Decoding Musical Resistance: English Vocal Music in the Service of the King, 1625--1660

The process of change brought with it a cross-fertilization between traditional popular culture and cultivated art forms. Because of the nature of the war, loyalties were conflicted and shifting. This shifting of alliances continued through the period of the interregnum governments, causing initially unrelated social and cultural spheres to integrate. Aristocrats participated in popular culture in an effort to reach middle-class audiences, which affected both the texts and the music. Classical knowledge and cosmopolitan themes were injected into mainstream street and tavern culture and traditional, tuneful music styles were adopted into art song, resulting in fruitful combinations. The outcome in music was a social and cultural interchange that saw aristocrats dabbling in ballads and country-dances, and the lower and middle classes indulging in what had originally been court dances and dialogues. By the end of the period, not one of the original contexts of music within English society was left unchanged. Though the popular music and poetry of the civil war period has, in the past, been dismissed as partisan ephemera, it is the argument of this dissertation that it was the involvement of music and musicians in the war effort that ushered in both stylistic changes and a new appreciation for the persuasive qualities of music that resonated through the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and into the eighteenth century.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Music

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Houck, Stacey Jocoy

Contributors dc:contributor

• Kellman, Herbert

• History, European

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3182279

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/85751