I've played English country dance music for years. It's a lovely repertoire, and playing for dances creates a wonderful synergy of sound and movement. My previous band, Crooked Sixpence, featured a fiddler who is an exceptionally talented musician. She hails from England, and is married to an Irishman from west Cork, so she is deeply familiar with the music of both the UK and Ireland.
One day, the dance caller we worked with sent us the set list for the next gig, and on it was a tune called "Lilliburlero." I played through it, and it's a sprightly little thing, but I didn't know it by that name; I'd heard it as the tune to a bawdy seventeenth-century song called "My Thing is My Own." I'll leave to your imagination what the "thing" was the singer is laying claim to, but... it's meant to be sung by a woman, and here's one verse as a clue:
A master musician came with intent
To give me a lesson on my instrument;
I thanked him for nothing, and bid him be gone,
For my little fiddle must not be played on.
The tune, I found out, is often attributed to Henry Purcell, but apparently predates him by at least three decades. (The link is to a lovely performance of the song by Ann and Nancy Wilson, of Heart fame, if you want to hear the whole thing.)
So I was surprised when Kathy, our fiddler, told the caller, "I'm not playing that."
Upon inquiry, it turned out that "Lilliburlero" also goes to a different set of words, lyrics that were written during the invasion of Ireland by the troops of William of Orange and which are meant to ridicule Irish language, culture, and religion. Read through the lens of history, you can easily see why they're deeply offensive, and remain so to many people 350 years later -- to the point that just playing the tune can raise hackles, even though it existed as a dance tune, and then a (non-bigoted) bawdy song long before the ugly anti-Irish lyrics became attached to it.
Songs and tunes can be powerfully evocative, both positively and negatively. In fact, the topic comes up because a few days ago was the birthday of late nineteenth, early twentieth century British composer and musician Hubert Parry, most famous for writing a gorgeous musical setting of William Blake's poem "Jerusalem." I heard a performance of it on the satellite radio classical station on my way home from my volunteer gig (sorting books for the Friends of the Library used book sale), and later that day saw it posted more than once on social media:
And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold,
Bring me my arrows of desire;
Bring me my spear, O clouds unfold,
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant land.
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Music has a tremendous capacity to evoke emotion, and when lyrics are attached, even more so. This causes the music itself to gain an additional layer of meaning that persists even when it's performed as an instrumental. The interplay between music, words, meaning, and emotional response is complex and highly individual -- as I described in a post a few months ago, creativity is a dialogue, and each person brings to the experience their own background, opinions, worldviews, and tastes. So it probably shouldn't surprise anyone that the same piece of music can set the heart pounding in one person, anger the absolute hell out of another, and leave a third unmoved either way.
Like with other matters of the creative relationship, chacun à son goût -- and the checkered history of some pieces of music make the matter even more complicated.
