¹ Published descriptions of recently found or hitherto neglected fifteenth-century sources include Kovarik, E.. ‘A Newly Discovered Dunstable Fragement” Journal of the American Musicological Society, 21 (1968), pp. 21–33 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, describing Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS 8948; M. Bent ‘New and Little-Known Fragements of English Medieval Polyphony’, Ibid., pp. 137–56, describing London, British Library, Add. MS 49597 (O), Cambridge, Trinity College, MS b. 10.5 (now part of MS b. 11.34; See below. pp. 124–8) and Oxford, Christ Church, MS Okes 253; M., and Bent, I., ‘Dufay, Dunstable, Plummer: A New Source’ Journal of the American Musicological Society, 22 (1969), pp. 394–424.Google Scholar describing London, British Library, Add. MS 54324; Sandon, N., ‘Fragements of Medieval Polyphony at Canterbury Cathedral’, Musica Disciplina, 30 (1976), pp. 37–54 Google Scholar, describing Canterbury, Cathedral Library, Add. MS 128; Seaman, A.-M. and Rastall, R., ‘The Music of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lincoln College Latin 89’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 13 (1976), pp. 95–101 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (with ‘Postscript’, Ibid., 14, 1977, pp. 139–40); Fallows, D., ‘English Song Repertories of the Mid-Fifteenth Century’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 103 (1976/1977), pp. 61–79 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, describing London, British Library. Loan 29/333, fol. 70; Hughes, A., ‘Fifteenth-century English Polyphony Discovered at Norwich and Arundel’, Music and Letters, 59 (1978), pp. 148–58;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Trowell, B., ‘Faburden – New Sources, New Evidence: A Preliminary Survey’ Modern Musical Scholarship, ed. Olleson, E. (Stocksfield, 1980), pp. 28–78;Google Scholar Bent, M. and Bowers, R., ‘The Saxilby Fragment’, Early Music History, 1 (1981), pp. 1–27;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Sandon, N., ‘Mary Meditations. Monks and Music: Poetry, Prose, Processions and Plagues in a Durham Cathedral Manuscript’, Early Music 10 (1982), pp. 43–55 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, describing London, British Library, Royal MS 7 a.vi: Wathey, A., ‘Newly Discovered Fifteenth-Century English Polyphony at Oxford’, Music and Letters, 64 (1983), pp. 53–66 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, describing Oxford, Lincoln College. MS Latin 124 and Oxford. University College. MS 16.

² 4 vols. (Oxford, 1969–), i, pp. vii–xiii; ii, pp. vii–ix; iii, p.vii respectively.

³ See, for example, Bent, M., ‘A Lost English Choirbook of the Fifteenth Century’, Report of the Eleventh Congress of the International Musicological Society, 2 vols. (Copenhagen, 1974), i, pp. 257–62.Google Scholar Further leaves from this same choirbook are now Bodleian Library, MS Don. b. 31 (identified by Andrew Wathey: see , Sotheby Sale Catalogue ‘Western Manuscripts and Miniatures’, 22 June 1982, p. 8, lot 5)Google Scholar; Canberra, National Library of Australia, MS 4052/2 (1) (facsimile in Anderson, G. and Dittmer, L., eds., Canberra, National Library of Australia MS 4052/2 (1–16), Publications of Medieval Musical Manuscripts 13 (Institute of Medieval Music, 1981), pp. 20–1)Google Scholar; and a half-leaf sold at Sotheby's on 25 April 1983 as lot 117, now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Don. b. 32. This last contains the hitherto unknown second treble part of Post missarum solennia, no. 147 in the Old Hall Manuscript (London, British Library, Add. MS 57950), with the text ‘Post misse modulamina’, and part of the top voice of Are post libamina (Old Hall, no. 146, ascribed to ‘Mayshuet’).

⁴ Manuscripts given by Neville are listed in James, M. R., The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge: A Descriptive Catalogue, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1900–1904), i, p. xxii; ii, pp. xvi–xix.Google Scholar

⁵ No. 97 in the list of Neville's donation printed by James, ibid., ii, p. xviii, is now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Selden supra 17.

