Willis, Jonathan Peter (2009) Church music and Protestantism in post-Reformation England: discourses, sites & identities. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis is an interdisciplinary examination of the role religious music played in the formation of Protestant religious identities during the Elizabethan phase of the English Reformation. It is allied with current post-revisionist trends in seeking to explain how the population of sixteenth-century England adjusted to the huge doctrinal upheaval of the Reformation. It also seeks to move post-revisionism onwards, by suggesting that the synthetic patchwork of beliefs which emerged during the English Reformation was nonetheless distinctively Protestant, and that we must redefine our notion of what it actually meant to be Protestant in the context of post-Reformation England.
The first of three sections, ‘Discourses’, explores the classical and religious discourses which underpinned sixteenth-century understandings of music, and its use in religious worship. Chapter one investigates the strengthening and importance of neo-classical notions of speculative music during the Renaissance, while chapter two explores how these notions affected the way Protestant reformers thought about, wrote about, and used music in public worship.
Section two, ‘Sites’, looks at the practice of Church music in the parish and the cathedral church. Chapter three uses qualitative and quantitative data from churchwardens’ accounts to document changing patterns of musical expenditure in the Elizabethan parish, while chapter four focuses on the cathedral, and challenges received notions about the supposed dichotomy between parish and cathedral worship practices.
The third and final section, ‘Identities’, shifts its attention to the people of Elizabethan England, and the ways in which music both served and shaped the processes of religious identity formation. Chapter five looks at music as a tool of pedagogy, propaganda and devotional piety, in church, schoolroom and home, while chapter six concentrates on the ways in which Church music both reinforced and complicated notions of communal and individual identity, acting as a source of both harmony and discord.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BR Christianity B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology M Music and Books on Music > ML Literature of music
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Church music -- England, Reformation -- England, Protestantism -- England, Identity (Psychology) -- England -- History, Music -- Psychological aspects, England -- Social conditions -- 16th century, England -- Social conditions -- 17th century, England -- History -- 16th century, England -- History -- 17th century
Official Date:	January 2009
Dates:	Date Event January 2009 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of History
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Marshall, Peter, 1964-
Sponsors:	Arts and Humanities Research Council (Great Britain) (AHRC)
Extent:	397 leaves : charts
Language:	eng

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