The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

Volume 28 (2022) No. 1

Thomas Mace and Music in Seventeenth-Century Cambridge

Stephanie Carter*

Abstract

Thomas Mace’s Musick’s Monument (1676) is well known as one of the few contemporary sources shedding light on the place of music in the turbulent years of mid seventeenth-century England. Mace’s list of almost 300 subscribers is grouped by location; the largest group of subscribers belonged to the University of Cambridge, which was Mace’s home and workplace. Exploring the lives of these subscribers for evidence of musical knowledge, interests, activities, and networks expands our understanding of practical music-making in seventeenth-century Cambridge, and of the broader cultural and academic discourse at the university at that time.

1. Introduction

2. Mace’s Subscribers and Music-Making at the University of Cambridge

3. Mace’s Subscribers and Musical Knowledge at the University of Cambridge

4. Mace’s Subscribers as Benefactors

5. Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

1. Introduction

1.1 Thomas Mace’s Musick’s Monument (1676) is an unusual book in the context of the English music book trade in the second half of the seventeenth century.^[1] On the one hand, it has long been viewed by musicologists as both an oddity and a commercial failure, as demonstrated by the musician’s lack of experience with the workings of the book trade, his rambling prose, the absence of classical references and scarce mention of English musicians famous in his own lifetime, and his apparent penury ca. 1690 when he journeyed to London to sell his instruments and music books.^[2] On the other hand, Musick’s Monument is frequently cited for the treasure trove of musical evidence it holds, for it is partly written in the form of a memoir by a musician based at the University of Cambridge—Mace was a singer at Trinity College—and spans the turbulent years of the Civil Wars, Commonwealth, and Restoration. It comprises three sections: a discussion on church and cathedral music; a practical treatise on lute playing with eight suites; and a general treatise on the lyra-viol, including an essay, “Musick in General.”

1.2 The book is also valuable for evidence not only of self-publication by subscription but for containing the only known subscription list in a seventeenth-century English printed music book.^[3] While this list of almost 300 subscribers has received attention elsewhere,^[4] this article examines Mace’s university subscribers within the university culture in which Mace lived and worked to reveal a more detailed picture of music in seventeenth-century Cambridge. In so doing, this article evaluates Mace’s subscription list as evidence for musical networks at the university, suggesting that Mace’s university subscribers were more than just academics patronizing one of the college chapel musicians. By studying the lives of the subscribers for evidence of musical knowledge, interests, activities, and networks, this article places Musick’s Monument within its contemporary setting of practical music-making at the university; it also explores the place of Mace’s writings in contemporary theological and philosophical debates, and the place of music in the broader cultural discourse of the university—including the scientific interest in musical sound and acoustics—and the place of music in academic benefaction for the university. Mace’s subscription list thus offers the opportunity to explore the place of music in the intellectual and social world of the seventeenth-century University of Cambridge.

1.3 The list of subscribers provides an opportunity to identify Mace’s supporters: there are 298 subscribers listed in Musick’s Monument, with 123 listed as belonging to the university.^[5] Previous descriptions of the list have suggested the majority of subscribers were family members, friends, and colleagues, with the prominent academics Henry More and Ralph Cudworth typically described as acting solely as patrons.^[6] However, this undervalues the list of university subscribers, who, at 41% of the whole list, comprise the largest body of subscribers based on geographical location. Furthermore, many of the subscribers who were not themselves Cambridge contemporaries or alumni had close connections with the university in 1676, with brothers or sons in attendance. Of the 224 (75%) of the subscribers I have identified, 184 (82% of those identified) were contemporaries at Cambridge at some point during Mace’s career, with a quarter (48) attending or having attended Trinity College. The importance of the University of Cambridge in Mace’s life and career, and in the success of Musick’s Monument, has never been heretofore examined despite providing a context for Mace’s writings. This article thus pieces together the often-hidden musical knowledge, interests, activities, and networks of the members of the University of Cambridge who subscribed to Musick’s Monument in the 1670s. Subscribers are highlighted in bold on first appearance.

