Honorable Mention for the SMFS First Book Prize!
What did nuns sing? How did they learn about music? How did the music affect their piety? This book answers these and many other questions about the musical life in English nunneries in the later Middle Ages. Drawing upon a wide range of historical sources, Yardley pieces together a mosaic of nunnery musical life. Formal monastic rules, medieval liturgical manuscripts, records from bishops’ visitations to nunneries and other medieval documents provide evidence that even the smallest convents sang the monastic offices on a daily basis and that many of the larger houses celebrated the late medieval liturgy in all of its complexity.
"There is much to be admired in this study. Yardley is careful and patient in her reconstructions and reading."--Journal of the American Musicological Society
“Yardley's Performing Piety culminates decades of research into the musical lives of medieval women. The book makes a significant contribution to the historiography of medieval women, showing us a neglected dimension of medieval musical life and culture, and it should find a ready audience among musicologists and literary critics as well as historians religion, art, and liturgy.”—Bruce Holsinger, University of Virginia
"Scholars of every stripe will profit from using this thorough and lucid book, which provides an unprecedented wealth of information on the music culture and worship life of female religious. Although the setting is medieval (and to some extent early modern) England, it is the first broad-based study of its kind for any part of Europe, and constitutes a model for future work on medieval female communities. Performing Piety synthesizes the results of years of archival work and manuscript study, shedding light on music created and sung in several of the most important religious institutions in the British Isles. Moreover, the book demonstrates the central role of music and ritual in the social structure of nunneries, their textual cultures, and the daily lives of their members. Yardley offers a fascinating picture of the liturgy as lived experience and corporate identity, its structure and musical genres changing over time, and varying from place to place. Her many rich insights into musical performance and education, spirituality and devotion, and the fusion of all these elements in the life of medieval nuns guarantee this book a place on the shelves of specialists in music, liturgy, history, religion, and literature."-- Susan Boynton, Columbia University
"[Yardley's] task is both daunting in its scale — the book is by far the most detailed survey of the evidence to date — and limited by the relatively rare survival of documents that can be linked securely with female monastic houses . . . but the author strikes a happy medium . . . This excellent and accessible study is heartily recommended not only to those studying women’s history, but also to anyone who is interested in gaining a better insight into medieval religious life, literature, music and spirituality."--Early Music Review
Introduction * The Monastic Rules * Musical Leadership in the Nunnery * The Reality of Musical Life * Everyday Musical Practices: Psalters, the Office of the Dead, and Polyphony * Pomp and Piety: Processional Practices in Nunneries * The Bride of Christ: Liturgies for the Consecration of Nuns * A Case Study in Benedictine Practices: Barking Abbey * Syon Abbey: The English Manifestation of St. Bridget's Order * Conclusions
