Reforming Community

For centuries, the medieval Catholic church served as a unifying force in English society. Regardless of wealth, gender, social status, or geographic location, regular worship services and collective devotional acts bound English men and women together in a shared sense of religious community. From the liturgical performances of choirs to carols sung by the public, music was an important part of these experiences. After King Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534, the English populace was forced to question relationships between religious doctrine and communal identity that had previously been taken for granted. Reforming Community takes this rupture as its starting point, examining how religious music shaped the formation of English identity during the reigns of Edward VI (r. 1547–1553) and Mary I (r. 1553–1558). Using London as its primary point of reference, this book reveals that religious music played both explicit and implicit roles in this identity construction; while the former resulted from government and ecclesiastical music policies, printed musical repertoires aligned with authorized doctrine, and officially sanctioned public performances, the latter grew from the ways English men and women interpreted contemporary religious policy in their own parish churches. By investigating a variety of genres and performance contexts during two political regimes that are often elided or overlooked in longer studies of the English Reformation, this book thus considers music’s role in mediating and expressing religious—and national—identities in mid-Tudor England.

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