ABSTRACT
No early modern English subject, male or female, rich or poor, young or old, was denied these extraordinary benefits. The accessible language and simple tunes of the vernacular metrical psalters were not merely available, but, at least in theory, familiar to all members of the reformed Church of England from the midsixteenth century onward. For women, as evidence is beginning to indicate, the psalms further inspired forms of musical expression that did not revolve around their relationships with men or with children. They served as a means through which women gave harmonious utterance to the meditations of their hearts, according to their class and educational backgrounds. These practices belonged to the continuity of women’s private devotion from the time of Elizabeth I to the Restoration that also included contemplation and the paraphrase and translation of psalms into English. They remind us that the highly personalized performance of psalms made use of women’s varied musical skills beyond the parish church and offered an alternative to the morally contested genres of balladry and dancemusic. Domestic psalm-performance provided a socially sanctioned and hitherto unexamined outlet for the considerable musical and spiritual impulses of many sorts of women, from humble dairy-maids through the daughters of the nobility.
