Chapter 5 - Double Motion

Summary

Chapter 5 examines Herbert’s attendance at the public choral liturgies of the church. Herbert was associated throughout his life with religious institutions that supported choral foundations: Westminster Abbey, Trinity College, Cambridge, Lincoln Cathedral, and, most famously, Salisbury Cathedral. Herbert’s practical interest in making music is well known; yet he was never a member of these choirs, and the music performed during public worship at these foundations is a repertoire that he would have experienced passively and aurally. This chapter reads Herbert’s poetic alongside contemporary developments in the composition and aesthetics of seventeenth-century liturgical choral music. In revealing striking analogues between Herbert’s verse and contemporary polyphonic church music, this chapter considers Herbert and his work in more receptive, attentive terms, affording significant new perspectives on the nature of devotional attention and early modern debates about the ‘beauty of holiness’ and the aesthetics of worship.