Reforming Community: Music, Religious Change, and English Identity in Mid-Tudor London

Ebook available to libraries exclusively as part of the JSTOR Path to Open initiative.

The religious reforms of the mid-sixteenth century raised important questions about what it meant to be English in the Tudor period―after all, the medieval liturgy had been one of the few constants for English people of all ages and classes for centuries. Reforming Community examines the key role religious music played in the formation of English identity in the nation’s capital as the governments of Edward VI and Mary I imposed competing religious agendas on a populace whose members held a plurality of views about reform. The book begins by examining the relationship between the “official” liturgical policies of Edward VI and Mary I and the practices of London’s parish churches, demonstrating that those across the confessional spectrum relied on links to the Henrician past to redefine their worship spaces. In the public sphere, however, supporters of the Edwardine and Marian governments sometimes differed; though both turned to the new genre of godly ballads, the former shaped discourses around Englishness and religion by promoting scripture-based song, while the latter relied heavily on public processions to reinforce an explicitly Catholic identity. Reforming Community thus argues that in using specific music to assert confessional preferences, Londoners sought to forge their own understanding of their identities separate from Catholic (and Protestant) Europe.

Anne Heminger is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Tampa, where she teaches music history and theory. She holds a BA in music from the University of Chicago, an MPhil in musicology from Cambridge (as a Gates Scholar), and a PhD in historical musicology from the University of Michigan. Her research centers on the English Reformation, examining how the composition, dissemination, and performance of religious music shaped the early modern construction of English identity in the sixteenth century.