# The Black Death



## Guest (Aug 8, 2017)

I don't know if this has been discussed before but if it has, it wouldn't hurt to do so again.

Basically, I just have one question: How did the Black Death affect the music of Europe? The uncomfortable answer I get is--very little to not at all. You have to wonder how such an event that killed between a third to half of the Europe's population seem to have left little impact on the music. When I listen to the music that existed, say, in the 12th or 13th centuries, I hear no appreciable difference in the music made in the mid 14th century when the pestilence hit Europe to the end of that century. It's as though it never happened. Now there are some differences but they could attributed to nothing more than the inevitable changes in fashion that always occur everywhere all the time.

Moreover, I can find little scholarly work on this issue. It's quite surprising to find a scholarly treatise on music of the late 14th century, for example, but the author skips over the Black Death which was raging in Europe at this time. Compare this to, say, the Vietnam War. There were all kinds of protest songs about Vietnam throughout the duration of the war. This war took 58,000 American lives but this is a miniscule number compared to how many died in Europe during the Black Death outbreak. Even with the Vietnam conflict, it was difficult to find a family that wasn't touched by it somehow. I knew a couple of people who served in that war. While I didn't know anyone who had died in it, I knew people who knew someone who died in it. Most Americans were touched by that war. So imagine how deeply touched Europeans had to be touched with whole villages and entire families being wiped out by a disease no one could understand or combat.

I read somewhere that music became more dirge-like in the wake of the Black Death but i see no evidence of this. Here is something from the 12th century:






13th century:






14th century:










Now to be clear, the Black Death entered Europe through the port city of Venice circa 1347 (it had hit the West in the 6h century and was called Justinian's Plague although little is known about it although scholars generally agree that this was the Black Death) and it took a while to spread throughout Europe. But certainly by the late 14 century, most of Europe was well aware of the Black Death and what it did. Yet the music seems utterly oblivious to it. Another 14th century piece:






"Trotto" is, in fact, a very famous piece of medieval music. I have found that most medieval music comps have a version of it and I've heard a good 25 or so. Strange for a piece performed while the Black Death raged through Europe to not contain a hint of the horror and despair that should have been rampant. It certainly doesn't sound dirgey to me.

Here is some 15th century music when there could be no doubt about the Black Death and yet it sounds like everyone was just having a swinging time:






This is also a very famous piece as I have several versions in my collection I'm not even sure how many but quite a few. Strange that some of the best known medieval pieces renown for their beauty inspirational quality came out in the midst of one of the most devastating outbreaks known to human history.

I started off wondering if the Euros were just endlessly optimistic or totally in denial but these would be untenable positions were I to accept either as a definitive explanation. I'm instead forced to ask how bad the Black Death really was. How extensive was it? How many did it actually kill?

In fact, how was it transmitted? It supposedly had its genesis in China as a bacterium called Yersinia pestis. Venetian traders then picked it up while traveling the Silk Road and eventually brought it back to Venice. Its method of travel supposedly was via rats that stowed away on the ships in port. The fleas rode on the infected rats and bit them and then jumped off the rats and onto humans and bit them thereby transferring the disease to humans. There is some truth to this as it did seem to enter into various countries by its port cities. But when excavation at the piers were done to expose the layer of strata that would have been exposed in medieval times, they found this layer almost entire bereft of rat bones. Rats suffered and died of the disease just as we humans did so they too would have been dropping dead of the plague. But where are those million little carcasses?

In the earliest classical music after the Black Death began ravaging Europe I do not hear anything that leads me to believe a huge pestilence had had any effect on the emerging classical music. Then again, maybe I'm wrong. I await enlightenment (with sources please).


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

A very good question, but I fear I don't know enough about medieval music to have any sort of answer. The Europeans are said to also be the only people that seem not to have noticed the famous supernova explosion of 1054 (or if they noticed, they made no note of it). I.e. at least the popular image is that they were pretty much set in their ways, and nothing could get through to them.

Of late, scholars of medieval Europe have begun to rethink that notion. But I don't really know enough about it to say much.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Maybe it was present in popular songs (like ring a ring a roses) which have disappeared. It just wasn't seen as a suitable subject for written music. This is true for other major events - think of the witch craze in the 16th century, or famine.

