Music, Dance, and Drama in Early Modern English Schools

The first book to systematically analyze the role the performing arts played in English schools after the Reformation.

Amanda Eubanks Winkler (Author)

9781108796507, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 June 2022

260 pages, 17 b/w illus. 12 music examples
24.9 x 16.9 x 1.4 cm, 0.46 kg

'Eubanks Winkler makes us comfortable with historical gaps and temporal tension. She shows us that it is possible to reconceive and reevaluate some of the most familiar early modern works, and she demonstrates the richness of previously undiscovered sources. Most significantly, perhaps, Eubanks Winkler presents us with a methodology to reanimate the past through the lens of our own experiences.' Sarah Williams, Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

Music, Dance, and Drama in Early Modern English Schools is the first book to systematically analyze the role that the performing arts played in English schools after the Reformation. Although the material record is riddled with gaps, Amanda Eubanks Winkler sheds light on the subject through an innovative methodology that combines rigorous archival research with phenomenological and performance studies approaches. She organizes her study around a series of performance-based questions that demonstrate how the schoolroom intersected with the church, the court, the domicile, the concert room, and the professional theater, which allows her to provide fresh perspectives on well-known canonical operas performed by children, as well as lesser-known works. Eubanks Winkler also interrogates the notion that performance is ephemeral, as she considers how scores and playtexts serve as a conduit between past and present, and demonstrates the ways in which pedagogical performance is passed down through embodied praxis.

Introduction. Minding the gaps
1. Situating pedagogical performance
2. Performing piety
3. Performing prestige
4. Performing accomplishment
5. Performing vice
6. Performing the professional
7. Performing the past: the specter of the schoolroom.

Subject Areas: Education [JN], Literary studies: plays & playwrights [DSG], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Music: styles & genres [AVG], Music [AV], Other performing arts [ASZ], Dance [ASD], Dance & other performing arts [AS], Theatre studies [AN], The arts [A]