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Volume 6, no. 2:
Poetry and Music in Seventeenth-century England. By Diane
Kelsey McColley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. [xvii,
311 pp. ISBN 0-521-59363-8 $59.95.]

Reviewed by Andrew R. Walkling*

1. these holy mysteries
2. by thought, word, and deed
3. We do not presume to come
Reference
1. these holy mysteries

Coming as it does from a scholar with an established reputation in the

world of Milton studies, Poetry and Music in Seventeenth-century England
represents a bold step for Diane Kelsey McColley. Trained as a literary
specialist, and possessed of a well developed though distinctly amateur
appreciation for music, McColley seeks to integrate her personal and
professional interests into a study designed to illuminate the connections
between seventeenth-century poetry and music for readers from a range of
disciplinary backgrounds. Despite the potentially daunting nature of this task,
she has produced an impressive work of interdisciplinary criticism. McColley is
informed and knowledgeable about most of her subject matter, and her
critical eyeand earattest to her long and distinguished scholarly career.
More importantly, perhaps, this book represents the kind of unabashedly
interdisciplinary studydriven by both academic expertise and personal
affinitythat many scholars labor after, and as such can teach us much about
both the opportunities and the problems that such an endeavor presents.
1.2 After an introductory chapter outlining the palette of techniques
applicable to the evaluation of musical and poetic language, McColley
proceeds to a discussion of the historical and liturgical setting for the
devotional arts in the early seventeenth century, with a particular focus on
the so-called church music controversy as a metaphor for the widening
ideological gulf between Puritans and high Anglicans in the decades leading
up to the eruption of civil war in the 1640s. This is followed by three chapters
examining the poetic output of John Donne, George Herbert, and John Milton,
and the place of musical gesture and idea in the structures, language, tone,
and rhetoric of their work. A final chapter addresses what McColley perceives
as the change in poetic uses of musical language after 1660 and especially in
the St. Cecilia odes of the 1680s and 1690s. Three appendices seek to
address lacunae in the expertise of various constituencies among the books
audience, providing a guide to the readings, images, and anthems of the
major feasts of the church year, a chronology of events in England during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and a glossary of technical terms
relating to musical analysis and the Anglican liturgy (definitions are provided,
for example, for anthem, cross-relation, homophony, Magnificat, and
theorbo). McColley also includes a selective discography and a more
extensive bibliography.
1.3 McColleys argument centers on the premise that the language and
structure of poetry is profoundly musical, and that the poets of the early
seventeenth century, immersed in a culture of liturgy, devotion, and spiritual
sensuality, responded to the music all around them by incorporating musical
gestures and idioms into their writing. Such musical variables as pitch,
harmony, rhythm, tempo, even voicing, can be traced into poetry and
provide, she suggests, a means of comprehending more fully the texture and
nuance of the words, thereby opening new avenues of understanding and a
more expansive appreciation of the aesthetic qualities of high art. The
concinnities between poetry and music are revealed in a number of ways.
On a basic level, a poem can be about music, employing music as metaphor
1.1

or as subject. Music can also manifest itself in the sound of poetry, directing
the rhythms and cadences of speech in order to infuse the text with greater
meaning or sensitivity. But, according to McColley, music can also play a
structural role in poetry, enhancing the semantic complexity of a text by
sounding partials of meaning and association to the fundamentals of the
words on the page. Like pitches, McColley argues, words are complex and
mutually responsive, (p. 173) noting that poetrys verbal harmonies, both
audible and cognitive, resemble the composition of Renaissance polyphony;
though reading linearly, one is conscious of an extraordinary density of verbal
resonances that form vertical harmonies (p. 78).
1.4 Carrying off such an enterprise requires considerable deftness and skill,
and different readers will find the books challenges more or less rewarding
according to their own interests and abilities. Because McColley comes to the
project with a distinguished career in literary analysis, supplemented by a
solid liturgical background and a good ear for music, she is well equipped to
guide non-specialists through her discussions of musical form and the early
seventeenth-century repertoire. What is perhaps less clear is how much
musicologists stand to benefit from her readings beyond a general
understanding of the musicality of English poetry. To that end, it seems
appropriate to explore how McColley configures and executes her readings,
what her perspective brings to an understanding of seventeenth-century
music, and to what specific considerations her material and critical
predilections may be attributed.
2. by thought, word, and deed
McColleys readings of Donne, Herbert, and Milton form the conceptual
heart of the book, and illustrate the variety of ways in which musical rhetoric
can be discovered in poetic texts. Chapter Three explores the polyphony of
John Donnes poetry, in particular Songs and Sonets and the multi-part poem
La Corona (1607). McColley creates sustained, polysemous readings of her
subject in order to show how, for example, the Songs and Sonets, by
combining lightness and seriousness, tenderness and tough wit, directness
and ironic allusion, incorporate the expressiveness and dramatic tension
supplied by multiple simultaneous musical lines in contemporary settings of
songs and madrigals (p. 108). In the process, she casts new critical light on
Donne, as in her brief analysis of A Valediction Forbidding Mourning (pp. 978)
and her reconsideration of Donnes spiritual sincerity (pp. 1323).
2.2 Chapter Four examines George Herberts use of word-tuning, asserting
that even Herberts simplest words...have infinite particles that resonate with
each other and with the matter of light and sound in a wonderful plenitude of
concinnities (p. 139). In analogizing the mutual resonances of
(homophonically, semantically, etymologically) related words as musical
partials and overtones, McColley concludes that like pitches, words are
complex and mutually responsive (p. 173). Although some aspects of these
readings can seem a bit strained (e.g., p. 162), on the whole, McColley makes
2.1

