The Song of the Devil: Representation of Evil across the Seventeenth-Century Stage in London
by
Colin J. Brown, B.M., M.M.
A Thesis
In
Musicology
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
MASTER OF MUSIC
Approved
Dr. Stacey Jocoy Chair of Committee
Dr. Angela Mariani
Dr. Virginia Whealton
Mark Sheridan Dean of the Graduate School
December, 2020
Copyright 2020, Colin J. Brown
Texas Tech University, Colin J. Brown, December 2020
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to acknowledge the following people in assisting me in composing this thesis. Drs. Whealton and Mariani for sitting on my committee and their invaluable assistance and editorial suggestions. And Dr. Jocoy for being my advisor on this thesis, for her indispensable guidance, irreplaceable knowledge of seventeenth century music, and for her much-needed support during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Thank you.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS ACCNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………………………………………………….ii ABSTRACT ...... iv LIST OF FIGURES ...... vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 What is evil in music? ...... 1 Background ...... 2 The Royal Society of London and Sir Isaac Newton...... 5 Literature Review ...... 7 History of Witches ...... 7 History of the Royal Society of London (RSL) ...... 8 History of Seventeenth-Century Music ...... 9 Methodology ...... 12 Concordance/Discordance ...... 14 Come Away, Hecate ...... 15 Purcell – Dido and Aeneas ...... 16 Iconography ...... 17 Synthesis ...... 19 Feasibility...... 20 Conclusion / contributions ...... 21 CHAPTER 2: EVIL IN JACOBEAN STAGE MUSIC...... 23 Depiction of Witches on the Stage ...... 25 Depiction of Witches in Masque ...... 32 Depiction of Witches in Staged Music…………………………………………………..35
CHAPTER 3: EVIL ON THE REFORMATION STAGE ...... 44 The English Civil War ...... 44 Dido & Aeneas ...... 52 CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION...... 62 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………….66 iii
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ABSTRACT Figuring prominently on the seventeenth century stage are the representations of the devil and his minions, witches, sorcerers, and lesser demons. As part of their nefarious activities, music usually is involved in their depiction in some way or form such as: singing, incanting, and evoking sound as a part of their supernatural atmosphere.
Musicologists Curtis Price and Steven Plank have noted that from an extension of the earlier fascination with witches, most notably King James I, there came to be a proliferation of demons and witches portrayed on the English stage and in turn became a popular phenomenon.
Later staged representations of the devil’s minions changed drastically from representations from the first part of the century. For instance, in Shakespeare’s Macbeth or even Middleton’s The Witch, representations were realistic and more frightening.
In this paper I focus on the representation of the evil and associated characters, and how they are represented on the stage across the 1600s in England. I also focus on how the aesthetics changed between the beginning of the seventeenth century and the end of the century by the influence of early modern skepticism brought about by the introduction of the empirical method propagated by the Royal Society of London (est. 1660). The issue of witches also impacted the attitudes toward women and their involvement on the stage.
I demonstrate this by focusing on two compositions. Robert Johnson’s “Come Away,
Hecate!” written ce. 1609 as an example from the beginning of the century and Hennery
Purecell’s opera Dido and Aeneas written in 1689 as an example from the latter half of the century. iv
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I show how the devil and his associated characters are represented musically using melodic and harmonic analysis, iconography, and contextual historical sources. I argue that with the encroaching Enlightenment, visions of the horrific were centered around the incorporation of Italianate music that represented the replacement of the fear of magic to a fear of antithetical Catholics.
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LIST OF FIGURES Figrue 1. Damnable Practices printed in London in 1619 ...... 18
Figure 2. Witchcraft Discovered and Punished printed in London, 1682 ...... 18
Example 2.1: Damnable Practices printed in London in 1619 ...... 30
Example 2.2: Witchcraft Discovered and Punished printed in London, 1682 ...... 30
Example 2.3: Inigo Jones’s designs for the masque Salmacida Spolia, 1640 ...... 33
Example 2.4: Costume sketch for an unidentified Queen from "The Masque of Queens",1609 ...... 34
Example 2.5: “Come away, Hecate!” ...... 40
Example 2.5 continued...... 41
Example 3.1: “When I am laid in Earth”, mm.1-8 ...... 55
Example 3.2: “O Let me Weep”, mm.1-9 ...... 57
Example 3.3: Circle of Fifths with Quarter-comma Meantone Distribution ...... 59
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION What is evil in music?
Witches, warlocks, wizards, sorcerers, all have been a part of western culture for centuries and how they have been depicted through the arts has changed through history.
Either on the stage or in visual art, the cackles and screams of the devil’s accomplices have echoed through the minds of humanity, giving a fright to young and old alike. What has interested musicologists is the extreme differences in the musicality of the staged portrayals of the demonic over the course of the long seventeenth century. In this thesis, I discuss the musical depiction of evil and the devil’s minions on the stage in early modern
England, and how the views changed across the seventeenth century. For instance, in the first half of the seventeenth century witches were portrayed as women whose insane behavior was directly caused by the devil, while later portrayal at the end of the century were either comical or came from within the witch herself. I focus on publications that highly influenced the English public, like King James I’s Daemonologie and Reginald
Scot’s A Discoverie of Witches, and on the influence of the Royal Society of London and the beginning of the new empirical method of science advocated by Roger Bacon and later by Sr. Isaac Newton. 2 I will demonstrate a change from a firm, religious belief to a more skeptical one. I discuss how these staged depictions show the changing views of
2 James I, King of England, King James, The First, Daemonologie (1597): Newes from Scotland, Declaring the Damnable Life and Death of Doctor Fian, a Notable Sorcerer Who Was Burned at Edenbrough in January Last (1591) (London : New York :John Lane ; E.P. Dutton, 1924) and Reginald Scot, Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft (London: William Brome, 1584). 1
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women in English culture during this time period, from being a subordinate role in the family that was completely submissive to the husband, to having a better understanding of the difference between the sexes brought about by the advancements of natural philosophy, the forerunner of science and medicine.
Background
Daemonologie
One historical figure that highly influenced the ideology of witches in the beginning of the seventeenth century, even though the belief of some form of the devil’s minions were around for many centuries before, was the new protestant king of England, Elizabeth’s replacement, King James the first. When it was suggested that witches cast a spell in order to impede James I’s wife’s journey to Scotland by causing a storm that would sink the vessel on which the queen was traveling, James I made it a mission in his life to prosecute those who were believed to be working for the devil. In fact, James I believed that it was his mission on earth to head the war on witches in the unified kingdoms of
Scotland and England.
King James was not thought of very highly when given the English throne in
1603. His appearance was uncouth, he was rumored to be homosexual, and often did not keep his promises; but he was welcomed nonetheless because he secured the throne for the protestants. In order to advance his popularity with the English people, he wrote a book to “prove two things… the one, that such devilish arts have been and are; the other, what exact trial and severe punishment they merit.” King James refers here to witchcraft and necromancy. Daemonologie was written in as a dialogue between the master and
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apprentice, Epistemon and Philomathes. The book contains a plethora of topics related to witches and the occult including what the arts of the occult are, the four main sorts of spirits, and the suitable punishment for magicians and witches. Of special note,
Philomathes asks why there are 20 female witches to every male witch, and Epistemon gives the common answer, quoting Donald Tyson’s introduction to his edition of James’ I
Deamonologie, that “women are inherently weaker than men, and ever since the Serpent deceived Eve, he has been more at home tricking women than men.”3 What King James I is saying here is that women, in this time period, were thought to be already more disposed to working with the devil, since it was the devil working through the woman that brought “The Fall of Man”. After writing Demonology, his popularity greatly improved with the people. They saw it as his testament against the devil and those associated with him.4 This included the Protestants’ enemy, the Catholics, whose rites were looked upon as a sort of sorcery.
Witches:
During the modern period, about 1450 – 1750, thousands of women were tried as witches. Brian P. Levack defines witches as, “individuals who possess some sort of extraordinary or mysterious power to perform evil deeds.”5 This definition reflects the beliefs of the English in the early seventeenth century. As the ability to possess mysterious powers is a myth, however, the real reason that women were tried was because of their social status and the inability to contest or challenge these beliefs. They were thought of as being subordinate to head of the household, which in most cases was
3 Donald Tyson, The Demonology of King James I (Woodbury: Llewellyn Publications, 2011): 33 4 See Tyson, Demonology, Introduction 66 5 Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (New York: Longman, 1987). 3
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the husband. Whenever a crime was committed by a woman the order of the household was disrupted, and in the eyes of the protestant church, it was the head of the family’s duty, the husband, to keep order. This resulted in the practice of disciplining the wife when she would disobey their husband. When the wife did break the hierarchical order of the family, an order that was representing the concordance of the family structure, the family order was then disordered.6 Anything that was disordered was immediately connected to the devil: concordance equals good and discordance equals evil. So, when the wife had an affair, or committed a crime, or even acted as a nuisance to neighbors or the community, the social order was broken, and an appropriate punishment would ensue.
Even gossip was thought to bring about discordance. In William Gearing’s treatise, A bridle for the Tongue: “The unbridled Tongue is set on fire of Hell… the Devil is in that tongue, he kindleth a fire in it, and bloweth it with the bellows of all mischief.”7 Surely, with the metaphor contained in this quote the reader can understand the strong correlation between the devil and the loose tongue. The understanding of the world was highly influenced by religion, particularly the protestant religion, in early seventeenth-century
England, and with the influence of the myth of witches and sorcerers, it makes sense then that the correlation between the devil and the disruptive woman came about and there was no questioning it. It was not until new insights were brought about by the empirical method instituted mid-century by the Royal Society of London that the correlation between the unruly woman and the devil began to be re-examined.
6 See Sarah Burlington Williams, Damnable Practises: Witches, Dangerous Women, and Music in Seventeenth–Century English Ballads (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015). Chapter 1 7 William Gearing, A bridle for the Tongue (London, n.p., 1663). 4
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Late 17th Century
The Royal Society of London and Sir Isaac Newton
There were two major events that influenced the beliefs surrounding evil and its portrayal in music and the stage: the English Civil War, and the formation of the Royal Society of
London.
The civil war took place from August 22, 1642 to September 3, 1651, when the absolutist
King Charles I believed that he alone had the power to rule Britain. The parliament thought otherwise and declared Charles I as committing treason against the people. He was ultimately condemned to beheading, and the sole rule went to the parliament, with
Oliver Cromwell as the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. During the British
Commonwealth, the parliament restricted musical activities. When Cromwell, who essentially became a monarch himself, died in 1658, the British government decided to restore the monarch and allowed King Charles II, the son of Charles I, who had taken refuge in France during the governance of the Commonwealth parliament, to take the throne. This Restoration period marked a profound change in the cultural and ideological systems throughout the United Kingdom.
