The 14th Francis Lee Utley Lecture will feature Christopher Marsh (Queen’s University Belfast) presenting "How to Produce a Hit Song (in Seventeenth-Century England)."
This lecture will consider the possibility that pop music began not in the 1950s, but in the 1590s (or thereabouts). Broadside ballads – sheet songs that sold for a penny a piece in early modern England – were, arguably, the first form of commercially-driven popular music and also the cheapest form of literature available at the time. The talk will focus particularly on 120 ballads that can be identified as major hits of the period, asking what it was about these super-songs that made them so successful and set them apart from thousands of other surviving ballads (attention will be paid not only to texts but also to tunes, pictures and the possibilities for performance). Those in attendance will hear and see a range of songs, dealing with topics such as love, death, violence, religion and politics. It will also be noted that several of these hit songs of the seventeenth century were also discovered, centuries later, by folksong collectors in Ohio.
Christopher Marsh is a social and cultural historian of early modern England and has published work on religion, social relations, gender and music. His most recent book is Music and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2010). His current project aims to identify 100 best-selling songs from seventeenth-century England and set up a website featuring facsimiles, transcripts and new recordings by The Carnvial Band (and invited guests). He teaches on various subjects, including popular culture, the family, gender relations and the history of museums.
This event is free and open to the public. Co-hosted by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the Center for Folklore Studies and the OSU Humanities Institute.
The Humanities Institute and its related centers host a wide range of events, from intense discussions of works in progress to cutting-edge presentations from world-known scholars, artists, and activists, and everything in between. In our current moment of riding the unpredictable currents of the pandemic, we reaffirm the value of in-person engagement. We strive to amplify the energy in the room. But we also recognize the need to be careful and the fact that not all our guests will be able to visit our space. We, therefore, will continue to offer Zoom access to all our events upon request. If you wish to have such access, please send your request to cmrs@osu.edu or moriarty.8@osu.edu.
