The Musical Structure of Dryden's "Song for St. Cecilia's Day"

Abstract

No ONE QUESTIONS that the for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687 is a well-structured lyric, but Dryden's critics have reached no consensus on exactly why its internal stanzas are arranged as they are. Alastair Fowler and Douglas Brooks have suggested that stanzas iii-vi depict the four humors-choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic, and sanguine.' Jay Arnold Levine argues that these same four stanzas represent both the four primeval elements from which God created the cosmos and the traditional four parts full instrumental music.2 Earl Miner posits that the whole poem falls into a chronological or historical order, with the exception of St. Cecilia's organ, which must enter the scene out of proper historical sequence in order to be climactic.3 Of course, all of these suggestions may be simultaneously valid: Manfred Bukofzer has cogently demonstrated that a single chorus from a Bach cantata contains at least five distinct levels of meaning,4 and baroque poetry such as for St. Cecilia's Day may exhibit a similar complexity. But to these previous explanations must be added another, one which should enhance our conception and appreciation of the lyric: Dryden, in keeping with his subject matter, used musical theory, especially the widely accepted theory of the modes, as the structural basis for his Song. The first critic to glimpse something of the subtle musicality of Dryden's construction was Jay Levine, who noted that, like a musical scale, the Song moves from harmony to harmony.5 Music