O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note

A multidisciplinary study of the uses of music and the portrayal of characters with mental disorder in seventeenth-century English opera and theater.

In the seventeenth century, harmonious sounds were thought to represent the well-ordered body of the obedient subject, and, by extension, the well-ordered state; conversely, discordant, unpleasant music represented both those who caused disorder (murderers, drunkards, witches, traitors) and those who suffered from bodily disorders (melancholics, madmen, and madwomen). While these theoretical correspondences seem straightforward, in theatrical practice the musical portrayals of disorderly characters were multivalent and often ambiguous.

O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note focuses on the various ways that theatrical music represented disorderly subjects—those who presented either a direct or metaphorical threat to the health of the English kingdom in seventeenth -century England. Using theater music to examine narratives of social history, Winkler demonstrates how music reinscribed and often resisted conservative, political, religious, gender, and social ideologies.

“In a world centered on notions of order and harmony, witchcraft, melancholia, and madness inhabit the margins of society. However, in this impressive and wide-ranging study, Amanda Eubanks Winkler skillfully relocates this trinity of disorder close to the center of our understanding of seventeenth-century English theater. Musically insightful, historically illuminating, and interpretatively rich, O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note will amply reward scholars of music and theater alike.” —Steven Plank, Oberlin College

“Winkler has crafted an extraordinarily useful and well-informed study that fills significant gaps in the existing musicological and theatrical scholarship on this period. With its interpretive subtlety, its approachable style, and its detailed exploration of a wide range of examples—from little-known stage works to such staples of the genre as Hamlet, The Duchess of Malfi, and Dido and Aeneas—this engaging book will be of interest to any scholar or non-specialist seeking to understand the seventeenth-century’s fascination with, and ambivalence toward, portrayals of witchcraft and madness on the theatrical stage.” —Dr. Andrew Walkling, Department of History, SUNY Binghamton

“Seventeenth-century England provides an outstanding backdrop for this study, which focuses on theatrical characters generally associated with mental disorder. . . . Opera scholars should find this work helpful, and specialists in gender studies will gain much from Winkler’s discussion of stereotypes, role reversals, pathological diagnoses, and so on. . . . Recommended.” —Choice