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This essay focuses on the work of Dominican Sisters in Memphis and Nashville during the second half of the nineteenth century. To a certain extent, their work often followed the trajectory of other congregations of religious women. They were sought after by priests and bishops, for example, who were anxious to establish schools and orphanages but needed religious women to staff and minister these institutions. On the other hand, the circumstances surrounding the arrival and subsequent work of the Dominicans in Memphis and Nashville differed dramatically from many of their counterparts in other parts of the United States. The sisters’ early years in Tennessee were marked by the devastation resulting from Civil War battles being fought on or perilously close to their properties. Following the war, Memphis and Nashville Dominicans experienced three outbreaks of yellow fever within a decade, as well as financial struggles that placed them in danger of being forced to abandon their schools and orphanages. Today, the Dominicans remain an active presence in both cities.

This chapter treats musical activities at the scuole piccole in the 17th century. Their patronal feasts remained important occasions for music, but other events also become significant. The Scuola dello Spirito Santo sponsored elaborate music for Pentecost, employing, among others, Francesco Cavalli and Antonio Lotti. Other scuole employed musicians for weekly compline services, monthly processions, and regular expositions of the Holy Sacrament. Services at the Fraterna Grande di Sant'Antonino included laude performed by the brothers. Many scuole, especially the parish-based Holy Sacrament confraternities, continued to build and maintain organs and employ organists. The Sovvegno di Santa Cecilia, founded by the singers of the city, organized an annual festivity that was one of the most elaborate in the city, with the participation of the entire chapel of San Marco and many others.

The passage of the Toleration Act meant religious freedom for non-Anglican Protestants but signaled a fundamental shift in the position of the Church of England in English society. Prior, the Church of England benefited from a government-backed monopoly on legal religious practice in England. The loss of these legal inducements meant that the Church of England had to compete equally, for the first time, in a marketplace of religious ideas. Chapter four exposes how the Church of England responded to this change with pro-music pamphlets advertising the joyful nature of the Anglican service in contrast to the austere practices of other Protestant denominations. It argues that while nonconformists wrote massive treatises arguing fine theological points about music in divine worship, Anglicans produced pamphlets that were addressed to the average reader in terms they could understand. It also connects these pro-music pamphlets to other accessible works written by Anglican propagandists that promote the Church of England in this new marketplace of ideas. Overall, the chapter reveals the previously-unknown propaganda functions of these Anglican music pamphlets and reveals that they were part of a larger, equally unknown, pro-Anglican propaganda campaign that directly responded to the results of the Toleration Act.

Throughout the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer creatively uses the hagiographic mode in both secular and religious tales as a way of negotiating hagiographic authority as a legitimising force. In several of his tales, notably the Physician’s Tale, The Clerk’s Tale, and the Man of Law’s Tale, Chaucer employs the powers of this authority, through the concept of sanctity, in order to articulate aspects of the literary. This articulation, which is problematic in many cases, leads to indeterminacy and is used to explore questions of character, authorship, authorisation, and power.

Alongside the Pythagorean veil, writers interested in the history of acousmatic sound have noted the obscure French word “acousmate.” The word appears in Apollinaire’s poetry, which was (via the poet Jérôme Peignot) the likely source for Schaeffer’s adoption of the term. Writers on acousmatic sound (and even the Larousse dictionary) have assumed that “acousmate” and “acousmatique” are synonymous. In this chapter, that assumption is proven to be false. The original baptism of the word “acousmate” appears in an article from 1730 about an extraordinary sonic event. The context and meaning of the word, as described in the original publication, are discussed, along with the debates that ensued. The history of the term is then traced from 1730 to Apollinaire.