⁶ On Neville's gift, see Gaskell, P., Trinity College Library: The First 150 Years (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 79–83.Google Scholar

⁷ For the dates of this type of binding, see Pollard, G., ‘Describing Medieval Bookbindings’, Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays Presented to Richard William Hunt, ed. Alexander, J. J. G. and Gibson, M. T. (Oxford, 1976), pp. 50–65.Google Scholar

⁸ Bent, , ‘New and Little-known Fragments’, pp. 142–3.Google Scholar

⁹ The upper and left-hand margins are intact, and although some 25 mm of the right-hand margin has been torn away for most of its length, there has been no loss of text here.

¹⁰ In the Agnus Dei the triple groupings are less obvious than in the other movements.

¹¹ See Bent, and Bowers, , ‘The Saxilby Fragment’, p. 2 Google Scholar. Other examples of stroke and similar simplified notations are discussed ibid., nn. 3, 5 and 12, and in Bent, , ‘New and Little-known Fragments’, pp. 149–53Google Scholar, Hughes, A., ‘The Choir in Fifteenth-century English Music: Non-mensural Polyphony’, Essays in Musicology in Honor of Dragan Plamenac, ed. Reese, G. and Snow, R. J. (Pittsburgh, 1969), pp. 127–37Google Scholar. and (discussing another source of Durham provenance) Sandon, ‘Mary, Meditations, Monks and Music’.

¹² The notation of the present fragment must be distinguished from sixteenth-century ‘playnesong’ notation, in which the several plainsong symbols are used to represent notes of different durations.

¹³ In the Gloria this voice rests at ‘Domine deus…filius patris’ and at ‘Qui sedes…miserere nobis’.

¹⁴ Rankin, S., ‘Shrewsbury School, Manuscript vi: A Medieval Part Book?’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 102 (1975/1976), pp. 129–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ Frere, W. H., ed., Graduate Sarisburiense, Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society (London, 1894; repr. 1966), pi. 2*.Google Scholar In the present source, the first word of the fourth invocation reads ‘Rex’ where the Salisbury Gradual has ‘Christe’.

¹⁶ It is possible, of course, that in these movements this upper voice fits as a counterpoint to chant stated or paraphrased in a lower voice.

¹⁷ Durham, Archives of the Dean and Chapter, Priory Register iii, fol. 137^v; when this contract was revised and reissued in 1448, plainsong was added to the list of categories of music to be taught (ibid., Priory Register iv, fol. 60^r). In Raine, J., ed., Historiae Dunelmensis scriptores tres, Surtees Society 18 (York, 1839), p. cccxv Google Scholar, the 1448 contract was printed in full, except for the omission of the important words ‘super organa quam ad planum cantum et organum discantandum’ after ‘tam ad modulandum’ on line 10 of the transcript.

¹⁸ Durham, Archives of the Dean and Chapter, MS 1. 9. Pont. 3, [para. 31]: ‘Item quod Cantores canunt in domo capitulari cantus laicales et tripartitos in magnum impedimentum sedencium in claustro’.

¹⁹ Ibid., MS Misc. Charter 2658 [para. 6]. Since Stele's singers were monks, not professional singing-men, they would need rehearsal and tuition of this kind; reference to formal rehearsals and practices is correspondingly, and conspicuously, absent from the archives of secular institutions, for example the collegiate and secular cathedral churches, where the singers were skilled professionals.

²⁰ The contemporary circumstances explaining the short-lived phenomenon of simplified notations such as that employed here are further discussed in Bent, and Bowers, . ‘The Saxilby Fragment’, pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

²¹ I should like to thank Miss Joan Williams of Lincoln Cathedral Library for her help and cooperation whilst I have been working on this material. Thanks are also due to Roger Bowers and Peter Lefferts for their invaluable suggestions.

²² Woolley, R. M.. Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library (Oxford. 1927), p. 26.Google Scholar

²³ The Lincoln catalogue (see note 22) refers to these as the sermons of Odo de Cantia. but there is not, to my knowledge, any reference to their authorship in the manuscript. Two separate figures. Odo of Cheriton (author of fables and sermons, d. 1246/7) and Odo de Cantia (Monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, Abbot of Battle, author of sermons, d. 1200). have often been confused: see Mynors, R. A. B., Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Balliol College, Oxford (Oxford. 1963), p. 27 Google Scholar, with further bibliography. The series of sermons in the present manuscript is that found in at least two thirteenth-century sources with clear indications of authorship, ascribing them to Odo of Cheriton: see Schneyer, J. B.. Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters für die Zeit von 1150–1350 (Autoren: L-P). Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophic und Theologie des Mittelalters: Texte und Untersuchungen 43 (Münster, 1972). iv, p. 483.Google Scholar

