Tea at Trianon: When Singing Was a Crime

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, May 30, 2025

When Singing Was a Crime

From JSTOR Daily

In 1542, Protestant reformers including John Calvin himself took power in the city of Geneva, turning it into a center of the Reformation. As musicologist Melinda Latour writes, one priority for the government over the decade that followed was stamping out illicit singing.
Latour writes that Calvin deeply respected the power of music, describing singing as a kind of public prayer capable of moving people’s hearts to zealously praise God. But that same power could feed evil thoughts and deeds.

“Just as wine is cast into a vessel through the funnel, so also venom and corruption are dropped down into the depths of the heart through melody,” Calvin wrote.

Yet singing was a common pastime for all sorts of people in Geneva, and many popular songs were deemed “indecent,” “dissolute,” or “outrageous.” And so, between 1542 and 1552, the city’s hybrid civic-religious court, the Consistory, judged more than one hundred cases involving singing. These included a gentleman singing with his manservant on Mardi Gras, seven apprentices of a ribbon maker singing together, and a woman charged for singing while working in her house and yard, among many others. While in most cases the specific song was not recorded, when it was, it often had lyrics with sexual contents or innuendo. Songs were also frequently flagged as dance music—while authorities viewed singing as having a proper place in praising God, dancing was totally forbidden as a gateway to fornication. (Read more.)