SOURCE: Davidson, Audrey. “Milton on the Music of Henry Lawes.” Milton Newsletter 2, no. 2 (May 1968): 19-23.

In the following excerpt, Davidson speculates on the relationship between Milton and Lawes through a reading of Milton's sonnet of praise to the composer.

Milton's encomiastic sonnet to Henry Lawes opens with the highest praise for his eminent contemporary:

Harry, whose tuneful and well measur'd Song First taught our English Music how to span Words with just note and accent, not to scan With Midas' Ears, committing short and long …(1) 

These lines, according to Donald Tovey, reveal a Milton who has forgotten the precise and artistic word-setting achieved by the madrigal school in the preceding generation. Furthermore, Tovey charges that “the composer's preoccupation with the scansion of ‘just note and accent’ leads him to over-punctuate the words and interrupt the flow of his music.”² Thus in Tovey's estimation, the sonnet's claims about Lawes's...