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COVID-19, the Plague, and Music

With the outbreak of COVID-19 we have seen a dramatic upheaval in our society across the globe. Thousands of people have died from infections caused by the coronavirus. The economy has been disrupted. Millions of workers have been idled, and several trillion dollars in investments have been withdrawn from the stock market. Travel to and from certain countries has been restricted. Gatherings of people have been prohibited in certain regions. France has banned indoor gatherings of more than 5,000 people. This has now been followed by them closing all non-essential businesses. The catchphrase is social distancing, maintain a distance of 6 feet or more from other people. People are advised to wash their hands thoroughly and regularly. They are instructed not to touch their face.

It seems as if there are new restrictions every day. However, these also seem to have come too late. Even so called 'first world' nations are suffering significant casualties from the pandemic. It may indeed be a worst case scenario in which millions of people die from COVID-19.

I had considered revising the content of this page in light of the turn of events in the pandemic. Writing about music could have been considered off point and uncompassionate. However, I have chosen not to remove the discussion of music. It is a very important part of life and has been for thousands of years. It is at the core of humanity. It has been present in the most dire of circumstances, such as in concentration camps during World War II. We are all on this earth for a finite amount of time. Many of us choose to parttake in music. For some it may just be a frivolous way to pass the time. However, I suspect for many it has much more significance.

The changes in society have had a profound effect on traditional musical performance. In Milan Italy, the Teatro alla Scala, the opera house where many operas by Rossini, Verdi, and Puccini had their premiers, has suspended performances. This was followed by a lockdown of the entire country. Fears regarding the virus have led the Boston Symphony Orchestra to cancel its tour of China, and the National Symphony Orchestra to cancel its tour of Japan. The Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center, and the Kennedy Center are all closed for the rest of the month of March. (The Met has now canceled the rest of its 2019-2020 season. They will lay off their workers at the end of March. It expects to lose 50 to 60 million dollars.) Regionally, in the early music world, the Washington Recorder Society canceled its workshop with Shelley Gruskin. Schools and universities have been shuttered. This disrupts education, of which music is one part. Even some religious services have been canceled. (Less than a week after writing this, almost all religious services have been canceled, the ones that remain are streamed online.)

My first thought relating to music was that classical music as an industry can hardly bear any more hardship. For many groups and organizations, ticket sales from concerts do not cover their expenses. They rely on charitable donations to stay solvent. Revenue from ticket sales will decline on account of concerts being canceled, and potential concert goers avoiding events that are not still held. Charitable donations will decline on account of the economic hardship on donors, and other pressing charities that are competing for funds. In many instances, other sources of income such as recorded media are not sufficient to make up for lost revenue. The prices of mp3s, and other digital files are judged in terms of popular music. For example, a digital album of rock music may sell for $10. Producers expect to sell hundreds of thousands of the album, if not more. The price and the volume make it a viable enterprise. Classical albums have a very low sales volume. They cannot in turn charge substantially more than the rock album without losing customers. The case is even worse with advertiser supported online streaming videos. Thousands of views are needed to earn a small sum of money. The digital marketplace is also very crowded. Groups not only compete with all of the other active groups across the globe, but also with recorded performances of the past. Then there is the whole issue of digital music. If it is digital, why even create acoustic music to be put in a digital form, when the music can be made digitally in the first place? Individual musicians are also in a very tight spot. Many of them are contract workers and are paid per performance. The cessation of concerts eliminates their income. Teaching is also disrupted by the outbreak. Even musicians who have faculty positions at universities are not all salaried. Many are paid by per student. If they do not teach, they do not get paid. All in all, it looks very bleak.

It is useful to put the outbreak into an historical context. There have been many pandemics in the past. One of the most famous and deadly was the plague that ravaged Europe in the middle of the fourteenth century. It had a very high mortality rate. It is estimated that more than half the population of Europe was directly or indirectly killed by it over the course of five years. Thus it was dubbed La Grande Mortalità. There were many smaller epidemics of the plague in Europe over the next centuries, although these paled in comparison to the initial outbreak.

La Grande Mortalità has long been thought to have been caused by the bacterium, Yersinia Pestis. Recent research in genetics has continued to support this theory. The plague has three main forms: bubonic plague, pneumonic plague, and speticemic plague. These correspond to the location of the infection in the body. The bubonic plague infects the lymph nodes, the pneumonic infects the lungs, and the speticemic infects the blood stream. All three types were present in European outbreak. One of the symptoms of the illness is sub-dermal hemorrhaging. This results in the skin taking on a dark blue or black appearance. For this reason the outbreak was later named the Black Death.