²⁴ Friend, A. C., ‘Master Odo of Cheriton’. Speculum, 23 (1948). pp. 641–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁵ Ibid., and Mynors, , Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Balliol College, p. 27.Google Scholar

²⁶ For comparable examples of troped settings of Alleluia chants, see Sanders, E. H., ed., English Music of the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries, Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century 14 (Monaco, 1979), nos. 69–72, App. 17–20.Google Scholar

²⁷ See, for example, Frere, , ed., Graduale Sarisburiense, pl. 195.Google Scholar

²⁸ London, British Library, Add. MS 38651, strips 49, 47, 52. See Reaney, G., ed., Manuscripts of Polyphonic Music (c. 1320–1400), Repertoire International des Sources Musicales b/iv/2 (Munich and Duisburg, 1969), pp. 375–6;Google Scholar Bent, , ‘New and Little-known Fragments’, pp. 137–9, 154.Google Scholar

²⁹ Alternatively, of course, the dot of augmentation may not yet have been known in England, thus necessitating the independent invention of this device to convey a dotted rhythm.

³⁰ Similar examples are known; for instance, the six apparently closely adjacent leaves that are now London, British Library, Add. MS 24198, fols. 132, 133, 1, contain motets of which the top voice of each begins successively with the letters R, S and T.

³¹ Of the remaining quire-guards, five (E, G, H, J and M outside) have no original markings. Strip B is the top of a parchment bifolium (the central fold is clearly visible), containing on each side of each page two lines of English verse, written in an anglicana hand of the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, but otherwise offering no clues to its provenance.

³² I owe this information to Mr T. A. M. Bishop, who also suggested the date. Two scripts are used: the first corresponds to Ker's Christ Church-type script, the second to the mixed Christ Church and St Augustine's script; see Ker, N. R., English Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1960), pp. 29–30, pls. 10, 11.Google Scholar

³³ The closest source I have found for comparison is the Missal of St Augustine's (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 270), written in the second part of the eleventh century: see Rule, M., The Missal of St Augustine's, Canterbury (Cambridge, 1896)Google Scholar. Unfortunately this book is deficient at most of the points required for comparison.

³⁴ For ownership and brief descriptions, see Davis, G. R. C., Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain (London, 1958), pp. 60–1.Google Scholar The Duchess of Norfolk Deeds passed to the Crown in 1817 and to the Public Record Office in the mid-nineteenth century; c 115/k.2/6684 was formerly c 115/a.7. For Cheryton, see Langston, J. N., ‘Priors of Lanthony by Gloucester’, Transactions of the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 63 (1942), pp. 96–107.Google Scholar

³⁵ Pollard, ‘Describing Medieval Bookbindings’. The present recto of the paste-down was originally a verso. The extreme inside edge of the leaf is visible as a stub (c. 10 mm.) between fols. 215 and 216 (not shown in Figures 9 and 10).

³⁶ On Lanthony Secunda, see Victoria County History of Gloucestershire, ed. Page, W. and others (London, 1907–), II, pp. 87–91;Google Scholar Knowles, D. and Hadcock, R. N., Medieval Religious Houses.; England and Wales (2nd edn, London, 1971), pp. 141, 164–5.Google Scholar For the separation of such collections at Durham, see Piper, A. J., ‘The Libraries of the Monks of Durham’, Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker, ed. Parkes, M. B. and Watson, A. G. (London, 1978), pp. 213–49.Google Scholar

³⁷ London, British Library, Add. MS 57950; Bent, M. and Hughes, A., eds., The Old Hall Manuscript, 3 vols., Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 46 (Rome, 1969–1973).Google Scholar

³⁸ Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS e Mus. 2, p. 75.

³⁹ Their dimensions are very similar to those (403 × 279 mm) of the roughly contemporary leaves preserved as Cambridge. Pembroke College, MS 314; see Fenlon, I., ed., Cambridge Music Manuscripts 900–1700 (Cambridge. 1982), pp. 103–6.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ In this case, the cantus firmus would need to be a proper Sanctus chant. Unfortunately the beginning of the tenor is illegible; its conclusion does not coincide with any of the chants for the Sanctus recorded in the Salisbury Gradual ( Frere, , ed., Graduale Sarisburiense, pll. 15*–17*)Google Scholar. Given the likely west-country provenance of these leaves, a search in service-books of Exeter Use might prove more profitable.

