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Emerging from a joint AHRC/ESRC-funded project, The Experience of Worship in late medieval Cathedral and Parish Church (2009–13), this doctoral thesis offers a chronological trajectory of the liturgical development of the Mass and Office of the Holy Name of Jesus, and in so doing, seeks to provide fresh perspectives on the significance of the name ‘Jesus’. Jesus Mass was one of a number of liturgies chosen by the project research team to enact as worship, with the texts, chants, spaces, ritual artefacts, vestments and furniture appropriate for the 1530s. My brief was to collaborate with other members of the research team in preparing the Jesus Mass texts and other textual resources for enactments in two different spaces, to participate as a singer in the enactment itself, and to reflect upon the experience after its last iteration. As a result of this high degree of involvement, a possible direction for research presented itself, as summarised below. Section I addresses the wider contextual issues of the devotion to the Holy Name, beginning with a study of the origins and occurrences of the Holy Name in the New Testament. It then traces the later development of the Name as the object of devotion in the West and more specifically in England during the Middle Ages, until it attains an officially recognised liturgical expression in the late fifteenth century. Section II of the thesis then focuses on the emerging Sarum Feast of the Holy Name (7 August) more specifically, with reference to the associated Mass and Office. It offers a survey of the evolvement of the observance through manuscript and printed liturgical sources of Sarum and other Uses, and of the extent of guild activity and musical provision during the period 1480–1530, both indicative of the extent of its practice nationwide. Section III provides an analysis of the emerging themes in both Mass and Office Propers, drawn from a variety of associated sources – scriptural, devotional and theological, which help construct an understanding of the significance of the Name. This is further enriched in Section IV by an exploration of the Feast of the Transfiguration (6 August), celebrated the day before the Holy Name, according to the Sarum Kalendar. In the final section the focus returns to the enactment, and explains the process whereby the Mass texts were transformed into a working edition with text, notation and rubrics, ready to be animated into an act of worship taking place as if in the late Middle Ages, but in 2011.

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This thesis seeks to put in writing a practical theology of congregational song - the song of the people. Congregational song has been overlooked; studies of church music tend to focus on choral music and studies of hymns tend to look at words rather than music. This study seeks to tell the story of the song of the people, and to develop a practical theology of congregational song derived from the song itself and from a congregation’s reflections on that song.

This thesis provides a comprehensive source study of the eighteenth-century Chapel Royal partbooks (London, British Library R.M.27.a–d). The 56 manuscript volumes in this collection, which are now catalogued into four groups (or ‘sets’), were used in the daily choral services at St James’s Palace during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The sources have a complex history since they have an ‘organic’ quality whereby the books continued to be copied into and altered whilst they were in regular use. The first part of the thesis (chapters two to six) examines the physical characteristics of the manuscripts by considering the books’ construction, the traits of the copyists, and the way material was gradually added. Paper and scribal analysis, as well as general cataloguing work, are used to identify the contents and explore the layers of copying. The second part of the thesis (chapters seven and eight) looks at the function of the books and considers the collection within its eighteenth-century context. Documentary sources are considered alongside various elements of the books to establish how the partbooks were used in performance. The Chapel’s method of partbook organisation is then compared with the organisation of similar collections at other choral foundations (including those with which the Chapel had strong connections).

Research on English Catholic Music after the Reformation has focused almost entirely on a small number of Catholic composers and households in England. The music of the English Catholic colleges, convents, monasteries and seminaries that were established in Continental Europe, however, has been almost entirely overlooked. The chief aim of this thesis is to reconstruct the musical practices of these institutions from the Reformation until 1700, in order to arrive at a clearer understanding of the nature of music in the post-Reformation English Catholic community. To this end, four institutions have been selected to serve as case studies: 1. The Secular English College, Douai. 2. St Alban’s College, Valladolid. 3. The Benedictine Monastery of Our Lady of the Assumption, Brussels. 4. The Augustinian Monastery of Our Lady of Nazareth, Bruges. The music of these institutions is evaluated in two ways: firstly, as a means of constructing, reflecting and forming English Catholic identity, and secondly, in terms of the range of influences (both English and Continental) that shaped its stylistic development. The thesis concludes that as a result of the peculiarly domestic nature of religious practice among Catholics in England, and interactions with Continental Catholicism, the aesthetic and ideological bases for English Catholic music were markedly different from those of its Protestant counterpart. The marked influence of Italianate styles on the sacred music of English Catholic composers and institutions in exile demonstrates a simultaneous process of cultural alignment with the aesthetic and theological principles of the Counter-Reformation, and dissociation from those of English Protestantism. Finally, it is clear that music was an important formational tool in both the seminaries and convents, where it shaped both community and self-identity, and created affinities with the locales in which these institutions were situated – although it is also clear that these uses of music had the potential to conflict.

This thesis takes as its area of exploration the papal chapel choir and its repertory, alongside the papacy and its patronage of the arts at the end of the fifteenth century. It draws on previous research concerning the singers, polyphonic manuscripts and artistic culture of the Vatican, but places Pope Alexander VI as the central figure of the thesis, showing schemes of patronage that shaped his reign. The research presents a transcription and analysis of the hymn cycle contained within the manuscript Cappella Sistina 15, alongside an assessment of the polyphonic music collection and places these against accounts of music making and evidence of music copying at the papal chapel during Alexander’s reign. The thesis also considers the environment of secular music making at Alexander’s court. In order to provide a context in which to understand this information, the life of Alexander VI is examined, tracing his artistic patronage and involvement with music both prior to his election and afterwards. Of particular note is the engagement of the artist Pintoricchio to decorate the papal apartments. Here, the artist’s representation of music as part of the seven liberal arts is analysed, providing a unique, contemporary and important insight into music practices in Alexander’s court. Three classifications of patronage are identified for Alexander’s reign, while also showing that these were strategies that he had used before he became pope. The music culture at the papal chapel is shown to be part of this strategy, through the consolidation of old music and the introduction of new music into the repertory, ending a task that had taken approximately 60 years. It shows that Alexander’s reign was an important period musically, that instituted new musical traditions and created an environment that prepared the way for the golden ages of patronage of Julius II and Leo X.