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Of Trees, Harps and Lutes

Des arbres, de la harpe et du luth
Chantal Schütz

Résumés

La relation entre musique, instruments et leur origine végétale dans le contexte de l'Angleterre élisabéthaine est explorée à la lumière de divers textes littéraires et pédagogiques de l'époque. Alors que le lien entre arbres et musique est souvent escamoté dans le discours de la période, il s’avère qu’il est profondément ancré dans les représentations symboliques des musiciens et présent dans de nombreuses scènes musicales emblématiques. La présente étude s'intéresse à la matérialité des instruments de musique, aux types de bois utilisés et à leurs associations symboliques. Dans cette optique, elle se penche sur les histoires mythiques d'Orphée et d'Apollon, mettant en lumière le pouvoir magique et transformateur de la musique sur la nature, ainsi que la résonance physique et émotionnelle entre les musiciens et leurs instruments. En interrogeant la poésie, la prose et les récits historiques, on peut mettre en lumière l'importance du bois dans la création et l'exécution de la musique, révélant une interaction complexe entre l'art, la nature et l'intervention humaine.

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1Playing a musical instrument almost always involves an intimate contact of the performer with some kind of wood: blowing into a recorder, hugging a lute, balancing a viol between one’s legs, holding a violin to one’s shoulder, handling a bow, clasping a harp, touching a keyboard, all of these bring one’s skin, mouth, fingers into a sensuous exchange with a deeply transformed version of one or several trees. Owning or buying one of these instruments involves regular visits to craftsmen’s workshops: there the combined smells of wood and varnish create a distinct atmosphere, while conversations with luthiers or instrument-makers often revolve around the quality, age and provenance of the wood used to build those precious instruments. The way modern luthiers or harpsichord builders talk about wood is steeped in the dialectic exchange between two disparate semantics: one of tenderness and sensuousness, another one of awe and secrecy. This quasi-religious experience seems to be a distant outcome of the sense of wonder Bishop Hall imagines the first listeners may have felt with regard to the miraculous power of musical instruments:

  • 1 Joseph Hall, Occasionall meditations by Ios. Exon ; set forth by R.H., London, Printed by W.S. for (...)

Vpon the hearing of a Lute well play’d on.
Had wee liued in some rude, and remote part of the World, and should haue beene told, that it is possible onely by an hollow peece of Wood, and the guts of Beasts, stirred by the fingers of men, to make so sweet and melodious a noyse, wee should haue thought it vtterly incredible; yet now that wee see and heare it ordinarily done, wee make it no wonder.1

2Yet, apart from this extremely insightful observation, there is surprisingly little to be found in the literary and pedagogical texts of early modern England that directly incorporates music, instruments and trees within one single discourse. Nevertheless, this tension between the sense of wonder induced by the inert nature of the wooden material, and the material contingencies that attend on the making of instruments – where the timber comes from, how much it costs, what are its different qualities – is embodied to a certain extent in various texts from the period. I propose to analyze some of these in order to fathom the meaning attached to trees with respect to music and musical instruments.

  • 2 Matthew Spring, The Lute in Britain: A History of the Instrument and its Music, Oxford, Oxford Univ (...)
  • 3 Patrick Gassmann, “Quand fromagers et boisseliers gruériens participaient à l’approvisionnement en (...)
  • 4 Jost Amman, Eygentliche Beschreibung aller Stände auff Erden, hoher und nidriger, geistlicher und w (...)
  • 5 Raymond Dittrich, Laute und Gitarre in der deutschsprachigen Lyrik: Gedichte aus sechs Jahrhunderte (...)

3There is a general paucity of information on instrument makers in early modern England (contrary to the continent), and very little has been written about the wood they used or how they procured it, as Christopher Marsh notes in his sum on early modern British music and society, and Matthew Spring confirms in his monography dedicated to the lute in Britain.2 This is quite striking, given that English instrument-makers are known to have used both local timber and wood imported from the Alps or even further.3 On the contrary, it appears that continental writers documented the activity of instrument makers in a little more detail. An example is provided by an engraving by Jost Amman of a lute-maker in his workshop, included in his renowned compendium on all the occupations on earth.4 The accompanying verse by the Nürnberg-based poet and musician Hans Sachs mentions that the lute-maker uses “Tännenholtz / gut vnd geschlacht”,5 the wood of good fir-trees cut for this purpose, and that he also builds gitterns and violins. Sachs was not only a poet but also a shoe-maker, which may explain his interest in the more prosaic or practical aspects of instrument-building. At any rate, his focus on the type of timber used for lutes and violins seems to point to a specialization of instrument-builders dependent on the type of wood as well as the type of instrument, while emphasizing the need to carefully select and properly cut the chosen tree.

4Both Bishop Hall’s wonder and Hans Sachs’s practical observation reveal that the connection between trees and music has to do with the importance of crafting and building, highlighting an unexpectedly physical take on the dialectic between art and nature. On the other hand, many texts on music invoke life, death and immortality, summoning the founding myths of musical practice and its rich associations with magic and religion. As an examination of some of these texts will attest, trees are deeply embedded in the elaboration of musical myths. From there, it will become possible to determine in which way musical practice articulates the physical origin of the wooden instruments it requires in order to be performed, with the symbolic representations of musicians and archetypal musical scenes.