⁴¹ Trent, Museo Provinciate d'Arte, MS 90, and Trent, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS 93.

⁴² Bent, M., ed., Fifteenth-century Liturgical Music ii: Four Anonymous Masses, Early English Church Music 22 (London, 1979), pp. 78–109 Google Scholar; the music of the Kyrie appears on pp. 191–3 (commentary on p. 182), and discussion of its Taunton source on pp. xvii (facsimile, before restoration of the leaf) and 180.

⁴³ The tenor is not complete at the end, and presumably concluded on an extra staff drawn in the bottom margin and now lost. Trimming at the top of the folio has removed the top staff on both sides, with some of the associated verbal text.

⁴⁴ It appears to read ‘[ ]n…is’, perhaps from ‘pars contratenoris’.

⁴⁵ Bent, , Four Anonymous Masses, p. 180 Google Scholar; the description of this movement as a 4 is presumably either an oversight or a misprint.

⁴⁶ This occurs in John Foxe's account of the life, trial and execution of the Protestant singing-man Robert Testwood in 1543; the narrative is conveniently accessible in Pratt, J., ed., The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, 8 vols. (4th edn, London, 1887), v, pp. 465–70.Google Scholar This anecdote, concerning a performance of Lauda vivi alpha et o (the only surviving setting of this text is that by Robert Fayrfax), is too long to quote in full; it is certainly the most colourful and entertaining account still extant of the circumstances of the performance of such music.

⁴⁷ It is conventionally surmised that in the case of the more sumptuous manuscripts of this period, for example the Eton Choirbook (Eton College, MS 178), the use of red ink to inscribe the verbal texts of passages in reduced scoring likewise warned the singers of the intervention of what may now be called a ‘counterverse’ for soloists ( Harrison, F. Ll., ed., The Eton Choirbook, 3 vols., Musica Britannica 10–12 (London, 1956–1961), i, p. xxii)Google Scholar. The term ‘verse’ survived into the seventeenth century, by which time it denoted passages for soloists accompanied by organ or instruments.

⁴⁸ In a hand of the middle of the sixteenth century, the name ‘Will[ia]m harwod’ appears in the middle of fol. 2^r as a graffito; it is upside down in relation to the music, and is clearly not a composer's name, despite its similarity to that of the fifteenth-century composer William Horwood.

⁴⁹ Bryden, J. R. and Hughes, D. G., An Index of Gregorian Chant, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), i, pp. 5–6 Google Scholar; unfortunately, the Antiphoner of Salisbury Use was not among those used in the compilation of this index.

⁵⁰ For a version in a Salisbury Antiphoner, see Frere, . ed., Antiphonale Sarisburiense, Pl. 420.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Extended accounts of the Luttrell family, and of the castle, manor and honour of Dunster under their lordship, are available in Maxwell-Lyte, H. C., A History of Dunster and of the Families of Mohun and Luttrell, 2 vols. (London, 1909).Google Scholar Among the Luttrell family archives in the Somerset Record Office, boxes dd/l p26–p30 contain Minehead Manor materials; there are numerous court rolls, Henry iv–Henry viii, and four Court Books, the latter dating from between 1501 and 1616. Of these, only p29/29 has a cover preserving polyphonic music; p29/31 (7–14 Elizabeth i) preserves some leaves from a fifteenth-century Gradual of unknown provenance; the other two (p28/16 and p30/47) have no music.

⁵² The boy's name appears to have been William Nycolas; pen-trials on one leaf include: ‘Ego sum bonus puer quern zelat altissimus – wyll^us Nycolas’.

⁵³ Among the flyleaves at the front of the volume, a similar inscription (now on two torn-up shreds) announces the material which Mr Iuyne taught ‘post festum nativitatis dominice’; apart from the change of date the inscription is identical, except insofar as his pupil's spelling had improved during the intervening three months. Presumably the name ‘Iuyne’ (Ewan) or perhaps Ivyne' (Evan or Ifan) was of Welsh origin.

