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Women in Victorian Church Music: Their Social, Liturgical, and Performing Roles in Anglicanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Walter Hillsman
Walter Hillsman*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Music, Oxford
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Extract

Musical outlets for English women in the medieval Church were generally restricted to convents, where they sang plain-song. Even female participation in liturgical plays like the Easter drama (with solo parts for the Marys at the Sepulchre) was normally not allowed. Singing in cathedral, collegiate, and major parish churches was limited to men and boys; in cathedral and collegiate foundations, only male singers could fulfil the statutory requirements of membership. The Henrician dissolution of religious houses thus put an effective musical damper on women in English church music for several years. (Abolition of chantry foundations in major parish churches, incidentally, caused the disbanding of most of the small parochial male choirs.)

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 27: Women in the Church , 1990 , pp. 443 - 452
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1990

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References

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19 For congregational singing, see Hillsman, W., ‘Trends and aims in Anglican church music in relation to developments in churchmanship’ (Oxford D.Phil, thesis, 1985), pp. 209’10 Google Scholar; for other information in this paragraph, see ‘ , F.R.C.O.’, ‘Female Singers in Church’, The Organist and Choirmaster, 8 (15 Oct. 1900), p. 128 Google Scholar; Curwen, J. S., Studies in Worship Music (First Series) Chiefly as Regards Congregational Singing, 2nd edn (London, [1888]), p. 318 Google Scholar; Blenkinsopp, E., ‘Women Choristers’, The Church Times, 24 (8 Oct. 1886), p. 758 Google Scholar; ‘Church News. Women in surplices’, The Church Times, 25 (23 Sept. 1887), p. 750; “An Angelic Choir”, The Church Times, 27 (30 Aug. 1889), pp. 781-2.

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