2. Mace’s Subscribers and Music-Making at the University of Cambridge

2.1 Mace served at Trinity College between 1635 and 1706. Musical activity, both theoretical and practical, held an important place at the university during his career.^[7] Within the university curriculum itself, musical sound was studied as a part of the mathematical branch of the quadrivium, and the physics of musical acoustics was also increasingly studied from the 1630s onwards.^[8] Practical music-making was not part of the curriculum. Nevertheless, throughout the seventeenth century, proficiency in music-making was gradually prized more and more among students as a gentlemanly attribute, and anecdotes of musical activity in former students’ diaries and memoirs, as well as by Mace in Musick’s Monument, clearly demonstrate musical ambitions among university members.

2.2 Mace suggests that the lute had special associations with Cambridge,^[9] and evidence for the importance of the viol includes the prevalence of viol ownership in the wills of members of the university staff whose duties included music making,^[10] as well as contemporary college accounts. The Trinity archives show that this college, at least, owned a chest of viols from ca. 1595 until at least 1672, when they were repaired, and Ian Payne has noted that this consort of viols was certainly used for domestic as well as sacred music-making.^[11] The accounts of Joseph Mede, tutor at Christ’s College from 1618 until his death in 1638, also include the purchase of books, instruments, strings, and the repair of viols.^[12] Mace also describes what appears to have been informal music meetings in Cambridge, quite possibly held at his home next to the Mitre Inn in St Bene’t’s [sic] parish where the musician had “a great Chamber where his organ stood, & a chamber next to it where his stove stood to ayer his viols with, & a Gallerie over the sayd Great Chamber”:^[13]

We had … a Custom at Our Meetings, that commonly, after such Instrumental Musick was over, we did Conclude All, with some Vocal Musick, to the Organ, or, (for want of That) to the Theorboe.

The Best which we did ever Esteem, were Those Things which were most Solemn, and Divine, some of which I will (for their Eminency) Name, viz. Mr. Deering’s Gloria Patri, and other of His Latin Songs; (now lately Collected, and Printed, by Mr. Playford, (a very Laudable, and Thank-worthy Work) besides many other of the like Nature, Latin and English, by most of the above-named Authors, and Others, Wonderfully Rare, Sublime, and Divine, beyond all Expression.^[14]

2.3 Students who recorded their musical activity at Cambridge include John Wallis (1616–1703), later Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford whose studies included the nature and practice of musical science from a mathematical viewpoint; he gave credit to his student days at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in the 1630s, where he “learned the rudiments of Musick.”^[15] Roger North recorded that his brother Francis “began his use of music, learning to play on the bass viol, and had opportunity of practice” during his time at St. John’s College, Cambridge, in the 1650s.^[16] Nicholas Hookes, student at Trinity College in the 1650s, wrote in a poem addressed to Mace’s contemporary “Mr. Lilly, Musick-Master in Cambridge,” that “We have good Musick and Musicians here, if not the best, as good as anywhere.”^[17] Peter Barwick  (1619–1705), a fellow of Corpus Christi and best known today as the author of a biography of his brother John (1612–64), dean of St Paul’s, recorded life at Cambridge in the 1630s and 40s. Although Peter does not mention his own involvement in music in memoirs about his brother’s life, his own opinions of music shine through:

Sometimes he would temper his severer Studies with softer Recreations, particularly with Musick, deservedly accounted one of the Liberal Arts, and that which sweetens as well as adorns all the rest; yet no one had a greater Abhorrence of that execrable Musick, which ministers to Lewdness and Intemperance. That in which he delighted was chast, severe, sober, holy; and the Use he made of it, was to bear his Part in singing forth God’s Praises in the publick Choir, with a Sweetness of Melody equal to that Fervency of Devotion, wherewith he daily celebrated them in his Closet. To this Study, which adds so much Life and Ornament to Divine Worship, he was always, by his Example as well as Advice, endeavouring to persuade such of his Fellow Collegians of the younger sort, as their Voices, their Age, and their Genius rendered capable thereof: Nor did he repent to have studied himself, what he found so useful for the Management of a Choir, when he was afterwards promoted to the Government of a Cathedral.^[18]