The formation of The Royal Society of London by King Charles II in 1660 was a catalyst for the changing views of the devil and of supernatural evil, which became more skeptical. The society’s job was to “Put a mark on the Errors, which have been strengthened by long prescription: to restore the truths, that have been neglected… separate the knowledge of nature, from the colors of rhetoric, the devices of fancy, or the delightful deceit of Fables,” and as a rule, the discussion of Religion and Politics was
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forbidden.8 The experimental philosophers began the empirical process, and nothing was taken for granted, for they wanted to observe for themselves how God controlled the
“clockwork” universe. When people started proving that all occurring phenomena had a scientific explanation, the devil’s involvement in the choices that people made became questionable. This in turn led scientists to develop theories in mental health and the investigation of how the mind works. 9 Moreover, the beginning of prioritizing the power of the questioning mind over that of religion led to the first burial of a non-saint/monarch in Westminster Abbey when Sir Isaac Newton was interred there in 1727; this indicated the beginning of equalizing human observation and science with religion. With the determination of the Fellows to “withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment,”10 the belief in sprits and heavenly creatures, would have to be proven by experiment. Since that could not be done, the belief in witches and the devil changed from a concrete truth to philosophy or superstition: a “device(s) of fancy,” and a “delightful deceit of Fables.” Because religious beliefs were no longer untouchable, they could be questioned and manipulated in ways that were protected from the Church. The Church no longer held sole control over understanding the universe.
8 Thomas Sprat, The History of the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge (London, 1667), 61-62 9 Early modern studies of mental illness began in the late 16th century with texts such as Timothies Bright’s Treatise of Melancholie (1586), although this was still strongly connected to the body and the humors. Later seventeenth-century studies were heavily influenced by Robert Burton’s famous Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), but also Thomas Willis’s De Anima Brutorum (1672). 10 “About us: History,” Royal Society of London, accessed November 17, 2019, https://royalsociety.org/about-us/history/ 6
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Literature Review
The studies dealing with Early Modern England are numerous, and there has been a lot of research dealing with the history of witches, the Royal Society of London, and music that aids in the portrayal of witches on the stage. The following is what I have found that pertains closely to the topic of the thesis presented in three categories: Sources regarding the history of witches, those regarding the history of the Royal Society of London, and those regarding the history of seventeenth-century stage music, and music pertaining to witches.
History of Witches
In terms of the history of witches, this study relies on three sources. The book The Witch-
Hunt in Early Modern Europe, written in 1987 by Brian P. Levack (1987) is a monograph on the history of the “European witch-craze.”11 This is a general history of the witch hunts that happened during the 1450 to 1750. The book The Malleus Maleficarum and the
Construction of Witchcraft: Theology and popular Belief written in 2003 by Hans Peter
Broedel is an introduction to the Malleus Maleficarum, how historical context influenced its authorship, and how it remained a powerful influence in the belief of witches from its conception throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.12It gives an understanding of the Malleus Maleficarum, which influenced the philosophy and beliefs of King James I, and therefore influenced the beliefs of the English people. Also, the book offers insight into the history of the belief in the history of the belief in witches and witchcraft. The book
11 Levack, Witch-Hunt. 12 Hans Peter Broedel, The Malleus Maleficarum and the Construction of Witchcraft: Theology and popular Belief (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003). 7
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The Demonology of King James I written in 2011 by Donald Tyson contains a transliteration of James’ I Daemonology to facilitate the comprehension of the text by taking away the barrier of seventeenth-century English spellings.13 It also contains an introduction which describes the history of how James I came to write his monograph.
History of the Royal Society of London (RSL)
The history of the RSL is important to understanding the naissance of the empirical method and the beginning of the relationship between skepticism and the belief in witches and the devil. The thesis garners most of its data from garners most of its data form three books. Promoting Experimental Learning: Experiment and the Royal Society
1660-1727, written in 1991 by Marie Boas Hall is a monograph that goes into detail of the minutes and papers read at the meetings of the RSL from1660 to 1727.14 This book provides information regarding the history of the RSL in detail, and is a great resource for extensive research into the history of the RSL and its experiments that dealt with skepticism and the mind. Establishing the New Science: The Experience of the Early
Royal Society, written in 1989 by Michael Hunter, is an historiography that deals with the establishment of the RSL in detail referring to the original documents of the Society.15 In relationship to the Hall, the Hunter deals with the beginnings of the RSL, whereas the
Hall discusses how the RSL changed in a specific time period. Katerine Butler’s article
“Myth, Science, and the Power of Music in the Early Decades of the Royal Society,” found in the January 2015 issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas, is an essay that
13 Donald Tyson, The Demonology of King James I (Woodbury: Llewellyn Publications, 2011). 14 Marie Boas Hall, Promoting Experimental Learning: Experiment and the Royal Society 1660-1727 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 15 Michael Hunter, Establishing the New Science: The Experience of the Early Royal Society (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1989). 8
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explains the direct influence of the Royal Society of London on the change of the notion of music to being more for the enjoyment of the listener than for its ethical influence.16
The essay provides support for my hypothesis that the empirical study of music influenced the way composers viewed the role of music in society and the way evil was represented in music compositions. The book Music in the Royal Society of London 1660-
1806, authored by Leta Miller and Albert Cohen (1987) is a reference for anything pertaining to music in relation to the RSL from 1660 – 1806.17 It lists every letter, paper, and experiment referencing music and sound and where to find them in the RSL archives..
History of Seventeenth-Century Music
The literature that pertains to the history of the portrayal of evil in music has been divided up into two categories; namely literature that concentrates on music pertaining to the portrayal of the devil and music that was presented on the stage in seventeenth-century
England. The dissertation “The Devil’s Music: A Literary Study of Evil and Music” written in 1978 by Suzanne Leppe for the completion of her PhD at the University of California concentrates on the ways in which evil is portrayed in music from antiquity to the twentieth century.18 This is a major resource for research in evil and music. The book Damnable
Practises: Witches, Dangerous Women, and Music in Seventeenth – Century English
Ballads, by, Sarah Burlington Williams and published by Ashgate in 2015, is an extensive
16 Katherine Butler, “Myth, Science, and the Power of Music in the Early Decades of the Royal Society,” Journal of the History of Ideas 76, no. 1 (January 2015): 47-68. 17 Leta Miller and Albert Cohen, Music in the Royal Society of London 1660-1806 (Detroit: Information Coordinators, 1987). 18 Suzanne Leppe, “The Devil’s Music: A Literary Study of Evil and Music,” PhD diss: University of California, 1978. 9
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study of the way that women were portrayed in English broadsides.19 It explores the way that the broadsides were instrumental in disseminating information about dangerous women and music related to them. It is one of the main resources about the portrayal of witches in media and the meanings behind those depictions in early seventeenth-century
England. The article “‘And Now about the Cauldron Sing’: Music and the Supernatural on the Restoration Stage” by Steven E. Plank, found in the 1990 August issue of Early Music, is about operas written during the restoration.20 The article stresses that the music was used to portray the otherness and spectacle of magic. The article considers why witch scenes were so popular and the similarities among scenes of operas written during this time. This study focuses on later portrayals of witches and opera during the reformation. The article
“Producing ‘Dido and Aeneas’: An Investigation into Sixteen Problems with a Suggestion to Conductors in the Form of a Newly-Composed Finale to the Grove Scene” by Roger
Savage and Michael Tilmouth discusses issues with the production of a Baroque opera in modern times.21 It discusses the notion that the characters in Dido and Aeneas represent different aspects of Dido, and highlights the fact that the witches in Purcell’s opera no longer represent the supernatural effects of evil upon a person, but that witches have become a representation of evil that comes from within the character.
My thesis also draws upon literature about the music of the seventeenth-century stage. The monograph Shakespeare’s Songbook, by Ross W. Duffin, published by W. W. Norton &
19 Sarah Burlington Williams, Damnable Practises: Witches, Dangerous Women, and Music in Seventeenth–Century English Ballads (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015). 20 Steven E. Plank, “‘And Now about the Cauldron Sing’: Music and the Supernatural on the Restoration Stage” Early Music 18, no. 3 (August 1990): 392-407. 21 Roger Savage and Michael Tilmouth, “Producing ‘Dido and Aeneas’: An Investigation into Sixteen Problems with a Suggestion to Conductors in the Form of a Newly-Composed Finale to the Grove Scene” Early Music 4, no. 4 (October 1976): 393-406. 10
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Company in 2004, is a collection of sixteenth century songs that Shakespeare inserts, quotes, and alludes to in his work.22 Duffin puts the tunes in context of the play and gives critical commentary on each song., I reference Duffin’s book for the songs that were sung by witches and sorcerers in order to analyze them and to discern how the witch song genera changed through the seventeenth century. The book Masques and Entertainments by Ben
Jonson, edited by Henry Morley, is a collection, with introduction, of masques written by the playwright Ben Jonson.23 It contains “The Masque of Queens” where the Antimasque contains a depiction of witches. The antimasque, a short drama that is used to portray the opposite of the allegory that is presented in the main masque, aids in understanding the depiction of witches on the stage during the beginning of the seventeenth century. The monograph Masque and Opera in England, 1656 – 1688 by Andrew Walkling is a comprehensive study of the development of court masque and through-composed opera in
England from the mid-1650s to the Revolution of 1688–89.24 Walkling argues that our understanding of “the distinctions between masque and opera must be premised upon an extensive archival and literary evidence, detailed textual readings, rigorous tabular analysis, and meticulous collation of bibliographical and musical sources”.. The monograph Music in the English Courtly Masque 1600-1640 by Peter Walls is about “the character and function of music in the masque.”25 Musical and literary discussion is combined with historical enquiry. Its discussion of the ways in which the different elements in the masque could be integrated to produce a coherent vision of a model human society
22 Ross W. Duffin, Shakespeare’s Songbook (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004). 23 Henry Morley, ed., Masques and Entertainments by Ben Jonson (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1890). 24 Andrew Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, 1656–1688 (New York: Routledge, 2017). 25 Peter Walls, Music in the English Courtly Masque 1600-1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). 11
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make it a valuable source on the history of the masque, how music worked within the masque, and how the music and culture influenced the portrayals of witches. Last but not least, the well-known monograph O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note: Music for Witches, the Melancholic, and the Mad on the Seventeenth-Century English Stage by Amanda
Eubanks Winkler in 2006 deals with the portrayal of disordered people on the stage and the certain conventions used by composers to aid in that portrayal.26 Chapter two of this book deals extensively with the portrayal of witches on the stage and the music that was used in conjunction with the portrayal.
