Networks of translation: a contextual study of Latin motets in seventeenth-century England, with focus on works by William Child

Whilst the liturgical music of William Child (1606-1697), organist of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, and the Chapel Royal, has received significant scholarship, little attention has been given to his motets, their Italianate idioms, distinctive Latin texts and biblical translations. Only one of Child’s thirteen motets has been discussed in secondary literature, or transcribed, previously. This thesis provides new perspectives on Child’s ‘Italian Way’, from which to view the functions, features, texts and contexts, of the concertato motet in seventeenth-century England, a time of significant upheaval, including Civil Wars. Child’s motets are presented in relation to a core network of musicians, centred on the Stuart Court and the University of Oxford, key institutions in enabling the assimilation and broad translation of the genre in England.

Volume Two provides a critical edition of Child’s concertato works, alongside motets by composers including Bowman, Lowe and Rogers, previously untranscribed. Drawing on the transcriptions, Volume One presents the stylistic features of Child’s motets in relation to courtly repertorial contexts, and the Heather Professorship in Oxford; the integral scribal role of Charles Husbands Sr (d. 1678) is shown for the first time. Motets are then discussed by distinctive text groupings, intersecting in Child’s work: ‘O bone Jesu’ motets, and settings of biblical translations originating in Calvinist Geneva. Works comprise settings of Tremellius-Junius, from Child to Purcell, and of Theodore Beza, previously uncredited as a motet-text source. Motets by Child and colleagues are shown to provide a significant lens through which to study aspects of translation: a ‘carrying across’ to England of musical and textual material, and a migration of culture, ideas and ideals, across post-Reformation Europe.