2.4 College chapels were another important place for university members to encounter music, particularly with the expansion of musical activity in the 1630s (curtailed by the early 1640s, although metrical psalm singing continued through the Commonwealth) and the revival of music in services at the Restoration.^[19] In the 1630s Mace’s college, Trinity, as well as King’s College, Jesus College, and Peterhouse had rich musical activity, with the future archbishop of York, Richard Sterne (?1596–1683) providing an organ and organist during his mastership at Jesus (1634–44).^[20] John Cosin (1594–1672), future bishop of Durham, encouraged his scholars to learn pricksong during his mastership at Peterhouse (1635–43) as well as procuring an organ and organist, and expanding the choir.^[21] Among the Peterhouse Caroline partbooks, copied during Cosin’s time, is an anthem by Mace—Alleluia I heard a voice—attesting to the musician’s involvement in university life from his earliest days as a lay clerk at Trinity.^[22]

2.5 Mace combined his singing duties with teaching of the theorbo, the French lute, the viol, composition, and “invention,” and the university would have given Mace a generous flow of “scholars.”^[23] Recently Matthew Spring has suggested that lute-playing Robert Creighton (1639–1734), who entered Trinity in 1655 as a pupil of James Duport and eventually left Cambridge around 1666 to return to Wells, may have been Mace’s pupil.^[24] Mace taught Sir Robert Bolles (1619–63) and the future master of Jesus College and Vice-Chancellor, John Worthington (1618–71).^[25] Worthington, along with William Sancroft (1617–93), later archbishop of Canterbury, and Humphrey Babington (ca. 1615–91), later vice-master of Trinity, sang in consort together during their time as fellows in the 1640s.^[26] Worthington began singing lessons with “Mr. Mace” on 17 May 1647, recording monthly payments up to November.^[27] On 20 November 1648 Worthington “began with Mr. Mace on the violl.”^[28] Music was clearly important for Worthington throughout his career: his surviving diary and letters include numerous references to music, including his recording of the lyrics of a pastoral sung at his wedding in 1657 to Mary Whichcote, niece of his tutor Benjamin Whichcote—and niece of Benjamin’s sister Elizabeth, who was married to subscriber Ezechiel Foxcroft (1633–76).^[29] Worthington and his wife continued their musical activity: his servant reported that Worthington “was very cheerful in company, and sometimes diverted himself by playing on the viol. At other times he would sing a psalm or divine song, whilst his wife played on the organ. And when he was at Jesus College [in the 1650s] he had sometimes concerts of music.”^[30] Worthington commented on his hand in the musical education of his students; he described Francis Mosley (died 1699), later cleric at the collegiate and parish church of Manchester, as “one whom I caused to be perfected in music.”^[31] Music was also an important attribute for Worthington’s prospective students: Benjamin Whichcote recommended Worthington to educate his nephew. Sir Jeremy Whichcote subsequently wrote to Worthington regarding his son’s musical education prior to entering Cambridge in early 1660:

I have sent him to you, to be ordered & disposed in all things, as you shall think fitting, & find him capable of: Assuring you, that shall be most grateful to me, wch you shall judg proper for him. Some lessons he hath learnt upon the viol, & some dances; & I also intended, he should have been taught to sing, had not Dr. Fuller’s advancement to a Deanery broke up his school: wch whether you shall think fit, that he shall now further procced in, I leave to you.^[32]

2.6 Worthington’s friend, Henry More (1614–87), fellow at Christ’s College, played the theorbo. More’s biographer reported that “the pleasure of this, and of his Thoughts with it, hath been at times so overcomingly great, that he hath been forc’d to desist: Though at other times again, after his hard Studies, he found himself, in an extraordinary manner, recreated and Compos’d by the Sweetness and Solemnness of that Instrument.”^[33] John Covel, Master of Christ’s College, in his memoir drawn up in 1719, remembered his student days in the 1650s at Christ’s under the mastership of Ralph Cudworth (1654–88):

