MEMS Seminar: Professor John Arnold (Kent)

MEMS Seminar:

Music, Meaning and Morality: Humanist Critiques of Music and Musicians in Late-Medieval English Cathedrals

By Professor John Arnold

This paper examines Christian humanist theories regarding music and its performance, and argues that there was considerable humanist criticism of musicians in late-medieval England, based upon Pythagorean, Platonic and Patristic ideas concerning music’s moral, liturgical and devotional role. Humanist denigration of certain musical practices, and promotion of others, stemmed from an emphasis upon poetry, rhetoric, and the advancement of virtue. What has, perhaps, been underestimated in scholarship thus far, is the close link between humanist chastisements of singers, choirs and composers and their criticisms of numerous other failings of both clergy and laity within the late-medieval Church. Drawing upon original sources and a wide range of secondary scholarship, I shall argue that these critiques aimed at a spiritual and moral renewal within the ecclesiastical body. I shall make a particular case study of Dean John Colet’s 1506 attempt to impose visitation injunctions upon the choir and clergy, and how his inappropriate approach hindered his success. Nevertheless, the humanist view that music could act as a powerful vehicle with which to convey the meaning of text, the understanding of which could lead one to greater thoughts and deeds of virtue and was therefore an artistic medium to be prized, if carefully controlled, eventually prevailed.

Revd Prof Jonathan Arnold is Michael Ramsey Chair in Theology at the University of Kent (Professor of Faith, Culture and the Arts). He is also Executive Director of the Social Justice Network, Canterbury Diocese, which has a portfolio that evolves in response to times of crises and includes migration and refugees, social issues of debt, hunger, homelessness, modern slavery and exploitation, the rehabilitation of ex-offenders and rural justice. Formerly he was Dean of Divinity and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford and, before that, was Chaplain and Senior Research Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. During his time in Oxford he lectured, tutored and supervised in ecclesiastical history. He co-founded the girl choristers’ choir Frideswide Voices in Oxford and sings professionally with ensembles such as The Sixteen, Ora, and The Gabrieli Consort. Publications include Sacred Music in Secular Society (2014); Music and Faith: Conversations in a Post-Secular Age (2019); The Everyday God (2024).

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