Catholicus non cantat? Reframing Communal Singing in Early Modern Catholicism

Music historiography has traditionally understood and described collective singing in the early modern era as an almost exclusive prerogative of Protestant communities. Recent and less recent studies, however, have recorded numerous occurrences of Catholic communal singing, for instance during processions, pilgrimages or popular missions. In spite of this, and even though several traditions (such as the Italian lauda) have been investigated in some depth, a comprehensive assessment of such singing practices and of their role in the surrounding soundscape is still wanting. Starting from a discussion of the causes of this ‘selective deafness’ in historiography, and moving on to a case study of late-fourteenth- to early-seventeenth-century Milan, the present article aims to start filling the lacuna and to demonstrate that communal singing was an important (if not always uncontroversial) element of Catholic sonic cultures in the early modern era.