“Thus the Harpe sounds out it selfe”

  • 6 William Basse. A Helpe to Memory and Discourse with Table- Talke as Musicke to a Banquet of Wine: B (...)

5While Hans Sachs and Bishop Hall give us a glimpse into the process by which trees are first cut then turned into instruments, an unexpected insight into the journey from tree to music is provided by a short verse published in 1619, within a collection assembled by William Basse and entitled A Helpe to Memory and Discourse, which, as its full title emphasizes, is mostly dedicated to table-talk.6 The anonymous poem “A Harpe”, subtitled “Thus the Harpe sounds out it selfe”, bears the hallmarks of emblematic literature, although no illustration is present in Basse’s Compendium. In the form of a prosopopoeia, a tree describes its own transformation into a harp, underlining the passage from “mute”, “silent” being to “sweet” and tuneful speaking, effected by the human hand.

  • 7 Ibid., p. 101.

A Silent tree I was, and mute did stand,
That now doth speake sweet tunes to euery hand.
My life was death, my death to me was life,
For heere with nature, art begins her strife,
That since in life by her I might not liue,
Art after death a life to me did giue.7

6The slightly contrived development that follows the presentation of the tree/harp underscores the gift of life conferred by art upon the inert wood, an outcome of the age-old “strife” between art and nature. That the word “life” is used five times in four lines, culminating in the idea that art provides life after death, reinforces the idea expressed in the third line, that the standing tree was not really a living being (“my life was death”), because it lacked a voice. The paradox of the production of music is thus that it requires killing in order to generate life, a trope that underpins the story of Orpheus, as will be seen in the second part of this article.

The Materiality of Instruments

7Basse’s speaking harp does not specify what tree had to die in order for it to come to life, but it is known that harps were often made from cypress or willow, two trees that have heavy connotations of grief and death. Might it be possible to detect further symbolic associations between given trees and the instruments that they spawn? Or is this association to be searched more in suggestive shapes and visual associations? What is more important, the nature of the tree or its origin?

  • 8 Thomas Mace, Musick’s Monument, London, T. Ratcliffe & N. Thompson, 1676.
  • 9 Michael Fleming, “John Evelyn on Musical Instrument Wood.” The Galpin Society Journal, 66, Galpin S (...)
  • 10 Micha Beuting, “More than dating? Further information obtained by dendrochronology”, in Stéphane Va (...)

8Our main source of information on the use of wood in instrument building, besides the few instruments that have survived, and the oral transmission operated by luthiers and other craftsmen, resides mostly in passing references in more general works. However, Thomas Mace, the author of Musick’s Monument, published in 1676,8 a book dedicated to the vindication of music and in particular of lutes and viols, provides some interesting insights into the qualities requisite for those instruments and the trees most apt to their construction. In addition, John Evelyn’s Sylva (1664 and several further editions) often mentions musical instruments when detailing the possible uses of such and such a tree. In his detailed analysis of the references to instruments in Sylva, and to wood in Musick’s Monument, Michael Fleming came to the conclusion that, in spite of the enthusiasm and dedication of the authors, “Mace and Evelyn simply did not name species in a way that can now be interpreted reliably”.9 This seems to be a result of the general instability of names and species in the period, and makes it difficult to directly map instruments against trees or to infer any symbolic associations. In fact, recent work suggests that luthiers were less particular than was previously thought when selecting wood for their instruments: they chose what was available locally, and used the wood they had in store indifferently for viols, violins or cellos, as in the case of the luthier Jacob Stainer.10

  • 11 J. Evelyn (1670). Sylva, or, A discourse of forest-trees, and the propagation of timber in his maje (...)

9While the names of tree species are not clearly delineated, some important characteristics of wood for instruments do emerge from an examination of the literature: its resonance but also its resistance to time, worms and humidity, conditions that enhance the natural qualities such as hardness or flexibility, which means some trees are more adapted to different types or parts of instruments. Thus, particularly hard woods such as euonymus or box tree are more suited for bows, while others such as fir-trees, or what is now referred to as spruce, are particularly resonant, and therefore apt for soundboards. Yew is recommended for the bodies of lutes, while pearwood is suited for the bodies of viols or the bridges of harpsichords. Evelyn also notes that cypress is a “very sonorous wood, and therefore employ’d for Organ-pipes”, as well as for harps.11

  • 12 Thomas Mace, op. cit., p. 245-246.

10Whatever the wood used, one of the constants of works discussing musical instruments is the high value placed on old instruments, especially in the case of lutes, because of the beauty of the sound they produce. Mace gives a prime example of this preference for “Old Instruments, before New; for by Experience, they are found to be far the Best. He assigns it principally to the quality of the wood, listing ahead of the “Other Adjuncts” needed to build instruments, “Glew, Parchment, Paper, Lynings of Cloath, (as some use;) but above All, the Vernish”. But his focus is on the effect of time (“Extream Age”) on the wood, which literally enables the instrument to breathe through ageing: thanks to this process, “the Pores of the Wood, have a more, and Free Liberty to Move, Stir, or Secretly Vibrate; by which means the Air, (which is the Life of All Things) both Animate, and Inanimate) has a more Free, and Easie Recourse, to Pass, and Re-pass.”12 Although Mace is trying to give a technical explanation for the better sound of old instruments, he returns to the idea that underpins the poem from Basse’s collection, that the wood of musical instruments is imbued with life.

