Dr Daniel Trocme-Latter

I am a historical musicologist specialising in music and ceremony, with a particular focus on the religious and cultural significance of music during the Reformation era. My first book, The Singing of the Strasbourg Protestants, 1523–1541, was published in 2015, and explores the part played by music in the unfolding of the Protestant reforms in the city of Strasbourg (at the time part of the Holy Roman Empire). It considers both ecclesiastical and ‘popular’ songs in the city, examining how both genres were part of people’s lives during this time of great upheaval. Drawing upon a range of sources—including liturgical orders and hymnals, polemical songs, chronicles of the Reformation and text manuscripts—the book explores the process by which congregational vernacular hymnody was introduced in Strasbourg churches for the first time. I have also undertaken research on the music of the sixteenth-century in Basel, Geneva and Scotland, as well as the influence of late fifteenth-century preachers on the German Reformation’s stance towards music. Currently I am preparing a new monograph about—with musical transcriptions of—a collection of sacred Latin polyphony, assembled by the Milanese composer Hermann Matthias Werrecore and sent to the publisher Peter Schöffer in Strasbourg during the 1530s. The music not only crossed the Alps, but it was cross-confessional, travelling from a staunchly Catholic city to a newly Protestant one. 

Profile at the Faculty of Music

Research interests 

Reformation; music and ceremony; early modern music; early music in film 

Teaching 

Lecturing: Papers 4, 9, and 16 in Part I of the undergraduate course.

Supervising: Papers 9 and 16. 

Research supervision 

I am always happy to hear from prospective supervisees in any area close to my own interests.