How many ways are there to sin while singing? Very many, according to the sixteenth-century Spanish canonist Martin de Azpilcueta. In chapter 16 of his Enchiridion sive manuale de oratione et horis canonicis, published first in Spanish in 1545 and then in Latin, both reprinted many times in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, he sets out in considerable detail a panoply of sins committed by singers, all of which cause distraction to listeners and therefore disrupt devotion. These include mispronunciation of words, anticipation of antiphonal responses, singing too fast or too slowly, talking and laughing in choir, singing counterpoint ineptly, singing chant without any variation, and failing to pause between verses. Special attention is devoted to singers of polyphonic music, who prize music over words, vaunt their voices, and insinuate lascivious and other secular songs into the mass.

None of this is new: churchmen had been inveighing against unruly singers for centuries. But do they sin, or do they merely err? ‘Peccare’ can mean either. For Azpilcueta it is clear that they do sin, though not mortally. The author of an anonymous treatise of the ninth or tenth century invokes Augustine in this context: ‘The blessed Augustine maintains that he sins so as to incur penance who enjoys the loudness [or height] of the voice more than the meaning of the words; for one must sing not with the voice but with the heart.’ That, the author says, is the reason for the institution of psalmody, for as David in playing the harp soothed the spirit of Saul, so through singing or jubilating singers purge diabolical desires from the hearts of the listeners. The conflict between music as sensual pleasure and music as an aid to devotion has been debated through the centuries. Music, on biblical authority, was appropriate for praising God, but it needed to be regulated, in style as well as performance. By the sixteenth century, one might think, the argument had been all but settled, at least for music in the Catholic Church: were not the rites of the papal chapel and St Peter’s celebrated with polyphonic splendour?