⁵⁴ For some account of this monastery, see Weaver, F. W., ‘Barlinch Priory’, Proceedings of the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, 54 (1908), pp. 79–106 Google Scholar, and Holmes, T. S.. ‘The Priory of Barlynch’, Victoria County History of (hereafter VCH) Somerset, ed. Page, W.. 2 vols. (London. 1909–1911), ii, pp. 132–4.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ There are no references to either school or schoolmaster in Orme, N., English Schools in the Middle Ages (London, 1973)Google Scholar, or idem, Education in the West of England 1066–1548 (Exeter, 1976): however, a set of early-sixteenth-century visitation injunctions to the prior and convent includes a stipulation that an instructor be found to teach the canons grammar, and it is possible that Iuyne's appointment was a result of this directive ( Weaver, , ‘Barlinch Priory’, p. 87 Google Scholar. calendaring London, Public Record Office, e 135 3 3/4).

⁵⁶ Indeed, during the immediately relevant period, the years c. 1450–1510, the castle and family were at a low point in their fortunes. From 1461 to 1485 the family was dispossessed; the castle and honour of Dunster were granted to the Herbert Earls of Pembroke, who did not reside. The castle fell into some disrepair, and when the Luttrell fortunes revived, the family preferred at first to reside elsewhere on their estates ( Maxwell-Lyte, , A History of Dunster, pp. 22–38).Google Scholar Sir Hugh Luttrell (c. 1460–1521, succeeded 1485) was said to have repaired and restored the chapel within the castle (ibid., p. 364), but in general it does not seem that very much can have been happening at the castle in his time.

⁵⁷ Ibid., pp. 383–409; Holmes, T. S., ‘The Priory of Dunster’, VCH Somerset, II, pp. 81–2.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ In the library of Wells Cathedral there survives a small fragment of a leaf of music, the divergence between the two sides of which in respect of date and notation shows an intriguing correspondence with the present leaves. On one side is part of a Sanctus, elegantly written in black full notation of c. 1450; on the other, the bass part of a votive antiphon (Gaude virgo mater christi), with an ascription to Richard Hygons, who was Master of the Choristers at the cathedral 1479–1507, casually written in black void notation of c. 1500. However, small but significant discrepancies in size of page and width of staff discount any hope that it might prove to have derived from the same manuscript as the Taunton fragments (Wells, Library of the Dean and Chapter, MS without reference, known as the ‘Hygons Fragment’).

⁵⁹ For example, Orme, N.. The Minor Clergy of Exeter Cathedral 1300–1548 (Exeter, 1980);Google Scholar lists of names of vicars choral of Wells, in Wells, Archives of the College of Vicars Choral, Register 1393–1534. supplemented by the indexes to Bird, W. H. B. and Baildon, W. P., Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Wells, 2 vols, Historical Manuscripts Commission, 12th report (1907–1914).Google Scholar

⁶⁰ The sole remotely possible candidate yet traced is a John Dunster who was already a canon of the Augustinian Abbey of St Mary, Bruton, Somerset, by 1529, and was its precentor by the time of its dissolution in 1539. He graduated S.T.B. at the University of Oxford in 1530 after nine years' study, and so was probably born c. 1495–1500. Bruton Abbey lay some 45 miles due east of Dunster; it was a comfortably wealthy and flourishing institution, and its patrons, in whom lay (in effect) the right to nominate the abbot, were none other than the Luttrells of Dunster. In 1543, soon after the dissolution, John Dunster was collated to one of the chaplaincies of the chantry of Nicholas Bubwyth, late Bishop of Bath and Wells, in Wells Cathedral (under the toponymic ‘Dunster’, which he must have retained after leaving religion); he died before the end of December 1558 ( Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, a.d. 1501–1540 (Oxford, 1974), pp. 179–80;Google Scholar Holmes, T. S., ‘The Priory of Bruton’, VCH Somerset, II, pp. 134–9)Google Scholar. This identification is very improbable. For this man to have been the composer, the hand which has entered his Mass in the present fragments would have to be of very considerably later date than it appears to be. Further, there appears to be no independent evidence suggesting that polyphonic music was cultivated in any way at Bruton Abbey; and, in any case, there was probably no transmission of property or documents from the abbey to its patrons – the Luttrell family – at the dissolution, since at the critical moment the head of the family was a minor, and the opportunity to regain (by purchase from the Crown) the properties of their proprietary monasteries was lost.

Figures 1 and 2 appear by permission of the Master and Fellows, Trinity College, Cambridge; Figures 3 and 4 by permission of the Dean and Chapter of Durham; Figures 5–8 by permission of the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln; Figures 9 and 10 are Crown copyright materials in the Public Record Office and are reproduced by permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office; Figures 11–14 by permission of the owner, Lt.-Col. Walter Luttrell, and by courtesy of the Somerset Record Office.