Rodgers, Mark. "Joseph Kerman, the 'Catholic' Interpretation of Byrd, and the New Musicology." In Byrd Studies in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Samantha Bassler, Katherine Butler, and Katie Bank. Clemson University Press, 2023.
People Involved:
In a series of influential articles and books published in the 1960s and 1970s, Joseph Kerman advanced the argument that the context of William Byrd’s recusancy held the key to interpreting his masses and motets. This article explores Kerman’s development of this argument alongside his contemporaneous writings on “criticism,” culminating in his landmark book Contemplating Music (1985). Placing these different aspects of Kerman’s work in dialogue with one another highlights tensions in his conception of criticism, and it deepens our understanding of his relationship with the new musicology while also throwing new light on the legacy of the “Catholic” interpretation for the field of Byrd studies.