Musical Culture in the Wars of Religion, 1550-1650

St Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge; 17-18 March 2018

Talks by:

Peter Bennett (Case Western Reserve) Marie-Alexis Colin (Brussels) Tom 
Hamilton (Cambridge) Kat Hill (Birkbeck) David van der Linden 
(Groningen) Margaret McGowan (Sussex) Emilie Murphy (York) David Potter 
(Kent) Alex Robinson (Cambridge) John Romey (Case Western Reserve) 
Daniel Trocmé Latter (Cambridge)

and featuring a *lecture-recital* by Edward Wickham and the Choir of St 
Catharine's College, Cambridge of the */Dodecacorde/ of Claude Le Jeune* 
Edward Wickham (Cambridge)

Registration costs £25 and includes a sandwich lunch on both days, a 
drinks reception, and tea and coffee breaks. Register via 
www.lejeune1598.eventbrite.co.uk

Organisers: Tom Hamilton, Alex Robinson, Edward Wickham with generous 
support from The Society for the Study of French History and the Society 
for Renaissance Studies.

Contact email: [log in to unmask]

Music was a crucial battleground in the Wars of Religion. In spite of 
this,historians and musicologists have rarely combined their approaches 
to understand the full significance thatmusic had in the civil wars. 
Historians have primarily studied how music shaped confessional 
identities, for example, as Protestantssang the Psalms together in 
worship or on the battlefield, to express their solidarity and take 
comfort in their faith despite persecution. Musicologists, on the other 
hand, have tended to concentrate on the most important composers from 
this time (such as Eustache Du Caurroy or Pierre Guédron), the genres in 
which they wrote (like ballets or /airs de cour/), or issues associated 
with the performance of this repertoire.

This conference brings together historians and musicologists with the 
aim of overcoming the boundaries that still remain between these 
scholarly disciplines. It focuses on the various contexts within which 
music was used and considers its impact in the Wars of Religion. Who 
sang music and for what aims? What was the relationship (if any) between 
the performance of music in elite circles versus the use of this art 
form among the wider public? Did music solidify or traverse confessional 
divisions? Lastly, how far can modern performers recreate the 
soundscapes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? Treating the age 
of the Wars of Religion across a whole century and using France as a 
focal point for making wider comparisons, the papers in this conference 
will explore the role of music from all sectors of society, from the 
royal courts to the city streets, and from both Protestant and Catholic 
perspectives.