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Katie Nelson, Love in the music room: Thomas Whythorne and the private affairs of Tudor music tutors, Early Music, Volume 40, Issue 1, February 2012, Pages 15–26, https://doi.org/10.1093/em/cas017
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Extract
I have heard [that] diverse young women of quality have suffered in their reputation and had such or worse mischa[nce] by those who taught [them] to sing and dance.
Sir Hugh Cholmley of Whitby (1600–57)
The social world of Tudor England presented itself as ordered and hierarchical. The Great Chain of Being illustrated how God had ordered the universe: God resided at the top, above archangels and angels, followed by a hierarchical ladder of earth’s inhabitants. This was the way God wanted it. The state modelled itself on God’s order, and the household modelled itself on the state. There was a place for everyone and everyone had their place.1
In reality, of course, things were different, and this article presents a particular professional group that confounded this model. Private music tutors enjoyed a booming business: there was an explosion of higher education in Tudor England, and musical skill in particular was newly and hugely fashionable. Resident music tutors were brought into great households to teach children (and sometimes parents) the skills necessary to impress. But there was an inherent danger in music education, both for tutors and their pupils. Isolated and intimate, the music room proved to be a place where power, intrigue and sometimes even love could intersect.
