“the speedy demolishing of all organs and all matters of superstitions, monuments in all Cathedral or Collegiate or Parish Churches and Chapels throughout the Kingdom.”
And even before then havoc had been made of the church organs. Of the court players no one knows--they disappeared. But after the Restoration the Royal Chapel Choir was re-formed with some difficulty, for both teachers and performers had been scattered to the four winds. Then followed the age of Purcell, Humphrey, Wise, and Blow.
Throughout the seventeenth century, and down to the time of the second George, ladies continued to play on the virginals and lute, and to practise reading music at sight.
“Part of a gentlewoman’s bringing up is to sing, dance, play on the lute, or some such instrument, before she can say her _Pater Noster_ or ten commandments: ’tis the next way their parents think to get them husbands, they are compelled to learn.”
And just as Englishwomen of the present day are apt to lay aside their accomplishments after marriage, so, in the seventeenth century,
“they that being maids took so much pains to sing, play, and dance, with such cost and charge to their parents to get these graceful qualities, now being married, will scarce touch an instrument, they care not for it.”
The very maidservants at that period understood music. Pepys speaks of a servant whom he and his wife took into their household, a poor, wretched girl, without proper clothing, but with a decided talent for singing, apparent even through a voice described by the diarist as furred for want of use. This was the fourth maid in the course of less than ten years whom Pepys praises for musical ability; and there was also the boy who was in the habit of playing his lute in bed at four in the morning, a habit that most employers would object to, but Pepys saw in it only occasion for praise.
The seventeenth century marks an era in our musical history, because it witnessed the first attempts at opera by English composers. Matthew Lock’s opera, _Psyche_, produced in 1673, was the first English composition of this class. Henry Purcell, when he was only about seventeen, wrote _Dido and Æneas_. It was performed in 1677. Now, as Madame Raymond Ritter has said--