After Dinners and Suppers they [the Fellows] had no common Combination Room, but went into ye Orchard in Summer, or at other times to one anothers Chambers, or elsewhere, as they thought fitting. Many of ye Fellows when I was a Freshman were Musical, and old Robt. Wilson taught them, and often bore them Company in some of their Chambers where they diverted themselves with Singing.… Some years before I was Fellow ye College Organ was taken down in ye Chappel, as ye like was done in all other Colleges; but after ye Parlor [in the master’s lodge] was made a Combination Room, ye old Organ pipes were patcht up Consent of ye Master and Fellows ye whole was set up in that Corner next ye Old Court where now the Great Map of the World hangs; and ye Wall was broken down into part of the next Chamber for ye Organ-blower, and ye Anthem books and Services to be dispos’d of in it. After K. Charles ye Second’s return the old Organ was again set up in ye Chappel, and ye little Organ, which before stood in ye Masters private Parlor, was brough into ye Combination room and set where it now stands. It was always thought to belong to ye College, and ye Master never (as far as I could learn) laid any claim to it, neither doe I know how we came by it; It was always kept in Tune at ye College charge; but ye Fellow-Commoners and Young Men would break open the Locks, and abused it, so it is now worth but little.^[34]

Covel himself is presumed to have been a viola da gamba player, and “old” Robert Wilson (1627–1710) undoubtedly refers to the singing teacher who first arrived at Christ’s College in 1649.^[35]

2.7 While the evidence is fragmentary, it is clear that many of Mace’s university subscribers were directly involved in practical music-making. Mace’s direct involvement in many of these activities is unknown, but his position in Trinity College chapel choir, his teaching experience, and the arrangement of his home suggest that he was a significant figure in the practical music-making networks of the university.

3. Mace’s Subscribers and Musical Knowledge at the University of Cambridge

3.1 Beyond evidence of practical music-making by Mace’s subscribers, there is also evidence of musical knowledge in the writings of contemporary Cambridge theologians and philosophers. Peter Sterry (1613–72), a direct contemporary of Mace, wrote extensively of his “musical theology”—despite an absence of any evidence of his participation in or consumption of music—highlighting  the undervalued “function of music in seventeenth-century English spiritual discourse.”^[36] Worthington, Sterry, and Cudworth, along with John Smith (1618–52) and Nathaniel Culverwell (1619–51), were students at Emmanuel in the 1630s, and all came under the influence of Benjamin Whichcote in developing the Cambridge Platonist movement (with Henry More at neighboring Christ’s College). Smith’s will reveals that he owned “a sett of viols being Six” at his death in 1652, although it is unknown whether or not Smith played during his studies at Emmanuel.^[37] Both Cudworth and Culverwell frequently refer to music in their writings,^[38] and Cudworth’s posthumous library sales catalog includes “Morley’s Plain and easy Introduction to Practical Musick 1608,”^[39] “Whole Book of Psalms, with Hymns Evangelical and Spiritual Lond. 1633,”^[40] “Salmon’s Proposal to perform Musick in Mathematical Propositions,” and “Butler’s Principles of Musick, Singing, and Setting.”^[41] Butler was well-versed in the developments in the 1630s of musical acoustics and natural philosophy, and another copy of his Principles of Musick (1636) appears in the library of the theologian and mathematician, and master of Trinity College, Isaac Barrow (1630–77).^[42] While there is no direct evidence of music-making by Cudworth, the inclusion in his library of the four-part psalms published in 1633 during Cudworth’s student days makes a tantalizing suggestion that he may have participated in music-making with his fellow students. Covel’s memoirs indicate that Cudworth was more than happy for music-making to take place in the master’s lodge. Covel goes on to record that Cudworth’s children performed under the direction of Cudworth’s stepson, John Andrewes:

In ye Room where Mr Maynard keeps there was acted (whilst it stood empty) a Pastoral by Dr Cudworth’s Children to some others, contriv’d by Mr John Andrews afterwards Fellow; To which I my self was courteously admitted as a Spectator.^[43]

