Table Of ContentMyths and stories offer a window onto medieval and early modern musical
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culture. Far from merely offering material for musical settings, authoritative
tales from classical mythology, ancient history and the Bible were treated
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as foundations for musical knowledge. Such myths were cited in support of
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arguments about the uses, effects, morality and preferred styles of music in
sources as diverse as theoretical treatises, defences or critiques of music, inI
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art, sermons, educational literature and books of moral conduct. Newly M
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written literary stories too were believed capable of moral instruction and d
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influence, and were a medium through which ideas about music could e
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be both explored and transmitted. How authors interpreted and weaved lY
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together these traditional stories, or created their own, reveals much about nT
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changing attitudes across the period.
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Looking beyond the well-known figure of Orpheus, this collection explores r
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the myriad stories that shaped not only musical thought, but also its styles, M and
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techniques and practices. The essays show that music itself performed o
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and created knowledge in ways parallels to myth, and worked in tandem e
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with old and new tales to construct social, political and philosophical n
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views. This relationship was not static, however; as the Enlightenment
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dawned, the once authoritative gods became comic characters and myth t
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became a medium for ridicule. Overall, the book provides a foundation for e
exploring myth and story throughout medieval and early modern culture, R
and facilitating further study into the Enlightenment and beyond. Y
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KATHERINE BUTLER is a senior lecturer in music at Northumbria University.
SAMANTHA BASSLER is a musicologist of cultural studies, a teaching artist, and an adjunct Medieval
professor in the New York metropolitan area. aE
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Contributors: Jamie Apgar, Katie Bank, Samantha Bassler, Katherine Butler, Elina G. Hamilton, Ste and Early
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Sigrid Harris, Ljubica Ilic, Erica Levenson, John MacInnis, Patrick McMahon, Aurora Faye Martinez, m
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Jacomien Prins, Tim Shephard, Jason Stoessel, Férdia J. Stone-Davis, Amanda Eubanks Winkler. any K Modern
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Cover Image: Suzanne de Court, Minerva Visits the Muses on Mount Helicon, painted enamel mirror, ath
early 17th century. Robert Lehman Collection, 1975, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Be Culture
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Public Domain. Cover design by Greg Jorss. sin
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Edited by Katherine Butler
an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk I PI2 3DF and and Samantha Bassler
668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620, USA
studies in medieval and renaissance music 19
Music, Myth and Story
in Medieval and Early Modern Culture
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music
issn 1479-9294
General Editors
Tess Knighton
Helen Deeming
This series aims to provide a forum for the best scholarship in early
music; deliberately broad in scope, it welcomes proposals on any aspect
of music, musical life, and composers during the period up to 1600,
and particularly encourages work that places music in an historical and
social context. Both new research and major re-assessments of central
topics are encouraged.
Proposals or enquiries may be sent directly to the editor or the pub-
lisher at the addresses given below; all submissions will receive careful,
informed consideration.
Professor Tess Knighton, Institucio Mila i Fontanals/CSIC,
c/ Egipciaques, Barcelona 08001, Spain
Dr Helen Deeming, Department of Music, Royal Holloway,
University of London, Egham, Surrey tw20 0ex
Boydell & Brewer, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk ip12 3df
Previously published titles in the series are listed at the back of this volume.
Music, Myth and Story
in Medieval and Early Modern Culture
Edited by Katherine Butler and Samantha Bassler
the boydell press
© Contributors 2019
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
First published 2019
The Boydell Press, Woodbridge
ISBN 978-1-78327-371-3
The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available
from the British Library
The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or
third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on
such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
Typeset in Adobe Arno Pro by
Sparks Publishing Services Ltd—www.sparkspublishing.com
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
List of Contributors x
Editors’ Note xiv
Introduction 1
Katherine Butler and Samantha Bassler
i myth in medieval music theory and philosophy
1 Music and the Myth of Apollo’s Grove 17
John MacInnis
2 The Consolation of Philosophy and the ‘Gentle’ Remedy of Music 32
Férdia J. Stone-Davis
3 And in England, There are Singers:
Grafting Oneself into the Origins of Music 46
Elina G. Hamilton
ii iconologies of music and myth
4 The Harmonious Blacksmith, Lady Music and Minerva:
The Iconography of Secular Song in the Late Middle Ages 63
Jason Stoessel
5 Foolish Midas: Representing Musical Judgement and
Moral Judgement in Italy c.1520 87
Tim Shephard and Patrick McMahon
iii myths in renaissance philosophies of music
6 Marsilio Ficino and Girolamo Cardano under Orpheus’s Spell 107
Jacomien Prins
7 Origin Myths, Genealogies and Inventors:
Defining the Nature of Music in Early Modern England 124
Katherine Butler
vi Contents
iv myth and musical practice
8 How to Sing like Angels:
Isaiah, Ignatius of Antioch and Protestant Worship in England 141
Jamie Apgar
9 In Pursuit of Echo: Sound, Space and the History of the Self 156
Ljubica Ilic
v narratives of performance
10 Ophelia’s Mad Songs and Performing Story in
Early Modern England 169
Samantha Bassler
11 Dangerous Beauty: Stories of Singing Women in
Early Modern Italy 187
Sigrid Harris
vi myth and music as forms of knowledge
12 ‘Fantastic Spirits’:
Myth and Satire in the Ayres of Thomas Weelkes 207
Katie Bank
13 Feeling Fallen: A Re-telling of the Biblical Myth of the Fall in
a Musical Adaptation of Marvell’s ‘A Dialogue
between Thyrsis and Dorinda’ 224
Aurora Faye Martinez
vii re-imagining myths and stories for the stage
14 ‘Armida’s Picture we from Tasso Drew’?: The Rinaldo and Armida
Story in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century English
Operatic Entertainments 241
Amanda Eubanks Winkler
15 Translating Myth Through Tunes: Ebenezer Forrest’s Ballad Opera
Adaptation of Louis Fuzelier’s Momus Fabuliste (1719–29) 259
Erica Levenson
Bibliography 277
Index 305
Illustrations
Colour Plates
i Andrea di Bonaiuto da Firenze, Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas
(post restoration 2003–4), detail of the Seven Liberal Arts on the
right. Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Cappellone degli Spagnoli.
