> Another take on the matter: In the eyes of Catholicism ah, but how does that play in england in elizabethan times? You have closeted catholics, confused church of england, protesting calvinists, black-clad puritans, refugee hugenots, and a Queen heading them all who quietly tolerates it all as best parliament tolerates her; quite a mix, some of them despising music in church service to the extent that it depressed the trade of organ building and repair.
We know that E loved the music and pagentry of her fathers church and court, as well she loved music and dancing at her own. The surviving body of music from that time shows a wide use of all the tones, including ones we consider minor. Full use is seen of rhetorical devices and madrigalism. Some of the musical publications had intriguing titles such as "Seven sobs of a sorrowful soul for sin" (settings of the penitential psalms of david; with numerous printings, it must have found some audience). As to catholic sensibility, consider music meant for passiontide, passion and even hurt are often conveyed seriously. Allegris' missere was written for the papal chapel and is as somber and dramatic a piece as you will find (well, this all precedes the Verdi requiem which has to take some sort of prize). Byrds "Ave verum corpus", indeed many ave verum corpus settings are somber. Dont forget that what we now think of as major and minor keys were not so thought of or used in the renaissance, but they had the concept of different hexachords termed tones. Hmmm, while confirming the title of seven sobs using google I stumbled into a curious website - http://www.hermetic.com/enochia/ces-I-iv.html -- Dana Emery To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
