Friday 29 March 2019

Singing the News: Ballads in mid-Tudor England (Thursday 25 April)

For the first lecture at our new venue - Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution at 16-18 Queen Square - I am particularly pleased that the branch will welcome Dr Jenni Hyde. Jenni is an academic, working mainly at Lancaster University, secretary of the Bolton branch of the Historical Association, and deputy chair of the HA's Branches and Members Committee, of which I am the chairman. She is also a musician, and the confluence of history and music has been a focus of her research.

Today we are bombarded by news, on television and radio, in newspapers, online. In the sixteenth century news travelled slowly, most artisans and labourers and many others could not read, and censorship and spying in an era of cataclysmic change were rife. Yet people were curious, they wanted to know what was going on, they had opinions and no doubt prejudices, and they wanted to express them.

One way in which ideas could be expressed and information passed on was through singing and listening to popular songs. The vernacular words and memorable tunes of sixteenth-century ballads made them accessible to everyone. For us they are an important resource for understanding the views and attitudes of the common people as Henry VIII broke with Rome and divorced or beheaded his wives, as Protestants, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans vied for ascendancy or asserted freedom of conscience, as England faced the might of Spain. Rhyme and melody became keys for passing on news, stories and ideas.

In her lecture Jenni Hyde will use live musical examples to demonstrate how the singing of ballads enabled the people of mid-Tudor England to make their own contributions to debates about the issues of the day whatever the restrictions the powerful sought to impose on freedom of speech.

Jenni Hyde's lecture will be followed by a brief Annual General Meeting at which those attending will be presented with the branch's annual report and accounts and details of the programme for the 2019-20 season.

Mike Short 

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