  • 13 Quoted in Michael Fleming and John Bryan, Early English Viols: Instruments, Makers and Music, Londo (...)

11That the wood of good quality instruments is alive is emphasized by the reluctance of worms to inhabit it – resistance to rotting, worms and decomposition is fundamental for an instrument to be able to age gracefully as in Mace’s description. A further illustration is provided by the French composer and viol player Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Forqueray, who noted in 1769 that “Les meilleures Violes Sont de bois d’Erable, dans lequel les vers ne se mettent jamais”,13 referring to the famed old English viols that were praised throughout Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The association of the wood of musical instruments with health can also be detected in an African tree used to make both instruments and remedies against venereal diseases, as can be inferred from Leo Africanus’s description “Of the tree called Ettalche”:

  • 14 Johannes Leo, A Geographical historie of Africa, Written in Arabicke and Italian, London, Impensis (...)

IT is an high and a thornie tree, hauing such leaues as the iuniper hath, and bearing a gum like vnto mastick, wherwith the African apothecaries vse to mingle and adulterate their mastick, because it hath the same colour and yealdeth some smell also. There are found likewise such trees in Numidian and Lybian deserts and in the land of Negros: but the trees of Numidia being cut in the midst, consist of white wood like vnto the trees beforenamed, and the Lybian trees of a browne or tawnie wood, but the trees of the land of Negros are extreame black within. And that black pith or hart of this tree, wherof musical instruments are made, is called by the Italians Sangu. That wood which is of the browne or tawnie colour is vsed by the African phisicians for the curing of the French poxe, wherupon it is commonly called by the name of pock-wood. 14

  • 15 M. Fleming and J.Bryan, op. cit., p. 74.

12A characteristic of wood that is also often underlined is that it is sensitive to humidity: instrument makers are well aware of that limitation, and wood is always seasoned to ensure stability – up to thirty years for the choicest violins. Yet even after having taken these precautions, instruments remain liable to change size with humidity. As a result, “over many years all viols tend to break and fall apart”,15 while wind instruments are affected in terms of tuning. Hence the importance of choosing wood that does not rot or is not subject to worms – even king Solomon is said to have been careful about such choices, as is underlined by Bishop William Cowper (1568-1619), referring to 1 Kings 10:12 and the many precious trees brought by the Queen of Sheba, that were used both to build both the steps of the temple and musical instruments:

  • 16 William Cowper, A holy alphabet for sion’s scholars full of spiritual instructions, and heauenly co (...)

When Salomon made harps, and other musicall instruments for the praise of God, he made them of Almuggim trees; that is, of such trees as rotte not. Teaching vs, by like signification, how induring should bee those instruments of our heart and affections, wherewith wee praise God, that we should not suffer them to decay.16

13Resistance to rot is a particularly important feature in our context because it is a reminder of the original nature of the material musical instruments are made of. The decay that might affect the wood is more perceptible in instruments than in furniture, and in itself seems to confer a life of its own to the musical objects, changing the way they sound or look without human intervention.

14Far from being mere “means of” music considered as its exclusive end, music-producing objects carry a further dimension, that of the particular “voice”, “timbre” or “feel” of their sound, and each one’s particular visible shape lets it appear as almost independent from the human intervention that created it. In this respect the musical instrument, as an object, is at the uttermost distance of Heidegger’s famous example of the hammer as an object “ready-to-hand”, a piece of “equipment.” This tension between the autonomous, expressive life of the instrument and its organic insensitivity is reflected in the contrasting shapes and designs of instruments: hautbois, flutes or recorders are basically sticks or branches, while the practice of adding carved wooden heads (finials) to the necks of viols, citterns and harps emphasizes the figurative – in many cases zoomorphic – design of those instruments.

  • 17 Richard Sibbes, A fountain sealed: Or, the duty of the sealed to the spirit, and the worke of the s (...)

15In the case of the viol, the bow, in effect a branch to which horse-hair has been attached, is needed to make the instrument and its metonymic head “sing.” Authors of emblem books and edifying literature mirror again and again the mimetics through which a wooden body imitates a human one, while the same comparison or metaphor is walked backward by moral predication, when preacher Richard Sibbes (1577-1635) observes that “[a] musicall instrument though in tune soundeth nothing, unlesse it bee touched,”17 emphasizing the notion that, like instruments, humans need to be touched by the Lord in order to pray correctly.

16This dialectic between inanimate instrument and human intervention is fundamental to much of the discourse that brings together trees and music. It finds a particular expression in the stories of Orpheus and Apollo, where the magic and wonder detected by Hall, and the strife between art and nature invoked by Basse, are embodied in the personal tragedy of the poet and the god.

