The first music books in Britain

The earliest reference to books of music used in the English church is in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People:

The committal in writing of ‘all things necessary for the celebration of festal days’, and the making of copies from this central source for use elsewhere, suggests a perceived need to perform the liturgy in a specific way, recognised as being correct: without a written version, ‘the order and manner of singing and reading aloud’ might not be properly maintained. Within Bede’s words a paradox lies hidden, however: what was being recorded in written form might include information about texts to be sung (as incipits or full texts), and texts to be read (ditto), along with rubrics about how the liturgy was to be performed, but it was all in the medium of words alone.