Hit songs and their significance in seventeenth-century England

A broadside ballad was a song, printed on one side of a sheet of paper, that sold for a penny in seventeenth-century marketplaces and other public spaces. Typically, it featured a text of twelve or more verses, several simple 'woodcut' illustrations and the name of a suggested melody. The pictures and tunes were frequently well-known already, having been 'recycled' from previous songs. Ballads were the pop songs of their day and it can be convincingly argued that the modern music industry - commercially driven and predominantly urban - has its roots among the publishers of broadsides in seventeenth-century London. In terms of the subject matter of balladry, love led the way, but there were also songs about religion, politics, sensational happenings, heroic adventures and terrible crimes.
Our research will identify, contextualise and publish online an authoritative sample of seventeenth-century England's best-selling ballads. New musical recordings will be commissioned from the acclaimed Carnival Band. In addition to a core of 100 songs, we will include the following: images of the ballads in later editions and versions of the songs drawn from manuscript sources, printed songbooks and later folk song collections; information about other ballads that were closely related to the core songs in terms of their texts, tunes or pictures; transcripts of all the song texts in modern type; a range of supporting information - bibliographical and contextual - that should help users to interpret the ballads; and links to other on-line ballad resources. All in all, the site will include 500 images of the selected ballads (some of the ballads were printed in two parts and will therefore require two separate images), 100 recordings and extensive supporting information prepared in collaboration by the academic participants. In effect, the website will display full scholarly editions of these ballads in an electronic format appropriate to the twenty-first century. Other outputs will include co-authored scholarly articles and conference papers, a PhD thesis and two public concerts.
Historians of all sorts are increasingly making use of ballads in their work, though they tend to concentrate on the texts to the relative neglect of the tunes and the pictures. The current project aims to encourage a more rounded interpretation of balladry by presenting newly-commissioned recordings and high-quality images of the original songs. Scholars are also in the habit of quoting ballads somewhat uncritically as they seek lively evidence to support arguments on other topics. The new website, by identifying a sample of the most successful songs, will demonstrate the value of distinguishing between ballads on the basis of their seventeenth-century impact. Obviously, ballads that enjoyed commercial success are likely to have been more reflective of popular tastes than those that failed to impress on such a scale. In these and other ways, the project will make a contribution to the debates that are currently taking place among historians and literary scholars about broadside balladry and its wider cultural significance.
The website is not intended, however, to be useful only to professional academics. Access to the resource will be free, and it is hoped that this will facilitate its use by a wider audience (including musicians, lovers of 'early music', radio and TV producers, and history students at school and university). The aspiration to broad relevance is reflected in the fact that the project will involve collaboration not only among academics but between them and a group of musicians. Towards the end of the the 3-year period, a concert programme will be performed on two occasions and in two different locations. It is hoped that this will help to publicise the venture well beyond academic circles.

In the seventeenth century, ballads belonged to everybody, and it is therefore appropriate that this project has been designed to reach well beyond academia. The benefits should begin to emerge as soon as the website is live and the other outputs have appeared. We anticipate that 'Hit Songs' will make an impact upon the following groups:

1. Musicians, whether amateur or professional, who specialise in 'early music'.
Very few of the featured ballads remain well-known today, but the Carnival Band's renditions should help to stimulate their revival. Potentially, the recordings and the on-line texts will help to extend the song repertoire of musicians, especially those with a particular interest in the music of the seventeenth century.

2. The listening public, especially those with a taste for historic song.
It is hoped that the recordings (and of course the concerts) will be of a quality sufficient to attract the attention and enhance the lives of many of those who listen to them. There is already a considerable audience for English 'early music' and the freely-accessible new recordings and images should prove appealing to many of its members.

3. All those with an interest in the history of English folklore.
Even the briefest online search reveals that followers of folksong are numerous and widely dispersed across the English-speaking world. Several of the featured ballads enjoyed later lives, and perhaps earlier lives too, as orally-transmitted folksongs, and it is hoped that the new recordings will stimulate considerable interest (they may encourage, in particular, further reflection on the somewhat controversial relationship between oral and literate culture in the past).

4. Programme-makers (radio and television) and their audiences.
Programmes dealing with aspects of early modern English history are broadcast regularly, and there is always a need for lively musical examples to contribute to the soundtrack. Recordings from an earlier project run by the PI have already been used by Radio Four, and it can be anticipated that the superior renditions of the Carnival Band will enjoy a life beyond the website.

5. Journalists (and their readers) who seek the historical roots of several modern preoccupations.
Possible topics might include teenage pregnancy (represented, for example, by the song entitled 'The amorous virgin'), medical fraud (one tune was entitled 'This will restore my Maiden-head again') and celebrity infidelity (represented by songs such as 'A Lamentable Ballad of Fair Rosamond, King Henry the Second's Concubine'). In addition, there were best-selling songs about sensational murders, near-death experiences, racial tension, domestic violence, inter-generational antagonism, role reversal, national identity and suicide.

6. Museum curators and their visitors.
The images and recordings may also be of value to those who are planning exhibitions and displays that feature aspects of seventeenth-century life. An exhibition on the Reformation could, for example, be enhanced by access to the song about a Protestant heroine entitled 'The most Rare and excellent History, Of the Dutchess of Suffolk's Calamity'. Visitors could be encouraged to explore the site through computers available within the display space, and the sounds of the music might help to generate an appropriate atmosphere.

7. School teachers and their pupils.
'Hit Songs' would also provide a valuable resource for teachers of early modern history. Given the nature of most curricula, interest would probably focus upon the political and religious songs, but creative teachers might also find ways in which to use many of the other ballads.