Orpheus and Trees

  • 18 A. Leigh DeNeef, “The Poetics of Orpheus: The Text and a Study of ‘Orpheus His Journey to Hell (159 (...)

17Orpheus is a major figure for Renaissance art, and early modern England makes no exception. Leigh DeNeef notes that at least thirty works “which make use of Orpheus lore” were produced between 1590 and 1600, adding that “every major Elizabethan poet contributed his share to the general English redaction of the myth.”18 It is not clear whether this popularity is due more to the fact that Orpheus is generally seen as the founding father of music, or to the tragic fate of his wife Eurydice and his fruitless journey to the underworld to rescue her. There is in fact an alternative and equally popular candidate to the title of founder of music, namely Amphion, but his personal history is more heroic and therefore less touching. This is made clear by Lodowick Lloyd, in one of many works dedicated to Greek and Roman antiquity:

  • 19 Lodowick Lloyd, The pilgrimage of princes, penned out of sundry greeke and latine aucthours, London (...)

Of Musicke and mirth.
Great controuersie there is for the antiquitie of Musicke, some doe attribute it vnto Orpheus, as the Thracians, which with Horace affirme that the Musicke of Orpheus coulde mooue stones, rockes, and trees: some vnto Amphion as the Thebans doe, which honour Amphion for the first musition, for that with his Harpe hee caused stones & trees to follow him, wherwith hee builded the towne of Thebes.19

  • 20 William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 2.5.36-37, in The Complete Works, ed. Stanley Wells, G (...)
  • 21 Ibid., 5.1.87-91.
  • 22 Ibid., p. 92-94.

18In the story of Orpheus, as in the myth of Amphion, trees are summoned because, along with rocks, they represent the epitome of insensitivity. Their being moved by the poet’s tunes is put forward as the most compelling sign of the power of his musical talent. But in The Merchant of Venice, it is to Orpheus that Shakespeare’s Lorenzo refers, in the context of the travails of love. The abductor of Jessica, daughter of one who fears music and enjoins her to “Let not the sound of shallow fopp’ry enter / My sober house,”20 is at pains to praise the power of music after their elopement. Might he be suggesting that the right kind of music could have changed Shylock’s opinion when he points out that “the poet / Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods, / Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage, / But music for the time doth change his nature”?21 In Lorenzo’s words, the progression takes us from the dull, obtuse (“stockish”) trees to the raging floods by way of the hard stones, all three qualifiers that might apply to the stern father whose anger is unleashed by his daughter’s flight. Of course Lorenzo’s dithyramb may sound like wishful thinking, given that he immediately contradicts himself by stating that the “man that hath no music in himself, / Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, / Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.”22 The scene would rather tend to debunk the traditional belief in the magical power of music, and the choice of the verb “feign” when referring to the poet reinforces the idea that the mythical story of Orpheus charming the trees is precisely only that: a myth.

  • 23 R. B., fl. [Orpheus His Iourney to Hell and His Musicke to the Ghosts], London, R. Johnes, 1595, p. (...)
  • 24 Kenneth Gros Louis, “The Triumph and Death of Orpheus”, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 9 (...)
  • 25 Orpheus His Iourney to Hell, op. cit., p. 8.

19Other authors appear to be less skeptical in their depiction of the Greek musician. Orpheus’s charming of “senseless trees”23 is repeatedly underlined in Orpheus His Iourney to Hell and His Musicke to the Ghosts, a poem published in 1595 that, in Kenneth Gros Louis’s words, represents “the culmination of the developments which made Orpheus Elizabethan as well as classical.”24 Demonstrating the efficacy of the musical magic, the trees remain so clearly in tune with Orpheus’s emotions that later on, after Eurydice dies, they visibly display their commiseration: “You wofull trees that witnesse of my mones,/ with hanging tops and teare-distilling shows.”25 In this poem, the charm does not operate only “for the time” but remains active as long as Orpheus is present or can project his feelings upon his natural surroundings. Yet the life displayed here has more to do with effects that could be attributed to the climate (hanging tops and falling drops) than to the natural life cycle of trees, which might have invoked losing leaves in the present situation, or burgeoning and blooming in a happier context.

20The equation of trees with dullards and blockheads that require the presence of the poet to come to life and feel is often recalled when, at the end of his journey, Orpheus loses his wife a second time and is later torn to pieces by the Maenads, who drown out his songs with loud drum-beating. The trees without the life-giving music are no better than the Maenads, and without Orpheus they cannot be taught the beauty of music and poetry. Jean de Marconville glosses this point, effectively explaining how the image of the charmed trees needs to be understood:

  • 26 Jean de Marconville, A treatise of the good and euell tounge with the vnstablenesse of the same, an (...)

And for this cause they sayd of olde that Amphion forced great rockes to moue out of their place by the sweete sound of his Harpe. So did Orpheus cause okes and elmes to leape for ioy of his harmony, wherby it is signified that the swet melody of their eloquēce, could prouoke and stir vp the most lumpish dullards of the world.26

21Marconville is also more precise than other writers, mentioning the types of trees Orpheus compelled to dance, oaks and elms, the sturdiest and tallest of trees. In mythology, elms are associated with death (they are often planted on graves), so the scene described here also anticipates Orpheus’s encounters with the underworld. Yet the focus is on the contrast between the unexpected capering of the trees and their solidity, since their timber is used to build ships and homes, and they are also famed for resisting water as well as weight and pressure. At any rate, they would not serve for the delicate, resonant parts of musical instruments. Would the equation with “lumpish dullards” be used about those trees without the context of the musical fable? This may be a self-serving comparison, but the fact is that it seems to have been quite widespread.

