Ru
EnMeng Juguang, N. Duda
Wind music in Stuart England
This article is devoted to a little-studied area of Russian musicology: English wind music of the Stuart era (1603–1714). The growing interest in the 17th-century English music among prominent conductors and performers, whose fascination with authentic Baroque instruments strongly motivated the search and study of Caroline and Restoration scores, is noted in the text. The tendencies in musical instrumentation, from court masques to the appearance of natural trumpets and related instruments in composers’ scores of the late 17th century, are traced in the study. The article devotes special attention to cornets and sackbuts, which popularity was unrivaled by any other wind instrument. The reader’s attention is focused on the activities of the Town Waits, who preserved and actively developed the wind music tradition in the island nation`s cities and towns. A description of the specific conditions of their service provides insight into how musicians were raised among waits, their key professional duties, the activities they readily combined, musical instruments they predominantly used, and so on. The article focuses on the analysis of surviving manuscripts, based on which a conclusion about the characteristics of English wind music, mostly dance, with real English melodic motives, with a recognizable harmonic originality and fancy texture is drawn. The conclusion that in English wind music of the Stuart era, a culture of professional wind ensemble musicmaking had already emerged in the first quarter of the 17th century, the development of which during the Restoration era was not hindered by either the mid-century English Civil Wars or the prohibitions of the English Republic, is presented in the study.
Key words
English wind music, Stuart era, cornett, sackbut, the Town Waits, Matthew Locke, Henry Purcell.
For citation
Meng Juguang, Duda N. Wind music in Stuart England. In: South-Russian Musical Anthology. 2026. No. 2. Pp. 44–51.
