Music in English Renaissance Drama by Long John H.;

Author:Long, John H.; [Long, John H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

MILTON ON LAWES: THE TRINITY MS REVISIONS

MacDonald Emslie

MILTON’S well-known sonnet on Henry Lawes exists in five forms. The Trinity College Cambridge MS contains three copies of it; the first is a rough draft in Milton’s hand, the second a fair copy in his hand (both these are on fol. 43), and the third is a fair copy by an amanuensis (on fol. 45). The first printed version of the sonnet appeared in Choice Psalms put into Musick for three voices (1648). Lastly, there is the second printed version, that of the second edition of Milton’s Poems (1673). The earlier versions are particularly interesting with reference to contemporary methods of song-making.

Milton calls Lawes’ song “tuneful” and “well-measur’d,” which suggests he is thinking of Lawes as particularly a composer of declamatory ayre—which is what he was at this time. An examination of the first hundred or so songs in Lawes’ autograph manuscript collection suggests that they are the work of the 1630’s: it contains, for instance, Lawes’ settings of the Comus songs (1634). While a third of these songs are simple tuneful ayres of the post-1622 kind, almost two-thirds of them are declamatory ayres. This English song form had been developed in court masques by Nicholas Lanier by 1614. We must therefore correct Milton’s remark (which remains the same in all versions of the sonnet) that Lawes “First taught our English Musick how to span / Words with just note and accent.” But we do not expect the exact truth from people writing complimentary verses about their friends, and in any case the remark seems to have been a stock compliment; in 1657 Lawes praised John Wilson in similar terms, saying that he was the first to give “the right accents and proportion” in English song.2

Milton, whose father was a composer as well as a scrivener, knew a great deal about music, and in the course of writing his sonnet he revealed various shifts in his musical thought. The most significant evidence of this is found in the Trinity MS’s first version, which is headed “To my freind Mr Hen. Laws Feb. 9. 1645.” Milton’s first version began:

Harry, whose tunefull & well-measur’d song

first taught our English Music how to span

words with just notes, wch till then us’d to scan

with Midas eares, committing short & long. . . .

He is stressing the point that in earlier forms of song the composer did not pay so much regard to the natural accentuation of the words. But the third line is turgid. Milton apparently made as his first alteration a revision of the second part of the line; he put a cross after “notes” and wrote over the line “when most were wont”; he then wrote out the result in full in the right-hand margin: “when most were wont to scan.” He was not, however, satisfied with the verses as they now stood: “words with just notes, when most were wont to scan / with Midas eares. . . .” It seems that he wished

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