‘Sonic Citizernship in Exile: Music & Authority at Early Modern English Convents’

This paper explores Vincent Andresani’s idea of ‘sonic citizenship’ and its applicability to liminal communities in early modern cities. Drawing on examples of liturgical ritual at English convents in Paris, Brussels, and Bruges, this paper interrogates how the convents used music to construct themselves as civic authorities, despite lack of concrete access to systems for sustained political power within their locales. It analyses the convents’ engagement with sonic rituals that enforced a ‘logic of exclusion’ in early modern urban space in a variety of ways, from upholding systems for communal temporal regulation to sanctifiers of state violence.