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Chapter 7 - England after the Norman Conquest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2023

Helen Deeming  and
Frieda van der Heijden
Helen Deeming
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London
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Summary

Separated from the rest of Europe by the English Channel, yet also linked to it through political and linguistic ties after the Norman Conquest, the musical culture of medieval England displays both connections to and differences from that of its neighbours. Latin song was composed in England and imported from elsewhere, and songs in the vernacular languages of Middle English and Anglo-Norman French also flourished. Songs in all three languages were often compiled together in manuscripts, and some existed in alternative forms, with texts switched to another language. This chapter examines the musical precursors of one of the most famous of all medieval songs, Sumer is icumen in, and shows that the production of polyphony and song in England (as well as Scotland and Wales) was vibrant and distinctive. Surviving pieces from the repertory of Worcester polyphony hint at English composers’ interest in the musical techniques of voice exchange and hocket, but the fragmentary state of many English sources suggests that the losses have been immense. We conclude the chapter with the genre of the English carol, cultivated briefly but fruitfully in the early fifteenth century.

Keywords

Later Cambridge SongstrilingualMiddle EnglishAnglo-NormanSumer is icumen inWorcester polyphonyvoice exchangemanuscriptscarol
Type
Chapter
Information
Medieval Polyphony and Song , pp. 139 - 159
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Further Reading

Bent, Margaret, Hartt, Jared C., and Lefferts, Peter M., The Dorset Rotulus: Contextualizing and Reconstructing the Early English Motet (Woodbridge, 2021).Google Scholar
Caldwell, John, The Oxford History of English Music, volume 1, From the Beginnings to c.1715 (Oxford, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deeming, Helen, ‘An English Monastic Miscellany: The Reading Manuscript of Sumer is icumen in’, in Manuscripts and Medieval Song: Inscription, Performance, Context, ed. Deeming, Helen and Leach, Elizabeth Eva (Cambridge, 2015), 116–40.Google Scholar
Deeming, Helen (ed.), Songs in British Sources, c.1150–1300, Musica Britannica 95 (London, 2013).Google Scholar
Dobson, Eric J., and Harrison, Frank Ll. (eds), Medieval English Songs (London, 1979).Google Scholar
Fallows, David, Henry V and the Earliest English Carols, 1413–1440 (Abingdon, 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevens, John, The Later Cambridge Songs: An English Song Collection of the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 2005).Google Scholar

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