Methodology
Compilation of Primary Sources
The time on which the thesis concentrates is the late sixteenth-century to the early eighteenth-century, the reason being that views of witches changed from being heavily influenced by the Catholic religion to those of skepticism. I believe that the change in views was brought about by the influence of certain events that happened during this time in England centering in London. These were the English Civil War, the Restoration, and the founding of the Royal Society of London. A number of primary source documents for these events can be found in the online resources Early English Books Online, the UCSB resource English Broadside Ballad Archive, the Oxford Bodleian Ballad database, and the special collections of the British Library, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, and the Library of Congress.
26 Amanda Eubanks Winkler, O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note: Music for Witches, the Melancholic, and the Mad on the Seventeenth-Century English Stage (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). 12
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Musical Formal and Harmonic Analysis of Relevant Works
My methodology also includes the analysis of specific musical pieces written during the
1590s-1630 & 1670s-1720s particularly Robert Johnson’s “Come Away, Hecate!” representing the beginning of the 17th century and Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, as a representative of the end, or later beliefs. I use full metrical and musical analysis along with study of the relationships between the text and music. I also compare the music of compositions dated from the first half of the century to the latter half of the century. The analysis is done to help support the composer’s period ideas towards witches and to compare the compositional techniques and usage in their respective time periods. This analysis supports the thesis that the use of witches in stage productions changed in correspondence with the emergence of empirical science and skepticism of religious beliefs.
The first pieces that are examined are the anti-masques that would precede the masque proper. The anti-masque would often depict witches brewing up a curse of sorts on the protagonist. Sometimes the anti-masques indicated that a song was sung by the witches. One of these songs is “Come Away, Hecate!” by Robert Johnson, believed to be used for some of the productions of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. The melody is disjunct and alternates between singing syllables on one note in one measure followed by octaves in the following measure representing a discreteness in the character of the witch that is performing the song as opposed to a melody that is conjunct and flows from measure to measure. “Come Away, Hecate!” is an example that demonstrates the religious beliefs of the early seventeenth century in that it represents an idea of music that witches might 13
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sing. Witches, being disordered people with their dealings with the devil, would sing disordered music.
For an example of music that was written during the end of the seventeenth century, I analyze Henry Purcell’s composition strategies when portraying Dido and the
Sorceress in his opera Dido and Aeneas. In contrast to Johnson’s “Come Away,
Hecate!”, Purcell’s witch is still an “anti-character;” but instead of representing the evil brought upon the protagonist by the devil, the witch is an “anti-Dido”. This is achieved by having the witch and her two assistants personify Dido’s insecurities and apprehensions of disaster in becoming involved with Aeneas, thus representing the evilness in the protagonist herself. This leads us to believe that people of the latter seventeenth century identified evil as something that comes from within the person and not from an outside influence such as the devil. It would have thus been harder for a person to say, “The devil made me do it.”
Concordance/Discordance
Turning to musical examples, one of the ways goodness in music has been defined in history is by how concordant its harmonies are. Composers use the pure intervals of the octave and fifth (later adding the major third) to represent perfect harmony. Past scholars have argued that the most concordant music is the simplest according to its harmonic ratio.27 When a violin string produces a sound, the sound is made up of more than one tone which are called harmonic overtones. The ratio that is used to describe the relationship between the harmonics are simple. For instance, the ratio of the octave is 2:1
27 See Arthur Schopenhauer, "Zur Metaphysik der Musik," Sämmtliche Werke, fünf bänden vol. 1 (Leipzig: Inselverlag, 1905), 1226-27. 14
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the next simple ratio is for the fifth which is 3:2 and for the fourth is 4:3 and for the third is 9:8. Because these ratios are natural, that is they naturally occur when a string vibrates, the simple ratios have come to equate what is natural or is good in music. Any music not containing these intervals was thought of as discordant or “evil”. Rhythm also conveyed concordance and anything that was in triple time or had three beats per measure was thought of as concordant since it reflected the trinity. This is complicated by the fact that sprightly pieces in three are often related to dance and conviviality, which can lead to sin—a fine line determined by other stylistic elements.
Come Away, Hecate
The piece Come Away, Hecate! is believed to be written by Robert Jonson for Thomas
Middleton’s The Witch written around 1609. In this piece, even though it sounds concordant to our modern ears, there are several instances of discordance that would have been more noticeable to contemporary audiences. For instance, in measures 20 – 23, the witch’s craziness (another sign that was thought of as a result of working with the devil) is brought about through the music, and the melody is broken and contrasts greatly in melodic line, switching between monotone to octave leaps which shows the disorder of the character.
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Purcell – Dido and Aeneas
For my second musical example I turn to Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas which premiered in 1689.
This exemplifies a shift in how witches are used in compositions. In Purcell’s Dido and
Aeneas, for example, the character of the witch represents an anti-Dido. In Roger
Savage’s article, he writes:
It could be argued in fact that, leaving aside Aeneas and his buffo counterpart the tenor-solo sailor, all the characters in the opera are really personified aspects of Dido: Belinda and the Second Woman projections of her yearning towards erotic fulfillment, the Sorceress a formidable anti-self embodying all her insecurities and apprehensions of disaster contingent on her involving herself in any deep personal relationship, and the two solo witches nightmarish shadows of Belinda and the Second Woman.
There are not any witches in the original story, the Aeneid, to begin with. The characters were added by Purcell. If Savage’s theory is taken into consideration, the witches are given more importance in the in the plot of the opera. They become humanized and begin to represent the discordance within one’s self. To become a crucial counter character to Dido and her companions giving the plot an exciting twist. An antagonist is introduced, and the antagonist is Dido’s own insecurities and apprehensions.
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The range of the singer suggests that the role might have been performed by an alto or countertenor. In operas the antagonist was usually sung in the lower range of the voice usually by a bass. In Christianity it is believed that Devil’s domain was that of the world.
In the study of Harmonia or the music of the spheres, the lowest tones of the octave are associated with the earth; so naturally if a composer wanted to depict evil to seventeenth- century audiences, they would have chosen a range that was lower than the protagonist.
In Purcell’s opera, the witch’s scene is performed in the middle of the opera, giving more importance of the witches’ influence on the plot than it would if the scene were performed at the beginning.
Iconography
Another methodological approach in this work focuses on the analysis of related iconographic depictions of demons and witches in the period. Related images are wood cuts representing witches and their activities, usually attached to or strongly associated with their aural and musical depictions. Examples include the woodcuts that accompanied broadside ballads, the popular published song form of the day, and images that were folded and printed into books and printed scripts of the plays.
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Figrue 1. Damnable Practices printed in London in 1619
Figure 2. Witchcraft Discovered and Punished printed in London, 1682
The first image is from Damnable Practices printed in London in 1619, depicts three crones (women of advanced age were thought of as suspicious characters because of the numerous markings acquired at the end of one’s life that were usually misidentified as
“witches’ mark” or “devil’s teat”) surrounded by typical examples of witch familiars, or
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creatures associated with the earth, corpses, disease, or nocturnal activities: Owl, dog, cat and rat.28 The second image from Witchcraft Discovered and Punished printed in London depicts a dance, led by the devil, taking place around a half man-half goat figure holding a candle and broomstick, possibly denoting that the activities are taking place during the night.29 More witch familiars are depicted in the background, and a piper playing an instrument with a large bell, possibly a shawm, can be seen seated to the left of the dance.
Witches were commonly thought to sing and take part in circle dances that were vigorous and athletic, represented here by the extreme height of the dancer’s raised legs. Prints representing the devil during the latter half of the seventeenth century coincide with the skepticism that was prevalent at that time and usually depicted the devil as a diminutive character like a leprechaun, sprite, or gnome; or as a risible character.
Synthesis
Combining the literary writings, music analysis, and iconography allows the historical context to support the interpretations of the visual, which ultimately helps to explain the processes by which the musical representations of dark and demonic subjects changed so markedly from the Jacobean period to the later Restoration. The historical context reveals that this was a most dynamic century for Britain in which views and aesthetics, ethics, and morals changed from being religious, and even fanatical, to being skeptical. The literary writings change from having religious influence, as Daemonologie can prove, to those of skepticism, as can be proven by the writings of the Royal Society of London.
The iconography connects with the literary traditions to visualize the change from fearful,
28 “Damnable Practises of three Lincolne-shire Witches” (Oxford: printed by G. Eld for John Barnes, 1619). 29 “Witchcraft discovered and punished” (n.p., 1682). 19
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haggard, demons to exaggerated, laughable, even satirical imagery. Accordingly, the musical compositions change from having witches represent humankind’s direct interactions with the devil, as represented by the anti-masques and Johnson’s “Come
Away, Hecate!”, to that of witches representing the bad inside one’s self, an internalized, psychological negativity, as found in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.
Feasibility
Following this introductory chapter, I will explore in Chapter 2 the background and context of the depiction of the background and context in general explaining the thesis in a whole. It does not go into much detail but just enough to pique the reader’s interest and to map out the rest of the format of the thesis.
In my second chapter I explore the background and context of the depiction of witches in the first half of the century in order to articulate the reasons behind the beliefs of the
English towards witches, and the influence of religion on the ideas of this time.
I outline the history of witch hunts and the influence of Scot’s A Discoverie of Witches and James I Daemonology upon the ideas of the time. I then draw connections to specific examples of music composed during the beginning of the century, concentrating upon music written for masques (specifically anti-masques) whose theme usually deals with witches or things related to them.
The remainder of the thesis deals with theater music portraying witches from 1660 and onward and how the skepticism brought about by the introduction of empirical science into the London society influenced musical composition.
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The third chapter discusses the effect of English Civil War, the Commonwealth, and Cromwell’s Protectorate on music-making in England. The chapter then focuses on the way in which the restoration of the reign of Charles II further affected music-making for the better, and how more possibilities for further research in natural phenomena and musical composition were possible under his reign. The chapter then considers the founding of the Royal Society of London and its influence on scientific experimentation, and the Society’s commitment to experiment and observation as set forth by the writings of Francis Bacon and later by Sir Isaac Newton. The chapter concludes with of the influence of empirical science upon society and its encouragement of skepticism toward phenomena and the ability of individuals come to conclusions through their own deductions. This resulted in people questioning religious beliefs. The compositions that are discussed in this context are Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Eccles’ Rinaldo and
Armida, contrasting these latter seventeenth-century musical portrayals of witches to those in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Chapter 4 contains my conclusions from comparing depictions of witches from the first half of the seventeenth century to those of the latter half of the seventeenth century.
