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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
With the proliferation of comprehensive commercial microfilming of major music collections, careful consideration needs to be given to the production of hard-cover books of facsimiles that traverse the same ground. Of course, a book is still a convenient way of storing and handling certain kinds of material. In compensation for its bulk it is tangible, accessible and portable, not to mention the fact that it can be annotated. And certain kinds of facsimile volume are obviously still going to be desirable: those reproducing single sources of great importance; those containing the contents of smaller libraries and obscure or less accessible collections; and those that comprise within a single volume an important cross-section of some scattered repertory or corpus of sources. In the light of those considerations, the publication of these two volumes of facsimiles of late-medieval English polyphony is most welcome. They make widely available at reasonable quality and price a vast amount of buried treasure found up to now only in the file drawers of a few specialists. The hoard consists of a large proportion of the surviving English polyphony from the era between the Worcester fragments and the Old Hall manuscript. This is an important and little-known repertory, spanning the entire fourteenth century but dispersed among numerous fragmentary sources. Both volumes will be necessary and welcome additions to public collections as well as to the private libraries of specialists in medieval music. They are also an essential complement to the four-volume edition of this same repertory recently published by Editions de L'Oiseau Lyre in the series Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, and they will surely prove invaluable for the teaching of surveys and seminars on early English polyphony.
1 A recent, more specialized facsimile volume that should be mentioned in conjunction with these two is Margaret Bent, ed., The Fountains Fragments (Clarabricken: Boethius Press, 1987), with its full-size reproduction of Lbl 40011B and Lbl 62132A (olim LEcl 6210), the latter in colour.Google Scholar
2 Ernest H. Sanders, ed., English Music of the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries, PMFC xiv (1979); Frank Ll. Harrison, ed., Motets of English Provenance, PMFC xv (1980); Frank Ll. Harrison, Peter M. Lefferts and Ernest H. Sanders, eds., English Music for Mass and Offices, I-II, PMFC xvi-xvii (1983–85).Google Scholar
3 See the observations of David Fallows in his Review of EECM 26, The Musical Times, 123 (1982), 357–8, and the reply by Roger Wibberley in his Letter to the Editor, The Musical Times, 123 (1982), 600–1.Google Scholar
4 Contrary to the way they are identifed in EECM 26 (p.112), Ccc 65 and Cgc 512 are not manuscripts normally housed in, or part of, the collection of Cambridge University Library (Cu). Additionally, it should be noted that the pages reproduced here from US-PRu 119 (pl.210–211) are both from the A fragments; the B fragments contain an exclusively earlier repertory notated in the rhomboid-breve version of English mensural notation.Google Scholar
5 A significant amount of space would have been saved for additional facsimiles by establishing a logical, uninterrupted order of sources, and by consolidating the various lists of manuscripts and facsimiles into a single table of contents. 22 pages in six locations could have been reduced to six pages at one location with no loss to the handsome appearance or generous layout of the volume, but with an appreciable gain in usefulness and consideration to the reader.Google Scholar
