The great majority of late-medieval lay people encountered the Universal Church most directly, and in some cases exclusively, through their local parish church. The parish has therefore been at the heart of research into lay piety, as witnessed in a range of detailed studies of pre-Reformation beliefs, rituals, rites of passage, clergy, episcopal oversight, parochial administration and social organization. Until recently, however, the ‘soundscape’ of the pre-Reformation parish has received less exhaustive attention, perhaps because the parish has been seen as peripheral or subordinate to the mainstream of musicological research (few first-rank composers are known to have worked within English parish churches), but also because the documentary sources are more disparate and often less complete and informative than the archives of more superficially prestigious institutions. Nevertheless, if the widespread cultivation of polyphonic singing within divine worship was one of the seminal cultural achievements of late-medieval England, what contribution did the parish make towards this revolution? How many parishes maintained polyphonic choirs? What role did the laity play in promoting liturgical polyphony? And what might such initiatives reveal concerning lay attitudes towards liturgical music? Studies of Bristol, London, Louth, Ludlow and York have highlighted the potential of the parish as a focus for musicological research, and have begun to answer some of these questions. The following handlist, an earlier form of which was prepared for the 2002 Harlaxton Medieval Symposium, is intended to serve as a springboard for further research in this field. Although neither complete nor definitive, its aims are to bring together, as comprehensively as possible, the available evidence concerning the singing of liturgical polyphony before 1559, and to provide an overview of the contextual factors which have informed the underlying methodology: to this end, the list itself is preceded by an extended commentary.

A little-known list of some 80 Elizabethan tune titles, probably copied during the 1590s at Lleweni Hall, near Denbigh in north Wales, is preserved in the library archive of the University of Wales, Bangor: MS Gwyneddon 4, a composite volume of late medieval Welsh poetry (p. 130 / f. 71v; see Illustration 1 and Figure 1 for parallel transcription). The list has neither heading nor notation, and was apparently written out at speed in random order. It has received little attention to date, although a transcription was published by Ifor Williams in 1937, and John Ward noted concordances with some of the items in the ‘Giles Lodge’ lute book in 1992. The list warrants closer scrutiny for several reasons: the number of ‘lost’ titles unique to this source; the theatrical associations of some of the tunes; reference to named individuals (among them ‘alen’, ‘mistres shandoes’, and the ‘countese of lester‘); and the implications of the unusual Welsh provenance. Taken as a whole, the list not only gives a flavour of the musical repertory associated with one wealthy Elizabethan household at the end of the sixteenth century, but also demonstrates how such a repertory was shaped by family tastes and connections. Part I of this article discusses the various contexts for the list with particular reference to its social and dramatic associations, while Part II comprises a catalogue of the tunes and their main concordances. Some of the most significant information is summarized in tabular form. Table 1 presents an alphabetical index of the tunes; Table 2, tunes known to survive with music and their earliest associated source; Table 3, tunes set as lute or consort items; Table 4, tunes associated with the actor Richard Tarlton (d. 1588); Table 5, Tarlton's ballads and other texts; Table 6, tunes prescribed in the ballad collection A Handefull of Pleasant Delites (1584); Table 7, tunes found in Playford's English Dancing Master; and Table 8, tunes cited in Elizabethan stage works.

Early in 2002, three nineteenth-century Scottish flute manuscripts came to light in the Whittaker Library at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD). The manuscripts are inscribed with the name of James Simpson of Dundee. The two slimmer volumes are dated 1828 and 1830. The third undated manuscript is a more handsomely bound volume and, judging by the content and handwriting, was likely to have been started at around the same time. Each manuscript consists almost entirely of flute duets and trios, and untexted psalm tunes for three and four voices. The history of the manuscripts is unknown, but it can be deduced that they were acquired by the RSAMD sometime after 1958. The manuscripts offer a colourful ‘snapshot’ of music-making in Dundee in the nineteenth century, with their cross-section of Scottish tunes and more widely-used drawing-room music, not to mention their church connections.