Secularization, National Identity, and the Baroque: Italian Music in England, 1660-1711

This dissertation asks why the musical culture of later seventeenth and early eighteenth-century England was so heavily influenced by Italy, despite intense anti-Catholicism and xenophobia. Most studies of this period of English history insist that anti-Catholicism and antipathy to foreign Catholics were absolutely central to English identity, and indeed, central to the development of that identity. Yet during the same period in which anti-Catholicism contributed to major social and political upheavals such as the Popish Plot, the Exclusion Crisis, and the Revolution of 1688, the English were consuming the music of foreign Catholics with increasing enthusiasm. By the first decade of the eighteenth century, this preference had culminated in the appearance of Italian opera and Italian opera singers on the English stage.;In the course of explaining the popularity of Italian music in England, I contribute to current debates about early modern national identity, transnational cultural interaction, and secularization. I argue that the English taste for Italian music reveals that by the time Italian opera arrived in England, the musical culture had expanded to include new, secular institutions and spaces for music in which Catholic associations were much less relevant. This process, I claim, took the form of transformative change to existing musical spheres and the opening up of new, secular spheres. Specifically, I emphasize the changing conceptualization of music as a result of scientific inquiry, especially by the Royal Society; the waning of first the Church and later the court as dominant centers of music patronage and innovation; and the increasing commercialization of music via new institutions and public spaces for music such as theaters, music meetings, and concerts. The willingness of the English to embrace Italian music and musicians suggests that models of early modern English thinking and decision-making rooted in anti-Catholic and anti-foreign antagonisms are inadequate.;Italian opera provoked debate and satire in eighteenth-century England, but expressions of concern about Italian music and musicians were conspicuous in their absence in the later seventeenth century. I place the ambivalent reception of Italian opera in England in the context of a longstanding, internally contradictory perception of Italy made up of a cluster of strongly positive and negative components. English accounts painted Italy as simultaneously a cultural paragon and a dangerous site of Popery and moral depravity. Finally, I argue that with a few noteworthy exceptions, concerns about Italian opera had to do much less with religious prejudice than with fears that opera would degrade English drama. I also suggest that although Italian opera was problematic for English national identity in some obvious respects, Whig leaders who promoted it were able to cast it as a positive example of English trading prowess---as another product among many that the English imported from the place that produced the very best.