Milton and Music Flashcards
What does Milton say at the start of Book IX of Paradise Lost?
‘Now I must change / Those notes to tragic’
Which negated words appear in the opening to Book IX of Paradise Lost?
‘disloyal’, ‘disobedience’, ‘distaste’, ‘distance’
What conditional clause does Milton use in the War in Heaven, book VII?
‘[as] if Nature’s concord broke’
What is created by the War in Heaven?
‘Horrible discord’
What happens when Lucifer and the angels come into proximity in the War in heaven?
‘Twixt host and host but narrow space was left,
A dreadful interval’
How does Milton describe Eve’s temptation in Book IX?
‘For understanding ruled not, and the will / Heard not her lore’
What state is Adam in after the fall?
‘from thus distempered breast’
How does Milton describe the fall in ‘At a solemn Musick?’
‘disproportioned sin / Jarred against nature’s chime’
How does Milton describe the prelapsarian Garden in ‘At a solemn Musick’?
‘in perfect Diapason, whilst they stood / In first obedience’
How does Milton open ‘At a solemn Musick’?
‘Sphere-born harmonious Sisters, Voice and Verse, / Wed your divine sounds’
What does Milton wish for at the end of ‘At a solemn Musick’?
‘O that we may soon again renew that Song, / And keep in tune with Heaven’
What does Milton say about harmony in ‘L’Allegro’?
‘The hidden soul of harmony’
When was ‘L’Allegro’ written?
Before 1645
When did Milton go to Italy?
1638
When was ‘At a solemn Musick’ written?
c.1631
When was Paradise Lost published?
1667
When was Dryden’s ‘State of Innocence’ published?
1677
What happens in ‘The State of Innocence’ after Raphael has foreshadowed Christ’s salvation?
‘soft Music, a Song and Chorus’ starts playing
What does Adam say in response to the music played at the end of ‘The State of Innocence’, applicable to the use of dissonance in music?
‘O goodness infinite! whose heavenly will
Can so much good produce, from so much ill’
What is used to indicate the chaos before the creation in ‘The State of Innocence’?
‘A symphony of Warlike Music is heard for some time’
What does Sigmund Spaeth say about the power of musical proportion for Milton?
‘He regards number and measure in music as essential because they give it objective reality and permanence.’
What does Murray Roston say about the change in tone between books VI and VII in Paradise Lost?
‘It is a harmonic descent, suggesting a diminution in tone, like the closing of an organ-stop to reduce the volume from the thunder of massed chords’
What does Lawrence McCauley say about the hints of rhyme in Paradise Lost?
‘Attuning one’s ear to such various rhyming produces a sense of acoustical texture in the poem’
What does Milton say about rhyme in his introductory note about ‘The Verse’ (1668)?
It is of ‘no true musical delight, which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one phrase to another’
When was Pope’s ‘An Essay on Man’ written?
1733-1734
How does the first Epistle in ‘An Essay on man’ end?
‘All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee; / […] All Discord, Harmony, not understood’
How does Pope describe an attitude to man’s faults?
‘passion discompos’d the mind’
Which Italian composer is credited with popularising dissonance as a compositional technique?
Claudio Monteverdi
