BEDFORD'S “GREAT ABUSE OF MUSICK”

Abstract

TO the student of English history no fact is more familiar than that of the degraded of religious, political, social, and artistic life during the period immediately following the so-called Restoration. Not so generally known, however, is the certainty that the closing years of the reign of Queen Anne there existed situation almost equally deplorable. With the demonstration of the latter, as it relates to matters ethical and national, the present paper cannot be directly concerned; but the existence of the work it proposes to discuss affords abundant evidence of the melancholy of English music and morals at the beginning of the eighteenth century. This is the period concerning which the Rev. John Mainwaring, his Memoirs of the Life of the late George Frederick Handel (1760), remarks, Excepting few good compositions the church style, and of very old date, I am afraid there little to boast of which we could call our own. conduct of opera here, i.e., all that regards the drama, or plan, including also the machinery, scenes, and decorations, foolish and absurd almost beyond imagination. Referring to the same time and subject, modern writer, Mr. Andrew Deakin (1822-1903), the Birmingham organist and critic, declares that at the end of the seventeenth century English music in condition, and maintaining a more or less miserable existence. The polyphonic style of writing, he says, was dying out, and harmony losing its virility. disputes concerning Service music were of no service to religion, but were terribly injurious to art, while whatever way music associated with the pursuits of the common people and the entertainments of the wealthy, resulted. This wretched condition and consequent debasement of music as an art, or as an aid to worship, the object which the author of The Great Abuse of Musick set himself therein and thereby to demonstrate and to amend. As to whether he entirely or even partially successful, history is silent. But before proceeding to examine his argument and criticize his conclusions it might be well to recount few of the principal incidents his career. Arthur Bedford born at Tidenham, near Chepstow,