ABSTRACT
This chapter situates Anne Boleyn’s reputed musicality within five centuries of endless fascination with her. Beginning the year of her execution (1536), an ever-expanding range of histories, biographical accounts, novels, and works of visual and performing arts have presented Anne as a singer, instrumentalist, composer, and/or consumer of musical performances and products. What remain to be acknowledged are the ways in which otherwise rigid academic studies since the eighteenth century romanticize Anne’s engagement with music, and, conversely, how often fictitious representations of her have incorporated historically accurate musical information. At the center of these contrasting depictions stand questions of Anne’s musical agency, musical training, and with whom and how she shared her musical abilities.
