At that time most villages had their feasts, revels, harvest homes, ringers' suppers, shearing feasts, and other entertainments. Some of us can remember when in the village churches the gallery was occupied by the village band, fiddles and viol, ophicleide, flute &c. They were done away with, and the hand-organ took its place in some churches, a real organ or a harmonium in others. It was a sad mistake of the clergy to try to abolish the old orchestra;—no doubt the playing was not very good, and the instruments were out of tune; no doubt also there was much quarrelling and little harmony among the performers, but an institution should be improved, not abolished. That gave the death-blow to instrumental music in our villages. Previously the smallest village had its half-dozen men who could play on some instruments. Now you find that there are half a dozen boys who can manage the concertina—that is all.
These instrumentalists attended all the festivities in a village, wakes, harvest homes, revels, and weddings, and were well received and well treated. They played old country dances, old ballads, old concerted pieces of no ordinary merit. In some parish chests may be found volumes of rudely written music, which belonged to these performers, mostly sacred, but not always so.
When in 1617 James I. was making a progress through Lancashire, he found that the Puritan magistrates had prohibited and unlawfully punished the people for using their "lawful recreations and honest exercises" on holidays; and next year he issued a declaration concerning sports and merry-makings, such as May-games, morris-dances, Whitsun-ales, the setting up of maypoles; and James very wisely said, "If these be taken away from the meaner sort, who labour hard all the week, they will have no recreations at all to refresh their spirits; and in place thereof it will set up filthy tipplings and drunkenness, and breed a number of idle and discontented speeches in their ale-houses." Also it would "hinder the conversion of many, whom their priests will take occasion hereby to vex, persuading them that no honest mirth or recreation is lawfully tolerable in our religion."
At the present day we hardly realize the extent to which music was cultivated in old times, so that England—not Italy, Germany, or France—was the great musical nation of Europe. What astonished foreigners, when they visited England in the reign of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, was the perfection to which music was brought here, and the widespread knowledge of music that prevailed. France had its music school created by Sully, a Florentine by birth, who was placed at the head of a band of violins by Louis XIV. At that time "not half the musicians of France were able to play at sight." Even that band, got together with difficulty, could play nothing at sight. Nor did Sully effect any great reform in this respect, for when the Regent, Duke of Orleans, wished to hear Corelli's sonatas, which were newly brought from Rome, no three persons were to be found in Paris who could play them, and he was obliged to content himself with having them sung to him by three voices. On the other hand, in England at that time every gentleman was expected to be able either to sing a part at sight, or play a part on some instrument or other. As a regular thing after supper, the party in a country house adjourned to the music-room, and there spent the rest of the evening in singing or in instrumental music. Nor was this knowledge of music confined to the upper classes. A curious instance of this we find in Pepys' diary. That diary extends between the years 1660-1669. In the course of his diary, four maids are mentioned as being in his household, to attend on his wife, and a boy who waited on himself. All of these seem to have possessed, as an ordinary qualification, some musical skill and knowledge. Of the first of the serving-maids he says (November 17, 1662), "After dinner, talking with my wife, and making Mrs. Gosnell (the maid) sing—I am mightily pleased with her humour and singing." And again, on December 5, "She sings exceedingly well." Within a few months Gosnell was succeeded by Mary Ashwell; and he tells us in March, "I heard Ashwell play first upon the harpsicon, and I find she do play pretty well. Then home by coach, buying at the Temple the printed virginal book for her." The harpsicon and the virginal were the pianofortes of the period, something like square pianos; in the virginal the strings were struck by quills. Of the third maid Mrs. Pepys had, Mary Mercer, he says on September 9, 1664, that she was "a pretty, modest, quiet maid. After dinner my wife and Mercer, Tom (the boy) and I, sat till eleven at night, singing and fiddling, and a great joy it is to see me master of so much pleasure in my house. The girle (Mercer) plays pretty well upon the harpsicon, but only ordinary tunes, but hath a good hand; sings a little, but hath a good voyce and eare. My boy, a brave boy, sings finely, and is the most pleasant boy at present, while his ignorant boy's tricks last, that ever I see." After some time Mercer went to see her mother, and Mrs. Pepys, finding her absent without leave, went after her, found her in her mother's house, and there beat her. The mother having urged that Mary was "not a common prentice girl," and therefore ought not to have been thus chastized, Mrs. Pepys construed it into a question of her right to inflict corporal chastisement, and dismissed Mary.
In October, 1666, says Pepys, "my wife brought a new girle. She is wretched poor, and but ordinary favoured, and we fain to lay out seven or eight pounds worth of clothes upon her back: and I do not think I can esteem her as I could have done another, that had come fine and handsome; and, which is more, her voice, through want of use, is so furred that it do not at present please me; but her manner of singing is such that I shall, I think, take great pleasure in it."
After a while Mary Mercer was taken back, and then we hear of singing on the water, especially after a trip to Greenwich when returning by moonlight. The boy Tom was usually of the party. Of him Pepys says (Oct. 25, 1664), "My boy could not sleep, but wakes about four in the morning, and in bed laying playing on his lute till daylight, and it seems did the like last night, till twelve o'clock." And again, Dec. 26, 1668, "After supper I made the boy play upon his lute, and so, my mind is mighty content,—to bed."
We do not in the least suppose that Pepys' household was singular in the respect of having a succession of musical servants. All people in those times were musical—men, boys, women, and girls, of all classes and degrees. At the fire of London in 1666, Pepys, who was an eye-witness, tells us that the Thames was full of lighters and boats taking in goods, and that he "observed that hardly one lighter or boat in three, that had the goods of a house, but there was a pair of virginals in it."
How those old fellows loved and cared for their instruments! Mace, a writer of 1676, tells how a lute should be treated. "You shall do well," he writes, "even when you lay it by in the day-time, to put it into a bed that is constantly used, between the rug and the blanket, but never between the sheets, because they may be moist. There are great commodities (advantages) in so doing; it will save the strings from breaking; it will keep your lute in good order." He enumerates six conveniences of so doing. At that time a lute, a good one, cost about £100.
So completely was it a matter of course to have music after supper, that Cromwell, a lover of music, only altered the character of the performance. When the ambassadors of Holland came to him, as Lord Protector, on the occasion of peace between the two Commonwealths, after having entertained them at a repast, he and the "Lady Protectrice" led them into the music-hall, where they had a psalm sung. This was in 1654. The dissolution of the cathedral choirs, the abolition of sacred music in the churches, scattered professional musicians over the country. There is a very curious traditional song relative to this change, sung in Devonshire, and called Brixham Town.
It relates how—