Abstract
Historiography has a tendency to privilege moments of change because they are considered worthy of being recorded by contemporaries, and, consequently, leave traces in archival documents and sources more easily than situations where no change takes place. In music history this tendency has manifested itself when dealing with religious reform movements and liturgical developments in the late Middle Ages and early-modern period.
Persistence, however, is also of great importance in these contexts, especially when a church or religious community had to be stabilized: here, the retention of tradition and its continuity were of great value for the actors.