6 Folio v verso of Cpc 228 is not recorded in RISM B/IV/1, but see Bent, Margaret, ‘New and Little-Known Fragments of English Medieval Polyphony', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 21 (1968), 141. This folio contains music that nearly completes Ave celi regina (Cpc 228, 7; a full concordance is Cgc 512, 11). This cantilena is edited after all sources in PMFC xvii, no.38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 Summers mentions some recent discoveries in a lengthy paragraph of footnote (p. 13, n.2). For published reports, some including facsimiles, on related sources too recently discovered for citation in either EECM 26 or MEMG 4, see Peter M. Lefferts and Margaret Bent, ‘New Sources of English Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Polyphony', Early Music History, 2 (1982), 273–362; Gordon Anderson, ‘New Sources of Mediaeval Music', Musicology, 7 (Melbourne, 1982), 1–26; Roger Bowers and Andrew Wathey, ‘New Sources of English Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Polyphony', Early Music History, 3 (1983), 123–73; Andrew Wathey, ‘Newly Discovered Fifteenth-Century Polyphony at Oxford', Music and Letters, 64 (1983), 58–66; William Summers, ‘Unknown and Unidentified English Polyphonic Music from the Fourteenth Century', Research Chronicle, 19 (1983–5), 57–67; Margaret Bent, ‘The Progeny of Old Hall: More Leaves from a Royal English Choirbook', Gordon AtholAnderson (1929–1981) In Memoriam, ed. Luther Dittmer (Henryville, PA, 1984), 1–54; Roger Bowers and Andrew Wathey, ‘New Sources of English Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Polyphony, ’ Early Music History, 4 (1984), 297–346. Of sources not described in print, I will mention just one long overlooked piece, a little three-voice discant snippet in the version of Franco of Cologne's Ars cantus mensurabilis found in the English source Ob 842, f.59v, setting the text ‘Dulcia', which is now edited as PMFC xvii, no.66 (facsimile in Gilbert Reaney and André Gilles, Ars Cantus Mensurabilis Franconis de Colonia, AIM:CSM, 18 (1974), 83).Google Scholar
8 One curiosity in MEMG 4 not posing too much of a handicap is that the order of sources is not as strict as possible. To mention just a few anomalies: Ccc and Cfm are found after Cgc, Cpc, and Cu; Ob 384 and Ob 548 (Bodley MSS) are listed in front of Ob22 and Ob 55 (Barlow MSS); and STs 1744 is listed before STs 41.Google Scholar
9 The full list of plates is given twice (pp. 7–10 and again on pp. 57–62). This nearly duplicates the full list of manuscripts (pp.23–4), which anyway is incorporated into the summary inventory (pp.25–35), which could easily have been annotated with cross-references to the concordances (pp.37–40), and supplied with RISM citations and other bibliography (p. 13, note 2). By a consolidation of information there could have been a saving of twelve or more pages and an increase in the accessibility of data. As things now stand, anyone new to the repertory faces the slow process of moving between the plates, the text-index, the other lists and a nearby copy of RISM to figure out what is here.Google Scholar
10 The two projects were initiated in part as offshoots of dissertations that Wibberley wrote for the University of Oxford ('English Polyphonic Music of the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries: a Reconstruction, Transcription, and Commentary', 1976) and that Summers wrote for the University of California at Santa Barbara (“The Origins, Changes, and Liturgical Use of Descant in Fourteenth-Century England', 1979). The editors became aware of each other fairly late in the game (in 1979), and decided to proceed regardless. One must regret that the EECM 26 editors were not able to defer to MEMG 4 for the presentation of a few of the small, integral sources all of whose contents meet the criteria for inclusion in the latter volume (such as Lbl 40725), and had included instead some lesser known motet sources such as CAc 128/2, Omc 266/268 or Onc 57.Google Scholar
