Is the state of melancholy caused by too much garlic and cabbage, as the 17th-century clergyman and polymath Robert Burton wondered? Or is it a psychological state comparable with mourning, as Sigmund Freud was to suggest three centuries later? Both analysts are quoted in this remarkable 65-minute presentation in music, words and images.
Burton, to be fair, proposed dozens of other possible causes, but reckoned too that music, at least as practised by the type of vain, idle fantasist “who capers in conceit all the day long” (what interesting parishioners he had!), could make things worse. His encyclopaedic study also has some sensible, more up-to-date recommendations, including exercise and a good diet.