The plague was an acceptable subject in literature I think, and art. It wasn't "unnoticed"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death_in_medieval_culture


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

_'But certainly by the late 14 century, most of Europe was well aware of the Black Death and what it did. Yet the music seems utterly oblivious to it.'_
---
For many in the arts at the time, it may seem ironic during a period of such wide-spread death that the Plague also intensified an interest in the positives of life:

_"The art of these centuries abounds in images of death, sure, yet it is also full of joy. The Europeans of the 1500s and 1600s created incredible treasures and beacons of civilisation. Far from being driven to despair by pestilence, it is as if they were spurred to assert the glory of life."_

How Artists Painted Through the Plague: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2012/feb/15/brush-black-death-artists-plague

Examples of the positive side in music have already been presented by the OP, Victor Redseal, and I believe it's understandable that those living during those deadly years made the right decision by not obsessing or repeatedly focusing on images or music related to the Plague.


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## tortkis (Jul 13, 2013)

I read that, at the outbreak of the black death, rich people took shelter in safe places and developed high culture in the closed circumstances. Due to the restrained activities, they had plenty of time to refine and sophisticate compositions, which became Ars Subtilior. It was sort of decadent music for selected court people, who shut out unpleasant outside world. Probably this is the reason we don't hear the impact of the widespread disease much in the 14th century music. It was a short essay about medieval music, and I am not sure if the author had reliable sources, sorry.

I wonder what kind of music was created by secular musicians who couldn't afford safe shelters and had to face terrible deaths. Since their musics were regarded vulgar and usually not recorded as score anyway, we cannot know how it sounded like.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

tortkis said:


> I read that, at the outbreak of the black death, rich people took shelter in safe places and developed high culture in the closed circumstances. Due to the restrained activities, they had plenty of time to refine and sophisticate compositions, which became Ars Subtilior. It was sort of decadent music for selected court people, who shut out unpleasant outside world. Probably this is the reason we don't hear the impact of the widespread disease much in the 14th century music. It was a short essay about medieval music, and I am not sure if the author had reliable sources, sorry.
> 
> I wonder what kind of music was created by secular musicians who couldn't afford safe shelters and had to face terrible deaths. Since their musics were regarded vulgar and usually not recorded as score anyway, we cannot know how it sounded like.


Yes sure, but as far as I know it doesn't crop up even in things like Carmina Burana.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

The rats most likely died on the ships mid-journey (which took a long time) and were then thrown overboard. After that the sailors who were infected would have been untreated and developed pneumonic plague - the stage where it becomes transmissible between humans from airborne droplets. The incubation period is rapid so those who hadn't already died would have been highly infectious by the time they reached port.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Don't you think the title of this thread would be a great bit of theatre. The Black Death - The Musical!


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Barbebleu said:


> Don't you think the title of this thread would be a great bit of theatre. The Black Death - The Musical!


Extras constantly required because they keep dying off?


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## Guest (Aug 8, 2017)

Barbebleu said:


> Don't you think the title of this thread would be a great bit of theatre. The Black Death - The Musical!


I was typing this late last night and I was actually falling asleep as I was typing so I had to cut it short but I was wondering why there were no opera about the Black Death. Now, operas were rather later than the first wave of the Death. I guess the earliest known is Dafne from 1597 but, even so. an opera set in the grip of the Death would have made great theater.

I also did think about the supernova of 1056 but there's obvious differences. The Europeans probably didn't mention it in any writings because the Church forbade it thinking that it was either the work of Satan or of God and must not be second guessed or speculated on. Any writings on the subject were seized and destroyed. And there was probably very little written about it as it was because writing wasn't exactly a widespread discipline in Europe at this time.

