Music for Queen Bees...

I learnt to read music very young - my dad taught me as I began to learn recorder (the proper playing of which is a rant for another day) and as I began to realise that these strange scribbles were a way of writing - that you could read what you hear in terms of pitch and rhythm etc as well as words i was hooked (my writing is so rhythm and atmosphere obsessed I sometimes wish that punctuation was more like musical notes in terms of pauses etc) - I remember sitting in the garden and listening to the birds around me and wondering how these sounds would look written down - the strange distant swishes of the river and the humming of the bees. Luckily for me in 'The Feminine Monarchie' written by the polymath, Charles Butler in 1609 - he tries to do the latter.

This was a very important bee book for many reasons, including that he overthrew the idea of the King bee being in charge in favour of the Queen bee (hence the title) - there's some amazing illustrations that can be seen on Bibliodyssey, but for me it is the musical notation that fascinates. When he first transcribed the sounds of rival Queen Bees he used a simple triplicate metre, but soon changed it to become a madrigal for four singers. I had seen this picture before and always wondered why half of it was upside down and apparently it was written in this way so that four people could stand around it and read without being squashed. I always find it funny how people these days think they're being shocking or avant-garde, whether it's in art, writing or music - I guess it's necessary for exciting things to continue in such worlds, but if you take a moment to look back, there's nearly always a random precursor quietly resting away a few hundred years ago...