ELIZABETHAN MUSIC
Sung by THE WIRELESS SINGERS
Conductor, STANFORD ROBINSON
THE glory of our Elizabethan period in music was one in which everybody shared, from the Queen herself to the humblest countryman or woman. Splendid music was composed in such volume that big libraries would be needed to house it all, could it ho gathered together now, and the whole of Europe looked towards England with a great deal more than mere respect, for its music. But music was a part of everyday life, as it has never since been, here or anywhere : to be able to sing or play, to read one's own part at sight, in madrigal or in a consort of lutes or vicls, to accompany on the spinet or the virginal, was as much a part of the ordinary man's or woman's equipment, as walking or riding. These were not accomplishments whose possession marked one out for favour or attention : they were taken for grautod, as eating or drinking or sleeping are taken for granted now, and to proclaim oneself untutored in such ways was, indeed, to be an outcast. As we sit down now to a rubber of bridge, the Elizabethan household and its guests went after dinner to the music-room to sing or play, and part-books were sot out where we should look for cards. Quito often they were printed, not in score, but with the sheets for the several parts set together in cross-shape, so that the singers could stand, or sit, about a table, and each sing from his own page, without any guidance from seeing what the others wore about. No wonder, then, that much fine music was composed : it had to be, in accordance with the stern old law of supply and demand.
It may bo that the present day has improved conditions in some ways since then : it would need to offer something very valuable to make up for that loss of music as an everyday joy, a part of the common man's delight. We listen to music now, instead of making it ourselves : if the wireless singers are reviving something of that forgotten culture, if they can awako a renascence of household team-music as the bust use for evening's leisure from the worries of the day, they will deserve well of their generation.