3.2 What Mace’s list of subscribers hints at is an unrecorded interaction between music, spirituality, and natural philosophy in the landscape of seventeenth-century Cambridge thought. Mace’s known contact with Worthington in the 1640s places Mace in an informal network of academics and students who were amateur musicians, in the relatively small and concentrated space of the University of Cambridge. This community included James Duport (1606–79), master of Magdalene College from 1668, where he apparently contributed an organ to the college chapel.^[44] Duport started at Trinity College in the late 1630s and remained a tutor there in the late 1640s and early 1650s when his students took part in a small college group meeting for scientific discussion and experiments.^[45] Charles Robotham (died 1700), later Rector of the parish known as “Reepham with Kerdiston,” Norfolk, had been a member of this Trinity group and had taken the position of university lecturer in mathematics in 1652–3.^[46]

3.3 Initial comparison of Mace’s writings with those of his contemporaries at Cambridge gives further weight to Mace’s role in these networks: as Thomas Dixon has highlighted, Mace was in sympathy with “the objections encountered by his Cambridge Platonist friends in their liberal use of philosophy in religious discourse.”^[47] Furthermore, as Jean Jacquot has pointed out, Mace’s interpretation of music as “a symbol of cosmic and human order” links him intellectually with Cambridge academics.^[48] In Musick’s Monument, Mace described his experiments with the manipulation of musical sounds as an attempt to seek enlightenment, identifying music as a means of experiencing divine contemplation.^[49] These experiments were part of what Linda Austern has described as a “quest for a natural theology whose reliance on mathematical demonstration and sense data linked it closely with natural philosophy.”^[50] This is evident in Musick’s Monument, where “the rules of music [are] rooted in nature … [and] its ‘mystical and contemplative part’ comes from a blend of nature and divinity.”^[51] Austern goes on to position Mace as the most important “defender and de-mystifier of instrumental technique, [reminding] his readers that such inventions as musical instruments were ultimately signs of divine wisdom, becoming, by implication, God’s creatures in the natural order.”^[52] This interconnection between music and spirituality in Mace’s thinking is marked most strongly when Mace describes himself “as much a Divine (I mean a Priest, and Son of the Church) as a Master in Musick.”^[53]

3.4 While the position of Mace’s thinking among his university contemporaries requires much more scholarly attention, the evidence of musical knowledge among his academic contemporaries allows us to begin to draw on the informal networks through which understanding of music was cultivated. In this respect, it is a shame that so many of Mace’s early prominent contemporaries were dead by 1676, including Worthington, Sterry, Smith, and Culverwell, and thus they do not appear on the list of subscribers. Within the small world in which Mace lived and worked, music would have mediated between different social strata: Mace’s reminiscences of consort-playing, for instance, refer to a cross-section of representatives from different social, political, and religious affiliations. In this way these gatherings were similar to William Ellis’s meetings in Oxford in the 1650s, where participants’ “love of music superceded [sic] any political, religious, or philosophical differences”; such factions did not just dissipate at the Restoration.^[54] Subscription to Musick’s Monument brought members of different religious factions together as well as representatives of opposing political perspectives. Royalists include Peter Gunning (1614–84), later bishop of Ely and Regius Professor of Divinity between 1661 and 1674; Sir Thomas Sclater (1615–84), Fellow of Trinity College, MP for the university in the Third Protectorate Parliament, and JP for Cambridge after the Restoration;^[55] Robert King (1600–76), Fellow and Master of Trinity Hall; Peter Barwick, later one of Charles II’s physicians;^[56] and fellows of Trinity College George Chamberlain and Anthony Marshall.^[57] Worthington was replaced by Sterne at the Restoration, and Whichcote was replaced by James Fleetwood (bap.1603–83).^[58]