a compelling case, drawing connections with Thomas Weelkess Gloria in

excelsis Deo (pp. 1645) and John Amners O Ye Little Flock (p. 169) to show
how Herbert is like a composer in providing interest to his text through an
innovative reworking (p. 169) akin to Weelkess and Amners own
unconventional settings.
2.3 Chapter Five provides a discussion of John Miltons poetry and musical
background with an eye to his use of voicing, turning again to Amners O Ye
Little Flock to demonstrate how Miltons On the Morning of Christs Nativity is
as diversely voiced and proportionally cadenced as a verse anthem (p. 187).
This chapter seems more exploratory and tentative (particularly in its
discussion of At a Solemn Musick, pp. 1929) and is somehow less satisfying
than the preceding two, giving the impression that it may have been the
earliest written of the three. In McColleys discussion of Paradise Lost (pp.
20215), for example, the compelling analogies between musical and poetic
craft used to analyze Donne and Herbert are sublimated to a more traditional
study of the poems extensive use of musical references and rhetoric.
2.4 This is not to suggest that McColleys interpretation of Milton is inferior;
indeed, in these three chapters, as in Chapter Two, with its discussion of the
liturgical year and its cycle of anthem texts in the light (pardon the pun) of
the stained-glass windows of Kings College Chapel in Cambridge, McColley
consistently provides readings that are original, provocative, and intellectually
satisfying. Given the nuance and sensitivity of these readings, then, Chapter
Sixthe concluding chapter of the bookcomes as something of a surprise.
Having explored the intrinsic musicality of early- and mid-seventeenthcentury poetry, McColley seeks to demonstrate the decay of this mode after
the Restoration, using as her chief evidence John Dryden and Nicholas Bradys
respective 1687 and 1692 odes for St. Cecilias Day. Following the lead of
such diverse commentators as Nicholas Temperley and Roger North, McColley
argues that from mid-century on, poems and music ... turned from the music
of praise to the praise of musicprimarily instrumental music (p. 219). In
McColleys formulation, the human voice as the primary musical vessel of
divine harmony is replaced with a cacophonous hierarchy of wooden and
metal instruments, culminating in Cecilias sacred ORGAN, but nevertheless
assisting in a loss of internalized spirituality at a time in poetic history when
faith and intellect were going separate ways, as were words and music (p.
228). Drydens and Bradys words, she avers, by way of example, while
delightful, are not in themselves musical...Though they praise music as a
creative principle, they also move away from the relation between words and
music conceptually (p. 233).
2.5 Leaving aside the obvious fact that the texts McColley has chosenodes
to St. Ceciliawould naturally be much more directly about music than the
earlier poems she has examined, we would do well to interrogate the implicit
assumption that the Restoration somehow embodies a degradation from a
presumed golden age of English poetry and church music. Certainly, change
did occur after 1660, but it did not come as quickly, or as decisively, as
McColley would have her readers believe. Moreover, simply to argue that

