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Catterwall

Caterwaul: 1. intransitive. To cry as cats in heat. 2. transferred. To make a discordant, hideous noise; to quarrel like cats [in noisy or angry manner] (1621-). Equivalent to cat + waul, from Middle English cater ‘tomcat’ + wrawlen ‘to cry or squall like a cat’.

Oxford English Dictionary


  • Beware of the Cat (c.1500) — Woodcut containing the German proverb (said to be used by Martin Luther): «hut uch vor den kattzen · dy vorn lecken unde hinden krattzen» ‘Beware of the cats, that lick the front and scratch the back’.

    A Cannibalistic Cat: Thomas Master’s Stringy Situation

    November 17, 2025
  • Bill Myers’s Barbershop Vowel Chart

    “Hallelujah Rye Love Him So”: Linguistic Errors in British Barbershop Singing

    November 5, 2025
  • Borrowing in the Baldwin Partbooks: Compositional Afterlives in the Music of John Mundy

    September 4, 2025
  • The Star Chamber, from a drawing made in 1836

    Music and the Hackness Home Invasion: Hoby vs Eure in the Star Chamber

    July 4, 2025
  • Beware the Cat

    Praiers, Pills, and Pelicles: Gregory Streamer’s Attempt to Hear the Language of Cats

    June 5, 2025
  • Letter, from John Wallis to Andrew Fletcher, dated at Oxford

    Too Many Cooks? John Wallis on the Palate, the Passions, and the Music of the ‘Ancients’

    April 28, 2025
  • Pierre de la Primaudaye

    Like to an Almaine flute: La Primaudaye on Voice and Speach

    February 20, 2025
  • Sir Francis Bacon

    A Good Voice to Beg Bacon: Two Centuries of Musings on Music and Sound

    March 16, 2024
  • King's Chapel, Cambridge

    The Oxbridge Hypothesis: Elitism in the English Revival of Early Music

    February 1, 2024
The Country Choristers
A Sermon at St Paul's Cross (1616)
Two men sing from a songbook they are both holding, while a younger man has fallen asleep at the table; a young woman looks on
A man is playing a violin to a accompany a group of girls singing
Village Choristers Rehearsing an Anthem for Sunday
Unknown - The Choir, Canterbury Cathedral (1712-15)

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