Musicians
Town musicians were known as Waits. They were the equivalent to that of a modern town’s band. The Waits have been in existence as far back as the medieval period. The role of the Waits were to perform at public occasions of the viewing pleasure of the town. They were to play original composed music.
Street musicians or traveling minstrels were looked down upon. They were feared and soon grew out of style and were replaced by the tavern and theater musician. Street music was common to be heard at markets and fairs. The music was usually light and quick. They performed using fiddles, lutes, recorders, and small percussion instruments attracting crowds whenever they played. The songs they played and sang were traditional favorites, “a far cry from the sophisticated and refined music of the Elizabethan court."
Theater became increasingly popular when music was added. Location on stage meant everything to a theater musician. The location gave certain effects to the sound produced. This could the impression of distance or providing an atmosphere to the plays and performances done. Theater music became even more popular with the rise of William Shakespeare in 1556.
Read more about this topic: Music In The Elizabethan Era
Famous quotes containing the word musicians:
“Music is of two kinds: one petty, poor, second-rate, never varying, its base the hundred or so phrasings which all musicians understand, a babbling which is more or less pleasant, the life that most composers live.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“As if the musicians did not so much play the little phrase as execute the rites required by it to appear, and they proceeded to the necessary incantations to obtain and prolong for a few instants the miracle of its evocation, Swann, who could no more see the phrase than if it belonged to an ultraviolet world ... Swann felt it as a presence, as a protective goddess and a confidante to his love, who to arrive to him ... had clothed the disguise of this sonorous appearance.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“We stand in the tumult of a festival.
What festival? This loud, disordered mooch?
These hospitaliers? These brute-like guests?
These musicians dubbing at a tragedy,
A-dub, a-dub, which is made up of this:
That there are no lines to speak? There is no play.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)