22Other trees invoked in Orphean poetry seem to have been perceived as more naturally prone to support the musician. In fact, in iconography, Orpheus is almost invariably portrayed in a grove. Initially, when Eurydice dies, he is said to hang his instrument (lyre or harp according to the sources) on the branches of one of those trees, as his grief reduces him to silence, before he is seized by furor poeticus and invents poetry (rather than just remaining a musician). This is the trope that is developed at length in a Davenant poem from the collection Madagascar, published in 1638 and entitled “From Orpheus Prince of Poets, To the Queene of Light; In favour of a young listner to his Harpe”:

  • 27 Sir William D’Avenant, Madagascar with other poems. by W. Davenant, London, Printed by Iohn Havilan (...)

Now for a cooling Shade, what use have wee
Of the delightfull Lydian-Platan-Tree,
Which Xerxes so much lov’d, or of the Lime,
Or the tall Pine, which spreads, as it doth climbe?
Or Lovers Sicamore, or mine owne Bay?
On which, since my Euridices sad day,
My Harp hath silent hung[.]27

  • 28 M. Fleming and J. Bryan, op. cit., p. 273.
  • 29 An English translation was published when the opera was performed in London: “May fate, ye tender a (...)

23Davenant’s poem is unusual in naming many different trees and also characterizing them – hinting in the process at some knowledge of the type of wood used to make musical instruments: pine suggests spruce, which, as we have seen, is a highly resonant type of wood. Sycamore was often used for the back and ribs of English viols.28 Xerxes’s love for the Plane-tree was so legendary that it was incorporated into an opera libretto by Nicolò Minato (1627-1698) in a couple of verses that would go on to become one of the most celebrated of Handel’s opera arias, “Ombra mai fu”, from the opera Serse, composed in 1738.29

Daphne

  • 30 Thomas Deloney, “A pleasant new Ballad of Daphne”, Printed by the Assignes of Thomas Symcocke, 1619 (...)
  • 31  Edmund H. Fellowes et al., English Madrigal Verse, 1588-1632, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1967, p. 40 (...)
  • 32 Pamela Coren, “Singing and Silence: Female Personae in the English Ayre”, Renaissance Studies 16. 4 (...)

24Orpheus’s mention of the “bay” as his “own” tree, a reference to Apollo’s signature laurel, introduces the myth of Daphne as a connecting thread between the poet and the god of arts, who is indeed sometimes said to have been Orpheus’s father. Daphne’s metamorphosis into a tree has frequently been set to music, as in the ubiquitous broadside ballad “A pleasant new ballad of Daphne”,30 or a poem and song by John Danyel published in 1606, “Coy Daphne fled,”31 that thematizes Daphne’s silence in response to Apollo’s “hot pursuit”. In the first verse of the latter poem, a speaker criticizes Daphne’s coyness and her “senseless” disdain for Apollo’s love, stating that “Whilst he complained his griefs, she rested mute”, which seems to automatically lead her to become “a winter-beaten tree”. Yet the second verse articulates a response that justifies Daphne’s silence, because she knew “men’s passions idle and of course”. As a result, not only was it “fit she should be mute”, but she is turned into an evergreen tree that lives on forever: “She rests still Green, and so wish I to be”. In Pamela Coren’s words, in voicing her anxiety and vindicating her silent defiance of the god, “Danyel is fulfilling the responsibility of poets and musicians to ventriloquize women’s grief,”32 but also giving a voice to the tree that welcomed her body.

  • 33 John Nichols, The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth: Among which are Interspersed other Solemnities, Pu (...)
  • 34 Diana Poulton, John Dowland, London, University of California Press, 1972, 2nd ed. 1982, p. 29-30.
  • 35 John Dowland, “My Heart and Tongue were twinnes”, A Pilgrimes Solace, Wherein is contained musicall (...)
  • 36 Iohn Cosyn, Musike of Six, and Fiue Partes made Vpon the Common Tunes Vsed in Singing of the Psalme (...)

