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Death of the Nightingale:
Improvising disruption in Early Modern England
Hello! I'm Fatima & I'm a PhD student @CamUniMusic working on musical improvisation & imperialism in early modern England. #EMQuon
Death of the Nightingale:
Improvising disruption in Early Modern England
Hello! I'm Fatima & I'm a PhD student @CamUniMusic working on musical improvisation & imperialism in early modern England. #EMQuon
In this paper I ask how the extemporary was associated w nature, empire & dangers of foreign feminine wiles. Let's start w language & how we talk about improv in the EM period-not only is ‘improvisation’ anachronistic but so is any blanket term used to describe improv #EMQuon
A word most commonly used to describe improvisatory acts in this period is 'extemporary' (& its variants) from the Latin phrase ex tempore - ‘out of (the/this) time’. #EMQuon
This word was used of singing (Nicholas Udall, c.1556: extempore will he dities compose), of killing (Jeremy Collier, 1694: I don't like a Man that can hate at first Sight, and kill Extempore), of living (J. Goodman, 1679: a man lives not ex tempore, but premeditates). #EMQuon
The notion of ‘extemporary prayer’ became a topic of debate throughout the 17thC, w authors on one side explaining how to extemporise prayers in your own words & on the other arguing that to do so was immoral & dangerous. #EMQuon
We can look at these debates to get a sense of some of the connotations of 'extemporary'. In 1661 Ireneus Freeman described extemporary prayer not only as better for a person of non-ruling class but also so dangerous it could result in the breakdown of law & order. #EMQuon
Framed as a way of following natural instinct, the extemporary becomes synonymous with uncurbed nature which must be controlled to stop the negative effects of that nature taking over & threatening public/personal 'English' safety #EMQuon
For eg, Freeman states that a magistrate must order ppl to pray with uncovered heads - even tho scripture contains this order as something that nature teaches - since this 'nature' does not apply to all humankind. #EMQuon
Freeman goes on to say that 'Turks' pray while wearing turbans. Here praying w uncovered head goes from a biblical command relating to universal human nature to one that must be transferred from Scripture -> magistrate to control the subversive Turkish 'nature' #EMQuon
This anxiety around the nature of Muslims/Ottoman Turks/Arabs highlights the danger of extemporary prayer as a way one might act on one's 'nature' to threaten rules that preserve English law & sense of identity #EMQuon
The transgressive connotations of extemporary prayer leaked into other uses of the word too; Robert Burton associates an ‘extemporanean stile’ with other faults of ‘Barbarisme’ (Barbary Coast: coastal regions of N Africa that became notorious for its Barbary pirates) #EMQuon
In this context, print may be seen as a way to preserve & maintain a sense of order & distance from Ottoman influence in both public & personal spheres - Freeman theorises that when ppl do not read words from a book, they are in fact reading imprints made on their brains #EMQuon
Moving to the musical side of things, theorist Roger North also describes improv in terms of imprints on the body, with one's 'invention' guiding the body's stored memories. Thus the improvisation of the musician depends on their body/bodily memory, invention, & nature #EMQuon
If 'extemporary music' is dependent on the body & nature of the musician who is improvising, are texts that describe how to improvise simply manuals to order & control bodies seen as 'unnatural' or subversive? #EMQuon
Running out of time/space here to go into this too fully, but I'd like to leave you w an example of an improvising nightingale in Jesuit poet Famiado Strada’s 'Musical Duel' frequently imitated throughout the 17thC & published in an English translation in London in 1671 #EMQuon
Strada stages a contest between a harpist & a nightingale, describing the nightingale as 'queen of a sweet Quire' whose 'empire' is 'invaded by the lyre'. He also calls her 'wood-bred syren' - though saying she is not as dangerous as sea-sirens #EMQuon
However, despite this reassurance, the nightingale must be silenced & die. The duel weaponises improvisation, w the nightingale showing the harpist that the ‘looser freedom’ of improvisation is her domain #EMQuon
The nightingale's natural ability to improvise the most skilled divisions on a ground (improvised variations over a repeating bass line) means the harpist must retreat & hit her with a 'brawl' of 'female sounds' #EMQuon
Using the very 'female' tools he is anxious the 'wood-siren' will mobilise against him, the harpist brings down the 'queen', her 'empire', & her improvisations through his sounds. #EMQuon
The poem ends with the nightingale singing one final ‘funeral note’, before succumbing to death. Her soul retires into the harp, which absorbs her & her song. The image of the bird being swallowed by the instrument is a symbol not only of nurture swallowing nature... #EMQuon
...but also of the subsuming of a wild & dangerously ‘female’ type of extemporary music-making into a more cultivated (male?) one. However it is not only the nightingale’s improvising that is threatening, it is her ‘empire’ that's at stake & which the harpist ‘invades’. #EMQuon
This colonial subtext coalesces English anxieties around a foreign, female ‘other’ holding power, enacting a fantasy of domination and subsumption that specifically occurs through musical improvisation. #EMQuon
Since the 'empire' in question was presumably that of the Ottomans w which EM England bred a politically-expedient closeness, how does this racialise the nightingale as Ottoman queen&thus characterise her improvisation as the product of a female Muslim body making music? #EMQuon
Finally, what does this mean for EM musical improv as inherently 'otherised' & potentially subversive in itself? How could improv’s present-ness be used to disrupt histories, historicise disruptions & listen to voices that are unarchived, dissenting, extemporary? #EMQuon
