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Polyphonic Offertories in Medieval England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
In an article that appeared in a recent issue of this journal, William J. Summers presented an extensive discussion of a fragmentary fourteenth-century polyphonic setting of a Latin poem, beginning Generosi germinis (Bodleian Library, Dept. Deeds, Christ Church, C.34/D.R.3∗, f. Bv). His conclusion that this is an offertory setting, however, seems to be less clear-cut than he proposes.
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1 'Unknown and Unidentified English Polyphonic Music from the Fourteenth Century', Research Chronicle, 19 (1983–5), 57–67, specifically 64–67. The author makes the same claim in his “The Effect of Monasticism on Fourteenth-Century English Music', La Musique et le Rite Sacré et Profane, Actes du XIIIe Congres de la Société Internationale de Musicologie (Strasbourg, 1986), ii, 136, note 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Initio Carminum ac Versuum Medii Aevi Posterioris Latinorum (Göttingen, 1959; 2nd edn, Göttingen, 1969).Google Scholar
3 Frere's (see note 9 below) and Summers's source, listed in Ulysse Chevalier, Repertorium Hymnologicum (Louvain, 1892–1920) under no. 34647, was the only one known to Guido M. Dreves, who printed the poem in Analecta Hymnica, xlix, 337.Google Scholar
4 Montague R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Gonville and Caius College (Cambridge, 1907), 289.Google Scholar
5 An eleventh was added ‘in a rather later hand’ (ibid., 290).Google Scholar
6 Dom Hesbert, ed., Le Tropaire-Prosaire de Dublin, Monumenta Musicae Sacrae, 4 (Rouen, 1966). They are Veni sancte spiritus et emitte celitus (f. 68v, p. 73), Dulcis ave penitentis (f. 107, p. 146), Gloria sanctorum (f. 124, p. 180), and Salvatoris mater pia (f. 116v, p. 165). Subsequent references are to this edition.Google Scholar
7 George F. Warner and Julius P. Gilson, British Museum: Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King's Collections (London, 1921), 216a.Google Scholar
8 f. 112, p. 156.Google Scholar
9 Walter H. Frere, “The Newly Found York Gradual', Journal of Theological Studies, 2 (1901), 585. Summers presents a transcription of Generosi germinis from this source.Google Scholar
10 Warner and Gilson, British Museum: Catalogue, 165a.Google Scholar
11 The Abbess of Stanbrook [Laurentia McLachlan] and J.B.L. Tolhurst, eds., The Ordinal and Customary of the Abbey of Saint Mary York (St. John's College, Cambridge, MS. D.27), i, Henry Bradshaw Society, 73 (London, 1936), 56–7. According to the editors ‘the MS. was probably written during the rule of … Abbot Thomas Pygot (1398–1405)’ (p. vii). The Lady Mass is referred to as ‘Missa familiaris [not familia] sive de Domina, quod idem est’ (p. 56), i.e. ‘the Mass for the Community [or the friends of the Community; cf. Frank Ll. Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain (London, 1950; rev. edn, 1963), 79] (St. Mary York) or the Lady-Mass, which is the same'. Contrary to Summers's assertion (p. 64), only the textual incipit is given. Hence his reference to the Analecta Hymnica belongs with the reference to Frere (previous sentence).Google Scholar
12 Analecta Hymnica, xxxiv, 24.Google Scholar
13 f. 109, p. 150.Google Scholar
14 Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century (PMFC), 14 (1979), 244.Google Scholar
15 f. 109v, p. 151.Google Scholar
16 Cf. PMFC 14, 244.Google Scholar
17 f. 116, p. 164.Google Scholar
18 See PMFC 17, ix-x, and David Hiley, ‘The Rhymed Sequence in England - a Preliminary Survey', Musicologie Médiévale, ed. Michel Huglo (Paris, 1987), 234–5. It may be appropriate to recall here the evidently Franciscan origin of the Gonville and Caius manuscript cited above.Google Scholar
