To add to Hannibal's admirable explanation:

Except on the extreme fringes, the English debate until the revolutionary
period was, indeed, almost entirely over polyphony, or, to be even more
specific, antiphonal choral settings. In the Admonition (I think--at least
in the same controversial context) Cartwright described choral settings as
"tossing" the text to and fro "like tennis balls," and the image becomes a
characteristic element of the argument's rhetoric. My sense is that
objections to organs continued but became more intense again in the middle
of the 17th century. I only know of the hard-line Zwinglian position (that
even metrical psalms were objectionable) among English speakers from the
existence of a very few tracts defended psalms (including the preface to
the Bay Psalm Book).

And I second his question about Ireland!

Beth



At 11:07 AM 2/25/2005 -0500, you wrote:
>My sense is that the Reformation debates about church music had less to do
>with specific associations with Catholic practice (Psalters were Scripture
>after all, and therefore above confessional conflict, especially if in
>vernacular languages) and more to do with a general anxiety about the
>aesthetic.  And this anxiety goes back at least to Augustine, who so loved
>music but therefore found it all the more perilous.  Zwingli was the same
>way.  Quite an accomplished musician, he nevertheless banned all music from
>Christian worship (ripping out organs, etc.) because its aesthetic -- and
>secular -- power was so seductive.  Calvin allowed the singing of Psalms
>because they were Scripture, and therefore safe (though there was still
>concern about the musical settings, as there was even in post-Tridentine
>Catholic practice -- polyphony threatened to overwhelm and obscure the
>text, the Word).  Luther was the most liberal of the major reformers in his
>attitude to music, but this wasn't necessarily because he enjoyed it most
>(since the enjoyment, for some, was the problem).  Anne may know more than
>I do about the English debates, but my sense is that they continue this
>basic disagreement up through the seventeenth century.  And Americans
>pitched in too.  The motive behind the aggressively bad verse of the Bay
>Psalm Book is exactly the same distrust of the aesthetic.  The verse of the
>New England Psalms certainly provides no distraction for the worshipper (at
>least so the thinking goes -- in my experience bad verse is at least as
>distracting as the beautiful).
>
>On the ancient hymns, I don't recall seeing specific discussion of Ambrose,
>Aquinas, etc. in this context.  Aren't the church fathers generally free
>from Catholic "taint," though?  The Reformers are somewhat creative in
>their approach to church history, linking themselves directly to the early
>church while by-passing the "Dark Ages" of the Roman Catholic period (up to
>1517, with exceptions for Hus, Albigensians, etc.).
>
>Others may be wearying of this thread, but another question occurs to me
>(or actually it occurred to my wife).  So far, in addressing what Spenser
>might have sung in church, we have focused entirely on English
>practice.  Can we assume that Irish practice was identical?  Might Spenser
>have experienced a somewhat different service in Ireland?  I have no idea,
>but would be happy to hear, if Irish experts like Thomas Herron, Andrew
>Hadfield, or others want to weigh in.
>
>Hannibal
>
>
>
>At 10:27 PM 2/24/05 -0600, you wrote:
>>Would it be fair to say that 16th-century controversies over reformed church
>>music were largely rooted in the problem of what it meant to claim
>>catholicity--as most magisterial reformers claimed it? The inherited model
>>was the divine office (developed in the monastic orders), which was in some
>>sense laicized and transmogrified by Protestants amid the dissolution of the
>>monastic houses and the creation of the prayer book and psalm books. As
>>legacies of medieval catholic antecendents, I would suppose that psalters,
>>like the prayer book, were open to being attacked as papistical and defended
>>as proper evangelical (and catholic) worship that was now in the hands of
>>the laity rather than clerical elites.
>>
>>Hymns might be criticized for unseemly secular origins--some Calvinist
>>denominations today take that view and steadfastly refuse to sing anything
>>but the Psalms--but many hymns used by modern Lutherans, Calvinists and
>>Anglicans employ medieval texts written by various monastics and church
>>fathers. I don't know if that is a modern innovation or not; did
>>Reformation-era Protestants sing (and argue over the appropriateness of)
>>hymns by Thomas Aquinas and Ambrose? -Dan Knauss
>>
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>
>Hannibal Hamlin
>Assistant Professor of English
>The Ohio State University
>1680 University Drive
>Mansfield, OH 44906
>419-755-4277
>[log in to unmask]



==============================================

Beth Quitslund
Assistant Professor of English

Department of English
Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701
phone: (740) 593-2829
FAX: (740) 593-2818