Book contents
- George Herbert and Early Modern Musical Culture
- George Herbert and Early Modern Musical Culture
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Musical Examples
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Measuring Well
- Chapter 2 Communities of Voices
- Chapter 3 The Visual Music of the Masque
- Chapter 4 Concord and Consent
- Chapter 5 Double Motion
- Chapter 6 Singing the Psalms
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 3 - The Visual Music of the Masque
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2022
- George Herbert and Early Modern Musical Culture
- George Herbert and Early Modern Musical Culture
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Musical Examples
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Measuring Well
- Chapter 2 Communities of Voices
- Chapter 3 The Visual Music of the Masque
- Chapter 4 Concord and Consent
- Chapter 5 Double Motion
- Chapter 6 Singing the Psalms
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In Chapter 3, Herbert’s verse is read in the context of another collaborative enterprise, the Stuart court masque. These playful and extravagant secular entertainments are an unusual context against which to set Herbert’s often modest devotional poetic, though Herbert can hardly have been ignorant of the genre: members of Herbert’s family – including the Earls of Pembroke, their wives and children, and Herbert’s own brother Sir Henry Herbert (c.1594–1673), sometime Master of the Revels – were involved in their performance and production. This chapter offers the court masque as a particularly vivid contemporary genre that engages with the possibilities of interdisciplinary expression. These entertainments alert us not only to the interplay between words and music, but also to the ways in which musical ideas of harmonious proportion might be expressed visually through the stage’s elaborate perspectival sets, and through the moving human medium of dance.
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- George Herbert and Early Modern Musical Culture , pp. 81 - 109Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022