3.5 The most well-known academic who continued at Cambridge following the Restoration was Cudworth, whose wife had extensive family links with Parliamentarians. Cudworth was frequently attacked by Ralph Widdrington (died 1688), Regius Professor of Greek from 1654, who was ejected from his fellowship in 1660 by Cudworth. Despite Widdrington’s own career advancement during the Protectorate, he complained to the king about Cudworth’s parliamentarian sympathies. The campaign against the latter was well-known—Henry More described it as a “very plot against Dr Cudworth”—and Cudworth became marginalized within the university.^[59] Personal rivalries and competition for jobs appear to have been frequent: Michael Honeywood had tried to get Cudworth’s mastership at Christ’s,^[60] and Samuel Blythe (died 1713) was handed the mastership of Clare College to thwart Nathanial Vincent.^[61] Thomas Page (died 1681), provost of King’s College, had been in competition with Isaac Barrow for jobs in the 1650s.^[62] However, despite political, theological, or philosophical disputes and personal clashes, these individuals are brought together in Mace’s subscription list, suggesting that music, at least, cut across these divides and rivalries, and brought harmony to what appears to have been social discord.

3.6 Mace’s guidance on music’s transformative power through everyday musical practice and on contemplation through listening to music, as well as the general interest at the time around understanding acoustics and musical sound, may have enticed theologians and natural philosophers to subscribe to his book.^[63] Roger North reported how Edmund Matthews (ca. 1615–92) performed experiments following the reading of his student Francis North’s A Philosophical Essay of Musick (1677). North comments that Matthews was “so affected” that “he made a perpetuall comment upon it; and took much paines by experiments to explain the doctrine of pulses; but these proffers are all mislayd or lost.”^[64] Isaac Newton (1642–1726/7), in response to North’s Essay, admitted that he was “want of experiments & skill in Musick.”^[65] However, by the 1670s Newton had brought music into his studies, comparing the diffraction of light to a musical scale; and there is evidence that Newton and Mace were acquainted. In a letter to Henry Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society, on 30 November 1675, Newton wrote:

Cambr.
Novemb 30. 1675.
Sir
An ancient Gentleman I met at your Assemblies (whose name I cannot recollect,) being thick of hearing desired me to inquire after the form of Mr Mace’s Otocousticon a Musitian here; but he has not been in town since I came from London, but is somewhere in London about printing a book of Musiue. Yet the last week I had opportunity to inquire after it of his son & he tells me the form is this. A the smal end to put into the ear BC the length suppose two foot CD the wide end suppose about eight inches over. The tube BDC tapers all the way almost eavenly like a cone only at the great orifice CD widens more, like the end of a Trumpet. He has of several sizes. The biggest do the best. If you can’t reccollect who the Gentleman may be I suppose Mr Hill can tell you, for I think Mr Hill was by when the Gentleman spake to me, & the Gentleman desired me to write to either Mr Hill or you about it.
Yours in hast
Is. Newton.^[66]

Not only does this letter demonstrate that Newton was well associated with Mace and his family and knew of the forthcoming printing of Musick’s Monument, but Newton respected Mace and his invention of a hearing trumpet enough to propose it to others.

3.7 Mace’s invention of an “Otocousticon” as well as the items and experiments described in Musick’s Monument—including his design for a “Musick-Roome” and invention of a “dyphone” (two-headed lute) and table organ—clearly illustrate the musician’s interests in acoustics, experiments, and musical technologies.^[67] Worthington, Mace’s old pupil, resident in London in the 1660s, was also interested in developments in musical technology and hybrid instruments, sending his polyphon to William Brereton (bap. 1631–80), an early member of the Royal Society, for demonstrations in October 1664.^[68] The Society showed particular interest in speaking and ear trumpets, with demonstrations in 1668, 1672, 1678, and 1699, and reviews of Samuel Morland’s (1625–95) Tuba stentoro-phonica (1671); news of the latter invention spread across Europe through the networks of the Society’s secretary, Henry Oldenburg (the recipient of Newton’s letter about Mace).^[69] While Mace was not a member, and there are no advertisements or discussions concerning Musick’s Monument in the Society’s publications, members of the Royal Society clearly knew of Mace and his inventions, including Sterne, Barrow, Cudworth, More, Newton, and Robert Paston (1631–83); Paston was Viscount Yarmouth at the time Mace’s book was published, and had been a student at Trinity in 1646. Despite Mace’s interest in acoustics and musical technologies, and his connections with members of the Royal Society, he was probably a minor figure on the fringe of this intellectual world—but one whose book seemed worthy of subscription.^[70]

