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The Musical Training of the Pearl Poet
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In the fourteenth century all good Englishmen were singers. How large a part music played in the life of the time is apparent in Chaucer, who, as Burney remarks, ‘never loses an opportunity of describing or alluding to its general use, and of bestowing it as an accomplishment upon the pilgrims, heroes, and heroines of his several poems.’ The carved figures in the minstrels' gallery at Exeter Cathedral and the Angel Choir of Lincoln are lasting memorials to the universal popularity of music in that day. While the cleric devoted himself to the music that lent beauty to the services of the church, the layman delighted in the music of the banquet, the battle, and the chase. Edward III. himself kept a band of household minstrels that included ‘trompeters, cytelers, pypers, tabrete, mabrers, clarions, fedelers, wayghtes.’ Le Art de Venerie, written by Twici, huntsman to Edward II., reveals a highly developed hunting music, and the martial music is mentioned by Chaucer in the Knight's Tale (A. 2511–12):
Pypes, trompes, nakers, clariounes,
That in the bataille blowen blody sounes.
Born into such a world as this, the poet of Pearl and Sir Gawain bore the deep impress of the popular taste. His own taste was of wide compass, and included an appreciation of instrumental and vocal, secular and ecclesiastical music.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1931
References
page 177 note 1 General History of Music, ii, 372.
page 177 note 2 Hawkins, History of Music, ii, 107.
page 177 note 3 See Henry L. Savage in JEGPh. xxvii, 1—15.
page 177 note 4 See appendix, ‘Hunting Music,‘ in The Master of Game, ed. Wm. A. and F. Baillie-Grohman, London, 1909; and notes in Tolkien and Gordon's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Oxf., 1925.
page 177 note 5 For other references to minstrelsy see Pur. 120–21, and Gaw, 484.
page 177 note 6 This and other examples, with music, are printed in the Oxford History of Music, i, 253–317.
page 177 note 7 Cambridge History of English Literature, i, 368.
page 177 note 8 Pearl, Introd., p. lii.
page 177 note 9 Ten Brink may possibly be regarded as an exception, who says, Hist. of Eng. Lit., i, 337: ‘It is hard to determine his rank in life. After being educated at the cloister-school, he probably entered the house of some nobleman, where he was occupied as scribe or reader, or perhaps as director of the minstrels.’
page 177 note 10 Oxford History of Music, I, chapters i–iii; ii, p. 87, note.
page 177 note 11 Carleton Brown, A Study of the Miracle of Our Lady Told by Chaucer's Prioress. Chaucer Soc., Ser. 2, No. 45, pp. 115–26.
page 177 note 12 W. H. Frere, The Sarum Use, Camb., 1901. Introd., pp. xxxii–xxxiii.
page 177 note 13 Foster Watson, The English Grammar Schools to 1660, Camb., 1908, p. 145.
page 177 note 14 J. A. Herbert, Illuminated Manuscripts, London, 1911, p. 221.
page 177 note 15 Foster Watson, op. cit., p. 145.