K. Dawn Grapes
With Mornefull Musique: Funeral Elegies in Early Modern England
Boydell & Brewer
278 pp, £19.99, ISBN: 9781787443242
Publication date: 2018
K. Dawn Grapes is an associate professor of Music History in the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance and has a Ph.D. in Historical Musicology from the University of Colorado at Boulder with specialization in music of Early Modern England, music history pedagogy, and flute history. In her book With Mornefull Musique: Funeral Elegies in Early Modern England published in 2018, Dr. Grapes brings an interesting intersection of music theory and social history to the early modern scholarship. She shows scholarship has previously only looked at each piece individually, but not comparing them directly to show how society had changed and reacted quite differently to the death of each monarch from Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I.
The layout of the chapters are a bit confusing but have beautiful titles from a elegy mentioned in the chapter to signify the contents. Throughout this review I will be looking at the context these chapters are put in. The composers and pieces that Dr. Grapes writes of are fascinating however. Looking at chapters one through five, they have a bit of a chronological sense as they seem music specific to each of the monarchs from the mid-1500s to 1612 when King James I dies. She does discuss the legacy these composers and their work leaves behind towards the end as well. These chapters do take a social history perspective to examine why specific elegies began during this era.
Dr. Grapes begins by defining an elegy as “a song or poem of lamentation, esp. for the dead; a memorial poem” (p 5). She makes a point to explain that this word comes from ancient Greece and does not seem to appear in the English vocabulary until about 1521, when death had become more of a regular occurrence for the people of the early modern time, especially if they lived in the cities. The English Reformation may have attributed to this need for services when the Catholic Church was no longer available, people in England needed to understand their grief and loss.
In chapter two, Dr. Grapes does a musical analyses that is quite interesting. She shows the readers that there were only a few accepted key changes at the time. This was explained in between the stories of two great composers, William Byrd and Thomas Watson. The deaths they were writing for were noticed by everyone from commoners to nobility so these elegies were significant and held in the highest regards.
Chapters three and four take the idea of elegies adding to the monarchs persona with Elizabeth I. Her reign was so large when she was alive and well after her death. Every decision she made was a reflection of the court and herself, what she wanted England to be. Every monarch begins to question how the rest of society would view certain colors, like Mary and Philip using the color purple, but Elizabeth saw the growth of elegies and decided the musicians and composers chosen were also a consideration of her persona. Like her father, Henry VIII, she attempted to be larger than life and used music at this time to do that. Elizabeth used this growth to bring religion back with many pieces that followed Protestant thinking or “gave credence to Elizabeth’s goddess-like persona” (p 81). It because another political tool for the rulers of England.
Chapter five consists of the fascination that society takes in Prince Henry when James I dies. There was a hope that the Prince could bring England back together after the schism. Dr. Grapes highlights that there was so much focus on Henry that there was even a section of an elegy dedicated to honoring Henry. There seemed to be no personal connection between the two so there is no solid reasoning as to why it happened other that the fact that the tribute was public (p 134-135). There seemed to be a more personal, as opposed to monarchal, view of Prince Henry. Plus with the growth and regularity of this elegy tradition, these musicians and composers could attempt more grandiose statements to gain attention from nobility and higher. This shows how much has changed socially due to shifting monarchs and leading up to the English Civil Wars.
Following that shifting in societal thinking, chapters six through eight talk about pieces and composers of the era that stand out. Chapters six and seven talk about elegies to honor women. These were mostly women who were deemed as socially significant and their elegies were found in manuscripts. Dr. Grape states that “deceased females represented in Paston’s collection include Queen Mary I, Queen Elizabeth I, Lady Magdalen Dacre Montague, and Mary Queen of Scots…A comparison of each of the “queen elegies” shows not only a similar approach in musical setting, but also a common textual voice, though neither composer nor poet is acknowledged” (p 155). Here it can be seen that composers and poets were willing to show themselves close (maybe closer than they were) with Prince Henry and other male monarchs, but the death of a significant woman was held in quite a different regard. There was still space made for these women and held with a different, maybe more sober, sense of loss.
Finally, chapter eight looks at elegies written to honor composers and musicians. This section is a different style of analysis than the rest of the book. Dr. Grape takes more of a musician and composer breakdown of how the word choice and music construction showed connection to the deceased. Each phase shows a view of not just the relationship of the two composers, but how the deceased left society a hole that needed to be filled, a need to express emotions. On page 207, she states “though the plaque is now gone, due to the church’s destruction in 1711, the words of this extended epitaph… revealing an ongoing remembrance of Tallis and his works.” The work these composers did was larger than themselves.
I did not expect to like this book, music is not normally my forte. But this is an extremely interesting way to view the shifting thinking of early modern English society, especially from dynasty to dynasty. When it came to structure, this book reminded me of Black Tudors by Miranda Kaufman. It is centered around stories of composers and their work, but adds context to the time. It created an otherwise interesting social and gender study of the time that I would have never thought of before. It includes snippets of the original music score and most of her sources seem to be a wide range. Some early 2000s and 2010s for most recent, but also ranging from the 1960-90. Overall, a really interesting way to see the early modern period.
