page_title: Protestant church music during and after the Reformation
section_title: Anglican church music
hierarchical_section_title: Protestant church music during and after the Reformation / Anglican church music
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of King Henry VIII (1491-1547)
context_page_description: Church music during the Reformation developed during the Protestant Reformation in two schools of thought, the regulative and normative principles of worship, based on reformers John Calvin and Martin Luther. They derived their concepts in response to the Catholic church music, which they found distracting and too ornate. Both principles also pursued use of the native tongue, either alongside or in place of liturgical Latin.
context_section_description: During the same time period of that Luther and Calvin were active on the mainland, England too was influenced and experienced its own distinct reformation movement. King Henry VIII, after failing to convince Pope Clement VII to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn, proclaimed himself head of the Church of England, an action which was officialised in Parliament’s 1534 Act of Supremacy. After this, England’s political ties to Rome were severed, but although the Church of England adopted a primarily Calvinist theology, it still retained many of the ecclesiastical traditions of Catholic services, to the dismay of the more conservative Calvinists. Given England’s unique situation, English Protestant music emerged as its own distinct genre during and after the Reformation. In some ways, it reflected elements of Calvinism; for instance, Calvinist psalmodies were exceedingly popular in mid-sixteenth century England. However, English congregations also utilized materials which would be considered more Lutheran in style, including broadside ballads which were repurposed for religious use. A particularly common source of worship material in English churches was the Second Book of Common Prayer, commissioned by the Protestant King Edward VI in 1552.
  The English Reformation oversaw the proliferation of English Protestant composers and the writing of many English psalters (musical arrangements of the Book of Psalms). This was in part due to a reaction against Catholic worship music following the English Reformation. English Protestants particularly denounced Catholic music due to the fact “that it was performed in a foreign tongue [Latin],” which they saw as conflicting with parts of Scripture and therefore with the will of God. Because of this, English clergymen and composers began to form a unique canon of English worship music distinct from that of continental Europe. Perhaps the most notable early Anglican Protestant composer was Issac Watts, known as the “Father of English Hymnody". Watts broke with the popular Calvinist theology of the time by altering his arrangements of the Psalms to better reflect Christian elements found only in the New Testament, as is evident by the title of his work, The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament. Another prominent English composer of the time was Benjamin Keach (1640-1704), a minister and leader of the Particular Baptist denomination. Keach is responsible for being the first songwriter to popularize the singing of hymns as opposed to purely Psalms in English churches, and his song collection, titled A Feast of Fat Things, became a staple in many English Protestant churches. While many English composers experimented with polyphonic chorales and the use of multiple instruments, the English Crown, under the young Protestant King Edward VI, began to tightly restrict these elements during a brief revival of English-Calvinist regulative theology. However, many of these restrictions on church music were lifted with Edward VI’s premature death and the Catholic Mary Tudor’s ascension to the throne in 1553.
caption: King Henry VIII of England (1491 –1547)
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