Conclusion / contributions
This study expands on the scholarship pertaining to the depiction of evil in art, especially in music. It also contributes to the study of how the naissance of empirical science influenced the aesthetics of art, especially music. This, in turn, also contributes to women’s studies in that it examines the correlation between evil, the depiction of evil, and the fashioning of non-normative women, those that did not fit the prevailing ideas of the proper behaviors of women in the household subservient to a husband. This study
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adds to the scholarship pertaining to aesthetics of early-modern England, and it expands on the scholarship pertaining to the transition between the medieval paradigm of scholarship that is supported by the unquestionable belief in the authority of ancient writings—scholasticism—to one that believed that knowledge was only valid if it had been observed in first person.
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CHAPTER 2
EVIL IN JACOBEAN STAGE MUSIC If the idea of goodness is represented by everything that is ordered, then the concept of evil is represented by disorder. This binary of good/order versus evil/disorder has led to the association of all evil things as chaotic and disordered. Manifestations of such disorder are used to represent evil in music. Ancient philosophers like Pythagoras and Plato used mathematical ratios to represent the ordering of the spheres of the universe. The seven spheres of the universe are represented by simple ratios such as 1:2,
2:3, 3:4. These ratios also represent the harmony found in music. 1:2 represents the octave, 2:3 the fifth, and 3:4 the fourth. Since simple ratios representing the consonances in music were made up of four numbers (1, 2, 3, 4), this 4-number limit was determined to be a manifestation of perfection in the universe. The larger ratios that represented the remaining intervals progressed towards more complex ratios and mathematically unlimited possibilities, which produced sounds that were not considered pleasing and were deemed to be noise. Whereas the consonant intervals, the octave, fifth, and fourth, were limited.30 The number four also represented the four elements (fire, air, water, and earth) which historically were thought to be the building blocks of the universe.
It was the perceived simplicity of these elements that brought about the early understanding of the orderliness of the universe. Even if the first four numbers were to be added together, they equal the number ten (1+2+3+4=10). It is this single number that represents the whole universe in the world of the Pythagoreans.31 So, it is easy to see that the ancients perpetuated the idea that the simpler something is—the more something can
30 Suzanne June Leppe, “The Devil’s Music: A Literary Study of Evil and Music,” ( PhD diss., University of California, 1978) , 5. 31 Leppe, “Devil’s Music” 6 23
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be represented as a singularity—the more perfect, or harmonious the thing is. Later, during the Christian Era anything that was ordered by God was thought to be good, as told in the creation story found in the book of Genesis; ordered here meaning both commanded into being and put into its proper place. In the order in which God placed the universe, the last creature to be made was man, the singular creature, ordered to rule the creatures of the world and maintain the garden of Eden, or earth, deemed the most perfect and best creature. It was also believed that God created a hierarchy in which man is superior over the animals, which in turn are superior over the plants, which are superior to the minerals of the earth. Woman, made from man, was believed to be subordinate to man. This belief was supported by the Christian belief that Jesus himself came to earth as a man. In early-modern Europe, anything outside of the hierarchy so instituted by God found in the Christian Bible was thought of as disordered or evil.
If it is the simple singularity that represents the good in the universe, it is the complex duality that represents evil. Anything that does not follow the simple order of the universe is thought of as being evil. For instance, beauty in nature was represented by the orderliness of the way nature works together to sustain God’s creation: the minerals of the earth give sustenance to the plants that in turn feed the animals, which in turn feed humankind. Nature is ordered and therefore beautiful and good; ugliness and disorder could only appear in nature if God’s will be somehow changed or warped. For example, if a man were to start eating dirt for sustenance, or if plants started eating the flesh of animals. (If this were a natural thing Body Snatchers would not be scary.) Norms and behaviors were also thus affected. A natural, good behavior would be something that was
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ordered by God. An example would be walking on two feet, such that a human adult crawling on their hands and knees would be disordered.
Depiction of Witches on the Stage
Turning to the Devil, the Christian master of all evil is seldom portrayed on the stage. Instead evil is more often portrayed by characters that represent him, including animals or people that are understood to be associated with the demonic. This may relate to the taboo subject that was the devil and all things related such that having an actor appear on stage as the fallen angel himself would have been seen as dangerous. This could also be true about portraying God on the stage. If God does have a part in a play or opera He is usually represented by the “Voice of God” and not God himself. This also stems from the belief that if a mortal were to see God in person they would expire. It would have been safer to portray characters that had a close association with him instead.
A character that has been closely related to the devil throughout the centuries has been the witch.
In modern culture the concept of witches and witchcraft has been highly influenced by visual media including television shows and movies. Witches are usually portrayed as ugly, with warts, green skin, wearing a black cloak with a pointy hat. They cackle, ride broomsticks, brew potions, have black cats, cast spells, and may eat children or be gifted with eternal youth. There is also occasionally the icon of the good witch who teaches the antagonist a lesson and helps those in need with magic. It is with these attributes that modern audiences recognize the portrayal of a witch.
Modern concepts of witches are influenced by the past, especially by ideas from the seventeenth century, a period in which many of these attributes were created and
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agreed upon by both church and society. According to Brian P. Levak the “major components of the cumulative concept of witchcraft” are “the pact with the devil, the sabbath, flight. Then associated with flight is metamorphosis.”32 Witches are usually portrayed as ugly, with animal familiars, being able to fly through the air either by applying “flying ointment” to a broom stick or their bodies, having made a pact with the devil, they have the ability to change their form into animals, they engage in infanticide and cannibalism, cause harm to other people, can cast spells or curses, participate in the demonic sabbath with other witches that includes dancing with the devil, and they were associated with a witches coven (which emphasizes plurality that is associated with evil).
It is through these cumulative concepts that early-modern audiences were able to recognize the characters on stage as witches.
There are many attributes that are related to witches but the most common were a pact with the devil, convening for the witches sabbath, and flight. It was usually these attributes that were either portrayed on the stage, either in action or in reference to them.
According to Levack a pact with the devil was something “resembling a legal contract” where the “devil provided wealth or some other form of earthly power in exchange for service and, of course, the custody of the human party’s soul after death.”33 The service was to be able to enact revenge or to satisfy their desire for worldly riches, “their whole practice is either to hurt men and their goods, or what they possess, for satisfying of their cruel minds in the former; or else by the wreck, in whatsoever sort, of any whom God will permit them to have power of, to satisfy their greedy desire in the last point.”34 A
32 Levack, Chapter 2. 33 Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, (New York: Longman, 1987) 32 34 Donald Tyson, The Demonology of King James I, trans. into modern English, (Woodbury: Llewellyn Publications, 2011), 116. 26
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good example is the three witches from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. They had no desire to help Macbeth they only prophesied that he would become king to wreak havoc on his and his family’s life. Macbeth can be seen as more of a story about the revenge of the witches than of Macbeth himself. After the pact was signed, it was thought that the Devil would touch the witch causing a mark to appear that was called a witch’s mark. The witch’s, or devil’s, mark was a hidden teat upon which their familiar would suckle. It was also this mark that church officials looked for when trying to condemn a witch. Older women usually had multiple odd marks on their bodies and any odd mark located on a woman was often considered to be a witch’s/devil’s mark. This resulted in both the real-world theater of the persecution of so-called witches and the depiction of such on the contemporary stage.
The second attribute was the Witch’s sabbath. The sabbath was where the witches
“worshiped [the Devil] collectively engaged in a number of blasphemous, amoral and obscene rites.”35 It was also at these sabbaths that “saying the Nicene Creed backwards while the celebrant stood on his head, the use of such expressions as ‘Go in the name of the Devil,” the blessing of the congregation with a black aspergillum, the consecration of a host made of either offal, turnip or other black substance, and the singing of the choir in
‘hoarse, gruff, and tune less voices.”36 In the seventeenth century it was thought that the witches convened in churches in a mockery to Christians.37 While convening in the church the devil would occupy the pulpit and their form of adoration was “to be the kissing of his hinder parts.” This was in imitation of God, a ploy that the devil uses often,
35 Levack, The Witch-Hunt ,35 36 Levack, 37 37 Tyson, Demonology,117 27
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where in the meeting of Moses with God on the mount he could only see God’s “hinder parts” because of the brightness of his glory.38 Because of the witch’s sabbath witches are almost always portrayed as in a coven. In Macbeth there are three witches that greet
Macbeth and Banquo in the first act. Scenes portraying witches often start out with a single witch calling to their coven to join them in casting a spell. This also happens later in the century in Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. The possible reason for this is the belief in seeing duality as evil. Where God, being a single entity, creates perfect and ordered phenomena, witches need more than one to create imperfect and disordered phenomena.
The third attribute is the ability of the which to fly to attend the sabbath. Flight
“provided an explanation for the ability of whites to attend secret nocturnal gatherings in remote areas without their absence form home being detected.”39 The witches also had the ability to transform into screech owls and steal babies. These were often referred to as night-witches who would swoop down to capture babies to devour.40 Witches were often times depicted as flying on a broom stick which was primarily a symbol of the female sex and the broom, an object used in fertility rights, was a phallic symbol. King James I had this to say about witches and flight:
For they say that diverse means they may convene, either to the adoring of their Master, or to the putting into practice any service of his committed unto their charge. One way is natural, which is natural riding, going or sailing, at what hour their Master comes and advises them; and this way may be easily believed. Another way is somewhat more strange, and yet is it possible to be true: which is, by being carried by the force of the spirit which is their conductor, either above the earth or above the sea, swiftly to the place where they are to meet; which I am persuaded to be likewise possible, in respect that Habbacuc was carried by the angel in that form to the den where Daniel lay (Apocrypha of Bel and the Dragon).41
38 Tyson, 117 39 Levack, The Witch-Hunt,41 40 Levack, 41 41 Tyson, Demonology, 121 28
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Here James I is commenting that witches can be like the rest of us and travel using horses or boats, but they also are able to travel in a way that is “strange” or, because of its unnaturalness, which is disordered and therefore evil and more fitting to witches, they are
“carried by the force of the spirit… above the earth” in other words, flying. James I justified this in relating it to the ability of Habakkuk, through the help of an angel, to fly to the lion’s den. Another way witches could fly was cloaked in invisibility by the devil and his minions seen only among themselves.42 Similar to changing into owls witches could also change into “a little beast or fowl” they then can “pierce through whatsoever house or church,” where all the doors would be closed they could enter any opening that is easily accessed by air.43 And lastly, James I reported that witches could travel with
“their bodies lying still as in ecstasy, their sprits will be ravished out of their bodies, and be carried to such places.”
