I think so many of the nice devisions we now impose on music and religeon(s) are too convenient to us.

Re: Henry and Anglican Church

He was the head of a very long movement stretching back into Holland, as many of his advisors and philosophers were dutch. We tend to see the King as a seperate from most everything these days but I think even for Henry this must have represented not so much a new Church as a seperation of power from Rome and a clarification of the role he thought he should (or could) play in in the country. He was confident in the divinity of his throne (or at least its stability)and didn't need the Pope's support.

Our concept of 'folk' song is necessarily coloured by the need to give us handles to understand the wealth of modern music our society is awash in. I strongly doubt the people of the 13th century allowed themselves many learned divisions -- mostly it must have been 'right' and 'wrong' songs (pagan\historical vs liturgical christian). I guess multiple classifications for music is an improvement on simply suppressing the past.

* The pagan\historical songs themselves certainly displaced other songs and had their own issues. Its just that the rise of literacy allowed for a markedly coordinated assault on the aural tradition so displacement was more complete and effective.

Is middle-english part of the arguement?
Is melody necessary or just lyrics? Are lyrics necessary?

Its fun to postulate and look for a small range of candidates but we are very unlikely to agree on one answer.

Sigurd


(Personally, whenever I look at the wealth of art in the public domain I have to ask who let our society as a whole stop contributing to it in any reasonable fashion. Guess we have our suppression too.)