William Byrd’s Come, woeful Orpheus in context: motion as visual and musical affect

Looking at William Byrd’s consort song Come, woeful Orpheus (1611) and the Orpheus overmantel at Haddon Hall (Derbyshire), this article imagines how music and visual culture provided reciprocal somatic and symbolic cues within the domestic sphere. Using Richard Haydock’s Tracte containing the artes of curious paintinge (1598), it considers how the Orpheus trope, cogitated and embodied through visual and musical media, could be used to produced ‘fellow feeling’ and affect through ‘motion’. ‘Motion’ was not only fundamental to early modern theories of affective communication but was thought to provide the spark of life that aided interpersonal connection.

This research explores the shared language between the theoretical and affective aspects of music and art in early modern England, stemming from classical sources on decorum and persuasive oration, to provide a more nuanced understanding of contemporary experiences of recreational music-making. I argue that the embodied and visual contributions of the performers are crucial to understanding Byrd’s song, as early modern approaches to motion and affect relied upon the body and voice, and were best communicated through sight and sound.