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2 results

  • Chapter 4 - Concord and Consent

  • Simon Jackson, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    George Herbert and Early Modern Musical Culture
    Published online:
    11 November 2022
    Print publication:
    01 December 2022, pp 110-138

  • Summary

    Chapter 4 examines the musical activities of Herbert’s elder brothe, Edward, first Lord Herbert of Cherbury (c.1582–1648). Cherbury’s musical activities are regularly overlooked by scholars interested in his work as a philosopher, historian, or diplomat. Yet music played an important role in his self-fashioning as a ‘Citizen of the world’, and these Stoic cosmopolitan ideals shaped his work as a diplomat and as a philosopher. In his philosophical work, Cherbury repeatedly turns to musical ideas to understand the nature of truth as a ‘harmonising’ of our faculties with the world. Most remarkably, evidence suggests that his philosophical ideas influenced his work as a composer: founded on the mathematical and astrological principles of harmony, his lute compositions attempted to express in a deeply personal and private music his relationship to the wider cosmos. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the echo poems composed by both brothers, demonstrating how the musical idea of resonance between the microcosm and the macrocosm informs their poetry.

George Herbert and Early Modern Musical Culture
  • Simon Jackson
  • Published online:
    11 November 2022
    Print publication:
    01 December 2022
  • Described by one contemporary as the 'sweet singer of The Temple', George Herbert has long been recognised as a lover of music. Nevertheless, Herbert's own participation in seventeenth-century musical culture has yet to be examined in detail. This is the first extended critical study to situate Herbert's roles as priest, poet and musician in the context of the musico-poetic activities of members of his extended family, from the song culture surrounding William Herbert and Mary Sidney to the philosophy of his eldest brother Edward Herbert of Cherbury. It examines the secular visual music of the Stuart court masque as well as the sacred songs of the church. Arguing that Herbert's reading of Augustine helped to shape his musical thought, it explores the tension between the abstract ideal of music and its practical performance to articulate the distinctive theological insights Herbert derived from the musical culture of his time.