ABSTRACT
Throughout the literary corpus of the English Reformation there is a consensus that music is a divine gift, yet as an art it is more harmful than beneficial to the human soul and character. Stressing the ethical effects of music, the English reformers, educators and social critics denounced the current abuse of musical practice. Their polemics, aimed to improve the intellectual and moral status of musicians, eventually led to the dramatic reduction of choral foundations at cathedrals and collegiate churches in the 1540s and 1550s. Two musical treatises refuted this musical polemic in England that persisted throughout the Reformation era: the anonymous The Praise of Musicke and John Case’s Apologia musices. It has been assumed that both were written by Case, a leading scholar of Aristotelianism based in Oxford. John Colet’s clerical reform at St Paul’s concerned the minor clergy, particularly the vicars-choral who had to be competent singers, and he imposed rigorous moral and intellectual discipline on them.
