Music, Politics and Religion in Early Seventeenth-Century Cambridge: The Peterhouse Partbooks in Context

The Peterhouse partbooks constitute a unique resource for studying two periods of English choral music. Their witness to musical trends at the time of the Henrician Reformation has attracted much attention since their assimilation into scholarly accounts of English music in the mid-nineteenth century. Less has been written, however, about what the collection can tell us about music on the eve of the English Civil War, in the period when the partbooks were brought together and when much of their music was composed. This volume considers the music of the partbooks as part of the broader cultural, intellectual, and material history of the 1630s. It breaks new ground in describing the institutional context for the creation of the partbooks and in providing an account of the materials used in them, as well as analysis of the scribal cultures from which they originated. For the first time, it properly situates the partbooks within the developing ecclesiology of the Church of England and investigates the influence of local and personal commitments on the liturgy and practice for which they were compiled.

Local and personal factors shaped the implementation of national political and religious change in the 1630s and this volume shows how these forces came together in short-lived and contentious innovation in cultural and intellectual life. Contributions consider the extent to which musical renewal formed part of a conscious programme of architectural, artistic, literary, and liturgical change whose purpose was to redirect the education and formation of future generations of priests and patrons within the Church of England. While exploring the mechanisms of change, they also consider the force of reaction to and dissatisfaction with novelty and the resulting turmoil, iconoclasm, and exile that transformed the careers of the protagonists in the story of the partbooks. Although particular in focus, the volume demonstrates how political, intellectual, and religious dispute infiltrated the lives of individuals and communities and generated conflicts that proved impossible to control. The story of the Peterhouse partbooks provides an unusually rich opportunity to review a critical period of British history through the prism provided by a remarkable example of musical and cultural survival.