A story through the diary · His pleasures
Music
Singing in parts, the viol and the flageolet, songs of his own: from the diary's first month to its last week.
591 days across 10 years, 1660–1669 · 25 steps in its story
Music is in the diary from its first month to its last week. He sings in parts and reads music at sight; he plays the viol, the violin, the lute and the theorbo (a kind of lute), and the flageolet, a little pipe; late on he buys a recorder. He pays masters to teach him to sing and to compose, and sets songs of his own: “Beauty retire”, which he teaches to Knepp, an actress and singer at the King's playhouse, and “It is decreed”. His wife, Elizabeth, learns to sing and to play the flageolet, and by 1667 they play together. Music, he writes in 1666, is “all the pleasure almost that I can now take”, though he worries that it keeps him from his business.
This thread follows his own music: what he played and sang, the lessons he paid for, the songs he made and the music that moved him. Other threads tell the people around it. Elizabeth's thread tells of her lessons and his impatience with them. Other women tells of his conduct with Knepp, and with Mary Mercer, Elizabeth's companion, who both sing with him here. The household tells of the boys and companions who sang with him. By 1669 his eyes, whose story The failing light tells, are “too much out of tune” for him to look at new songbooks with any pleasure.
The story in 25 steps
Step 1 · Monday 16 January 1660
In the diary's first month, after a dinner with singing, he goes on with friends to the Green Dragon on Lambeth Hill. They sing till nine; he tries new music at sight and plays his flageolet.
there we sang of all sorts of things, and I ventured with good success upon things at first sight, and after that I played on my flageolet
16 Jan 1660Step 2 · Wednesday 21 November 1660
At night he plays his violin in his dining room, the first time since he came to this house, and then his lute.
I took much pleasure to have the neighbours come forth into the yard to hear me
21 Nov 1660Step 3 · Tuesday 25 June 1661
Goodgroome comes to teach him to sing. They begin at once; the first song is “La cruda la bella”.
I agreed presently to give him 20s. entrance, which I then did, and 20s. a month more to teach me to sing
25 Jun 1661Step 4 · Tuesday 14 January 1662
Berkenshaw comes to the house by appointment and they begin lessons in composition.
Mr. Berkenshaw by appointment yesterday coming to me, and begun composition of musique
14 Jan 1662Step 5 · Thursday 27 February 1662
Berkenshaw cries up his rules as perfect; Pepys thinks them the best yet made but “somewhat lame”. They quarrel, and Berkenshaw flings out. Pepys had meant to let him go anyway: he has all the rules, he thinks, and the lessons cost £5 a month.
we fell to angry words, so that in a pet he flung out of my chamber and I never stopped him
27 Feb 1662Step 6 · Monday 1 September 1662
At Sandwich's lodgings he, Will Howe and Paget play over pieces of Locke's that he and Howe used to play at sea.
it being the first music I have heard a great while, so much has my business of late taken me off from all my former delights
1 Sep 1662Step 7 · Friday 21 August 1663
He pays the instrument maker Hunt £3 for his viol, and the carver 10s. for its carving, and Hunt tells him what he may say of his instruments. Earlier, at Greenwich, the organist Arundell played him “a fine voluntary or two”.
he tells me that I may, without flattery, say, I have as good a Theorbo viall and viallin as is in England
21 Aug 1663Step 8 · Monday 21 December 1663
At Sandwich's he hears Captain Cooke and his singing boys, Dr Child, Madge and Mallard sing over the anthem Sandwich has made for the King's Chapel. Then Cooke and two boys sing Italian songs.
which I must in a word say I think was fully the best musique that I ever yet heard in all my life
21 Dec 1663Step 9 · Friday 22 July 1664
At home he finds his friend Hill, a merchant, with Andrews and Seignor Pedro, who sings Italian songs to the theorbo; they sing a piece by Carissimi all evening. They want Pedro weekly; Pepys fears “idle Masters” will grow a trouble.
Fine it was, indeed, and too fine for me to judge of.
22 Jul 1664Step 10 · Wednesday 31 August 1664
After dinner he goes up to hear his new boy, Tom Edwards, who comes from the King's Chapel and “understands musique well”, play a lute Pepys has borrowed that day from Mr Hunt.
the boy would, with little practice, play very well upon the lute, which pleases me well
31 Aug 1664Step 11 · Wednesday 6 December 1665
He spends the afternoon on a song he has set to Solyman's words to Roxalana (a part in The Siege of Rhodes). That evening at Mrs Pierce's, among others, he hears the actress Knepp sing: “the best company for musique I ever was in”.
the most excellent, mad-humoured thing, and sings the noblest that ever I heard in my life
6 Dec 1665Step 12 · Saturday 9 December 1665
Home late from the office, he sings his own song “Beauty retire” to his friend Hill.
