"" educated type of Puritan, it is a well-known tradition that the soldiers of the army went into battle singing Psalms. Of the educated, broad-minded Puritans, Milton himself belongs, of course, to the finest type. But there were others also who showed a very decided love for music. Cromwell owned a valuable organ, kept a privatę musician, and gave State concerts." 1 Colonel Hutchinson, the regicide, "could," according to his wife, "dance admirably well," and "had a great love to music, and often diverted himself with a viol, on which he played masterly."2 Finally, as representing the uneducated but liberal Puritan of later times, John Bunyan may be cited. His writings are full of the love of music, further evidence of which is given by the well-known story of the flute cut from the leg of a prison-chair.3 Puritan England, then, was by no means unmusical. If anything, the attack upon ecclesiastical music strengthened the interest in secular music, and its popularity increased rather than diminished. It was only through the degenerate taste of the Restoration period that English music really suffered. Of that period, however, as having had no real influence on Milton, nothing need be said here. The seventeenth century, as a whole, represents the climax and the succeeding decline of English music. It was a century which received the heritage of a musical supremacy stretching as far back as the time of Henry VIII, and reaching its highest level in the Elizabethan period. As a result of this earlier supremacy, English music in the seventeenth century commanded the widest popular interest and enthusiasm ; and this enthusiasm was felt 1 Firth, Oliver Cromwell, pp. 457-458. 2 Memoirs of the Life of Col. Hutchinson, by his Widow Lucy, H. G. Bohn, London, 1848, p. 22. 3 See Davey, p. 267. not so much for the emotional as for the formal aspect of music. Even the popular styles of composition were calculated to appeal to the intellect rather than to the feelings. The development of the monodic school, however, brought a more intelligent appreciation of the beauty of pure melody. Moreover the increasing importance of the words in vocal music led to a close alliance with the sister art of poetry, an alliance which showed its effects in the work of most of the greater musicians and poets of the day.1 Milton's environment, then, was distinctly musical. He lived at a time when the formalizing tendency of the Elizabethan period was still felt, but was mingled with a truer sense of proportion and a clearer recognition of values, the direct result of which was a close and mutually beneficial relationship between music and poetry. 1 Cf. Milton's own reference to the Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse," S. M. 2; and the sonnet To Mr. H. Lawes. II THE LIFE OF MILTON AS A MUSICIAN An account of the music of Milton's time leads naturally to a consideration of the more vital influences in the poet's life—the influences of heredity and of peculiar environment. Milton's father was a musician-no mere enthusiastic amateur, but a composer of real merit, "so eminently skilled . as to be ranked among the first masters of his time." 1 Aubrey tells us that "he was an ingenious man, delighted in musique, composed many songs now in print, especially that of Oriana."2 Edward Philips, the poet's nephew, brings out the fact that the elder Milton, although a scrivener by trade, was not "wholly a slave to the world; for he sometimes found vacant hours to the study (which he made his recreation) of the noble science of musick", and that "for several songs of his composition . . . he gained the reputation of a considerable master in this most charming of all the liberal sciences." 3 Aubrey and Philips both speak with admiration of an In Nomine of forty or possibly eighty parts, composed 1 Hawkins 3. 368. Cf. Burney 3. 134, where the elder Milton is called “equal in science, if not genius, to the best musicians of his age." S. v. Milton in Grove's Dict. 2 Brief Lives 2. 62. The song of Oriana was a madrigal for six voices published in 1601 in a collection entitled "The Triumphs of Oriana to which such eminent composers as Wilby, Morley, and Ellis Gibbons also contributed. Milton's song, No. xviii in the collection, was called Fair Oriana in the Morn." The words are given by Todd, Life, 1809, p. 4, n. 3 Life 352-353. by Milton's father, for which he received a gold medal from "a Polish prince." 1 Aside from such personal opinions, the ability of the elder Milton is clearly proved by his place as a composer in the best of the Elizabethan music-books.2 A first-hand comparison of these works with the recognized masterpieces of the time shows Milton to have equalled the best of his contemporaries in contrapuntal skill, and to have been above the average in melodic inventiveness. Milton's own estimate of his father as a musician is for us of the greatest interest. In his Latin Elegy Ad Patrem he builds up an elaborate defense of poetry. He urges his father's musical skill as one of the strongest arguments in favor of his own career as a poet, when he says: 1 Brief Lives 2. 62; E. Philips, Life 352-353. For a definition of In Nomine see Hawkins 3. 280, n., and Grove's Dict. s. v. In Nomine. 2 Four of his compositions appeared in Sir William Leighton's Tears or Lamentations of a Sorrowful Soul, 1614, namely Thou God of Might, four voices, printed in Burney 3. 139; O Lord behold, five voices, O had I Wings, five voices, printed in Hawkins 3. 369; If that a Sinner's Sighs, five voices. Byrd, Dowland, Wilby, and Coperario also contributed to this collection. The settings of the psalm tunes York and Norwich, appearing in Ravenscroft's Psalter, 1621, are by Milton's father. Hawkins (Hist. of Music 3. 367-368) says of "that common one called York tune" that the tenor part of this tune is so well known, that within memory half the nurses in England were used to sing it by way of lullaby; and the chimes of many country churches have played it six or eight times in four and twenty hours from time immemorial." A collection entitled Tristitiae Remedium, dated 1616 and probably edited by Thomas Myriell, contains six English and Latin motets by the elder Milton. Two of these, When David heard and I am the Resurrection, both for five voices, are printed in No. xxii, Old English Edition, from the British Museum Add. Mss. 29. 372-377. The other four, still in manuscript, are O Woe is Me, five voices, Precamur sancte Domine, How doth the Holy City, and She weepeth continually, all for six voices. Christ Church, Oxford, has manuscripts of If ye love Me, four voices, and five Fancies in five and six parts. Nor thou persist, I pray thee, still to slight And useless, pow'rs, by whom inspir'd, thyself Now say, what wonder is it, if a son In close affinity, we sympathize In social arts, and kindred studies sweet? Such distribution of himself to us Was Phoebus' choice; thou hast thy gift, and I Mine also, and between us we receive, Father and son, the whole inspiring God.1 2 With such a father to teach him the rudiments of the art it is only natural to suppose that the boy Milton was very early in life set to work at musical studies. We can well imagine the musical atmosphere of the Milton household. There must have been an organ in the house, and probably there were other instruments as well, for the scrivener could afford certain luxuries. Possibly his musical friends assembled in his rooms at times. Some of the leading composers of the day may have been present at these informal gatherings. The great John Wilby, king of madrigal-writers, must have been at least an acquaintance of the Milton family. Possibly the youthful genius, Thomas Ravenscroft, the famous Sir William Leighton, the modest but talented clergyman, Thomas 3 1 Ad Patrem 56-66, Cowper's translation, pp. 61-62. Quoted in Latin below, Appendix I, p. 105. 2 Aubrey says expressly, His father instructed him" (Brief Lives 2. 67). • His works appear in the same volumes as those of the elder Milton. |