This is a large and impressive book, delightful to read. It claims to be “the first comprehensive survey of English popular music during the early modern period to be published in over one hundred and fifty years” (flyleaf), that is, since William Chappell’s Popular Music of the Olden Time of 1859. That is perhaps a bit hard on the work of Francis Galpin, Walter Woodfill, David Price, Nicholas Temperley, David Lasocki, Claude Simpson, John Ward, and others, who have delved into aspects of popular music of the time, but they are mostly acknowledged in the introduction, and this is indeed a comprehensive survey, which they did not attempt. A glance at the select bibliography is enough to show the wide range of materials consulted by Marsh, scattered throughout the land, as well as the literary record in books and pamphlets. In recent years, the marvelous Records of Early English Drama volumes have added enormously to our stock of references to music and musicians around the country. Even so, Marsh would be the first to acknowledge that much more will be found; he can only set out the broad scene. My own exploration of “ordinary” musicians has been confined to London and Kent and generally supports his findings. He notes that “the discipline [of musicology] has traditionally concentrated on written compositions that are judged to be of high aesthetic value. … Aristocratic patronage has been well studied, but the same cannot be said of support for music at the village level” (29). He admits that by concentrating on the latter “this perspective will generate difficulties of its own. The musical worlds of artisan and aristocrat cannot be cut apart with anything resembling a clean incision” (30).

It is a fact that the majority of musicians, however eminent, were of relatively humble stock. Those fortunate enough to have gained employment at court or with the nobility were usually the most skilled as performers and composers, but we should also note that patronage regularly extended to those with lesser talents. Music in the Filmer manuscripts at Yale runs the gamut from sophisticated compositions by court composers, through selections of theater music, to two-part ballad settings. The last seem to have been made by a musician called Francis Block, whose incompetence extended to unsuccessful attempts to add a third part to airs by Lawes, Coleman, and Jenkins. My own research on the Le Strange family at Hunstanton found they regularly rewarded the Newmarket waits, musicians at Thetford, and “Fakenham Musick,” quite apart from individuals like “Gray the Musitian” or “Mr Griffith for Tuning the virginalls,” “a singing woman,” or “for Beare for the Soldyers at the muster and to the Drummer and to the one that played on the pipe,” a “Trumpeter,” and so on. In earning their various livings, these people were undoubtedly grateful for these rewards, which were undoubtedly a regular part of their income and more reliable than any gained at the pub or village green.

Several of the London waits seem to have had a regular job playing for the Revels at the Inns of Court, and it is likely then they would also have gained employment as tutors to the nobility studying there. They were automatically made members of the Company of Musicians of London, but their individual wealth varied enormously. Marsh mentions Bateman and Walker (the latter was particularly prosperous), but we could also add Vincent Janvyrn and Isaac Thorpe, both of whom owned lands and bequeathed plate to the Company. George Hilliard (membership unknown) bequeathed both music books and Latin books to his relations, which suggests he was educated. But at the other end of the scale, in 1663 the presumably itinerant Edward Sadler was forbidden to make music in public houses or meetings by the Company of Musicians of Westminster “because of his insufficiency” (Andrew Ashbee, ed., Records of English Court Music, vol. 5 [Aldershot, 1991], 255). He was undoubtedly a common minstrel, but I question Marsh’s distinction between “minstrel” and “musician.” In my experience the terms are not fixed; the latter tended to replace the former during Elizabeth’s reign. Minstrels were not necessarily the poor relations: in 1591, Robert Postell of St. Nicholas Olave, minstrel, was sufficiently well off to bequeath lands and buildings in Isleworth to his wife. In general it seems that competent “ordinary” musicians could be classed with tradesmen, at least in the towns. I think more could be made of family connections between musicians, not only father/son descent but also through marriage to daughters of other musicians. This is well documented at Court, but is also true of waits and their kind. And I failed to find “apprenticeships” in the index. Kent has one of the best surviving collections of inventories. I searched sample volumes many years ago. Where instruments were mentioned, it was in the estates of clergy, lawyers, and gentlemen—perhaps one or two in a hundred inventories—rather than tradesmen. So Henry Jenkins, carpenter, father of John (mentioned by Marsh), was an exception; possibly he made instruments. Marsh describes lay clerks as sincere and dedicated to their service (on the whole) and often working as tradesmen to increase their meager income. Cathedral choirboys often benefited from musical training. Christopher Marlowe on admission as a scholar to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, was required to “be so entred into the skill of song as that [he] shall at the first sight solf[a] and sing plaine song” (Corpus Christi College, Regulations for Matthew Parker’s scholarships). “Whittington’s Chimes” are mentioned, but why were they inserted into seventeenth-century compositions: two in consorts by Jenkins, Vautor’s Sweet Suffolk Owl, and the addition to Byrd’s Battle in late sources? The suggestion that Jenkins “was an accomplished bell-ringer himself” (456) is, I am sure, a nineteenth-century fantasy. A CD of rustic performances by the Dufay Collective is an aural bonus. “Farinells ground” (track 9), “almost certainly transcribed from a printed source” (528), is virtually all from Playford’s Division Violin (1685), not in the bibliography.

This book is a rich source of material about the “ordinary” musicians of England and their impact on the lives of their equally ordinary contemporaries. It is good to have the thoughts of a historian rather than a musician to add depth to this fascinating topic.