A Specific Example of Exchange: the National Churches and their Corresponding "Nations"

Research about music in Romeís national churches mainly consists of monographic studies which tend to describe the musical life of certain chapels. Accounting and administrative documents inform us about extraordinary music organized by the churches. These documents also reveal the use of a ëfestive Roman modelí. During the 17th century, music used by national churches on such occasions cannot clearly be distinguished from ëRomaní music. Positions of musical responsibility, particularly the choirmaster, were, moreover, entrusted to Italian musicians, in spite of the foreign nature of the institutions.
This paper considers the links between the national churches and the nation they represent in Rome. Two kinds of exchange will be analysed. The first one considers the festive calendar in use in the national institutions. The second, drawing on little-studied sources including the sacred texts set to music, aims to verify the conformity, or lack of, to the Roman liturgical practice. Could the musical homogeneity that seems to emerge in the extraordinary celebrations then be questioned? Moreover, the liturgical analysis allows us to examine the ëordinary musicí through the prism of the way a national identity constructed itself in a foreign country.
The study of cultural transfers between the national churches and the country they represented in Rome is one of the main issue of the research project called Le modèle musical des églises nationales à Rome à l’époque baroque (UniversitÈ de Liège / Marie Curie Program). For this conference some methodological considerations will be presented through concrete examples resulting from archival research.