19 I am puzzled by Professor Summers's stern dismissal of the term cantilena (“The Effect of Monasticism', note 4). Admittedly, none of the authorities cited in my ‘Cantilena and Discant in 14th-Century England', Musica Disciplina, 19 (1965), note 33, or in ‘Cantilena', The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), iii, 729–30, uses cantilena in such a way as to evoke explicitly the genre of pieces collected as nos. 20–51 in PMFC 17. Yet all the cited references imply it to some extent. In the absence of any more precise indications, the term cantilena - arguably the only one likely to have been used - seems preferable to a circumlocution like ‘free technique’ to designate this genre of polyphonic settings of Latin religious poetry with its particular musical style.Google Scholar
20 In view of its origin as a monophonic strophic song John Stevens calls it a cantio ('Angelus ad virginem: the History of a Medieval Song', Medieval Studies for J.A.W. Bennett, ed. P.L. Heyworth (Oxford, 1981), 321–2).Google Scholar
21 PMFC 17, nos. 18 and 16; cf. also nos. 15a and b. I cannot follow Summers's claim that ‘the plainsong [of Generosi germinis] sounds up a fourth'. Its first four pitches are quoted untransposed in the lowest voice (first four notes); they are also represented in the middle voice, a fifth up and at more or less half-speed. Thereafter the picture becomes murky.Google Scholar
22 This is by no means a unique case of selective polyphonic setting of poetry. See, for instance, PMFC 17, no. 23 (Critical Commentary, p. 178), which could not possibly have been intended to be used for the original purpose of the poem and its melody. Another more tangled case is represented by the poem of PMFC 14, no. 6, which reappears in various permutations in the ‘Old Hall’ manuscript (Andrew Hughes and Margaret Bent, eds., The Old Hall Manuscript, Corpus mensurabilis musicae 46, no. 45), in a thirteenth-century noted missal of Sarum use (Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal 135, f. 286) as a Sanctus trope, and elsewhere.Google Scholar
23 The mise-en-page of ‘Psallens flecte [not flectite] genua', cited in his note 7, is entirely normal for the beginning of a new piece and thus fails to support his conjecture regarding the ending of ‘Generosi germinis'.Google Scholar
24 Kurt von Fischer, Handschriften mit mehrstimmiger Musik des 14., 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, RISM B IV4 (Munich-Duisburg, 1972), 665.Google Scholar
25 Wolfenbüttel, Herzog-August-Bibliothek, 677. Regarding the date of the manuscript, and specifically of its eleventh fascicle, see Brown, Julian, Sonia Patterson and David Hiley, ‘Further Observations on W1', Journal of the Plainsong & Mediaeval Music Society, 4 (1981), 53–80, and Ernest H. Sanders, ‘Notre-Dame-Probleme', Die Musikforschung, 25 (1972), 339, respectively.Google Scholar
26 The prose Inviolata integra (see p. 1 above) and the Marian processional antiphon Ave regina celorum appear among these offertories. That the former achieved various liturgical functions, including that of an offertory in W1, 11, was observed by Edward H. Roesner ('The Origins of W1, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 29 (1976), 372–3). In addition, the conclusion seems justified that even then such chants as Ave regina celorum were also occasionally used as offertories.Google Scholar
27 See Dittmer, Luther, The Worcester Fragments, Musicological Studies and Documents, 2 (1957), no. 4. Both W1 and the so-called Worcester Fragments reflect ‘considerable liturgical inclusiveness’ (Sanders, ‘Tonal Aspects of 13th-Century English Polyphony', Acta Musicologica, 37 (1965), 31).Google Scholar
28 Frank Ll. Harrison, PMFC 17, 184.Google Scholar
29 'A New Source of Early English Organ Music', Music & Letters, 35 (1954), 202.Google Scholar
30 See Lipphardt, Walther, Die Geschichte des mehrstimmigen Proprium Missae (Heidelberg, 1950), especially pp. 148–57.Google Scholar