© 2018 Photo SCALA, Florence, courtesy of Musei Civici Fiorentini
ii Sandro Botticelli, Philosophy Presenting Lorenzo Tornabuoni(?) to the
Seven Liberal Arts. Musée du Louvre. © Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft
mbH. Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, www.
gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html
iii Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Museen de Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz:
Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78.C.28. Image © 2018 bpk-Bildagentur
iv Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale: Banco Rari 229, fol.IV verso.
Reproduced by permission of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage
and Activities, and Tourism (MiBACT). Further reproduction
prohibited
v Dosso Dossi, Allegory of Music. Florence, Museo Horne. © 2018 Photo
SCALA, Florence
vi Cima da Conegliano, Judgement of Midas, oil on panel, 43 × 73 cm,
1513–17. National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen. © SMK Photo
vii Lorenzo Lotto, Allegory of Virtue and Vice, oil on panel, 57 × 42 cm,
1505. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Photograph courtesy
of the National Gallery of Art, Washington
viii Agnolo Bronzino, Apollo and Marsyas, oil on panel transferred to
canvas, 48 × 119 cm, c.1530–2. Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.
Photograph © The State Hermitage Museum. Photo by Leonard
Kheifets
ix Marco Jadra, Polygonal Virginals, cypress, maple, ebony and ivory,
17.1 × 146.3 (front) × 42.6 cm, 1568. Victoria & Albert Museum,
London. Photograph © Victoria & Albert Museum, London
x Sir Anthony van Dyck (Flemish 1599–1641), Rinaldo and Armida
(1629), oil on canvas, 93 × 90 in. (253.3 × 228.7 cm). The Baltimore
Museum of Art: The Jacob Epstein Collection, BMA 1951.103.
Photograph by Mitro Hood
viii Illustrations
Black and White Plates
4.1 Coëtivy Master (Henri de Vulcop?), Philosophy Presenting the
Seven Liberal Arts to Boethius. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum:
MS. 42, fol.2v. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open
Content Program 69
4.2 Musica shown in an Initial from a Copy of Boethius’s De musica.
London, British Library: Burney 275, fol.359v. Image by the British
Library. Public domain 69
4.3 Minerva. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France: frç. 12420,
fol.13v. Reproduced by permission of the library 81
4.4 Minerva. Paris, Bibliothèque National de France: frç. 598, fol.13r.
Reproduced by permission of the library 82
6.1 Girolamo Cardano, ‘Lament’ in De tranquillitate, OO, vol. 2,
pp. 346–7. Reproduced from the facsimile reprint of Cardano’s
Opera Omnia with the kind permission of Frommann-Holzboog
Verlag e.K. 120
Musical Examples
12.1 Thomas Weelkes, ‘Ha Ha’, Ayres and Fantastic Spirits (London,
1608), bars 1–5, transcribed by Francis Bevan 213
12.2 Thomas Weelkes, ‘Since Robin’, Ayres and Fantastic Spirits
(London, 1608), bars 6–12, transcribed by Francis Bevan 217
12.3 Thomas Weelkes, ‘Aye Me Alas’, Ayres and Fantastic Spirits
(London, 1608), bars 8–10, transcribed by Francis Bevan 220
14.1 John Eccles, ‘For Revenge to Armida We Call’, bars 1–7, from
Rinaldo and Armida, London, British Library, Add. MS 29738 248
Figures
1.1 The Order of Planetary Orbits According to Eriugena 27
14.1 Structural Similarities between The British Enchanters and Rinaldo 250
14.2 Comparison of Rinaldo and Armida and Rinaldo 251
Tables
1.1 Greater Perfect System as Presented by Boethius in De institutione
musica 22
1.2 Lesser Perfect System as Presented by Boethius in De institutione
musica 23
Illustrations ix
1.3 Immutable System, Combining both the Greater and Lesser
Perfect Systems 23
1.4 Eriugena’s Listing of the Tetrachords of the Immutable System
Compared to De nuptiis, Book IX and Boethius’s De institutione
musica, Book I 25
3.1 London, British Library: Lansdowne MS 763, fol.56v 47
3.2 Sources for Definitions of Musicus and Cantores 51
3.3 Comparison of Passages on the Origin of Music in De origine et
effectu musicae 54
4.1 The Ordering of the Liberal Arts 66
4.2 The Pairing of the Liberal Arts with their Inventors 67
4.3 Text and Translation of Francesco Landini’s Musica son 71
15.1 Verse Sung by Momus from Destouches and La Motte’s Issé
(1719), Act IV, Scene 3 269
15.2 Verse Sung by Momus in the Final Vaudeville of Fuzelier’s Momus
Fabuliste (1719) 273
15.3 Verse and Marginalia from ‘Momus Fabuliste’, Recueil de chansons
choisies en vaudevilles. Pour servir à l’histoire, anecdottes depuis 1697
jusques à 1731 273
The editors, contributors and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and per-
sons listed for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright.
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for
any omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledge-
ment in subsequent editions.
