From a musicological perspective, early modern crowds are a source of both fascination and frustration. We know 
that large numbers of people attended the many and varied spectacles that punctuated urban life at this time, in light of which it is only logical to assume they must have had an opinion about the plethora of sounds and noises to which they were exposed…and yet, recovering what those views were is treacherously, if not impossibly, difficult for us today.
Confronting this truism provokes a string of additional questions. Did the masses of onlookers really hear everything that could be heard in a given procession, celebration or ceremonial entry, and did they all have more-or-less the same opinion of these sonic surroundings? In what ways did the crowds contribute directly to the soundscape of such events? Did they come ‘rather to see then to heare’, as one contemporary claimed about the throngs attending the Lord Mayor’s Show in early seventeenth-century London?[1] By extension, were they more impressed by the noise and cacophony associated with such events than any music in the conventional meaning of that word, and was the musical component really intended for them anyway? Finally – and perhaps most importantly of all – how can we attempt to answer such questions from the material that has come down to us?
One of the many goals of my Marie Curie project on music in Renaissance Avignon[2] has been to try and understand how music was appreciated by the local inhabitants, as well as to establish what role this group played in shaping the city’s various acoustic contexts, from public celebrations to more regular events.
Official accounts of Avignon’s important events from this period often ignore the crowds altogether. And yet, there are a few interesting exceptions to this rule that enable the types of questions posed above to be addressed. For instance, it quickly becomes clear from such cases that the music was not really provided with the masses in mind at all. In some ceremonial entries into Avignon, like those offered to Cardinal Acquaviva (1594) or Cardinal de Bourbon (1574), the local inhabitants were simply represented symbolically, either as a ‘voice’ in some of the song texts or via allegorical representations of the ‘people’ at certain arches. The same impression effectively emerges from some of the rare examples where ‘real’ crowds are supposedly described, as in the official account of Louis XIII’s entry into Avignon (1622). Here, it all feels rather unreal: the masses behave impeccably well, they react in the correct way to what they hear, they epitomise all too conveniently the concept of the ideal state…[3]
But it was not always like this. At one point in Marie de’ Medici’s Avignon entry (1600), a chariot of musicians was actually broken and subsequently displaced by the crowds. This inadvertently prevented the performance of Janequin’s well-known chanson ‘La Guerre’, a piece that carried a crucial and symbolic message in the entry’s programme.[4] The crowd’s actions, in short, had a direct impact on what was heard (or rather not heard). This undoubtedly reinforces the view propagated by some contemporary narratives that the masses were an unruly, chaotic and disorderly entity that needed to be tamed at all times. But it also reminds us that crowds could contribute to the soundscapes of such events in ways that went beyond the conventional ones of cheering, applauding, or shouting standardized phrases (such as ‘Vive le roy’). We can only speculate as to whether the inhabitants noticed their direct (albeit negative) impact on the soundscape in this entry, whether some of them specifically intended to influence it in this way (i.e. as a sign of some sort of disapproval), or whether some of them even regretted their disruptive actions…
What about unofficial or manuscript sources? So far, sources of this sort that I have encountered have shed little light on individual reactions to what was heard. On the other hand, writers of ‘livres de raison’ (commonplace books) like Jean de Rodolphe Roubert do occasionally single out a musical component, such as a chariot of musicians, in these events[5]; if nothing else, this surely suggests that they considered such elements to be a key part of the overall programme, even if one often wishes they dwelt a bit longer on them and were more forthcoming in their opinions…
Future research may well throw up other (and more detailed) examples of individual reactions to the sounds experienced and appreciated by the throngs of onlookers – not just in Avignon, but in other cities across France (and indeed Europe) at this time.[6] Whatever else can be said, though, the quest to recover these lost voices and opinions is far from fruitless. On the contrary, such an endeavour serves to remind us that, if the soundscape was primarily put together for the benefit of the civic authorities or distinguished visitor, the crowds not only had an opinion about what was presented to them but also, on occasion, actively played a part in forging the resultant soundscape.
Alexander Robinson has just completed a 2-year MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship at the CESR in Tours (2022-24), and has just started a position as a research associate at Basel University as part of Hanna Walsdorf’s ‘NightMuse’ SNSF Advanced Grant Project (2024–28). He has published widely on early modern music, especially from France.
Feature Image: Detail from Abraham Bosse (1602–76), ‘Théâtre de Tabarin’ (c.1618–20).
© Gallica/BnF, département Estampes et photographie, RESERVE FOL-QB-201 (21)
[1] Thomas Heywood (1633), quoted in Scott A. Trudell, ‘Occasion’, in Early Modern Theatricality (Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) ed. Henry S. Turner, p. 230-49, at p. 239.
[2] AVIGNONMUSIC (“Music, Religion and Civic Identity in Renaissance Avignon”), H2020-MSCA-IF-2021 – Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships 2022-2024, grant no. 101063276.
[3] These examples are discussed in more detail in my forthcoming chapter, ‘Musique, identité civile et rituels urbains à la Renaissance : le cas d’Avignon (c. 1550-c. 1625)’, in La ville en fête à la Renaissance: actes du colloque tenu au château de Bournazel le 29 septembre 2023 / Les rencontres de Bournazel, ed. Thierry Verdier (Presses de l’Université de Montpellier/éditions du Buisson), as well as chapter 4 of my forthcoming monograph on music in Renaissance Avignon (in preparation).
[4] For more on this, see Alexander Robinson, ‘Music and politics in the entry of Maria de’ Medici into Avignon (19 November, 1600)’, in Music and Power in the Baroque Era (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018) ed. Rudolf Rasch, pp. 179–202, esp. p. 193.
[5] Joseph Girard, ‘La Chronique de Jean de Rodolphe Roubert, bourgeois d’Avignon (1582-1606)’, Annales d’Avignon et du Comtat Venaissin 2 (1913), p. 217-42.
[6] For an example of how unofficial sources can do just that, whilst also shedding light on the dissenting voices in an official event, see Benoît Bolduc, ‘Listening to the Crowd at the Carrousel de la Place Royale (1612)’, forthcoming in Alexander Robinson, Marc W. S. Jaffré and Bram van Leuveren, Marginalised Voices and Figures in French Festival Culture, 1500–1800 (Turnhout: Brepols. scheduled publication date 2025). For a related research project, see also Ionuț Epurescu-Pascovici’s current work on livres de raison (https://www.lestudium-ias.com/fellows/ionut-epurescu-pascovici)