I enjoyed this Emily ... perhaps Pythagoras merits a mention: who, according to a legend, understood music because he heard different notes rhythmically coming from a blacksmith's forge. He entered the smithy, and had the relationship between size and pitch explained to him. So music begins with blacksmiths, before Pythagoras passed knowledge of its making into the world ...
Thank you Joad for this comment and for subscribing! I came across the Pythagoras story just the other day when I was browsing EEBO ahead of my soundscapes paper - and now I am keen to know more about this link between the origins of music and ironworking. I also came across a passage in Two Nobles Kinsmen along similar lines about someone riding a horse: 'As he thus went counting / The flinty pavement, dancing, as ’twere, to th’ music / His own hooves made—for, as they say, from iron / Came music’s origin...'
The excellent Map of Early Modern London (MoEML) people have shared a spoken recording on this song on their blog post about the sound of pageants - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/docs/plumly_smiths_song.mp3
I enjoyed this Emily ... perhaps Pythagoras merits a mention: who, according to a legend, understood music because he heard different notes rhythmically coming from a blacksmith's forge. He entered the smithy, and had the relationship between size and pitch explained to him. So music begins with blacksmiths, before Pythagoras passed knowledge of its making into the world ...
Thank you Joad for this comment and for subscribing! I came across the Pythagoras story just the other day when I was browsing EEBO ahead of my soundscapes paper - and now I am keen to know more about this link between the origins of music and ironworking. I also came across a passage in Two Nobles Kinsmen along similar lines about someone riding a horse: 'As he thus went counting / The flinty pavement, dancing, as ’twere, to th’ music / His own hooves made—for, as they say, from iron / Came music’s origin...'