple simultaneous musical lines in contemporary settings of
songs and madrigals (p. 108). In the process, she casts new critical light on
Donne, as in her brief analysis of A Valediction Forbidding Mourning (pp. 978)
and her reconsideration of Donnes spiritual sincerity (pp. 1323).
2.2 Chapter Four examines George Herberts use of word-tuning, asserting
that even Herberts simplest words...have infinite particles that resonate with
each other and with the matter of light and sound in a wonderful plenitude of
concinnities (p. 139). In analogizing the mutual resonances of
(homophonically, semantically, etymologically) related words as musical
partials and overtones, McColley concludes that like pitches, words are
complex and mutually responsive (p. 173). Although some aspects of these
readings can seem a bit strained (e.g., p. 162), on the whole, McColley makes
2.1
music and poetry were drained of their intellectual and spiritual content
bespeaks an incomplete understanding of the wealth of musical and literary
creativity in the latter period. My intention here is not to mount a defense of
Restoration culture; rather, this issue provides an opportunity to explore some
underlying considerations relating to the acquisition of interdisciplinary
expertise and to consider how McColleys book, in particular, can be more
fully understood.
3. We do not presume to come
At a party not long ago, I was asked by a colleague from the sciences, one
with a passing familiarity with the history of seventeenth-century England,
whether the Restoration period was not one of far less creativity in the arts in
comparison with the Elizabethan and early Jacobean age. This kind of
assumption, I believe, bespeaks not so much the intrinsic quality of literary,
musical, and artistic creativity in the two eras, but more the accessibility of
those materials to a broad modern audience. To put it simply: one can hardly
turn around in our own day without stumbling over a production of
Shakespeare, whereas the theatrical works of John Dryden and his
contemporaries are seldom performed, even by leading repertory companies.
Shakespeare, it would seem, speaks to modern audiences in a way that
Dryden does not, even though the popularity of the latter poet remained
considerably greater for at least a century after his death. Similarly, the music
of Tudor and Jacobean composers such as Tallis, Byrd, Dowland, Weelkes,
Gibbons, Tomkins, and even Amner might be considered much better known
to modern audiences than the output of Locke, Humfrey, Blow, Purcell, and
Croft. The former, many of whose works are liturgical and a capella, are
widely sung in church choirs and have been extensively recorded by leading
ensembles over the course of many decades. Restoration composers, on the
other hand, created works requiring more extensive musical forces, such as
odes and symphony anthems, placing many of their choral compositions
beyond the reach of modern amateur performing groups who, to quote
McColley quoting Ralph Battell, ha[ve] not wherewithall to be at the charge
of these Aids and Ornaments to their Religious Worship (p. 229). With the
notable exception of Purcell, the works of Restoration composers remain
largely unrecordedand in many cases uneditedso that there has been as
yet little opportunity for modern audiences or performers to develop a
familiarity with this repertoire and begin to understand its breadth and
rhetorical power.
3.2 This distinction goes to the heart of McColleys own relationship with
seventeenth-century music, a relationship that she openly acknowledges and
which appears to have had a defining influence on the discursive form of her
book. As a practicing Episcopalian and a member of her parish choir, McColley
is well situated to have developed a familiarity with the English sacred music
commonly available to modern amateur performing groupsthat is, the music
of the Elizabethan age and the early seventeenth centuryand her blending
3.1
Reference