# Persecution



## Packrfan (Sep 4, 2017)

Were any composers ever punished or persecuted for violating church edicts on the types of music that could be played?


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

Wow, good question.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

There was significant discussion about what was appropriate Church music during the Council of Trent, somewhat revolving around the music of John Taverner. Although the circumstances of some performances were altered due to Church regulations (Three parts of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis were offered in a secular concert as Three Grand Hymns), I am unaware of any actual punishments being meted out. Martin Luther is famous for opening up the music allowed in his reformed denomination (saying famously no reason the Devil had to have all the good tunes), but he was already excommunicated by then.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Packrfan said:


> Were any composers ever punished or persecuted for violating church edicts on the types of music that could be played?


Church forums must know this a lot better.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Wow! That would be like having mods on a forum, so many years later!

History seems doomed to repeat itself.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Perhaps not exactly what the OP asked, but didn't William Byrd get into trouble for his Cathlolicism? This from Wikipedia:

From the early 1570s onwards Byrd became increasingly involved with Catholicism, which, as the scholarship of the last half-century has demonstrated, became a major factor in his personal and creative life. As John Harley has shown, it is probable that Byrd's parental family were Protestants, though whether by deeply felt conviction or nominal conformism is not clear. Byrd himself may have held Protestant beliefs in his youth, for a recently discovered fragment of a setting of an English translation of Martin Luther's hymn "Erhalt uns, Herr, bei deinem Wort", which bears an attribution to "Birde" includes the line "From Turk and Pope defend us Lord".[14] However, from the 1570s onwards he is found associating with known Catholics, including Lord Thomas Paget, to whom he wrote a petitionary letter on behalf of an unnamed friend in about 1573.[15] Byrd's wife Julian was first cited for recusancy (refusing to attend Anglican services) at Harlington in Middlesex, where the family now lived, in 1577. Byrd himself appears in the recusancy lists from 1584.[16]

His involvement with Catholicism took on a new dimension in the 1580s. Following Pope Pius V's papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, in 1570, which absolved Elizabeth's subjects from allegiance to her and effectively made her an outlaw in the eyes of the Catholic Church, Catholicism became increasingly identified with sedition in the eyes of the Tudor authorities. With the influx of missionary priests trained at the English College, Douai, (now in France but then part of the Spanish Netherlands) and in Rome from the 1570s onwards, relations between the authorities and the Catholic community took a further turn for the worse. Byrd himself is found in the company of prominent Catholics. In 1583 he got into serious trouble because of his association with Paget, who was suspected of involvement in the Throckmorton Plot, and for sending money to Catholics abroad. As a result of this, Byrd's membership of the Chapel Royal was apparently suspended for a time, restrictions were placed on his movements, and his house was placed on the search list. In 1586 he attended a gathering at a country house in the company of Father Henry Garnett (later executed for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot) and the Catholic poet Robert Southwell.[17]


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