There is speculation whether or not the Black Death was even bubonic plague because it seemed not to have been transmitted from rat to human by flea vectors but spread a lot faster than bubonic plague would have. This leaves us to speculate was the disease was. But regardless, i don't think the Black Death killed as many people as they say. Pockets of Europe were ravaged but I think the majority of Europe coped just fine. Certainly, leaders passed info back and forth and put stringent safeguards in place to prevent infected people from getting in. As a result, there was still plenty of leisure to pursue the high arts and improve the culture because the Black Death would have savaged European culture were it as deadly as they say. It would have been a second Dark Ages.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

Victor Redseal said:


> I started off wondering if the Euros were just endlessly optimistic or totally in denial but these would be untenable positions were I to accept either as a definitive explanation. I'm instead forced to ask how bad the Black Death really was. How extensive was it? How many did it actually kill?


It was horrible. One out of every three people died, and died in great pain and humiliation and not quickly. One out of three. Look to your left, look to your right, one of them is going to die.

One of the options you did not mention is that music might have been an escape from the misery. The purpose perhaps not so much to express feelings, but to find respite from a horrible situation. They didn't need to play sad music, everyone knew where to go to see sights and hear sounds (and experiences smells) that would make one sad and hopeless.

Fascinating topic. I need to look into this.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Victor Redseal said:


> The Europeans probably didn't mention it in any writings because the Church forbade it thinking that it was either the work of Satan or of God and must not be second guessed or speculated on. Any writings on the subject were seized and destroyed.


I doubt there is any evidence of this. And both The Canterbury Tales and The Decameron, 14th-century works, are collections of stories told by pilgrims on journeys to escape the black death.


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## Guest (Aug 9, 2017)

JeffD said:


> It was horrible. One out of every three people died, and died in great pain and humiliation and not quickly. One out of three. Look to your left, look to your right, one of them is going to die.
> 
> One of the options you did not mention is that music might have been an escape from the misery.


I already mentioned the possibility that the Europeans were either full of boundless, if not unwarranted, optimism or were in serious denial about what was going on around them and I reject both. Neither makes sense. "I lost my wife, my kids, my best friends, the merchantmen, the blacksmith, the horses, the baker, the cows, the sheep and the butcher--all dead and I may contract this horrible disease at any moment and die in utter agony but, you know what? I'm going to celebrate and look at the good things still left in my life." I'm sorry, but no. Not going to happen. A smaller disaster you can do that with but one a huge one as the Black Death supposedly was? Read your own description:

"It was horrible. One out of every three people died, and died in great pain and humiliation and not quickly. One out of three. Look to your left, look to your right, one of them is going to die."

I know people who, if they lost their kids, would kill themselves rather than live without them. No, the songs would have reflected the intense pain and misery that permeated all of Europe and Eurasia. The only place where happy or meditative songs would proliferate was where people were free to write such pieces and that had to be a place where there was no immediate threat of the Black Death coming to town.



> The purpose perhaps not so much to express feelings, but to find respite from a horrible situation. They didn't need to play sad music, everyone knew where to go to see sights and hear sounds (and experiences smells) that would make one sad and hopeless.


By standard accounts, there was nowhere you couldn't to get away from the misery and the sickness and the death. You watch people around you dying in agony--people you grew up with, people you love. How can you just decide to sing happy songs as if their deaths meant nothing??



> Fascinating topic. I need to look into this.


It is, isn't it?


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## Guest (Aug 9, 2017)

KenOC said:


> I doubt there is any evidence of this.


Of course not, it was destroyed. And the only literate people then were monks and nuns so if the pope issued an order saying no one is to mention you-know-what then there will be virtually no records. Otherwise, you have to entertain the notion that they saw the nova in the sky and thought nothing of it, found it of so little interest that not a single person even thought to mention it. That's a bit silly. People were either forbidden to write of it or the writings were later collected and destroyed. I'm going to guess the former.



> And both The Canterbury Tales and The Decameron, 14th-century works, are collections of stories told by pilgrims on journeys to escape the black death.


Yes, we know England was stricken acutely as were parts of Italy but we also know that in cities as Milan, few or no deaths were recorded. Poland appeared to be untouched. So I believe good-sized pockets of Europe were badly stricken but the majority of Europe remained unscathed and THAT would be cause for great happiness and solemn thankfulness. Those places would be where the happy sounding music came from.


