If music be the food of love … From Shakespeare to Haight Ashbury
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Version 0 of 1. The “sweet thunder” of music echoes throughout Shakespeare’s plays “to glad [the] ear” of groundlings and galleried alike, but the soundscape of Elizabethan England was far richer and more pervasive than Claire van Kampen suggests (Such sweet thunder, G2, 22 August). Shakespeare’s plays make reference, in verses, snatches and stage directions, to over 100 popular songs. These songs were part of an oral tradition that, by the 16th century, was being printed for mass consumption in the form of woodcut broadsheets of ballads, which gave the lyrics and cited well-known tunes to which they were to be sung. That there were over 200 known ballad writers known by name is evidence of a continuing popular tradition. The “lower orders” were far from illiterate; by 1580 most London craftsmen were able to read and write to some extent and many more would have been able to read more than they could write – witness the Mechanicals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, humble artisans directed to “con” (ie read and learn) their parts. Musical literacy was also widespread with the citterns and lutes hanging in the premises of barber/surgeons available not for professional entertainers but for customers keen to play while waiting. Romeo and Juliet features three common fiddlers to judge by the names of Rebeck (an early fiddle) Soundpost (found inside the fiddle) and Catling (though then, as now, sheep’s gut was used for the strings), demonstrating Shakespeare’s familiarity with the world of the fiddlers who might have played in alehouses or ordinaries (taverns were for “better” class of customer). Though the works of Shakespeare have inspired musicians and composers the world over since his death 400 years ago, in his own day he was the fruit rather than the founder of a folk culture with roots that were centuries deep.Austen LynchGarstang, Lancashire • California warrants its place at the heart of much of the history of the counterculture of the 1960s (Feed your head, G2, 22 August), but with the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love just months away, it would be good to acknowledge the broader geographical spread of ideas and events, avoiding the reification of California, San Francisco, Haight Ashbury etc. Alex Needham suggests that Monterey Pop was “arguably the first music festival”. If we stick with the notion of pop and exclude the preceding jazz and folk festivals in Newport (US), Beaulieu (UK) and elsewhere, there were still the Marquee Club’s three-day events at Richmond and Windsor, which over the previous four years offered the Rolling Stones, the Who, Cream, the Yardbirds, the Animals and many more. Something was happening back then, but it wasn’t all in one little spot on the US west coast, anymore than the Swinging 60s happened only in Chelsea or Knightsbridge.Dr Dave AllenPortsmouth • Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com |