Contemporary visual depictions in the early half of the seventeenth century can be found in wood cuts representing witches and their activities, usually attached to or strongly associated with their aural and musical depictions. Examples include the woodcuts that accompanied broadside ballads, the popular published song form of the day and images that were folded and printed into books and printed scripts of the plays.
42 Tyson, 121 43 Tyson, Demonology, 122 29
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Example 2.1: Damnable Practices printed in London in 1619
Example 2.2: Witchcraft Discovered and Punished printed in London, 1682
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The first image (2.1) is from Damnable Practices printed in London in 1619, depicts three crones surrounded by typical examples of witch familiars, or creatures associated with the earth, corpses, disease, or nocturnal activities: Owl, dog, cat and rat.44 The second image (2.2) from Witchcraft Discovered and Punished printed in London depicts a dance, led by the devil, taking place around a half man-half goat figure holding a candle and broomstick possibly denoting the activities are taking place during the night.45 More witch familiars are depicted in the background and a piper playing an instrument with a large bell, possibly a shawm, can be seen seated to the left of the dance. Witches were commonly thought to sing and take part in circle dances at their sabbaths that were vigorous and athletic represented here by the extreme height of which the dancer’s legs are raised. Through the examples of wood cuts the intention of the artist of portraying the witch with familiars representing disordered activities, broom sticks representing flight, and dancing around the devil representing the witches’ pact and sabbath et al, conveys to the viewer that what is being depicted are witches.
It is with these attributes that playwrights and composers could portray their witches in a way that the audience could identify them as witches. These attributes were already common in the culture of the audience which had been disseminated through hearsay of the activities of the witches in case reports and through broadside ballads. By depicting the witches by coming from far off places to join in spellcasting and acting in ways contrary to “normal” humans the playwrights and composers are able to connect with the audience. Because of the attributes that are ingrained in the culture of the
44 “Damnable Practises of three Lincolne-shire Witches” (Oxford: printed by G. Eld for John Barnes, 1619). 45 “Witchcraft discovered and punished” (n.p., London, 1682). 31
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audience they can see that the characters who are depicted in a manner as witches to be witches. These attributes were of course then written in the music depicting witches which will be the next discussion.
Depiction of Witches in Masque
Inigo Jones (1573-1652) was an architect and stage designer for several dozen masques in collaboration with Ben Jonson has left us with many of his designs for characters. One of them depicting three witches. The example below is one of Jones’s designs for the masque Salmacida Spolia.46
46 John Peacock, The Stage Designs of Inigo Jones The European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 32
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Example 2.3: Inigo Jones’s designs for the masque Salmacida Spolia, 1640
Even though there is no design from the Masque of Queens this image closely resembles the description given by Johnson of the Dame, the head witch from the masque:
At this, the Dame entered to them, naked-armed, bare-footed, her frock tucked, her hair knotted, and folded with vipers; in her hand a torch made of a dead man’s arm, lighted; girded with a snake.47
As can be seen in the example the woman is naked-armed, (in fact naked-chested too), there are snakes coming out of her hair, snakes tied around her waist, and she is holding a
47 http://hollowaypages.com/jonson1692fame.htm p. 346 33
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snake in her right hand and a bone in the other. The sources for Johnson and Jones used for their costume design comes from a conglomerate of descriptions of different Classical characters. Atë, the Greek god of mischief, delusion, ruin, and folly described by Homer in the Iliad and Erichtho, a Thessalian witch.
In comparison, the example below is of one of the virtuous queens from The
Masque of Queens. Like the witch, she is bare-chested but in contrast to the witch the character depicts beauty, whereas the witch depicts hideousness. This is an example where evil mimics good to spoil the positive image of beauty.48
Example 2.4: Costume sketch for an unidentified Queen from "The Masque of Queens", 1609
48 Peacock, 66. 34
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The first actors were the “Queen of Great Britain, with her ladies” which took place “at
Whitehall, Feb. 2. 1609.” Because the masque was performed at court women were allowed to perform on stage therefore performed the witches’ rolls, whereas the actors depicting witches in public theaters were men because women were not permitted to perform in public allowing more of the masculinity of the witches to show through.
Depiction of Witches in Staged Music
There are two aspects of the music to consider when analyzing. The rhythm and the melody where each have their own characteristics that are descriptive of witches and where collectively enhance each other in depicting witches.
The form of this piece is that of a solo cantata that was popular in England in the beginning of the seventeenth century. The cantata consists of two sections with a dialogue section in duple time followed by a dance in triple time. These cantatas were
British composers attempt to write recitative followed by a short aria and therefore was a quasi-operatic way to conclude the scene of the play. In “Come Away Hecate!” there is a dialogue section from measures one through forty-one, then a solo section sung by
Hecate followed by the dance section starting in measure sixty-one to the end. The dance section is then repeated.
The rhythm contains devises that adds to indicate a disordered-ness of the music.
In the first section of the piece, measures1-23, there are numerous examples of rhythmic dissonance which is one of the devises used by Johnson. For example, in the first measure the entrance of the spirit, or witch, enters on an off-beat. Normally an entrance would come in either on a strong beat, beats 1 and 3, or with an anacrusis leading into the
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strong beat of the measure.49 Again in measure three, the voice enters on the weak beats creating a rhythmic dissonance by creating an accent on these beats. Another convention that Johnson uses to indicate disorder is use of the eighth note followed by a dotted- quarter note. This rhythm can be referred to as the scotch-snap which is a rhythm commonly identified with the Scottish dance genre of the Strathspey. Writing rhythms commonly found in peasant music was one way early 17th century composers indicated that what was being depicted on the stage was subordinate to courtly music since music performed by peasants was thought of as base and should be left to the simple ways of the common folk. The rest of the first section contains examples of accenting the third beat of the measure and can be found in measures 14-17, and measures 18 through 23.
In the second section, measures twenty-four through thirty-nine, there is a reoccurring rhythm of dotted-quarter, eighth that first appears in measures six and seven. Even though the dotted-quarter note falls on the strong beats of the measure the eighth note before it creates a jarring(?) effect to the listener enhanced by the intervallic leap between the notes which will be discussed more in detail later in the present chapter.
The third section, measures forty through sixty, contains a scotch-snap rhythm,
(m. 40). Even though this section does not contain as many examples of rhythmic dissonance, the melody contains intervallic dissonances. This is usually the case where if the rhythm or the melody does not contain a lot of instances of dissonance, there will be more instances in the other.
49 When speaking of beat hierarchy, I am referring to the seventeenth century notion of beat hierarchy where the first beat of the measure is the strongest, the second a weaker beat, the third strong but not as strong as the first beat, (here I use the term “medium” beat), and the fourth beat the weakest in the measure. To conclude, the beat hierarchy can be said to be: strong, weak, medium, weak. 36
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In the fourth and final section of the piece, measures 61 through 76 is in ¾ time which is significate for a triple meter is usually associated with the trinity, the three in one, which again points to a singularity which also denotes perfection. This leads to the fact that what Johnson is utilizing here would be thought of as offensive to a Christian audience. Since the characters that is singing the piece three-four time, the sacred meter, are themselves sinister and evil, in turn creates a mockery of the sacred. The devil him self the “ape of God” is being represented here. But, because it is only a mimic of goodness it still contains an imperfection. At the end of the two musical phrases the scotch-snap returns here as the quarter followed by a half note rhythm in measures 67 and
68 and again in measures 73 and 74 and repeated in measures 75 and 76.
Turning to the melodic element of the piece, Johnson used multiple indicators of musical disorder. A piece that is ordered will contain a melody that is flowing or lyrical.
The phrases have a natural ascent, or descent to a certain note, then will return to where it began from using stepwise motion. On the other hand, a melody that is disordered will be disjunct, contain leaps, or have no curve or arch to the line. It may remain on one note, in a possible mockery of Christian chant or utilize neighboring or chromatic tones.
In the first section of “Come away, Hecate” the melody contains many leaps. The first interval encountered is a fifth down to F followed by a fourth, a second, and then a fourth downward to A. The next phrase contains nothing but thirds and fifths. All the leaps, especially in the second phrase, bring to mind a trumpet tune, indicating a possible militaristic connotation, which in turn represents the masculine. Witches were represented with masculine features—unnatural women with male attributes. It was a belief that when magicians became witches their sex changed to female, but they retained
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some masculine features as with the witches in Macbeth. The witches were described as having beards by Banquo: “You should be women, and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so”. In the Jacobean period, the performance practice would have been that Hecate and her coven were played by males on the stage giving the witches a masculine appearance. Also, the piece would have to have been sung in falsetto adding to the unnaturalness of the characters. This in addition to all of the leaps in the piece created an opportunity for the performer to mar them and purposely sing them out of tune, maybe even purposely cracking the voice, which would have added more to the “ugliness” of the character.
Another section that utilize large leaps in the melody is in measures twenty through twenty-three at the phrase “I will but ‘noint, and then I mount” etc. What is also interesting here is Johnson’s use of the monotone line. In the instance found in measures
20 to 23, Johnson uses the juxtaposition of measures containing octave leaps to make the line more disjunct. In measures 24 through 32 the line for the most part does not contain any leaps except at the words “I muse, I muse” which is also found in measure thirty- four. The major third leap is imitative of a horn call which also points towards the masculinity of the witches. The horn is used in hunting, which was considered a masculine sport. Johnson also utilized text painting in this piece. In measure forty-two at the words “and now I fly,” Johnson writes a sixteenth-note assent describing the upward motion that Hecate makes as she ascends into the air. The piece contains more examples of octave leaps in measures 46, 58, and 67. To top it off, the last measure contains another instance of text painting where at the words “our height can reach,” the notes F
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and E are sung at the top of the range used in this piece, giving the actor the opportunity to perform the ending of the piece representing the atrociousness of the witches.
In conclusion, the piece “Come Away Hecate!” is a prime example of music written for witches in a staged production in the early seventeenth century. Two of the three attributes that Levack considered associated with witches are represented: flight and the witches’ sabbath. In fact, the piece is about witches flying great distances to revel in the streets to entice young men into having sexual relations with them; to create chaos across the land. In turn the audience, being familiar with these attributes, recognized the characters on stage as witches, through the lyrics, rhythm, and melody of the piece, as well as through the potential of masculinized performance practice suggested above. It is clearly apparent in “Come Away Hecate!” that witches of the early seventeenth century are represented by a melody that is disordered and disjunct shown by dissonant rhythms that accent weak beats of the measure, or are reminiscent of music of a lower class, and a melody that is reminiscent of the hunt representing masculinity and can be degraded by singing in the falsetto by male actors.
