Young Choristers, 650-1700

First full-length consideration of the role played by young singers, bringing out its full significance and its development over time.

First full-length consideration of the role played by young singers, bringing out its full significance and its development over time.

Young singers played a central role in a variety of religious institutional settings: urban cathedrals, collegiate churches, monasteries, guilds, and confraternities. The training of singers for performance in religious services was so crucial as to shape the very structures of ecclesiastical institutions, which developed to meet the need for educating their youngest members; while the development of musical repertories and styles directly reflected the ubiquitous participation of children's voices in both chant and polyphony. Once choristers' voices had broken, they often pursued more advanced studies either through an apprenticeship system or at university, frequently with the help of the institutions to which they belonged.
This volume provides the first wide-ranging book-length treatment of the subject, and will be of interest to music historians - indeed, all historians - who wish to understand the role of the young in sacred musical culture before 1700.

SUSAN BOYNTON is Associate Professor of Historical Musicology at Columbia University; ERIC RICE is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Connecticutat Storrs.

CONTRIBUTORS: SUSAN BOYNTON, SANDRINE DUMONT, JOSEPH DYER, JANE FLYNN, ANDREW KIRKMAN, NOEL O'REGAN, ALEJANDRO PLANCHART, RICHARD RASTALL, COLLEEN REARDON, ERIC RICE, JUAN RUIZ JIMENEZ, ANNE BAGNALL YARDLEY

Introduction: Performance and Premodern Childhood - Susan Boynton and Eric Rice
Boy Singers of the Roman Schola Cantorum - Joseph Dyer
Boy Singers in Medieval Monasteries and Cathedrals - Susan Boynton
The Musical Education of Young Girls in Medieval English Nunneries - Anne Bagnall Yardley
Choirboys in Early English Religious Drama - Richard Rastall
FromMozos de coro towardsSeises: Boys in the Musical Life of Seville - Juan Ruiz Jiménez
The Seeds of Medieval Music: Choirboys and Musical Training in a Late-Medie val-Maitrise - Andrew Kirkman
Choirboys in Cambrai in the Fifteenth Century - Alejandro Planchart
Choirboys andVicaires at the Maitrise of Cambrai: A Socio-anthropol ogical Study [1550-1670] - Sandrine Dumont
Choirboys, Memorial Endowments and Education at Aachen'sMarienkirche - Eric Rice
Thomas Mulliner: An Apprentice of John Heywood? - Jane E Flynn
Cantando tutte insieme: Training Girl Singers in Early Modern Sienese Convents - Colleen Reardon
Choirboys in Early Modern Rome - T Noel O'Regan