Of Music:

During the Civil War period domestic music making was the main musical activity taking lace, as the Court dispersed and theatres were closed. Earlier in the century, however, there were also dances, theatre music and that for masques, and church music.

Dances - this includes not only music for dancing, but also groups of dances arranged principally for listeners. The dance pairs of the Renaissance (e.g. pavan and galliard) grew during the mid-century into dance suites, basically of allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue, and optionally including gavotte, bouree, minuet, ayres and variations.

Masques - courtly entertainments combining instrumental and vocal music together with dancing and acting, generally on mythological and allegorical subjects - together with a strong element of flattery of their royal or noble patron.

Theatre music - by 1600 it was customary to have music before and after plays, between the acts. and also to heighten dramatic tension for supernatural effects.

Church Music - a surprising number of ordinary parish churches had organs, but in the average parish service music would be very limited. The real home of Stuart church music was the Chapel Royal, which maintained the highest artistic standards and trained and employed the foremost performers and composers. This, of course, ceased with the death of Charles I, although Cromwell did maintain a group of house musicians. The Puritans' reputation for hating music rests mainly on their suppression of church choirs, and the Parliamentary decree of 1644 forbidding the use of the organ in services, allowing only the simplest of music, such as ,metrical psalms sung by the whole congregation. At the Restoration and the re-establishment of the Chapel Royal the return of many musicians from abroad introduced exciting new ideas into English musical life.

'The People's' music - it was common for ordinary people to make music both, sung and played, in taverns and barbers' shops, and a popular form was the 'catch' - and unaccompanied round, often with a ribald text. Printed ballads were sold in the streets, and already popular tunes would be used for these - during the Civil War 'Greensleeves' was utilised for many Royalist political ballads. What we know as 'country' dances were done by all classes, with a collection of both words and steps published by John Playford during the Commonwealth. The violin, considered at this time a lower class instrument in England, would accompany these except at higher class levels.Music heard by townsfolk would also include that made by Waits. These were small band of musicians employed by towns, who used mainly shawms, cornett sackbutts and other instruments suited to being heard outdoors.

Typical instruments of the time included harpsichords (Pepys reports seeing many of them carried across the Thames to escape the Great Fire of London), virginals, clavichords , organ (primarily associated with church music), viols (principal string instruments of the C17th), violins (became more used later in the period), lute(on way out), cittern, guitar (gittern), woodwind (recorders of all sizes), brass (trumpet, sackbut, cornett), timpani (only percussion instrument) and harp.

Gill Burton, A Musical Musketeer