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Example 2.5: “Come away, Hecate!”
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Lyrics
Sprit Come away, Come away, Hecate, Hecate Oh, come away! Hecate I come, I come, I come With all the speed I may With all the speed I may Where’s Stadlin? Sprit Here Hecate Where’s Puckle? Sprit Here and Hippo too And Hellwain too; We lack but you Come away Make up the count. Hecate I will but ‘noint, And then I mount, And then I mount, And then I mount. Sprit There’s one comes down to fetch his due, A kis, a cull, a sip of blood; And why thou stay’st so long, I muse, I muse, Since the air’s so sweet and good Hecate Oh, art thou come? Sprit All goes well to our delight: Either come or else refuse, refuse. Hecate Now I’m furnish’d for the flight Now I go, and now I fly, Malkin may sweet sprite and I; Oh what a dainty pleasure is this To ride in the air When the moon shines fair; And feast and sing, and toy and kis Over seas, our mistress fountains;
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Over steeples, towers and turrets, We fly by night, ‘mongst troops of sprits
(All) No ring of bells to our ears sounds, No howls, nor yelps of hounds; No, not the noise of water’s breach, Nor cannon’s throat our height can reach.
Rhythm m.1 Off beat entrance m.2 same phrase m.3 voice entrance on the weak beats 2 and 4 m.4 weak beat entrance m.5 Hecate entrance m.6 “I come” repeat on eighth dotted-quarter four times mm. 8,9 eighth noes with length and pitch accents m. 10 and of four, anacrusis m. 11 short long eighth dotted-quarter imitative of the scotch-snap found in the Strathspey mm 12, 13 same rhythm as in m. 11 repeated at a higher pitch mm. 14, 15 eighth notes to accent on medium beat 3 mm. 16, 17 asemetrical phrase with emphasis on medium beat 3 mm. 18-23 accents on medium beat 3 m. 24 Sprits sing m. 27 quarter, quarter, half note – accent on medium beat 3 mm. 29,30 Rhythm like m.6, 7 as in a mockery? m. 32 end of phrase m. 33 Hecate same dotted-quarter, eighth rhythm as in m. 6, 7. m. 34 same eighth quarter as m. 6,7 m. 35 sprit response m. 38, 39 end of phrase extended awkwardly to end on medium beat 3 with repletion “craziness” m. 40 Hecate, scotch-snap rhythm mm. 42-60 Hecate, describing flight mm. 54-58,60 m. 61 change to ¾ time mm. 67,68 scotch-snap mm. 73,74 quarter half dotted-half rhythm mm. 75, 76 previous rhythm repeated. mm. 61-76 repeated
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CHAPTER 3
EVIL ON THE REFORMATION STAGE
The English Civil War
The causes of the English Civil War are complex, but a simple, often-discussed answer is that religion, in the form of constant battles between different versions of
Protestantism caused enough ideological strife to split the kingdom. King James I believed in the Divine Right of Kings, in other words that because of his birthright and the anointing at his coronation (which were understood as the “magic rights” or ritual of religion that made him king), he was chosen by God to rule Great Britain and Ireland.
James I’s son Charles I believed this even more so and therefore believed that he was not answerable to the parliament. In fact, Charles I dismissed parliament in 1629 for eleven years. It was called the “personal rule,” if you were a royalist, or the “eleven years of tyranny” if you supported the parliament. In 1635 Charles I ordered that every citizen pay the “ship money”, which was a tax that helped the upkeep of the navy. Charles I believed that because the navy’s protection benefited the realm, everyone had to pay the tax. But this tax was only to pay for the wars that had taken place earlier in the century. In addition to that, Charles I ordered that a new prayer book be used in the church service, which damaged his relationship with the Scotish. In 1641 Parliament made requests before considering Charles’s demands for more money. They put to trial and executed
Thomas Wentworth, first Earl of Strafford (aka “Black Tom the Tyrant”) who was
Charles’s head advisor, ended the “ship money” tax, and argued that parliament should never be dismissed without parliament’s assent. Because Charles I thought that
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parliament’s requests were inimical, he would not agree to their terms. In response in
1642, Charles I went to Westminster with 300 soldiers to arrest five of his most virulent critics in parliament. The five members had been warned and were not in parliament that day, but it brought up the question of the safety of the members of parliament against the king. Charles realized that his relationship with parliament was irrevocably broken and six days after his failed attempt to arrest the MPs he left London for Oxford to raise an army and the civil war began.
After many battles in which parliamentary forces were more successful in controlling the majority of Great Britain, Charles I was executed for treason on January
30, 1949. A great groan was supposedly heard in the crowd when Charles was beheaded.
Some in the crowd believed that, because of the king’s divine right to be king, was going to be saved from death by a miracle. Some audience members even stood under Charles’s body to catch his blood, which they thought was sacred and held powers to heal the sick.
The myth of the divine right of the king was demolished at the moment of the regicide. A king had never been publicly beheaded before; they were exiled or put under house arrest. When the king was finally beheaded and there was no miraculous rescue from God the myth was finally disproven. With this myth of the divine right broken, the most visible and tangible myth to the people for the king, all other myths, like that of the pope representing God’s will on earth, had the potential to be broken.
During the Commonwealth, Oliver Cromwell, who lead the parliament against
Charles I, became Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. He was urged to take the crown and proclaim himself king, although he resisted this he did start acting like a king. When he died in 1658, his son Robert Cromwell, who was picked by his father to lead the
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commonwealth, did not have the character to lead and fled to France. After these events, parliament felt that the only way to stabilize the country was to ask Charles I’s son,
Charles II to return from the Netherlands to rule as king. On Charles II’s thirtieth birthday he triumphantly marched to London from Dover along flower strewn streets amidst crowds of supporters who were, after the strict rule of Cromwell, ready to welcome back their king.
It was in the environment of the Restoration that the Royal Society of London was created in 1662 with a charter by King Charles II. The society was formed to discuss the ideas of Francis Bacon. Thomas Sprat’s (1635-1713) History of the Royal Society of
London written in 1667 better explains why the Royal Society was formed. In Sprat’s history, which was written to promote the society to a larger audience, the conflict in the restoration toward the creation of a new science, a science that did not depend on conjecture, and could be easily contradicted is apparent. Sprat emphasized that to find the truth of nature one had to allow nature to speak for itself. In other words, through the direct observation of natural phenomena the workings of nature can be discovered.
William T. Lynch examined Sprat’s history and details how Sprat promoted the society for the new post-Commonwealth England. Lynch writes:
In Sprat’s History of the Royal Society of London, we find an account of the experimental natural philosopher as a model philosopher and citizen, an identity well suited to traditional English moderation, Sprat envisioned a restoration of English moderation following the onslaught of Interregnum zealotry and dogmatism, a restoration made possible by attending to sensible things rather than protracted doctrinal debates.50
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Lynch explains that Sprat felt that the tendency to say things to be true without the consideration of evidence or even the opinions of others was part of the philosophy that led to the Civil War and the Commonwealth. As a result, Sprat believed that taking things in moderation and “attending to sensible things”, i.e. things that can be observed, a true
English trait of moderation can be achieved. To be moderate in things was to be a true
Englishman, and a conservative Englishman, as well: “For King and Parliament.”
Sprat also promoted the Society’s ideals as a philosophy of mankind and not of any individual society, “… it was only a willingness to mix and match the best of various perspectives that would ensure ‘a far more calm and safe knowledge.’”51 Lynch notes that
Sprat continued to emphasize that the “Royal Society differed from all other contending parties insofar as it attended directly to natural and manufactured things themselves rather than to verbal quibbles.”52 And, the objectivity of the Royal Society, “treated the natural world as speaking for itself,” setting apart “the interpretations of the philosophers who investigate it,” which was understood to create results that were not debatable.53 Debating the results of a narrow confined mathematical deduction lead to the destruction of the truth since it led away from it. Sprat’s history promoted the Royal Society as new and improved from the practices that led to debate and uncertain knowledge of nature by the old philosophers. The empirical practices of the society, with its results objectively observed in nature, were undebatable and led to concrete truths. This was both a statement of faith in logic, rather than religion, and a political statement condemning
51 Lynch p.164 52 Lynch p.167 53 Lynch p.173. 47
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zealous religious beliefs held by radicals and Catholics alike. The truths of the Royal
Society led to the decline in the belief in magic and myths.
Bacon’s new philosophy, promoted by the Royal Society, led to a new way of thinking for citizens of England. Keith Thomas writes about this in his monograph
Religion and the Decline of Magic. Even though there was a new technology being introduced to society the changes that occurred were mental in character. As Thomas writes, “In many different spheres of life the period saw the emergence of a new faith in the potentialities of human initiative.”54 Thomas concludes:
We are, therefore, forced to the conclusion that men emancipated themselves form these magical beliefs without necessarily having devised any effective technology with which to replace them. In the seventeenth century they were able to take this step because magic was ceasing to be intellectually acceptable, and because their religion taught them to try self-help before invoking supernatural aid. 55
Because Protestantism was a “self-help” religion, people started second guessing the
“supernatural aid” of the Catholic church. It was the artisans and manufactures who lived in the cities who led in this belief. The carpenter made the furniture and not the furniture the carpenter. Thomas writes, “Their trades made them aware that success or failure depended upon their unaided efforts, and they despised the substitute consolations of magic.”56 With people realizing that the myths of the Catholic church, the mass and beliefs in transubstantiation, the intercession of saints, and the Pope and King as Gods representative on earth, could be potentially disproven by the objective study of nature, other beliefs in the supernatural, such as magic, could also be disproven.
54 Thomas p. 661 55 Thomas p.663. 56 Thomas p.663 48
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In the second half of the seventeenth century, due to the decline of belief in the supernatural, the representation of witches changed from the three attributes of witches in music (pact with devil, flight, sabbath, masculinity) mentioned in chapter 2, to a representation of the threat of Catholicism. The most threatening thing to the United
Kingdom in the latter half of the seventeenth century was the possibility of the rule of a
Catholic king and the possibility of this happening continued until the defeat of Charles
III at Culloden in April 1746. Because of this Catholics, always feared as an evil threat to
Protestantism, were even more feared and despised. Composers often wrote their music representing evil in a “Catholic” way incorporating either Roman Chant style or later
Italian and French styles; both countries were Catholic and could be used to represent evil and disorder in their compositions, although Italy as the seat of the Pope was considered to be more noxious.