11 The presentation of Lbl XXIV in MEMG 4 (pl.58–61) does make considerably more sense that the format adopted in EECM 26 (pl. 15–22). However, in MEMG 4, I-PIca could and should have been photographed and mounted as a single plate. Note also that Cgc 512, f.247 verso is printed in EECM 26 as pl. 142 on p. 156, though it properly belongs either before or after pl. 120–1. Since the publisher has allowed numerous blank pages elsewhere in EECM 26 to preserve recto-verso relationships, it would have been useful to have followed that method here as well; a blank plus f.247v before the present p. 134 would have done the trick.Google Scholar
12 According to Wibberley, ‘Letter to the Editor’ (see note 3 above), the publisher trimmed off a marginal scale that was photographed with each source in EECM 26.Google Scholar
13 RISM B/IV/1, 575.Google Scholar
14 See PMFC xiv, nos.23–27 and PMFC xiv, App.nos.2–8.Google Scholar
15 A later concordance in Ob 55 for Mater ora filium (Ob 3, 1= Ob 55, 5) has been considerably modernized in notation. See Peter M. Lefferts, The Motet in England in the Fourteenth Century (Ann Arbor, 1986), 135–7.Google Scholar
16 RISM B/IV/1, 524.Google Scholar
17 EECM 26, xxv.Google Scholar
18 Luther Dittmer, Worcester Add.68, Westminster Abbey 33327, Madrid, Bibl.Nac.192, Publications of Medieval Music Manuscripts, 5 (Brooklyn, NY, 1959), 15; Ernest H. Sanders, ‘Sources, MS, VI: English Polyphony 1270–1400', The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), xvii, 657.Google Scholar
19 According to Robert Branner, Manuscript Painting in Paris During the Reign of Saint-Louis: A Study of Styles (Berkeley, CA, 1977), 238.Google Scholar
20 Some Franconian sources of English provenance may well date from the later thirteenth century, but in any event there is no neat way to draw a line between thirteenth- and fourteenth-century sources; at present such decisions must inevitably be arbitrary. A case can be made for regarding as a homogeneous group all English sources of the 1280s/1290s through to the 1320s that use a Franconian-style notation. At the same time, however, for stylistic, notational, generic and repertorial reasons it is possible to draw a sensible line roughly at 1300, with Lwa 33327, Ob 60 or Ccl on the earlier side, and the newly-discovered F-TO 925 (Anderson, ‘New Sources') and Cjc 23 (Lefferts and Bent, ‘New Sources', 306–14), along with the better-known Onc 362 or Lbl 24198, just on the later side.Google Scholar
21 Luther Dittmer, ‘Beiträge zum Studium der Worcester-Fragmente', Die Musikforschung, 10 (1957), 33–5; Sanders, ‘Sources, MS', The New Grove, xvii, 659–60.Google Scholar
22 Jacques Handschin, ‘The Summer Canon and its Background, Part I', Musica Disciplina, 3 (1949), 91; Ernest H. Sanders, ‘Burgate, R. de', The New Grove, iii, 462, and PMFC xiv, Appendix no.15.Google Scholar
23 They are included in Andrew Hughes, ‘English Sacred Music (Excluding Carols) in Insular Sources, 1400–c.1450’ (PhD dissertation, University of Oxford, 1963), and omitted from PMFC xiv-xvii. Some are described in RISM B/IV/3–4 rather than B/IV/2. RISM B/IV/3, 66 indicated that the STs Kyries were once promised for publication in volume 9 of EECM in an edition by Hughes. Note also that the Kyrie setting Sts 41, 2 has a concordance on the verso of the front flyleaf in US-CAhh 8948, whose rear flyleaf has mass movements by Dunstable. Omc 267 is a part of the manuscript now known as H6, the surviving scraps of which have been assembled and discussed by Margaret Bent in ‘The Progeny of Old Hall: More Leaves from a Royal English Choirbook', Gordon Athol Anderson (1929–1981) In Memorian, ed. Luther Dittmer (Henryville, PA, 1984), 1–54.Google Scholar
24 Incorrectly identified in RISM B/IV/2, 370.Google Scholar
25 See Strohm, Reinhard, “The Ars Nova Fragments of Gent', Tijdschrift, 34 (1984), 109–31. For a dissenting view on the origins of the unique Foligno Gloria fragments, see Palumbo, Janet, ‘The Foligno Fragment: A Reassessment of Three Polyphonic Glorias, ca.1400', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 40 (1987), 169–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26 See Summers, ‘Unknown and Unidentified English Polyphonic Music', for more on WOc 68, frag. xix.Google Scholar
