Includes bibliographical references (pages 240-268) and index.
"With mornefull musique" : the English musical funeral elegy -- "The floure of England" : the earliest musical elegies for Sir Philip Sidney -- "Of griefe and honour still" : Elizabethan courtiers -- "Say Death hath lost" : knights of the realm -- "Weepe forth your teares" : laments for a lost king -- "A flower of beutye" : the feminine legacy of queens and matriarchs -- "For death of her" : the unusual case of Mary Gascoigne -- "And music dies..." : musicians and their stories.
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"This book looks at the musical culture of death in early modern England. In particular, it examines musical funeral elegies and the people related to commemorative tribute - the departed, the composer, potential patrons, and friends and family of the deceased - to determine the place these musical-poetic texts held in a society in which issues of death were discussed regularly, producing a constant, pervasive shadow over everyday life. The composition of these songs reached a peak at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. Thomas Weelkes and Thomas Morley both composed musical elegies, as did William Byrd, Thomas Campion, John Coprario, and many others. Like the literary genre from which these musical gems emerged, there was wide variety in form, style, length, and vocabulary used. Embedded within them are clear messages regarding the social expectations, patronage traditions, and class hierarchy of late Elizabethan and early Jacobean England. En masse, they offer a glimpse into the complex relationship that existed between those who died, those who grieved, and attitudes toward both death and life."
Elegiac poetry, English-- History and criticism.
Funeral music-- England-- 16th century-- History and criticism.
Funeral music-- England-- 17th century-- History and criticism.