The plague of 1347 can be traced back to Asia. By 1346, reports reached Europe of mass deaths in India, Tartary, Syria, Armenia, and Mesopotamia. It is thought that some of these were caused by the plague, although others may be been caused by another disease or a famine. The plague was brought to the doorstep of Europe along the Silk Road by traders or armies. One army that contracted the plague was that of the Mongol Jani Beg, Khan of the Golden Horde. By 1347 the city of Kaffa in Crimea was again besieged by Beg's army. Genoese traders fled the conflict and sailed across the Mediterranean to Sicily. They brought the plague with them. The traders then moved on and spread the disease to northern Italy. When the Italians realized that the disease came from the ships, they began to refuse them permission to dock until a month had passed. This was the first instance of a quarantine. Some ships sailed onward, spreading the disease further, into France. From there it spread to England and then to Germany. The disease is contagious and can spread from person to person. It has long been thought that one of the main vectors were fleas that carried the bacterium. They in turn resided on rats and other rodents who served as a major reservoir of the illness. (Rodents and fleas are the major sources of outbreaks to this day.) It is thought that rats boarded ships and were very influential in the spread of the disease. This view of rats being a major reservoir of the illness during the Black Death has been challenged in recent years. Scholars have pointed out that the plague was present in Norway which had no rats.

There were no effective treatments for the plague. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) stated as much in his book Il Decameron. John Payne provides the following translation: "To the cure of these maladies nor counsel of physician nor virtue of any medicine appeared to avail or profit aught" Thus, even then people realized that there was no cure. This fact was brought home when Gentile da Foligno, a notable Italian doctor, died from the plague in 1348. He was one of many doctors who died, the plague spared no one.

Let us now turn our attention to music. During and after the initial outbreak many treatises were written that provide advice regarding the disease. From a modern perspective, much of the advice was useless and some was potentially harmful such as advocating phlebotomy (blood letting). From our perspective, it is valuable as it provides information regarding music. (During the fourteenth century music and medicine were intimately connected, along with mathematics and astrology.) Some of the advice addressed the psychological consequences of the outbreak. Gentile da Foligno, in his tract Consilium Contra Pestilentiam (Council Against the Pestilence), recommended that people drink wine so that they may be in good cheer while venting their fear. In his text, Regiment de preservacio de pestilència (Directions for Protection from the Plague), Jacme d’Agramont also advocated being joyful. He specifically warned of the danger of fear. The recommendations of good spirits and joy extended to the use of music. Some authors such as Tommaso del Garbo (1305-1370) and Giovanni da Dondoli advocated partaking in music as being beneficial to ward off the illness. Garbo, who was a Professor of Medicine in Perugia, wrote in his Consilio Contro alla Peste "... make use of songs minstrelsy and other pleasurable tales without tiring yourselves out ..." As an aside, it is interesting to note that this advice that was given for treating the plague was the same advice that doctors of the time provided for lovesickness, to flee and to have mirth.

Other writings also mention music. Il Decameron, which is a work of fiction, states in its preface that some people shut themselves in to avoid the plague. Although they avoided excess, it was mentioned that they still took part in music. It goes on to state that other people cavort and play music. Music was the common denominator. This is corroborated in later paintings that illustrate people playing music and enjoying themselves while death personified was looming to take them away.

There are documents that mention music in monasteries. A letter by Bishop of Winchester William Edenton requests monks to "...devoutly chant the 7 penitential psalms and the 15 gradual psalms on your knees." From these examples, we see that the plague did not stop music making. Musical traditions, such as the chanting of psalms continued, although the particular psalms that were selected, and the frequency of chanting them presumably changed.

Public music making was changed by the plague. In some instances it was curtailed. Gabriel de Mussis (ca. 1280 - ca. 1356) states in his Istoria de Morbo sive Mortalitate quae fuit Anno Domini MCCCXLVIII that trumpets or bells were not sounded to summon people to funerals. In Pistoia Italy laws were enacted on the 2 of May 1348 that prohibited criers, trumpeters and drummers from calling people to a funeral. Another law states that no bells shall be rung during funerals, so as not to trouble or frighten the sick. There were also instances in which music was made in public. Machaut wrote that flagellants crucified themselves flat on the ground while singing to a catchy tune some new song or other.

After the outbreak music continued. In the visual arts, the plague had a dramatic impact on the content of the works. Images of death, or of people suffering from the plague were common. In music we see less of an effect. Three musical luminaries of the fourteenth century, Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300 - 1377), Philippe de Vitry (1291 - 1361), and Francesco Landini (c. 1325 - 1397), lived through the outbreak. Let us focus on the music of Machaut, as his music spans the outbreak.

Machaut was unusual in that he created several collections of his works. One of these, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds français 1586 (MachC), was collected during the early 1350s. It is regarded as containing his extant works prior to that time. Thus, works from his later collections can be dated after to the plague. One set of his works, Le Remede de Fortune, is thought to have been composed prior to 1342. One of his sacred works: "Bone pastor, qui pastores / Bone pastor, Guillerme / Bone pastor" was thought to have been written in 1324. Thus scholars are confident that he was active in writing both sacred and secular works before the plague. There are many sacred and secular works by Machaut that date after the plague. His sacred magnum opus, La Messe de Nostre Dame, was written in the 1360s.