music and poetry were drained of their intellectual and spiritual content
bespeaks an incomplete understanding of the wealth of musical and literary
creativity in the latter period. My intention here is not to mount a defense of
Restoration culture; rather, this issue provides an opportunity to explore some
underlying considerations relating to the acquisition of interdisciplinary
expertise and to consider how McColleys book, in particular, can be more
fully understood.
3. We do not presume to come
At a party not long ago, I was asked by a colleague from the sciences, one
with a passing familiarity with the history of seventeenth-century England,
whether the Restoration period was not one of far less creativity in the arts in
comparison with the Elizabethan and early Jacobean age. This kind of
assumption, I believe, bespeaks not so much the intrinsic quality of literary,
musical, and artistic creativity in the two eras, but more the accessibility of
those materials to a broad modern audience. To put it simply: one can hardly
turn around in our own day without stumbling over a production of
Shakespeare, whereas the theatrical works of John Dryden and his
contemporaries are seldom performed, even by leading repertory companies.
Shakespeare, it would seem, speaks to modern audiences in a way that
Dryden does not, even though the popularity of the latter poet remained
considerably greater for at least a century after his death. Similarly, the music
of Tudor and Jacobean composers such as Tallis, Byrd, Dowland, Weelkes,
Gibbons, Tomkins, and even Amner might be considered much better known
to modern audiences than the output of Locke, Humfrey, Blow, Purcell, and
Croft. The former, many of whose works are liturgical and a capella, are
widely sung in church choirs and have been extensively recorded by leading
ensembles over the course of many decades. Restoration composers, on the
other hand, created works requiring more extensive musical forces, such as
odes and symphony anthems, placing many of their choral compositions
beyond the reach of modern amateur performing groups who, to quote
McColley quoting Ralph Battell, ha[ve] not wherewithall to be at the charge
of these Aids and Ornaments to their Religious Worship (p. 229). With the
notable exception of Purcell, the works of Restoration composers remain
largely unrecordedand in many cases uneditedso that there has been as
yet little opportunity for modern audiences or performers to develop a
familiarity with this repertoire and begin to understand its breadth and
rhetorical power.
3.2 This distinction goes to the heart of McColleys own relationship with
seventeenth-century music, a relationship that she openly acknowledges and
which appears to have had a defining influence on the discursive form of her
book. As a practicing Episcopalian and a member of her parish choir, McColley
is well situated to have developed a familiarity with the English sacred music
commonly available to modern amateur performing groupsthat is, the music
of the Elizabethan age and the early seventeenth centuryand her blending
3.1

of professional expertise in the literature of this period with amateur

enthusiasm for its music serves her well in her treatments of Donne, Herbert,
and Milton. It also provides her with a general roadmap to the composers of
the period, their works, and available recordings (e.g., pp. 323 n. 35 and p.
37 n. 39). But in her treatment of the later seventeenth century she is
compelled to fall back chiefly on her scholarly knowledge of literature, while
bringing to bear only an imperfect understanding of the Restorations musical
traditions and language. In discussing the 1687 St. Cecilia ode (pp. 2268), for
example, she omits any mention of Giovanni Battista Draghis striking musical
setting of Drydens text: Draghi is passed over in a footnote citing Franklin
Zimmermans 30-year-old dismissal of the composers talents (p. 272 n. 3),
and McColley seems unaware of the 1995 recording of the work by The Parley
of Instruments (Hyperion CDA66770). Moreover, her reliance on the special
case of St. Cecilia odes is unfortunate, given the wide range of Restoration
sacred, liturgical, and devotional music that could have been mined to enrich
her discussion. The advent of a full-blown baroque culture in England after
1660 may well have elevated some performative and rhetorical
characteristics of religious music toward an otherworldly sublime, but the
human, reflective, and personal qualities McColley prizes can be found
everywhere, from Humfreys setting of Donnes late poem A Hymne to God
the Father to Crofts Burial Service to Purcells They That Go Down to the Sea
in Ships or, in a more secular vein, his moving setting of Cowleys poem If
Ever I More Riches Did Desire. Had McColley considered some of these works
as carefully as she does those of Tomkins, Weelkes, and Amner, perhaps some
of her conclusions might have been different.
3.3 My purpose in raising these questions is not to suggest that such concerns
prevent McColleys book from being an important and largely persuasive
study; rather, I think that the difficulties she encounters are instructive, as
they illustrate some potential pitfalls of interdisciplinary scholarship. Indeed,
despite its shortcomings, Poetry and Music in Seventeenth-century England is
in many ways a model of what interdisciplinary workor indeed any kind of
scholarshipshould be. McColleys genuine love of the music and texts she
examines is a persistent undercurrent in this book, and her willingness to
submit her ideas to the scrutiny of a variety of specialistseven when, as in
the opening chapter, her conclusions might seem a bit unoriginal, and her
insights mostly on a local levelis laudable. Herein, I would submit, lies the
greatest value of this work for musicologists, and ultimately it is this quality
that determines the success of McColleys endeavor. Reading the final pages,
with their apostrophe to organs and parish choirs, one becomes aware that
McColleys book is, in a way, her own song: an intensely personal statement
from a respected scholar, and a compelling demonstration of the extent to
which an ear for music and an ear for poetry can be mutually enriching.

Reference

*Andrew R. Walkling (aw12@cornell.edu) is Visiting Scholar at the Society

for the Humanities, Cornell University, and Associate Fellow of the Center for
Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the State University of New York,
Binghamton. He is a historian of seventeenth-century England with an interest
in the royal court, music, and theatre in the reigns of Charles II and James II.
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