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## Guest (Aug 9, 2017)

"A sickly season," the merchant said,
"The town I left was filled with dead,
and everywhere these queer red flies
crawled upon the corpses' eyes,
eating them away."

"Fair make you sick," the merchant said,
"They crawled upon the wine and bread.
Pale priests with oil and books,
bulging eyes and crazy looks,
dropping like the flies."

"I had to laugh," the merchant said,
"The doctors purged, and dosed, and bled;
"And proved through solemn disputation
"The cause lay in some constellation.
"Then they began to die."

"First they sneezed," the merchant said,
"And then they turned the brightest red,
Begged for water, then fell back.
With bulging eyes and face turned black,
they waited for the flies."

"I came away," the merchant said,
"You can't do business with the dead.
"So I've come here to ply my trade.
"You'll find this to be a fine brocade..."

And then he sneezed.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Victor Redseal said:


> Of course not, it was destroyed. And the only literate people then were monks and nuns so if the pope issued an order saying no one is to mention you-know-what then there will be virtually no records.


Odd that two of the most-read books from that era both concern the black plague. Perhaps the authors, good Catholics both, missed that papal bull, which itself seems to have gone missing?

Also, plenty of people outside the clergy were literate -- the authors Chaucer and Boccaccio, for instance, neither of whom were churchmen. And the readers of their books, of course.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

In the case of sacred music after the medieval period, it was relatively rare for completely new texts and music to be written in direct reaction to major events like the Black Death. Instead, post-medieval sacred composers often composed new settings of ancient hymns that had been around for centuries but whose themes were analogous to current events. For example, the _Te Deum_ hymn dates back to the 5th century, but it was a common hymn to use after times of plague. So while there may not be many examples of 15th century works that make direct references to the Black Death, there were many _Te Deum_ settings in the 15th century. (Not to mention the fact that 15th-century musicians wishing to address the Black Plague didn't need to compose new _Te Deum_ settings; they could have simply used previous settings.)

In fact, some liturgical texts and hymns were so commonly associated with the plague that when new manuscripts of sacred music are discovered and they contain settings of plague-related texts, musicologists will sometimes use this as a clue in determining when the manuscript was created.

Of course there are exceptions. The hymn _Stella celi extirpavit_, which was set to music several times by mostly English composers, seems to have been written in direct response to the Black Death.


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## Guest (Aug 9, 2017)

KenOC said:


> Odd that two of the most-read books from that era both concern the black plague. Perhaps the authors, good Catholics both, missed that papal bull, which itself seems to have gone missing?
> 
> Also, plenty of people outside the clergy were literate -- the authors Chaucer and Boccaccio, for instance, neither of whom were churchmen. And the readers of their books, of course.


I was talking about 1056 and the supernova that the Europeans apparently decided to ignore. I mentioned nothing about literacy in the 17th century. Even Americans could read by that time.


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## Guest (Aug 9, 2017)

> In the case of sacred music after the medieval period, it was relatively rare for completely new texts and music to be written in direct reaction to major events like the Black Death.


I don't think I posted any liturgical music in my examples.

Yes, we've established England was hard-hit. What I'm saying is that I don't believe the whole of Europe was hard-hit. I think most of it was not. I already know Poland was virtually untouched. So there were places where the plague was virtually unknown and I believe that these places comprised most of Europe. I don't believe if all of Europe was that hard-hit that they would have emerged into the classical era (circa 1600) none the worse for wear. Europe would have collapsed. In fact, I doubt most of England was that hard-hit. London and the surrounding area was certainly decimated but I wonder if the northern regions were really that hard-hit. I'll bet not.

Here's a website I wish I had found yesterday and I might never have started this thread:

http://www.historyextra.com/article...ngs-you-probably-didnt-know-about-black-death

I'll quote a few relevant passages (and this is a British website):

Here, writing for _History Extra_, medieval historian Samuel Cohn shares 10 lesser-known facts…[about the Black Death]

*1) The Black Death (October 1347 to c1352) did not eradicate a third of Europe's population*
Open almost any textbook on western civilisation and it will claim that the Black Death felled one-third of Europe's population. In fact, in some places such as a village on an estate in Cambridgeshire manorial rolls attest that 70 per cent of its tenants died in a matter of months in 1349, and the city of Florence tax records drawn up shortly before and after the Black Death suggest that its toll may have been about the same in 1348.

