Aesthetics and Opera

Question 1

What does Dryden say about his text’s relationship to the music in the dedication to ‘King Arthur’?

Answer 1

‘my Art on this occasion, ought to be subservient to [Purcell’s]’

Question 2

What does Dryden say about the conflict between poetry and music in the dedication to ‘King Arthur’?

Answer 2

‘the Numbers of Poetry and Vocal Music are sometimes so contrary, that in many places I have been obliged to cramp my verses and make them rugged to the reader, that they may be harmonious to the listener’

Question 3

What do the Saxons use in their rituals in ‘King Arthur’?

Answer 3

‘Sacred Runic Rhymes’

Question 4

When was Dryden’s ‘King Arthur’ published?

Answer 4

1691

Question 5

When was Dryden’s ‘Albion and Albanius’ written?

Answer 5

1680, music written and performed in 1685

Question 6

When was Thomas Lediard’s ‘Britannia: An English Opera’ published?

Answer 6

1732

Question 7

What two pseudo-musical characters appear in Lediard’s ‘Britannia’?

Answer 7

‘Discord’ and ‘concord’

Question 8

What does the front-matter of ‘Britannia’ boast?

Answer 8

‘Illuminated and adorned with a great number of elements… in a manner entirely new’

Question 9

What does Andrew Walkling term the nature of English opera in this period?

Answer 9

‘polyglot nature of the form’

Question 10

How does the prologue to ‘Alfred: A Mask’ begin?

Answer 10

‘In arms renown’d, for arts of peace ador’d, / ALFRED, the nation’s father more than lord, / A British author has presum’d to draw’

Question 11

What does Alfred say about the role of the arts in nationalism?

Answer 11

‘to raise anew our English name, / By peaceful arts that grace the land they bless’

Question 12

What does Mercury refer to Augusta (London) as in ‘Albion and Albanius’?

Answer 12

‘glorious Fabrick’

Question 13

What does the prologue, ‘To the Opera’, in ‘Albion and Albanius’ say about genre with regard to the public?

Answer 13

‘Satyre was once your Physick, […] We bring you change, to humour your Disease’

Question 14

Where does Addison find himself in his dream vision?

Answer 14

the ‘region of false Wit’

Question 15

What does Addison hear in his dream?

Answer 15

‘The Fountains bubbled in Opera tune’

Question 16

When did Joseph Addison publish his ‘Spectator’ on false wit and opera?

Answer 16

1711

Question 17

When did Joseph Addison’s failed opera ‘Rosamand’ premiere?

Answer 17

1707

Question 18

How does Addison describe the ‘Heathen Temple’ of ‘Dullness’?

Answer 18

‘a Monstrous Fabrick built after the Gothick manner, and covered with innumerable Devices in that barbarous kind of Sculpture.’

Question 19

What do the English have a taste for, according to Addison?

Answer 19

‘Epigrams, turns of wit, and forced conceit’

Question 20

What has Addison been trying to do with regard to taste in his articles?

Answer 20

‘to banish this Gothic Taste which has taken Possession among us’

Question 21

When was Pope’s ‘Epistle to the Earl of Burlington’ published?

Answer 21

1731

Question 22

What is Pope’s advice to architects?

Answer 22

‘Let nature never be forgot. / Consult the Genius of the Place’

Question 23

What does Pope miss about ancient architecture?

Answer 23

when ‘pompous Buildings once were things of use’

Question 24

What does Pope say about attending to constituent aesthetic components?

Answer 24

‘Parts answ’ring Parts, shall slide into a Whole’

Question 25

When was Swift’s ‘Proposal for correcting the English tongue’ published?

Answer 25

1713

Question 26

What does Swift say about a changing language?

Answer 26

‘it is better a Language should not be wholly perfect, than that it should be perpetually changing’

Question 27

How does Swift characterise our habit of shortening words?

Answer 27

‘a Tendency to relapse into the Barbarity of those Northern Nations from whom we are descended’

Question 28

What does Joseph Addison say about Italian Opera’s effects on English identity in a Spectator issue from 1711?

Answer 28

Viewers of opera ‘sit together like an Audience of Foreigners in their own Country’

Question 29

How does Joseph Addison describe the collapse of British stage culture, and the hope for a new one, in the Spectator (1711)?

Answer 29

‘When a Royal Palace is burnt to the Ground, every Man is at Liberty to present his Plan for a new one’

Question 30

How does Thomas Shadwell refer to the Reformation in his ‘Congratulatory Poem’ to William of Orange (1689)?

Answer 30

The Catholic Church’s ‘building made of Stubble and of Hay, / Was by our Wise Reformers swept away’

Question 31

How does Shadwell refer to the rise of Catholicism in England under Charles II and James?

Answer 31

‘down in pieces dash’d, the Noble Structure lay.’

Question 32

How is the Glorious Revolution described by Shadwell?

Answer 32

‘To purge itself that it may clean become, / The fermentation soon throws off the Scum.’

Question 33

When was Thomas Shadwell made poet laureate?

Answer 33

1689

Question 34

What does Diane Dugaw say about Dryden’s use of multi-media in his later works?

Answer 34

They ‘insist upon suprarational responses that lift characters in the works and, if successful, audiences of the works to a spiritual dimension.’

Question 35

When did Richard Blackmore publish his ‘Advice to the Poets’?

Answer 35

1706

Question 36

When was Richard Blackmore’s ‘King Arthur’ epic poem published?

Answer 36

1697

Question 37

What does Blackmore proclaim in his preface to ‘King Arthur’?

Answer 37

‘I had not my Eye on any other Model’

Question 38

What does Richard Blackmore ask in his ‘Advice to the Poets’?

Answer 38

‘The Pagan gods might grace a Pagan scheme, / But will they too adorn a Christian theme?’

Question 39

What does Dustin Griffin say about 18th century nationalism in England?

Answer 39

It was not simply defined by the ‘presence of a threatening ‘other’ across the Channel’, but was rooted in its ‘inescapable inheritance’

Question 40

What does Pope say in his ‘Essay on Criticism’ that links the rules of art to national constitution?

Answer 40

‘(As Kings dispense with Laws themselves have made)’

Question 41

What does Michael Burden suggest about English opera and tradition?

Answer 41

Its lack of a consistent style and governing tradition ‘IS the national tradition’