25Daphne’s silence is also thematized in an entertainment played for Queen Elizabeth at Sudeley House in 1592.33 In a scene of Apollo and Daphne that was presented to the queen, the stricken nymph in fact re-emerges from her tree and asks the chaste queen for protection. But before that, a short song staging a lutenist and a singer on either side of a laurel highlighted the fact that Apollo in effect adopted the tree as his instrument: “This tree my lute, those sighs my notes of ruth”. The lute in that scene was actually played by the famed lutenist John Dowland,34 whose setting of the second song insists on the incompatibility of coercion and affection: “Engrave upon this tree Daphnes perfection / That neither men nor gods, can force affection”.35 This conflict between coercion and emotion is also present indirectly in Davenant’s poem, for when his Orpheus mentions that his “Harp hath silent hung” on the branches of a tree since Euridyce died, he is, as unambiguously as deliberately, referencing Psalm 137, “Super Flumina Babylonis”, which describes how the grief of the Israelites in exile led them to hang their harps on the branches of the willows that grew “by the rivers of Babylon”, while their cruel conquerors forced them to sing. In all the translations current at the time, the trees referred to are willows, as in this setting by John Cosyn: “When as we sat in Babilon, the riuers round about, and in remembrance of Syon, the teares for griefe burst out, we hangd our harpes and instruments, the willow trees vpon: for in that place men for their vse, had planted many one”.36 Willow thus meets bay in Davenant’s conflation, fitting into the wider topos of inexpressible grief and the impossibility of singing under compulsion, be it for female characters like Daphne or oppressed peoples like the Israelites.

  • 37 Christine Y Delyn, Clairseach, la harpe irlandaise : aux origines de la harpe celtique, Plouneour-M (...)

26For modern readers, there is an additional poignancy to this connection if one remembers that Irish harps (cláirseach), which were often made of willow, came to symbolize the resistance to English conquest, to the point that they were extensively confiscated and destroyed, leaving only a few specimens intact.37 The silencing of instruments through destruction, or of their players through grief and mourning seems to close the circle and bring them back to the state of dullness and senselessness of the trees initially charmed by Orpheus’s song. Yet the cycle is endlessly repeated as new mirth calls for new music which in turn requires new instruments. Nowhere is this made more obvious than in a humorous poem written in 1649 by Edward Benlowes, a minor poet of metaphysical bent. In this “Poetick Descant upon a Private Musick-Meeting,” Benlowes, who was a music lover and protector of the composer and lyra-viol player John Jenkins, displays his knowledge and enjoyment of music by embodying the performers as “sweet Planets” in the act of “ransack[ing] Musick’s Cabinet” after having set “Their Instruments in tune”:

  • 38 Edward Benlowes, A Poetick Descant upon a Private Musick-Meeting, London, s.l., s.n, 1649.

SOL! Thou pure Fountain of this Streaming Nois!
Patron of Sweetness! Soul of Joies!
How were wee ravisht with thy Viol’s warbling Voice!

Thy Nectar-dropping Joints so plai’d their part,
They forc’d the Fibers of our heart
To dance: Thy Bow’s swift-lightning made the Leero start.

Thou didst ev’n saw the grumbling Catlines still,
And tortured’st the Base, until
His roaring Diapasons did the whole Room fill. 38

27These are the poet’s friends, and he describes wavering between the aural and visual enjoyment they provide in a vivid depiction that combines highly spiritual conceits with strikingly physical impressions. Thus, music is equated with liquid sweetness (“pure fountain”, “nectar”, “Cataracts of Liquid Gold”) and the consort of instruments with a constellation, a reminder of the Boethian theory of the music of the spheres. Yet, at the same time, the musicians’ and listeners’ bodies are not only summoned but stimulated by the sounds, as the “Nectar-dropping Joints” of the former compel “the Fibers” of the latter’s “heart / to dance”. The intimate relation of player to instrument is featured in the “sawing” of the strings (“the grumbling Catlines”) and by the “swift-lightning” of the bow that startles the lyra-viol (“leero”) – a form of “torture” of the bass-viol that makes it possible to fill the room with “roaring diapasons.” The classic anthropomorphizing of the musical instruments, materialized by the “warbling voice” of the viol and the grumbling of the strings, is completed by a more original take on a keyboard instrument, the pedal-organ, and its player, who is allegorized as the moon:

  • 39 Ibid.

LUNA the Pedal richly did adorn;
If ‘twixt the Cedar and the Thorn
There’s ought harmonious, ‘twas from this sweet Fir-tree born.39

28Two types of conifer commonly used in instrument making are actuated here, in Benlowes’ customary exuberant style, to conjure up the complex harmonies made possible by their conjunction with the undefined “thorn,” probably hawthorn. The opposition between the tall majestic cedar and the small colourful shrub is resolved by the sweet music produced by the spruce soundboard, a reminder that keyboard instruments usually involve several different types of wood – oak or cypress could also have been mentioned here. Although Benlowes concludes his dithyramb by asserting that “MUSE! Thou transcend’st; Thou without Instruments canst plaie”, the body of the poem contradicts this airy claim, and the penultimate line returns to the Orphean simile of music giving life to dull material. Only this time, it is human bodies that the poet refers to: “Musick! thy Med'cines can our Griefs allaie, / And re-inspire our lumpish Claie.”

Conclusion

29Thinking of trees in conjunction with musical instruments thus makes it possible to discern subtle changes across the period in the perception of trees as animate objects – living beings, indeed beings that are able to create life. For one, they are reconnected to their mythological association with the nymphs who inhabit them or were transformed, first into trees, then into musical instruments or adjuncts to musical performance. Then there is clearly a shift from a generic approach to dumb or silent “trees” toward more precise catalogues, as in the texts written by John Evelyn, William Davenant or Edward Benlowes.