Yet, the plague skipped over or barely touched other villages, even within Cambridgeshire, and may not have infected at all vast regions such as ones in northern German-speaking lands. Given the state of record-keeping and preservation, we will probably never be able to estimate the Black Death's European toll with any precision.

[I should point out the the Decameron talked about the Black Death in Florence but according to this article only one household was recorded as dying of the disease in Milan.]

*2) The Black Death was not a disease of the black rat transmitted to humans by fleas*
Not only textbooks but serious monographs on the Black Death and its successive waves of plague into the early 19th century in Europe go on about rats (usually the black ones) and fleas without qualification. But what is the evidence?

No contemporary observers described any epizootic [animal epidemic] of rats or of any other rodents immediately before or during the Black Death, or during any later plagues in Europe - that is, until the 'third pandemic' at the end of the 19th century. Yet in subtropical regions of Africa and China, descriptions of 'rat falls' accompanying a human disease with buboes in the principal lymph nodes reach back at least to the 18th century.

As for fleas, unlike during the 'third pandemic', when plague cases and deaths followed closely the seasonal fertility cycles of various species of rat fleas, no such correlations are found with the Black Death or later European plagues before the end of the 19th century.

*3) The Black Death was not a disease of poverty*
Not only do contemporary chroniclers list important knights, ladies, and merchants who died during the Black Death, but administrative records also point to a wide swath of the population felled in 1348-49. Furthermore, many wealthy and well-fed convents, friaries, and monasteries across Europe lost more than half of their members; some even became extinct.

[I did come across a painting online showing dancing skeletons leading a king and several nobles to their graves which they seemed to accept with resignation]


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

_No, the songs would have reflected the intense pain and misery that permeated all of Europe and Eurasia. The only place where happy or meditative songs would proliferate was where people were free to write such pieces and that had to be a place where there was no immediate threat of the Black Death coming to Town._

What is evidently true is that in some areas the arrival of plague harkened in a new darker era of painting. Paintings were overflowing with tortured souls, death, dying, fire and brimstone, bringing a somber darkness to visual art, literature, and music. The dreadful trauma of this era instigated the imaginations of writers and painters in worrying and unsettling ways for decades to follow. The insecurity of daily survival created an atmosphere of gloom and doom influencing artist to move away from optimistic themes and turn to images of Hell, Satan and the Grim Reaper. Many painters simply gave up art believing that it was hopeless to try and create beauty in a hellish world.

What's not being considered are those people who might have had some measure of philosophical, spiritual or religious _acceptance_. But evidently some form of benign philosophical acceptance does not fit in with the theory of the Plague years that some are trying to promote. What's missing is the consideration that someone might make the best of the situation, or that people continued to be in love and then wrote a song about it, or that people were still inclined to paint, to draw, to even write humorous stories, to have children, to travel, or to worship, is not on the radar of certain historians who may have their own philosophical limitations or a negative outlook on life.

Historians sometimes make assumptions about what people actually did to psychologically and emotionally survive in a very bad situation who may not have been inclined, because of the pain involved, to dwell on the death that was taking place around them, or that they heard about. So it may not necessarily follow that everyone was suppressed by the Church, weren't free, or that they were in some kind of a denial because they didn't write songs about the Plague and death. Maybe they didn't want to write a song about their dead wife or dead child or dead father, but instead tried to make the most of their own life, because they did not know how long they might live themselves. Such conditions would be a good reason to leave something positive behind and be remembered for that.

Perhaps the real history to be written is the state of their minds, through faith or some kind of other understanding, to get through the horror, and _that_ would actually be something worth reading about rather than why they didn't dwell on or write more about their misery. If one wants to find accounts of their misery then look to their journals and diaries, rather than something of beauty they may have created in memory of someone they loved.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Who knows? But some thoughts:

If the plague were predominantly thought to be God's punishment for mankind's sinful transgressions, why write songs about it?

