ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 focuses on the historiography of the ‘English madrigal’, beginning with an examination of the misunderstood terms, ‘light’ and ‘grave’ or ‘serious’, as measures of musical quality, using Thomas Morley’s Plaine and easie introduction to practicall musicke (1597) as a starting point. It observes a subtle but significant difference between contemporary and modern use of these terms that has yet to be properly interrogated. It offers two examples of where Morley might have encountered similar ‘spectra’ of gravity to lightness, including contemporary writing on rhetoric and the music books of Italian composer Orazio Vecchi. This extended case study demonstrates how a critical examination of historiography (including modern adaptations of contemporary terminology) contributes to a more nuanced understanding of this music.
This chapter also outlines misleading modern stereotypes of the English madrigal and some of the sources that have contributed to their development. It argues as to why this repertoire is not ‘unliterary’, at least not as measured by twentieth-century scholars. This chapter also considers the complex issues surrounding genre and seventeenth-century music, including the ways they have been presented by influential musicologists like Edmund Fellowes and Joseph Kerman. Finally, it criticises outdated musicological narratives about the intellectual differences between the madrigal and lute song traditions and explains why an examination of the historiography of the English madrigal is a necessary part of a study that looks to music’s social context of use rather than to form in assessing this body of repertoire.
