Accessibility statement

Music and the English Reformation

Wednesday 19 October 2011, 4.30PM

Speaker(s): Jonathan P Willis (Birmingham)

CREMS Research Seminar

Tea and coffee available at 4.15 ALL WELCOME

Dr Jonathan Willis began a three-year Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Durham, in October 2010, to work on a project entitled ‘The Ten Commandments and the English Reformation.’  In September 2011 he took up hiscurrent post at the University of Birmingham. 

Jonathan Willis' research explores the nature of religious, social and cultural change during the period of the Reformation, on the most fundamental level concerned with questions of belief and identity, and the relationship between the two. His doctoral research looked at the relationship between church music and Protestant religious identity formation in England during the reign of Elizabeth I.  This involved considering the philosophical and theological origins of ideas about music and its power over mankind, as well as a detailed exploration of the practice of music-making in key religious sites, the parish and cathedral church.  He has also examined the ways in which music was used as a tool of religious instruction, propaganda and devotion, as well as its ability to foment both harmony and discord in a range of different communities.  A monograph and a number of essays and articles stemming from this research are either already published or in preparation for publication.

Publications

  • Jonathan Willis, 'Protestant Worship and the Discourse of Music in Reformation England', in Natalie Mears and Alec Ryrie (eds),Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, forthcoming).
  • Jonathan Willis, '"A Pottle of Ayle on Whyt Sonday": Everyday Objects and the Musical Culture of the Post-Reformation Parish Church', Tara Hamling and Catherine Richardson (eds), Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 211-220.
  • Jonathan Willis, Church Music and Protestantism in Post-Reformation England: Discourses, Sites and Identities (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010).
  • Jonathan Willis, 'Nature, Music, and the Reformation in England', in Peter Clarke and Tony Claydon (eds), God's Bounty? The Churches and the Natural World (Studies in Church History vol. 46. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010), pp. 184-193.
  • Jonathan Willis, '"By These Means the Sacred Discourses Sink More Deeply into the Minds of Men": Music and Education in Elizabethan England', History, 94.3 (2009), pp. 294‐309.

contact crems-enquiries@york.ac.uk


Location: Seminar room BS/008, ground floor, Berrick Saul Building

Admission: free