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<p>The Whole Booke of Psalmes, first published in 1562, was not only the English Reformation’s
primary hymnal, but also by far the most popular printed music book published in England
in the sixteenth century. This dissertation argues that in addition to its identities
as scriptural text and monophonic musical score, the WBP functioned as a music instructional
book, intended by its publishers to improve popular music education in Elizabethan
England. Motivated by Protestant ideology, the WBP promoted musical literacy for the
common people. This dissertation further demonstrates that the WBP made a hitherto
unrecognized contribution to music theory in early modern England, introducing the
fixed-scale solmization system thought to originate at the end of the sixteenth century.
Drawing upon musicology, book history, and the study of Reformation theology, this
dissertation makes a contribution to post-revisionist English Reformation scholarship,
arguing that the WBP and its music-educational materials formed part of the process
of widespread conversion from Roman Catholicism to English Protestantism.</p><p>John
Day’s highly successful claim to monarchical authorization and religious authority
for the WBP made the book the most prominent guide to a Protestant musical aesthetic
for the common people. According to the WBP, the English Protestant musical identity
was characterized by several features: communal singing of easy monophonic melodies,
particularly by the laity rather than clergy and musical professionals; a broad selection
of appropriate texts that encompassed Scripture (particularly the psalms), liturgical
canticles, and catechetical texts; regular singing both devotionally as a household
and as a congregation in church settings; and performance with instrumental accompaniment.
Musical literacy was an imperative: if being a Protestant meant becoming an active
part of musical worship, then it was crucial to teach all the laity to sing well,
enabling them to fully inhabit that identity.</p><p>For this reason, many of the 143
known editions published from 1562 to 1603 contained one of two features intended
to teach basic musical literacy: a letter to the reader which served as an introductory
music theory treatise, and a special font that assigned solmization syllables to individual
pitches for ease of sight-reading, which was accompanied by its own single-page explanatory
preface. These prefaces made the WBP unique among the music-theoretical works produced
in sixteenth-century England, the prefaces being neither the sort of introductory
essays found in instrumental instruction books nor freestanding music theory textbooks.
Their content was simple and accessible, with the goal of educating their common readers
in the musical skills necessary for the singing of psalms (but not improvisation or
composition, critical topics in other sixteenth-century English music theory treatises),
and both prefaces employed religious language that gave sacred meaning to music education.
The WBP’s simplified solmization system made an important advance in the history of
music theory, one that has up until now been thought to originate thirty years later
with music theorists Thomas Morley and William Bathe.</p><p>Yet as we know from early
Jacobean documents and practices, the average early seventeenth-century churchgoer
remained unable to read music and was therefore unable to utilize the WBP as a musical
score. I contend that the failure of the WBP’s didactic content was due to music printing
errors that significantly hindered the psalter’s capacity to improve musical literacy.
Despite John Day’s introduction of the music preface and printed solmization syllables
and the general policy of his successors to maintain Day’s general structure, content,
and Protestant message, the usefulness of the WBP in promoting musical literacy and
Protestant musical devotion was severely hampered by seemingly musically-illiterate
compositors and a lack of editorial oversight.</p>
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