Books, Arts & Manners: Who Killed English Music?

A MUSICOLOGIST with a Dorothy Sayers bent of mind might write an interesting essay on the unexplained death of English music, particularly now that recording companies seem to be systematically issuing the works of Henry Purcell. With him, in the late seventeenth century, English music reached its height—and then virtually perished.

Earlier in the century, under Oliver Cromwell—one of the greater calamities to strike the island—music and theater had been seized by the throat as the Devil’s work or, worse, the Papacy’s. All public theaters were closed to prevent the works of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson from destroying morals. Music as art and ritual was banned in churches; in many cathedrals, organs and music books were destroyed.

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Ralph de Toledano

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A MUSICOLOGIST with a Dorothy Sayers bent of mind might write an interesting essay on the unexplained death of English music, particularly now that recording companies seem to be systematically issuing the works of Henry Purcell. With him, in the late seventeenth century, English music reached its height—and then virtually perished.

Earlier in the century, under Oliver Cromwell—one of the greater calamities to strike the island—music and theater had been seized by the throat as the Devil’s work or, worse, the Papacy’s. All public theaters were closed to prevent the works of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson from destroying morals. Music as art and ritual was banned in churches; in many cathedrals, organs and music books were destroyed.