Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-cjp7w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-05T04:52:03.406Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 7 - England after the Norman Conquest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2023

Helen Deeming
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London
Get access

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.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×