30The exploration of the intricate relationship between music, instruments, and trees in early modern texts reveals a nuanced understanding of the symbiosis between art and nature. On the basis of this analysis of literary texts, historical accounts, and mythical narratives, it becomes apparent that trees play a vital role not only as raw materials for instrument construction but also as symbolic entities imbued with meaning and significance. From the practical considerations of selecting the right type of wood for specific instruments to the symbolic associations between certain trees and musical themes, early modern writers repeatedly touched on the profound interconnection between the material and the metaphysical realms. The myths of Orpheus and Apollo, in particular, serve as powerful metaphors for the transformative power of music over nature, illustrating how sound can animate the seemingly inert and evoke emotional responses from both humans and the natural world.

31In essence, the discourse surrounding music, instruments, and trees in early modern England offers a rich tapestry of insights into the cultural, aesthetic, and philosophical dimensions of musical practice. By delving into the materiality of music-making and the symbolic resonances of trees, this study illuminates the profound ways in which art and nature intersected in the early modern imagination, leaving a lasting imprint on musical discourse.

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Notes

1 Joseph Hall, Occasionall meditations by Ios. Exon ; set forth by R.H., London, Printed by W.S. for Nath. Butter, 1631, p. 204-205.

2 Matthew Spring, The Lute in Britain: A History of the Instrument and its Music, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 69; Christopher Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 20.

3 Patrick Gassmann, “Quand fromagers et boisseliers gruériens participaient à l’approvisionnement en bois de lutherie. Un exemple anglais datant de la fin du XVIIIe siècle”, in Stéphane Vaiedelich and Anne Houssay (ed.), Actes de la journée d’étude du 6 juin 2009 : Dater l’instrument de musique, Paris, Musée de la musique, 2009, p. 68-84, here p. 83. https://www.citedelamusique.fr/pdf/insti/recherche/dater/total_fr.pdf, (All web references last accessed 05/01/2026).

4 Jost Amman, Eygentliche Beschreibung aller Stände auff Erden, hoher und nidriger, geistlicher und weltlicher, aller Künsten, Handwercken und Händeln, Frankfurt am Mayn, 1568. The relevant page can be viewed at: https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Eygentliche_Beschreibung_Aller_St%C3%A4nde_auff_Erden:Der_Lautenmacher.

5 Raymond Dittrich, Laute und Gitarre in der deutschsprachigen Lyrik: Gedichte aus sechs Jahrhunderten. Eine Anthologie, Leipzig, Engelsdorfer Verlag, 2014, p. 10.

6 William Basse. A Helpe to Memory and Discourse with Table- Talke as Musicke to a Banquet of Wine: Being a Compendium of Witty, and Vsefull Propositions, Problemes, and Sentences / Extracted from the Larger Volumes of Physicians, Philosophers, Orators and Poets. London, TB for L Becket, 1630 (1st ed. 1619).

7 Ibid., p. 101.

8 Thomas Mace, Musick’s Monument, London, T. Ratcliffe & N. Thompson, 1676.

9 Michael Fleming, “John Evelyn on Musical Instrument Wood.” The Galpin Society Journal, 66, Galpin Society, 2013, p. 201-201, here p. 204, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44083118.

10 Micha Beuting, “More than dating? Further information obtained by dendrochronology”, in Stéphane Vaiedelich and Anne Houssay (ed.), Actes de la journée d’étude du 6 juin 2009 : Dater l’instrument de musique, Paris, Musée de la musique, 2009, p.163. https://www.citedelamusique.fr/pdf/insti/recherche/dater/total_fr.pdf

11 J. Evelyn (1670). Sylva, or, A discourse of forest-trees, and the propagation of timber in his majesties dominions, London, Jo. Martyn and Ja. Allestry, 1670, p. 119.

12 Thomas Mace, op. cit., p. 245-246.

13 Quoted in Michael Fleming and John Bryan, Early English Viols: Instruments, Makers and Music, London, Routledge, 2016, p. 206.

14 Johannes Leo, A Geographical historie of Africa, Written in Arabicke and Italian, London, Impensis Georg. Bishop, 1600, p. 357.

15 M. Fleming and J.Bryan, op. cit., p. 74.

16 William Cowper, A holy alphabet for sion’s scholars full of spiritual instructions, and heauenly consolations, to direct and encourage them in their progresse towards the new ierusalem: Deliuered, by way of commentary vpon the whole 119. psalme. by william covvper, London, Printed by H. Lownes, for Iohn Budge, 1613, p. 156.

17 Richard Sibbes, A fountain sealed: Or, the duty of the sealed to the spirit, and the worke of the spirit in sealing. wherein many things are handled about the holy spirit, and grieving of it: As also of assurance and sealing what it is, the priviledges and degrees of it, with the signes to discerne, and means to preserve it. : Being the substance of divers sermons preached at grayes inne. / by that reverend divine, richard sibbes D.D. and sometimes preacher to that honourable society, London, Printed by Thomas Harper for Lawrence Chapman, 1638, p. 85.

18 A. Leigh DeNeef, “The Poetics of Orpheus: The Text and a Study of ‘Orpheus His Journey to Hell (1595).’” Studies in Philology, 89. 1, 1992, p. 20-70, here p. 20.

