Milton and Music

Question 1

What does Milton say at the start of Book IX of Paradise Lost?

Answer 1

‘Now I must change / Those notes to tragic’

Question 2

Which negated words appear in the opening to Book IX of Paradise Lost?

Answer 2

‘disloyal’, ‘disobedience’, ‘distaste’, ‘distance’

Question 3

What conditional clause does Milton use in the War in Heaven, book VII?

Answer 3

‘[as] if Nature’s concord broke’

Question 4

What is created by the War in Heaven?

Answer 4

‘Horrible discord’

Question 5

What happens when Lucifer and the angels come into proximity in the War in heaven?

Answer 5

‘Twixt host and host but narrow space was left,
A dreadful interval’

Question 6

How does Milton describe Eve’s temptation in Book IX?

Answer 6

‘For understanding ruled not, and the will / Heard not her lore’

Question 7

What state is Adam in after the fall?

Answer 7

‘from thus distempered breast’

Question 8

How does Milton describe the fall in ‘At a solemn Musick?’

Answer 8

‘disproportioned sin / Jarred against nature’s chime’

Question 9

How does Milton describe the prelapsarian Garden in ‘At a solemn Musick’?

Answer 9

‘in perfect Diapason, whilst they stood / In first obedience’

Question 10

How does Milton open ‘At a solemn Musick’?

Answer 10

‘Sphere-born harmonious Sisters, Voice and Verse, / Wed your divine sounds’

Question 11

What does Milton wish for at the end of ‘At a solemn Musick’?

Answer 11

‘O that we may soon again renew that Song, / And keep in tune with Heaven’

Question 12

What does Milton say about harmony in ‘L’Allegro’?

Answer 12

‘The hidden soul of harmony’

Question 13

When was ‘L’Allegro’ written?

Answer 13

Before 1645

Question 14

When did Milton go to Italy?

Answer 14

1638

Question 15

When was ‘At a solemn Musick’ written?

Answer 15

c.1631

Question 16

When was Paradise Lost published?

Answer 16

1667

Question 17

When was Dryden’s ‘State of Innocence’ published?

Answer 17

1677

Question 18

What happens in ‘The State of Innocence’ after Raphael has foreshadowed Christ’s salvation?

Answer 18

‘soft Music, a Song and Chorus’ starts playing

Question 19

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?

Answer 19

‘O goodness infinite! whose heavenly will
Can so much good produce, from so much ill’

Question 20

What is used to indicate the chaos before the creation in ‘The State of Innocence’?

Answer 20

‘A symphony of Warlike Music is heard for some time’

Question 21

What does Sigmund Spaeth say about the power of musical proportion for Milton?

Answer 21

‘He regards number and measure in music as essential because they give it objective reality and permanence.’

Question 22

What does Murray Roston say about the change in tone between books VI and VII in Paradise Lost?

Answer 22

‘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’

Question 23

What does Lawrence McCauley say about the hints of rhyme in Paradise Lost?

Answer 23

‘Attuning one’s ear to such various rhyming produces a sense of acoustical texture in the poem’

Question 24

What does Milton say about rhyme in his introductory note about ‘The Verse’ (1668)?

Answer 24

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’

Question 25

When was Pope’s ‘An Essay on Man’ written?

Answer 25

1733-1734

Question 26

How does the first Epistle in ‘An Essay on man’ end?

Answer 26

‘All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee; / […] All Discord, Harmony, not understood’

Question 27

How does Pope describe an attitude to man’s faults?

Answer 27

‘passion discompos’d the mind’

Question 28

Which Italian composer is credited with popularising dissonance as a compositional technique?

Answer 28

Claudio Monteverdi