only excepts against two notes in the base, but likes the whole very well
9 Dec 1665Step 13 · Friday 23 February 1666
Knepp calls to see Elizabeth, who is out, and they drive about looking for her. Once Elizabeth is home, he spends the evening teaching Knepp his song “Beauty retire”; she repeats her own and others' parts from the playhouse. It is his birthday: “33 years”.
which she sings and makes go most rarely, and a very fine song it seems to be
23 Feb 1666Step 14 · Monday 30 July 1666
He sings in the garden with Elizabeth and Mercer. Elizabeth is plainly dissatisfied that he spends so much time teaching Mercer to sing and never took the pains with her. In the diary he grants it and gives his reason; to her he says nothing.
it is because that the girl do take musique mighty readily, and she do not, and musique is the thing of the world that I love most
30 Jul 1666Step 15 · Wednesday 22 August 1666
Knepp tells him his song “Beauty Retire” is “mightily cried up”. He thinks he has done “It is Decreed” better, though he has not finished it.
which I am not a little proud of
22 Aug 1666Step 16 · Wednesday 19 December 1666
Hingston the organist sets a bass to his “It is decreed” and says “the ayre is good”. He tells Pepys the King's musicians are five years behind with their wages.
Evens, the famous man upon the Harp having not his equal in the world, did the other day die for mere want
19 Dec 1666Step 17 · Tuesday 12 February 1667
At Brouncker's, Signor Baptista sings an act of his own Italian opera, playing the harpsichord (“upon a harpsicon most admirably”). At home that night he is troubled only “that these pleasures do hinder me in my business”.
but then I do consider that this is all the pleasure I live for in the world
12 Feb 1667Step 18 · Friday 17 May 1667
Greeting, Elizabeth's flageolet master, has had “a bad bargain” teaching her by the year, as she practises too little, Pepys thinks. He pays Greeting 20s. a month more to teach him too. Practising together that evening, he is pleased she “can readily hit her notes”.
he shall teach me, and this afternoon I begun, and I think it will be a few shillings well spent
17 May 1667Step 19 · Saturday 15 June 1667
Purser Tyler reports “horrible miscarriages” in “this business at Chatham” (The Dutch war, from his desk tells it), and all afternoon he is “vexed to see how slowly things go on for want of money”. At night he plays his flageolet.
Played with pleasure, but with a heavy heart, only it pleased me to think how it may please God I may live to spend my time in the country with plainness and pleasure, though but with little glory
15 Jun 1667Step 20 · Thursday 27 February 1668
At “The Virgin Martyr” with Elizabeth and Deb Willet, the wind music when the angel comes down leaves him “transported” all night. He resolves to practise wind music, and to have Elizabeth do the same.
which is so sweet that it ravished me, and indeed, in a word, did wrap up my soul so that it made me really sick, just as I have formerly been when in love with my wife
27 Feb 1668Step 21 · Sunday 29 March 1668
Harris the actor and Banister, a musician, dine with him; they all sing, and Banister plays the theorbo and the flageolet. Talk with Banister confirms “some of my new notions about musique”.
it puts me upon a resolution to go on and make a scheme and theory of musique not yet ever made in the world
29 Mar 1668Step 22 · Wednesday 8 April 1668
At Drumbleby's, the pipe-maker's, after much talk about pipes, he buys a recorder, which he means to learn to play.
the sound of it being, of all sounds in the world, most pleasing to me
8 Apr 1668Step 23 · Tuesday 26 January 1669
Among the books Will Batelier has brought him from France are “one or two printed musick-books of songs”.
but my eyes are now too much out of tune to look upon them with any pleasure
26 Jan 1669Step 24 · Tuesday 2 March 1669
He holds a dance at the Navy Office that goes on till two in the morning. The musicians, “the best in town”, are Greeting, his flageolet master, and another violin, with a theorbo.
being one of the days and nights of my life spent with the greatest content
2 Mar 1669Step 25 · Friday 28 May 1669
In the diary's last week he spends the evening on the water with Elizabeth and his brother, as far as Chelsea, with their supper, making sport with the western bargemen.
my wife and I singing, to my great content
28 May 1669
See all 591 days on the mood grid
Related stories
- Elizabeth Nine years of a marriage in his own words: tenderness and quarrels, her loneliness, his jealousy and his violence, her reproaches, and the night she found him embracing Deb Willet.
- Other women The women he made sexual advances to over nine years, many of them dependent on him for a husband's post, a widow's pay or a place in his house.
- The household Servants hired and dismissed, boys and maids beaten, and Will Hewer, the clerk who stayed.
- The failing light From tired eyes by candlelight to the fear of blindness that ended the diary.
- Patrons Edward Montagu, Earl of Sandwich from 1660, made him; then Coventry and the Duke of York took over, while Sandwich fell from favour, went abroad and came home deep in debt.
- Curiosity Books bound alike, a microscope, a comet, the Royal Society: the reader and collector who wanted to know how things work.