4. Mace’s Subscribers as Benefactors

4.1 Further evidence of the musical interest of Mace’s subscribers can be gleaned from their role as benefactors to the university and its colleges. This evidence can be found not only in Musick’s Monument but also in evidence of construction work at the university during Mace’s career. Mace made a number of proposals in Musick’s Monument for benefactors to support church choirs and (as mentioned above) for the building of a “musick-roome” during a period at Cambridge that saw numerous schemes for building, including proposals for a university library and Senate House. College libraries and chapels were repaired, refitted, or built anew, with many of the college masters and fellows footing the bill.^[71] For example, fundraising for a new chapel at Emmanuel College began in 1665 and building started in 1668; the old chapel was then refitted as a library in 1679.^[72] The first appeal for building the Wren Library at Trinity College started in January 1676, signed by Barrow, although the decision to build the new library had been made by January 1675 when Duport bequeathed money to the project along with his private library.^[73] Sclater and Babington also donated money to building work at Trinity around this time.^[74] Donations of book collections were also common: Peter Gunning, who had made plans to build a new chapel at St John’s during his mastership, bequeathed half his books to his college library.^[75] It is understandable that Mace introduced his proposal for a music room in this context, perhaps hoping to encourage support for a university music room—one that was never built.^[76]

4.2 The period following the Restoration saw cathedral deans and university college masters restoring choirs. Although it is hard to determine Mace’s influence in this regard, it is worth noting that his subscription list includes individuals proactive in restoring choirs and organs.^[77] At Cambridge, these subscribers include Duport, who apparently contributed an organ to the chapel during his mastership of Magdalene College,^[78] and Gunning, who installed an organ and reformed the choir during his mastership of St John’s.^[79] In Musick’s Monument, Mace expresses his disappointment in the lack of “any late Benefactors, towards the Augmenting or Maintaining” of church choirs, although Gunning went on to bequeath money to St John’s in the early 1680s “for the maintenance of some singing youths and others … and for the better provision of more voices for the Quire, whereby God’s service may be more solemnly performed and decently sung,” following donations by the new master Francis Turner (1637–1700) and the late John Barwick.^[80] Although not a subscriber, the future Vice-Master of Trinity, Thomas Smith (died 1714), had originally entered the college as a chorister in 1672, thus singing alongside Mace. Smith’s bequest to the Wren Library at Trinity in the beginning of the eighteenth century hints at music-making activities at the University of Cambridge in Mace’s later days: his books include Mace’s Musick’s Monument, Playford’s Treasury of Music (1669), and Purcell’s Orpheus Britannicus (1698–1702).^[81]

5. Conclusion

5.1 These snippets of evidence piecing together the musical interests and activities of Mace’s subscribers are indicators of the existence of a whole series of largely untraceable networks through which ideas, including those involving music, circulated. By examining sources relating to members of the university who subscribed to Musick’s Monument and by placing Mace and his book within a contemporary setting, it is possible to begin to build a broader picture of music at the seventeenth-century university, and of the networks of academics—including theologians and natural philosophers—that Mace was a part of and from whom he was able to drum up support for the publishing by subscription of his book. Mace’s writings suggest that music played a more significant role in the cultural and intellectual environment of the university than has been previously acknowledged. Mace himself, typically described as an outdated, deaf musician, deserves more credit than is usually bestowed upon him: Newton turned to him for advice, and multiple members of the Royal Society subscribed to his book. By studying Mace’s university subscribers, it is possible to not only build upon our knowledge of the sound world of seventeenth-century Cambridge in Mace’s lifetime but also to begin to position discourse about music within the broader intellectual thinking of the university. It is clear that the nature of networks that lay behind a subscription list was complex, but by making such a list the focal point for research, it is possible to begin to assess readership of a book about music within the broader context of contemporary theological and philosophical thought, and ultimately to explore more fully the intellectual and cultural world—and the role of music within such a world—of the seventeenth-century University of Cambridge.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Penelope Gouk and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this article.