SONGS AND BALLADRY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 711, 10 July 1929, Page 6

SONGS AND BALLADRY

ELIZABETHAN AGE S LOVE OF MUSIC LECTURE AT UNIVERSITY THE part that music played in the community life of the Elizabethan age was the theme of the lecture given 'last evening by Professor SperrinJohnson on the subject of “Elizabethan Folk Music and Popular Ballads.*’ It was the fifth lecture of the series on “Shakespeare and His Time.” which is being given weekly in the Auckland University College Hall. The lecturer said that music had reached a high state of development in Elizabethan times, and in the plays of the period there were many indications of its universal popularity. An interesting anthology of musical allusions, both popular and academic, could be made from these plays. The numerous and poetical references to music in Shakespeare were well known, but a host of allusions remained which seemed cryptic or nonsensical to modern ears, while they must have been easily comprehended by Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences. That the people of England, especially in the towns, had lost none of the love for music manifested in Chaucer’s time, could be definitely shown. Barbers’ shops were furnished with virginal and lute for the entertainment of waiting customers, and music was even regarded as a qualification for apprenticeship. Shakespeiire’s delicate sensibility to the aesthetic effect of music was abundantly shown. Apart from these artistic considerations, the plays, in common with less valuable contemporary work, provided interesting material for study by musical archaeologists. Once of widespread popularity, the ballad became neglected by educated people toward the seventeenth century, and was relegated to the lower orders, to whom it seemed as fiction, music, and newspaper. A ballad of hopeless doggerel may, however, have interest for the ethnologist, because the air might illustrate the problem of scale evolution and illustrate the criteria of musical aesthetics. The ballads that remained could be classified as household, amorous, satirical, humorous, political, and narrative. The epic or descriptive ballad was commonest, and dealt usually with some historical or important event at home or abroad- In the early part of Elizabeth’s reign, 760 ballads were entered at Stationers’ Hall, and only 44 books. The lecture was illustrated with lantern slides and musical examples. Among the songs having Shakespearian associations, Miss Alma McGruer sang three versions of “Walsingham,” one of which was sung by Ophelia in the mad scene in “Hamlet.” Another was “O Mistress Mine,” which is in “Twelfth Night.” The lecturer himself played as piano solos two examples from the “Virginal Book,” and Miss Florence Walker, on the violin, played a set of dance tunes of the period.