Maybe people were too busy dying or burying their loved ones to bother writing songs.

Songs in general tend to be more about love than death.

Church music tended to be more general than speciific. Why write a song specifically about the plague when you've got a perfectly good Dies Irae?

The nova of 1054 could easily have come down to us in the guise of the Star of Jesus. (How do we know when that detail entered the Scripture?)


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Victor Redseal said:


> I already mentioned the possibility that the Europeans were either full of boundless, if not unwarranted, optimism or were in serious denial about what was going on around them and I reject both. Neither makes sense. "I lost my wife, my kids, my best friends, the merchantmen, the blacksmith, the horses, the baker, the cows, the sheep and the butcher--all dead and I may contract this horrible disease at any moment and die in utter agony but, you know what? I'm going to celebrate and look at the good things still left in my life." I'm sorry, but no. Not going to happen.


You may be being a bit quick with this conclusion. The populations of Europe didn't suffer just the Black Death at that time. Among other things they were recovering from a huge famine from 1315 which lasted for just over two years. During that period the music produced - and it was largely produced by musicians in the pay of wealthy patrons who didn't suffer from the famine - was also quite static with regard to themes. No doubt there were popular folk music and ballades with a different tone. In the case of the plague we see this with the nursery rhyme (as it now is) _Ring a Ring o' Roses_.

Boccaccio's _Decameron_ describes the sort of outlook adopted by a good many people during the plague as one of pursuing decadent happiness in the face of the worst of times; a sort of last spree before certain death in those worst of times. In any case as this is pre-enlightenment there is far less, if any at all, of the sense of an individual in so much art. Most of it is religiously devotional. Some of it looked back to "better times" before the recent disasters. In this frame of mind there was probably not not much of an appetite for social commentary composing.

Like most large scale human disasters there is usually some concurrent artistic output, but as the occurrences are less understood while they are happening, you have to look forward to music of later decades (and centuries). Look how much post WW2 culture there is devoted to WW2 in comparison to the time it actually happened. Music of later centuries after the plague does have a different tone. Alongside it, as always, there is a look back to supposed better times.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

Victor Redseal said:


> How can you just decide to sing happy songs as if their deaths meant nothing??


I know, it seems crazy to me. At the same time I think there is a tendency to over estimate the similarities of medieval minds to our own modern minds. More than a few things that we find inconceivable were commonplace.

The plague is kind of a minor passionate reading interest for me, I find looking for and finding echoes of those times in what historical record is available, just fascinating.

I have to admit though, as it is not a professional interest, my reading goes slow, and I get quickly overwhelmed with the weight it all, which gets in the way of my living here and now.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

I think the historical musicologists among us need to help here. I am not sure. Can we strongly ascribe a self expression motivation to the participation in music in those days, the way we certainly can today?


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## Guest (Aug 10, 2017)

MarkW said:


> Who knows? But some thoughts:
> 
> If the plague were predominantly thought to be God's punishment for mankind's sinful transgressions, why write songs about it?
> 
> Maybe people were too busy dying or burying their loved ones to bother writing songs.


Whether you intend to or not, you're basically making my case for me. The happy songs--the love songs and country dance tunes--were not written by those caught up in the plague. They had far more pressing matters. Those that wrote those pieces were those more removed from the pestilence. As an example, I had a co-worker whose daughter was living in Japan. She joined the Navy and was stationed there, met a local in Sasebo and got engaged and decided to make Japan her home. She was living there when the tsunami hit. A few weeks later, he was trading emails with her and he told me about it. Not knowing the situation, I asked how bad it was over there with all the deaths and the Fukushima reactor and he said that in Sasebo everything was normal. People kept track of it on the news but life in Sasebo was never disrupted. People went to work, went shopping, went clubbing, went to movies, etc. I think that's how Europe was. Parts of Europe were ravaged and horrible but most of Europe was removed from the carnage and disease. These people carried on the arts while people in the afflicted areas carried their dead through the streets.


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## Guest (Aug 10, 2017)

Anybody here ever read "Flies" by Anthony Vercoe?


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