Machaut's secular musical works greatly outnumber his sacred ones. The majority of his musical works focus on courtly love. The choice of subject was not influenced by the outbreak. This being said, many of his works were allegorical and their interpretation is not always straightforward. Recall that I mentioned that the remedies for the plague were identical to those of lovesickness. Given this mindset, one could consider lovesickness as an allegory for the plague. Even taking into account such an interpretation, we find that Machaut writes works involving lovesickness prior to the plague.

Some of Machaut's musical works are associated with historical events. For example, the aforementioned motet Bone pastor, qui pastores / Bone pastor, Guillerme / Bone pastor is thought to have been composed for the occasion of the nomination of Guillaume de Trie as Archbishop of Reims. Tu qui gregem tuum ducis/ Plange regni respublica/ Apprehende arma is thought to have been a plea to the archbishop of Reims to repair the fortifications of the city. This connection to historical events is something these works have in common with some works by Philippe de Vitry. (In fact, some of de Vitry's works comment specifically on particular historical events.) However, it is notable that these works do not choose the plague as their focus, despite its obvious importance.

Machaut did write some works that touch on illness and death. In his later years Machaut wrote the Ballade Plourez, dames, plourez vostre servant, Cry, ladies, Cry for your servant. In it, ladies weep for Machaut who is on his deathbed. They perform his funeral rites, and pray for his soul. The text for Plourez was contained in Machaut's poem Les Voir Dit, A True Story. The poem is autobiographical, and tells the tale of a romance he had with a young woman. In it he falls seriously ill. Daniel Leech-Wilkinson posits that Plourez composed by Machaut during the years 1361-62 while he convalescing from the illness. Although there was a general cultural awareness of death as the result of the plague, I believe that this work is inspired from the sense of mortality that comes from illness and age.

This is not to say that the plague did not have a profound effect on Machaut. He wrote about the plague in the poem Jugement dou Roy de Navarre. He indicated that the sky prognosticated war, misery, and pestilence. He specifically mentioned eclipses of the moon and sun, as well as the presence of a comet. There was a strange rain, and earthquakes which destroyed many towns. He wrote that wars broke out, and that Jews poisoned the wells, streams, and fountains. Nature saw the destruction and was displeased. She had Jupiter forge storms and lightning. Stones fell from the sky. The air was corrupted. People fell ill, were discolored, and had buboes. At last, He who sits on high unleashed death. Only nine people out of a hundred survived. This is a very graphic account. However, he never chose to include such texts in his music.

Machaut himself took shelter from the outbreak. According to his works, he shut himself in during the Summer, and came back out the following Spring. You can imagine this had a profound effect on him.

It is also worth commenting that Machaut's style changed over time, as it common with many writers and composers. Some of his later works are longer, and seem to draw upon earlier musical styles with their melismas. This being said, it is difficult to ascribe these changes to the plague, as opposed to maturation, or other events such as the Hundred Year's War.

I will just briefly touch on Landini. He was in his early career when the plague broke out. Like Machaut, Landini's works focus on love. Again, the plague did not influence the choice of subject.

Although the plague did not influence music as drastically as in the visual arts, it did still have an influence, especially as time went on. By the last quarter of the fourteenth century there was a distinct influence of the plague on religious services. One service that developed was the Missa Pro Mortalitate Evitanda, Mass to Avoid Death. With continued outbreaks of plague people turned to saints for intercession. Saint Sebastian was one such figure. He was a Praetorian Guard who was ordered to death by the Roman Emperor Diocletian in 288 A.D. for converting people to Christianity. He was tied to a tree and shot with arrows. Miraculously he survived. He was nursed back to health by Saint Irene of Rome. Saint Sebastian confronted Diocletian about his cruel treatment of Christians. Diocletian had him clubbed to death and thrown into the sewer. The Golden Legend, a history of the saints, credits Saint Sebastian with ridding Italy of pestilence in the time of King Gumbert after an altar was erected to him in the church of Saint Peter in Pavia. Paul the Deacon in his Historia Langobardorum also recounts this event, which he dates to 680 A.D. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, plagues have been portrayed as divine arrows. The plague may have been associated with Saint Sebastian as he survived being shot with arrows. He may have been likened to Apollo, who caused plagues by shooting pestilence arrows, and was also the god of medicine. Another intercessor was Saint Roco, who lived during the fourteenth century. He was credited with healing people who were suffering from the plague. Votive Masses were held for these saints. Some of these, or sections of them were set to music. Guillaume Dufay (c. 1397 - 1474) composed a motet and an isorhythmic motet for Saint Sebastian, each titled O Sancte Sebastiane.

Thus we see music in the context of a pandemic. It was played to ease the suffering of the populace. Some aspects of performance changed and new laws were enacted. Over time the pandemic had a significant influence on music. We are seeing much of this again.

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