19 Lodowick Lloyd, The pilgrimage of princes, penned out of sundry greeke and latine aucthours, London, Printed by [John Charlewood and John Kingston? for] William Iones, 1573, p. 112.

20 William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 2.5.36-37, in The Complete Works, ed. Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, John Jowett, et William Montgomery, Oxford, Clarendon Press, The Oxford Shakespeare, 1988.

21 Ibid., 5.1.87-91.

22 Ibid., p. 92-94.

23 R. B., fl. [Orpheus His Iourney to Hell and His Musicke to the Ghosts], London, R. Johnes, 1595, p. 3.

24 Kenneth Gros Louis, “The Triumph and Death of Orpheus”, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 9. 1, 1969, p. 63-80, here p. 66.

25 Orpheus His Iourney to Hell, op. cit., p. 8.

26 Jean de Marconville, A treatise of the good and euell tounge with the vnstablenesse of the same, and also with the abuses thereof. with a discourse of the punishment which the lord hath shewed on al those which through swearing and periuring themselues, haue broken gods commandements, London, By J. Wolfe] for Iohn Perin. 1592, p. 32-33.

27 Sir William D’Avenant, Madagascar with other poems. by W. Davenant, London, Printed by Iohn Haviland for Thomas Walkly, 1638, p. 45-46.

28 M. Fleming and J. Bryan, op. cit., p. 273.

29 An English translation was published when the opera was performed in London: “May fate, ye tender and ye beauteous leaves, / Of my beloved plane / May thy dear peace be undisturb’d by storms, / By thunder’s rage, or by the light’nings blast; / Nor may’st thou be, by russl’ing winds, prophan’d. / No, never vegetable made / A dearer and a lovelier shade; / And never from the sun’s fierce heat, / Was more agreable retreat.” George Frederick Handel, Xerses. An Opera. As perform'd at the Theatre Royal in the Hay-Market, London, J. Chrichley, 1738.

30 Thomas Deloney, “A pleasant new Ballad of Daphne”, Printed by the Assignes of Thomas Symcocke, 1619-1629?, EBBA 30261, British Library – Roxburghe. https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/30261/image.

31  Edmund H. Fellowes et al., English Madrigal Verse, 1588-1632, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1967, p. 401.

32 Pamela Coren, “Singing and Silence: Female Personae in the English Ayre”, Renaissance Studies 16. 4, 2002, p. 525–47, here p. 537.

33 John Nichols, The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth: Among which are Interspersed other Solemnities, Public Expenditures, and Remarkable Events During the Reign of that Illustrious Princess: Collected from Original MSS., Scarce Pamphlets, Corporation Records, Parochial Registers, &C., &C.: Illustrated with Historical Notes (3 vols), 2014. Vol iii, p. 609-616.

34 Diana Poulton, John Dowland, London, University of California Press, 1972, 2nd ed. 1982, p. 29-30.

35 John Dowland, “My Heart and Tongue were twinnes”, A Pilgrimes Solace, Wherein is contained musicall harmonie of 3. 4. and 5 parts, to be sung and plaid with the lute and viols, London, William Barley, 1612, n. 18.

36 Iohn Cosyn, Musike of Six, and Fiue Partes made Vpon the Common Tunes Vsed in Singing of the Psalmes, London, John Wolfe, 1585.

37 Christine Y Delyn, Clairseach, la harpe irlandaise : aux origines de la harpe celtique, Plouneour-Menez, éditions Hent Telenn Breizh, 1998, ch. IV.

38 Edward Benlowes, A Poetick Descant upon a Private Musick-Meeting, London, s.l., s.n, 1649.

39 Ibid.

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Chantal Schütz, « Of Trees, Harps and Lutes  »Études Épistémè [En ligne], 48 | 2025, mis en ligne le 16 mars 2026, consulté le 19 avril 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/22288 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/160fs

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Auteur

Chantal Schütz

Chantal Schütz was Assistant Professor at the École Polytechnique from 2001 to 2023, where she was Head of the Languages and Cultures Department from 2017 to 2023, and Coordinator of English language teaching from 2011 to 2017. A graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, she wrote her dissertation on Thomas Middleton, and has published extensively on Shakespeare and his period, in particular the relationship between text and music in early modern England. A member of the PRISMES research team at Sorbonne Nouvelle, she was a research fellow for 4 years at the Globe Theatre in London, and for 2 years at the European University Institute in Florence.

Professeure Assistante à l’École Polytechnique de 2001 à 2023, Chantal Schütz y a dirigé le département des Langues et Cultures de 2017 à 2023, et coordonné les enseignements d’anglais de 2011 à 2017. Ancienne élève de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, agrégée d’anglais, elle a consacré sa thèse à Thomas Middleton, et de nombreuses publications à Shakespeare et son époque, notamment les rapports entre texte et musique dans l’Angleterre de la première modernité. Membre de l’équipe de recherches PRISMES de l’Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, elle a été chargée de recherches pendant 4 ans au théâtre du Globe à Londres, et 2 ans à l’Institut Universitaire Européen de Florence.

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