27 Edmond de Coussemaker, Histoire de l'harmonie au moyen age (Paris, 1852), pl.xxxiii; Dom Anselm Hughes, Worcester Medieval Harmony of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Burnham, 1928); James H. Baxter, An Old St Andrews Music Book (London, 1931).Google Scholar
28 Carl Parrish, The Notation of Medieval Music (New York, 1957); Willi Apel, The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900–1600 (Cambridge, MA, 1953); Heinrich Besseler and Peter Gülke, Schriftbild der mehrstimmigen Musik, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, III/5 (Leipzig, 1973); Dittmer, Worcester Add.68; idem, ed., Oxford, Latin Liturgical D 20; London, Add. MS. 25031; Chicago, MS.654 App., Publications of Medieval Music Manuscripts, 6 (Brooklyn, NY, 1960); Ernst Apfel, Studien zur Satztechnik der mittelalterlichen englischen Musik (Heidelberg, 1959).Google Scholar
29 Margaret Bent, ‘The Transmission of English Music 1300–1500: Some Aspects of Repertory and Presentation', Studien zur Tradition in der Musik, ed. Hans Eggebrecht and Max Lütolf (Munich, 1973), 65–83.Google Scholar
30 Roger Bowers, ‘The Performing Ensemble for English Church Polyphony, c.1320-c.1390', Studies in the Performance of Late Medieval Music, ed. Stanley Boorman (Cambridge, 1983), 188–92.Google Scholar
31 On GB-Onc 57, see Lefferts and Bent, ‘New Sources', 352–3.Google Scholar
32 See Lefferts and Bent, ‘New Sources', 281–6.Google Scholar
33 Frank Ll. Harrison, 'Ars Nova in England: a New Source', Musica Disciplina, 21 (1967), 68–70.Google Scholar
34 Frank Ll. Harrison, ‘Polyphonic Music for a Chapel of Edward III', Music and Letters, 59 (1978), 420–8.Google Scholar
35 Wibberley, ‘English Polyphonic Music', 182–9; see also Lefferts and Bent, ‘New Sources', 347–52.Google Scholar
36 His discussion of the fourteenth-century forms follows the fuller account of Margaret Bent, ‘A Preliminary Assessment of the Independence of English Trecento Notations', L'Ars Nova italiana del Trecento IV (1975), ed. Agostino Ziino (Certaldo, 1978), 65–82.Google Scholar
37 In light of Wolf Frobenius, ‘Zur Datierung von Francos Ars cantus mensurabilis', Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 27 (1970), 122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
38 We need an up-to-date monograph on the morphogenesis of the various square and rhomboid-breve versions of thirteenth-century English mensural notations, a study in which the evidence for, and implications of, Wibberley's hypothetical ‘slant convention’ could be examined at length. We also need to examine more closely the evidence for the claim of an unchanged and exclusive English preference for trochaic rhythms extending from the thirteenth into the fourteenth century. The preference is strong but not exclusive, and the rhythms of semibreve duplets and triplets in a basically Franconian context must be judged on a source-by-source and piece-by-piece basis. Note that Lwa 12185 not only contains a pure example of the notation of Doncastre (CS I, p.427; see Lwa 12185, 3), as Wibberley observes (pp. xxvi-xxvii), but also of the early fourteenth-century English(?) Johannes de Garlandia (CS I, pp.424–5; see Lwa 12185, 2). A few small corrections: the date of the Quatuor principalia is 1351 (p.xxvii); the use of the signum rotundum in Ob 652 is as a ‘vide’ sign, not as a change of modus (p.xxviii, in reference to pl.208–9); and the composition at the bottom of the last page of Cfm is not ‘untexted’ but rather incomplete through loss of text (p.xviii).Google Scholar
39 For instance, the discussion of the name and function of the ‘cantilena’ repertory is carried on in footnotes 2 (p.13) and 3 (p. 14), in the text of p. 14 and pp. 16–17, and in footnotes 22 and 23 (p. 16); cantus firmus practice is discussed in the text and notes on p. 15, and then returned to on p. 17; flagged semiminims are discussed in text and notes on p. 14 and again on p. 18.Google Scholar
40 See Lefferts and Bent, ‘New Sources', 360–1, 320.Google Scholar