Through the novel experiments of The Royal Society of London the knowledge of the world changed in ways that led to the skepticism of magic and myth of the latter half of the century and beyond. By letting nature speak for itself the true workings of the universe were found out. No longer were phenomena explained by simple comparisons,
(e.g. Cheese is yellow, and the moon is yellow, therefore the moon is made of cheese). In restoration England a new definition of Englishness came about sweeping away the older, pre-civil war English world of conjecture and assumptions. This led to a new Englishman who knew the true understanding of the universe, where rationality influenced every aspect of life and even the understanding of religion’s irrational beliefs were dismissed.
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The theater reflected beliefs in the real world. As one of the results of the influence of empirical thought was a skepticism towards the supernatural this was soon depicted on the stage. Plank writes:
Rational skepticism shown by Pepys would even find a theatrical voice. In Shadwell's 'English opera' Psyche (1675), Nicander, the suitor of Psyche, dismisses the dire prophecies of the oracle as a sham, and in doing so may well have echoed the skepticism of the audience concerning things magical: ‘Be not by this Imposture, Sir, betray'd, By this dull Idol which the Priests have made; Too many Cheats are in the Temple found, Their fraud does more than piety abound; They make the senseless Image speak with ease What e’r themselves shall please.’
Plank’s example shows that theater, both through play content and through prologues and epilogues, was an outlet for rational ideas. In turn, the Catholic faith became something that could be used to represent evil on the late seventeenth-century stage. The reasons causing the association are: Catholicism’s perceived irrational devotions and beliefs, especially the belief in transubstantiation, a continued threat of a Catholic king on the throne, the English avoiding the absolutism that prevailed during the first half of the century under the rule of Kings James I and Charles I, and that the pre-commonwealth notions of sorcery that had been disproven through science. Because of the newly- strengthened association of the Catholic faith with evil, the depiction of evil on the stage, including witches, were now being portrayed with Catholic attributes. The supernatural started to recede in favor of Catholic imagery. For instance, dialogues between the congregation and the celebrant were imitated in witches’ scenes. The scenes taking place in a cavern could be satirizing Catholic churches, which were described as being basically pagan. Similarly, the music became more Italianate because Italians were the
“bad” Catholics, and Italy was where the pope resided. Even though the French were
Catholic, they were not regarded as being as evil as the Italians because of the close
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associations that King Charles II and his brother James had with France, which was a refuge for them when they were in exile.
One of the ways that evil and the supernatural was represented on the stage was by the association with the supernatural with music. Steven Plank writes:
Restoration audiences fully expected their theatre to be a musical one, as the amount of surviving theatre music attests, but they required that it be, for the most part, rationally appropriate. The prominence of supernatural scenes reflects this desire. Such scenes occasion not only music per se, but 'fantastic' music, powerful enough to charm within the drama and without.57
Plank is stating that for there to be music in the restoration dramas it had to be introduced in a rational way. This was done by writing for characters that would mimetically sing because singing was a way to relate the otherness of the supernatural to the audience. One restoration drama that uses this device is the play Rinaldo and Armida written by John
Dennis with music by John Eccles in 1699. The tragedy tells the story between the crusader Rinaldo and the sorceress Armida who attempts to keep Rinaldo from completing his quest of liberating Jerusalem, but in the meantime falls in love with
Rinaldo. To aid Armida in hindering Rinaldo she calls upon her sprits and fairies to distract him. Rinaldo and Armida never sing in the production instead it is Armida’s
“sprits” and “nymphs” who do the singing. This also proves that evil is no longer irrational, the antithesis of rationality and therefore the absence of good which is evil.
Instead evil is now represented rationally through Catholic and ritualistic qualities assimilating what was once taboo and shunned to something that was represented equally with the protagonist. In the beginning of the seventeenth century the antagonist was represented as completely opposite of the protagonist, as is seen in the anti-masque, which were intentionally written to contrast with the masque proper and in post-
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reformation England the antagonist and protagonist are both shown as equals. This is proven by the fact that both Rinaldo and Armida are speaking roles only. It is only when magic is needed Armida’s evilness is enacted through her sprits and nymphs separating her from the evilness by a degree.
Dido & Aeneas
Purcell also used music to represent the supernatural in Dido and Aeneas libretto by Nahum Tate and music by Henry Purcell written in 1689. For example, the Sorceress is the only character in the opera to have a recitative that is accompanied by the orchestra resulting in a “distinctive sound” that “imparts a mysterious quality to the Sorceress’s utterances.”58 Another similarity between the Eccles’s Rinaldo and Armida and Purcell’s
Dido and Aeneas is the use of sprits or elves (as is the case in the Purcell) to separate the witch from the action of the magic by a degree. As stated above, Eccles uses sprits and nymphs, and in Purcell’s opera the characters causing the magic to happen, (the witches rarely cause the evil to ensue, they are only the instigators, they call the sprits into action and do not perform the action themselves) are the cupids causing Dido and Aeneas to fall in love, and the “elf” in the form of Mercury that causes Aeneas to leave Dido.
In Dido and Aeneas, the irrational and other is represented by the sorceress, her witch minions with fairies and fates. Even though the witches represent evil and mockery that is associated with the devil, this was implemented to represent the continuity of
English theater and connect it to the anti-masque traditions of pre-reformation England.
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In Purcell’s opera, the witches take on a more psychological meaning. Roger Savage explains this new role of the witch in his article in Early Music:
It could be argued in fact that, leaving aside Aeneas and his buffo counterpart the tenor-solo sailor, all the characters in the opera are really personified aspects of Dido: Belinda and the Second Woman projections of her yearning towards erotic fulfillment, the Sorceress a formidable anti-self embodying all her insecurities and apprehension of disaster contingent on her involving herself in any deep personal relationship, and the two solo witches nightmarish shadows of Belinda and the Second Woman.59
If the opera is to be taken as an allegory for King William leaving Queen Mary for continental wars, then Dido’s insecurities and apprehension could be understood as fear against evil. The similarities between the Sorceress and Dido in the opera go farther.
There are three witches and there are three characters associated with Dido. Also, Belinda is Dido’s blood sister, whereas the other two other witches are the Sorceress’s coven sisters.60 The Sorceress calls upon her elf to dissuade Aeneas from staying with Dido and to leave while Dido and her companions call upon cupid to persuade Aeneas and his companions to stay and fall in love with Dido.
Another consideration of Dido and Aeneas is its pedagogical intent. The primer of the opera took place in a fashionable boarding school for “Young Gentlewomen” where the opera could be used to educate the women about relationships. In act one of the opera
Dido is lamenting to her sister the fact that she is has been widowed and is now alone—a situation that the gentlewomen could easily find themselves in the future. Aeneas arrives and is told by her sister that an opportunity to lift her spirits has presented itself and that she should take advantage of; an allegory for any attractive young man that would arouse
59 Savage in Price, p.261 60 Belinda as Dido’s sister comes from the Dramatis personae of the opera; see Curtis Price, ed. Dido and Aeneas (NY: Norton, 1986), 82. 53
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the interests of a woman left alone by her husband. When Dido and Aeneas meet, they quickly fall in love and commit fornication in a nearby cave, which is the pedagogical crux of the opera. The next act presents the witches, the anti-Dido, and could represent the guilt that Dido feels for fornicating and sullying the memory of her husband therefore wishing that Aeneas and what he represents (the guilt and fornication) would be gotten rid of.
In the second scene of act two Aeneas returns from a hunting expedition; a common symbol for masculinity. Aeneas shows Dido his “bending spear”, a phallic symbol, with the impaled head of a beast that could be interpreted as representing the coitus. Immediately a storm breaks and the characters are forced to take shelter, which could be interpreted as Dido’s ensuing distrust of Aeneas. The Sorceress’s elf in the guise of Mercury tells Aeneas that Jove commands him to leave Dido. He tells Dido and confesses his love for her. That he would rather stay and anger the gods than leave. Dido at this point realizes that she has soiled the memory of her dead husband and tells Aeneas to leave. Dido’s realization represents her turning away from sin she committed and the need for absolution, but her guilt is too much to bear and she ends up dying of a broken heart. In conclusion, the lesson of the opera would be to warn young women against fornication and the guilt and sadness that results from it.
The musical conventions that Purcell used in composing his Dido and Aeneas to convey evil, death and sadness are an important component of these depictions.
Throughout Purcell’s oeuvre several conventions are used but there are three that are used in Dido that are the easiest to recognize. The first is the use of the key C minor to
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signify death and sadness and the second one would be the use of a descending chromatic ground bass. The third convention is the use of F minor in the Witches’ scene in Dido.
The first convention, the use of C minor, is found in the first act of Dido where
Dido is lamenting her situation in life. Her recitative and most of the music in the first half of the scene is in C minor. A key that is also used in Music for the Funeral of Queen
Mary, written in 1695 and is another one of Purcell’s famous pieces. The use of C minor in both these pieces can only point to Purcell’s connection of the key of C minor with death. In the funeral music it is associated with the death of Queen Mary II and in Dido the possible death of Dido’s husband. It could also be a foreshadowing of Dido’s own death at the end of the opera.
The second convention that Purcell uses is the use of a descending chromatic ground. The chromatic ground is found as the bass for Dido’s lament in act III, ii. The descending chromatic line was a common practice in the baroque era that was used to portray sadness and despair. It is used fittingly for the lament for Dido is lamenting her future and her despair for having soiled her husband’s memory. The ground is in triple time and is quite simple starting on G3 and descending through 5 measures to the octave
G2. (Ex 3.1)
Another place that Purcell utilized the descending ground bass in in the semi-opera The
Fairy Queen, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream written in 1692. In the piece The Plaint, a descending ground bass is used. (Ex.3.2)
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Example 3.1: “When I am laid in Earth”, mm.1-8
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Example 3.2: “O Let me Weep”, mm.1-9
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The ground is in D minor and starts on D4 and instead of a direct chromatic descent to the octave below it consists of a descent alternating between seconds and thirds. The lyrics talk about the departure of a loved one that will never be seen again.
Lyrics:
O, Let me weep! Forever let me weep! My eyes no more shall welcome sleep. I’ll hide me from the sight of day And sigh my soul away O, let me weep! Forever let me weep! He’s gone his loss deplore And I shall never see him more.
As Dido is lamenting her future departure the character is lamenting the departure of their lover; both deal with the same subject more or less.
The third convention is Purcell’s the use of F minor in the witches’ scene in Dido.
F minor is not a common key found in Purcell’s works and may be unique to the composition. One reason that the key of F minor was used is, having four flats in its key signature and being played in quarter-comma mean-tone temperament, it would have a disagreeable character to the listener. In quarter-comma temperament the keys that contain more accidentals become less in tune, or contains fewer pure intervals. This is the case with F minor. In quarter-comma temperament the sharps and flats are two different notes unlike equal temperament where they are enharmonic. When tuning the temperament usually the accidentals that are chosen are C-sharp, E-flat, F-sharp, G-sharp, and B-flat.
