O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note: Music for Witches, the Melancholic, and the Mad on the Seventeenth-Century English Stage - Hardcover

Winkler, Amanda Eubanks

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253348056 ISBN 13: 9780253348050

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2006

Synopsis

In the 17th century, harmonious sounds were thought to represent the well-ordered body of the obedient subject, and, by extension, the well-ordered state; conversely, discordant, unpleasant music represented both those who caused disorder (murderers, drunkards, witches, traitors) and those who suffered from bodily disorders (melancholics, madmen, and madwomen). While these theoretical correspondences seem straightforward, in theatrical practice the musical portrayals of disorderly characters were multivalent and often ambiguous.

O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note focuses on the various ways that theatrical music represented disorderly subjects―those who presented either a direct or metaphorical threat to the health of the English kingdom in 17th-century England. Using theater music to examine narratives of social history, Winkler demonstrates how music reinscribed and often resisted conservative, political, religious, gender, and social ideologies.

About this title

About the Author

Amanda Eubanks Winkler is Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at Syracuse University. She specializes in early music.

Edition details

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0253348056
• ISBN 13: 9780253348050
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 248