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IN ITS EFFECTS UPON MUSIC, ETC. 405 |
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Even in Convocation, it was proposed " that the use of organs be abolished," as early as 1562.
In 1586, while Parliament was sitting, another virulent Puritan pamphlet was printed and industriously circulated. It was entitled " A request of all true Christians to the Honourable House of Parliament." It prays " that all cathedral churches may be put down, where the service of God is grievously abused by piping with organs, singing, ringing, and trowling of Psalms-, from one side of the choir to another, with the squeaking of chanting choristers, disguised (as are all the rest) in white surplices; some in corner caps and filthy copes, imitating the fashion and manner of Antichrist the Pope, that Man of Sin and Child of Perdition, with his other Rabble of Miscreants and Shavelings." In this book, deans and canons are described as " unprofitable drones, or rather caterpillars of the world," who " consume yearly, some 2500Z., some 3000Z., some more, some less, wherein no profit cometh to the Church of God." Cathedrals " are the dens of idle loitering lubbards; the harbours of time-serving hypocrites, whose prebends and livings belong, some to gentlemen, some to boys, and some to serving men and others." While such were the invectives of Puritans against church music, even in Queen Elizabeth's reign, it could not be expected that secular music, or any but their own " psalms to hornpipes," should escape similar animadversion. Accordingly, Stephen Gosson, in his Schoole of Abuse (1579), comparing the music of his time with that of the ancients, says, " Homer with his musick cured the sick soldiers in the Grecian camp, and purged every man's tent of the plague;" but " thinke you that those miracles could be wrought with playing of dances, dumps, pavans, galliards, measures, fancies, or new strains ? They never came where this grew, nor knew what it meant. . .. The Argives appointed by their laws great punishments for such as placed above seven strings upon any instrument: Pythagoras commanded that no musician should go beyond his diapason " [octave]. " Were the Argives and Pythagoras now alive, and saw how many strings, how many stops, how many keys, how many clefs, how many moods, flats, sharps, rules, spaces, notes, and rests; how many quirks and corners; what chopping and changing, what tossing and turning, what wresting and wringing, is among our musicians; I verily believe that they would cry out with the countryman, Alas! here is fat feeding and lean beasts; or, as one said at the shearing of hogs, Great cry and little wool, Much ado and small help." A passage from this author " against unprofitable pipers and fiddlers," and one from Thomas Lovell, against " dauncing and minstralsye," have already been quoted under Queen Elizabeth's reign (ante pp. 107, 108) ; but even Thomas Lodge, who replied to Gosson " in defence of poetry, musick, and stage plays," would not defend the merry-making pipers and fiddlers. He says, " I admit not of those that deprave music: your pipers are as odious to me as yourself; neither allow I your harping merry beggars;" but " correct not music when it is praiseworthy, lest your worthless misliking bewray your madness."
Philip Stubbes, in his Anatomy of Abuses, first printed in 1583, (and so popular with the Puritans that four editions of it were printed within twelve years), devotes an entire chapter against music. He says that from " a certain kind of |
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