Another source
of popular inspiration and refinement in the great age that lies between the
Armada and the Civil War, was music and lyrical poetry. They flourished together:
many of the best poems, like the songs in Shakespeare's plays, were written
to be sung. Europe recognized Elizabethan England as the country of music
par excellence. German travellers noted with admiration how they heard beautiful
music of violas and pandoras, for in all England it is the custom that even
in small villages the musicians wait on you for a small fee." Throughout
Tudor times, fine Church music was written in England, indifferently for
the Roman Mass or the Anglican service, while the Renaissance inspired non‑ecclesiastical
music with a fresh spirit, so that it reached its zenith under Elizabeth.
The genius of Byrd adorned impartially the religious and the profane sphere,
and whole troops of able composers flourished in that great age of the madrigal.
The arena of Tudor and Stuart music was not the concert‑hall but the domestic
hearth. In days when there were no newspapers, and when books were few and
ponderous, the rising middle class, not excluding Puritan families, practised
vocal and instrumental music assiduously at home. The publication of music
by the printing‑press helped to diffuse the habit, and Elizabeth set the
example to her subjects by her skill upon the virginals.
Music and song
were the creation and inheritance of the whole people. The craftsman sang
over his task, the pedlar sang on the footpath way, and the milkmaid could
be heard "singing blithe" behind the hedgerow.