Category: Section 2: Music and Song

by Chua Shao Jun

Rinaldo and Armida is a semi-opera tragedy written by John Dennis in 1698. The book was published a year after, in 1699, and was printed by Jacob Tonson at the Graye’s Inn Gate. The play was written to honour the Duke of Ormond, whom the protagonist, Rinaldo, was modelled after.

The book is beautifully covered in mosaic paper, mixed with colours such as red, yellow and black. The year of publication, 1699, is printed on the spine of the book.

The book begins with a dedication to the Duke of Ormond, making references to the Duke’s love of his country, his honour and the love of glory. Although John Dennis drew lots of inspiration from Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, he made a valiant attempt to differentiate his work from Tasso’s in the preface. He mentioned several times that his version of Rinaldo is original and unequal to Tasso’s character, and beckons the readers to appreciate his characters without pre-supposed impressions of Tasso’s creation. His beckoning was targeted especially towards readers of Tasso, since they are the ones most familiar with the characters Rinaldo and Armida, and have a stronger tendency to compare the two author’s interpretation of the characters.

Since the book is a semi-opera, it is written in the form of the character’s lines, the lyrics of the songs the characters will sing, as well as the settings for the play. The musical element of John Dennis’ Rinaldo and Armida was what sets it apart from Tasso’s original work, since Jerusalem Liberated was written to be only a narrative, and not a semi-opera.

The story of the play follows Rinaldo, the Christian hero, who falls in love with a beautiful sorceress called Armida. Armida, though she was a beautiful woman, was very prideful and had a bad temper, which led Rinaldo to leave her eventually. Armida was accused for enchanting Rinaldo with spells, so Rinaldo had to exercise good reason to leave her, and resist her charm. Dennis’ portrayal of Armida differs from Tasso’s, in that Dennis placed a larger emphasis on the humanity of Armida. Tasso portrayed Armida as a pure villain, merely seducing Rinaldo with charms and spells, until Rinaldo came to his senses and resisted her. Dennis, however, portrayed Armida as an antagonist that is capable of complex emotions, capable of reflection and displaying affectionate sentiments towards romance. The more humane portrayal of Armida intensifies the tragic nature of the romance, since now the romance between Rinaldo and Armida involves a psychological struggle, as opposed to Tasso’s version, where Rinaldo simply leaves her and rejoins the Crusaders in a line of duty.

The play was performed at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, featuring the actors and actresses Betterton, John Thurmond, Elizabeth Barry, Elizabeth Bowman and Elinor Leigh.

by Nur Sarah

This unique edition of “Watts’ Divine Songs” is one of many from Isaac Watts’ larger collection of moral and religious poems for children which was written in 1715. Published in the mid-19^th century, this pocket-sized booklet is merely 8 pages long and contains a small selection of only 3 poems with accompanying illustrations on every page. This particular edition contains the poems ‘Morning Song’, ‘The Little Busy Bee’ (which you might recognize from the parodied version in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) and ‘Brotherly Love’.

Pocket-sized booklets such as this were known as toy books, which is a type of chapbook. Chapbooks were small printed booklets that gained popularity in 17^th and 18^th century Europe as a medium for entertainment. They were usually made of rough paper between 8-24 pages long that were bound with thread. Any illustrations were printed using crude woodcuts. Because they were so cheaply produced, they became a common source of reading material for lower-class people.

But unlike the usual chapbooks, toy books like “Watt’s Divine Songs” were typically a lot smaller, and were targeted towards the child audience. As part of the marketing strategy, these booklets came with small toys, hence the term ‘toy books’. So early toy books were essentially the first form of children’s books, featuring illustrations to go alongside rhymes and tales as its content. They were often released as part of a series.

Isaac Watts’ original larger collection, Divine Songs, was written in a such a way that was meant to be accessible to young readers, so that they may truly learn and understand moral religious values. It was actually even used as a textbook in schools. Even so, the focus and purpose of it was mostly on education. With the toy book edition, however, there was an attempt at balancing education with entertainment in order to appeal to children.

by Lisa Chong

This 15th-century Italian liturgical manuscript is made of parchment, and contains sheet music for religious chants. Unlike modern Western sheet music, the musical stave consists of 4 lines instead of 5, in a form known as plainchant – a sacred piece composed in Latin for the liturgies of the Western church. Such a large parchment page would have been a common sight for those in a church’s choir; its size ensured all singers could refer to the music simultaneously. There are also Roman numerals inked in red on both pages, indicating folio references for full versions of separate chants, such that they would not need to be repeatedly written out in full.

Although Latin was the main language used in Christian service throughout Europe at the time, we can reasonably trace this parchment’s origins to Italy. As seen in Figure 1, part of the music stave has been rubbed out to make space for shorthand text: “Octava Agnetis Virginis”. This is a chant for Saint Agnes, patron saint of chastity and purity, and the most prominent female martyr in ancient Rome. Throughout the year, church choirs would sing different hymns and masses depending on upcoming religious events, including their saints’ upcoming Feast days. The octave is a second Feast celebrated on the eighth day afterward; therefore, members of this church commemorated not only the Feast of Saint Agnes on the 21st of January, but also repeated the feast. This double veneration indicates that the region this church was situated in held Saint Agnes in particularly high regard; the main regions of Europe that would have fallen under these criteria were Italy and England, but the former is more likely due to the plainchant’s origins as a notation invented solely for liturgical composition in the Western church.

Interestingly, the first page has the final line of a previous hymn overriding into the next stave, as seen from the Latin “allelu ya”/hallelujah. But it does not continue left to right into the next stave: it juts into a small right-most section below, and to its left is the rubbed-out stave, with text indicating that the chant below it is for the Octave of St Agnes. Here is a closer look, with the atypical line boundaries shown.

This is likely because the scribe needed to make space for the decorated illuminated capital – the large, ornate letter ‘V’ that sprawls all the way across the left side of the page – that begins Psalm 44:13-16, which is associated with St Agnes’ second octave feast. In doing so, the manuscript writer exhibited a prioritisation of form over minor function. The more elaborately decorated illuminated capital in blue (as opposed to the smaller black capital ‘E’ in “Eructavit”) signals not only the beginning of any new line or chant, but the start of an important commemoration for a particularly venerated Feast Day. Perhaps, stylistic form did not win over function; this decoration functions, alongside the music it accompanies, as a celebration of the mercy of Christ.