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Example 3.3: Circle of Fifths with Quarter-comma Meantone Distribution
To create the pure thirds that the temperament is known for the sharps are tuned flatter than equal temperament and the flats are tuned sharper than equal temperament. It is when these keys are used for their counter parts is when the tuning fails. Unless the key is split allowing two different strings, or pipes, to be chosen, the result will almost always be undesirable. In the key of F minor, the relative key of A-flat major, four flats are found in the key signature and only two of those flats are found on the keyboard, E-flat and B- flat. The other two flats, A-flat and D-flat are tuned “flatter” than desired because they are tuned for their counterparts, G-sharp and C-sharp. This also becomes a problem when playing in the key of F minor for the three main chords of the key, the tonic, subdominant, and dominant, contain the two flats that are not found on a typical quarter- comma tempered keyboard making them out of tune. Perhaps Purcell employed the out- of-tune-ness of F minor to help convey the ugliness of the witches. The use of quarter- comma temperament is often overlooked in analyzing pieces because of the unfamiliarity of performing in the temperament. The ability to perform in the temperaments used
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during the time of the composition adds a different perspective on the intentions of the composer.
A direct comparison between Dido and the Sorceress that supports the theory that the witch is an anti-Dido is the way Purcell constructed the form of act III, i after the sailors’ dance, and act III, ii. In act III, i, the Sorceress is singing of Dido’s imminent death and the witches achieving their goal of bringing the demise of Dido. And in act III, ii Dido sings her lament and dies. The way that the scenes are constructed is by starting with a recitative followed by a solo in the form of AAB, then a chorus that is repeated.
Another interesting connection is the key. The witches’ music is in the key of B-flat major which is the relative key of D minor in which Dido sings her lament. Also, the fact that the scenes follow each other highlights a connection between the Sorceress and Dido.
These scenes are also the last scenes that the characters appear in and make their final statement. By writing the same form for both the final scenes shows that Purcell is placing the same importance on the characters. In Purcell’s mind the Sorceress is just as important as Dido. Whereas earlier plays and masques the witch would have had more of a secondary role in the play.
Both the sorceress and Dido sing their final statements in a binary form related to aria forms that were quickly becoming the backbone of Italian opera. The Arcadian
Academy in Rome started Opera Seria and its main vocal style the Da Capo aria, as an effort toward creating a stylized musical form of emotional expression. In using a binary form for his main character’s arias, Purcell was continuing his Italianate experimentation, beyond the idea of opera, which could be linked back to the masque, toward a more immediately recognizable Italian musical style. For Purcell this represented new,
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fashionable music, like his sonatas “after the Italian style.” For many of his intellectual audience members such as John Evelyn or Roger North, these arias would have been a clear nod to Italian, even popish musical invention. French musicality was normative, but the use of Italian musicality is a reference to the exotic Other, even Catholicism. With this in mind, such a choice for these two powerful arias, representative of the women’s power—the sorceress to control “spirits” and Dido’s power over her own death—is important: it places them musically in a special, other space, away from the norm.
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CHAPTER 4
CONCLUSION This study has considered the portrayal of evil, mainly witches and demons, on the British stage across the seventeenth century. It is important to not only notice that this depiction changed over time, but to try to understand why evil changed its face from something real and terrifying to something spectacular and laughable. It is in seventeenth-century England’s shifting relationship with religion and science that one finds the answer. At the beginning of the century, England was still in the Renaissance with a leader, King James I, who fervently believed in demons and devils; his reign promoted the continuation of witch hunts and persecution that had been sweeping across
Europe since the 1400s. This began to change, however, by mid-century as new philosophical ideas about the nature of humankind were debated amongst the literati.
Parliament asserted itself against the personal rule of King Charles I, demanding to be heard and sparked the rebellion that would become the English Civil War: king against parliament, Cavaliers versus Roundheads. In the end, the king lost his head and the belief in the divine right of kings, along with many other faith-based superstitions, lost ground.
The Restoration of the monarchy brought King Charles II back from exile in France and the Hague where he had been immersed in new fashions and learning. He allowed for the establishment of the Royal Society to study natural philosophy, which could help to remove the superstitions and zealotry of the past.
As chapter two made clear, witches and related demons in the early part of the century were truly feared and were depicted as frightening specters. They were related to religion, but mainly with continued beliefs in paganism or satanism that swirled around
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their perceived relationship with the devil. James I made this relationship clear in his
Daemonologie that relied upon earlier texts, including Scott’s Discoverie of Witchcraft.61
Witches, they maintained, had certain unholy qualities given to them by the devil: they could fly on broomsticks and travel large distances to meet their covens for sabbath, they could magically enter any building, and they could force people into unholy acts. They were often considered to be ugly or disfigured, with a masculine appearance, and were believed to eat children. This is how they were depicted on the stage.
Both in the public theaters, like the Globe or the Blackfriars, and in the private masquing entertainments at court, witches, demons, and sprites would often appear.
When they did, as in the famous scenes in Macbeth with the three witches gathered around the cauldron, they were ominous and evil. Their chanting has forever stayed in the public consciousness as synonymous with and as a harbinger of great tragedy: “Double, double, toil and trouble….”62 This is not thought of as singing in the modern sense, but this chanting recitation would have been heard by seventeenth-century audiences as a perversion of Christian chant, related also to Catholicism. For Thomas Middleton’s more exciting scene from the play The Witch, lutenist-songwriter Robert Johnson composed
“Come away, Hecate.” Here the witches cavort to more fashionable music, but their unholy relationships are foregrounded in their dialogic musical relationship. Like other musical dialogues of the period, they begin in duple time to allow for more declamatory style, but then shift to triple near the end. This has the effect in this piece of allowing characters to call to one another and meet, and then to enjoy a maliciously gleeful dance.
61 James Daemonologie and Scott’s Discoverie of Witchcraft. 62 William Shakespeare, Macbeth: IV.i. 63
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These are two very different scenes of witches, with very different music, but what is similar about them is the depiction of witches as realistic, scary, and in keeping with the religious literature of the period.
Chapter 3 discussed the change that developed at the point of the English Civil
War and its aftermath. The Royal Society was established early in the Restoration of the monarchy to dispel the controversies of the recent past by allowing intelligent men to debate and study anything except politics and religion. The Royal Society was not the only place that new ideas were discussed. The Restoration also coincided with the establishment and proliferation of coffeehouses in England, which were seen as “little universities” where people, mostly men, would go to discuss all the latest news. Many people discussed these new ideas and were convinced that older beliefs and ignorance had not only allowed for the belief in monsters and witches but had also caused the monstrosity of the Civil War. Empirical evidence showed that people could not fly and that earlier belief in witches’ power was misguided; new skepticism argued that the exciting expulsions of demons from the early 1600s were just spectacle that had enforced belief. Now, at the end of the century, that spectacle would be put to good use for entertainment purposes.
Ironically, in an age when the belief in their power was waning, witches became more centralized in plays and operas. No longer the fearful creatures of the past, they could take center stage and, using new stage machinery adopted from the continent, they could appear and disappear, and even fly. This change had profound ramifications for the music used in such scenes, as well. Witches were still often seen as non-normative, in strange clothing or mannish demeanor, but now their music was more musically
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exciting—as if it somehow contained their “magic”. This was embodied through the
Italianate qualities of their music, borrowing from Italian opera—quite directly in some cases—and from the related lament and solo cantata. These vocal styles allowed for extreme displays of emotion and contrasting emotions, that were the equivalent of vocal fireworks. And, since witches were not considered to be real anymore, they could be lumped together with other unnatural (nonexistent) things like sprites and ghosts, which made it acceptable for them to sing on stage, even in dramas where normal characters, for reasons of verisimilitude, were not allowed to sing.
The Italianate qualities of Restoration witches’ music resonated with their
Otherness, but also importantly with their Catholic connections. The skepticism of the later seventeenth century did not believe in witches as demonic or satanic beings they had been at the beginning of the century, but fear does not completely disappear, it shifts. The fear of the Restoration that appeared repeatedly, was the fear of Catholicism and of a potentially Catholic monarch. The Exclusion Crisis ran from 1679 to 1681 and ultimately led to James, Duke of York, to be excluded from the throne for his Catholic faith. This resulted in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the beginning of the Jacobite movement that lasted until the 1740s. It may seem a stretch to say that Italianate musical style would have been heard by contemporary audiences as Catholic, but it is important to remember that many more people were traveling to the continent at this point and heard opera in
Italy. The French had their own style of staged musical entertainment and Lully had tried to differentiate it from any of its Italian origins. To hear witches singing in what was perceived as an extravagant, effusive, and foreign style of singing tied them more closely to real religious fear of Catholicism.
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This fear could then translate into the spectacle of the witches on the Restoration stage. The Sorceress in Dido and Aeneas could command center stage and sing in the same style and even the same musical form as Dido herself. This has led many musicologists to puzzle. Why would the Sorceress be on the same level musically with the heroine? This has caused a great deal of speculation from Savage’s ideas about other characters representing aspects of Dido to contemporary beliefs that Dido represented
Queen Mary and many more. This study suggests that the connection between the two characters and their music is indeed deep, but not that the characters are the same.
Instead, the musical similarities between their arias and their Italianate character expresses the Otherness of both characters: the Sorceress as a non-normative, ritualistic
(i.e. Catholic) leader who seeks the overthrow of the throne, and Dido as a non- normative, female leader who seeks both power and emotional fulfillment, which leads to her melancholy and her demise. Dido is not represented as Catholic, but the powerful miasma of despair that leads to her suicide, is a non-normative state, which ties into the growing study of mental illness in the Enlightenment.
Witches were thus a shifting symbol of fear, seen and heard in their staged depictions. That women would challenge the heteronormative beliefs of the church and derive power not from husbands, but from their unholy communion with the devil was frightening to early-modern men, fueling their depiction as baby-eating monsters, hags who plotted the destruction not just of kings, such as Macbeth, but of men in general. The beginning of the Enlightenment in England, solidified by the establishment of the Royal
Society, created a new skepticism that recognized scary, non-normative women not as witches in commune with the devil, but as figures of rebellion. In an age when the largest
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fear was not Satan, but rather Catholics on the throne of England, these witches were rebels or Jacobites and were seen and heard as symbols of disorder. No longer were they understood as the disorder of magic and superstition, but the disorder of the popish threat.
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