The Ritson Manuscript (London, British Library, Add.5665) is a late fifteenth-century English choirbook, that is a major source for English carols. In addition to 44 carols, it includes three masses, 23 motets, several other sacred pieces, and secular works in English and French. [1] Among the composers represented in the book is Sir William Hawte.
Along with the Pepys Manuscript it is much less elaborate than the Eton, Lambeth and Caius Choirbooks; it contains shorter and simpler pieces which appear to have been written for smaller and less able choirs. [2]
The Ritson Manuscript appears, upon internal evidence, to have been the product of at least five distinct hands. It was compiled over a long period, beginning early in the second half of the fifteenth century and ending in 1510, and originated in the West Country. The Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music 1400-1550 suggests it was likely to have been copied at a Franciscan monastery in Devon or possibly Exeter Cathedral. [1]
It was later owned by Joseph Ritson, who in 1795 gave it to the British Museum. [1]
John Sheppard was an English composer of the Renaissance.
The Pepys Library of Magdalene College, Cambridge, is the personal library collected by Samuel Pepys which he bequeathed to the college following his death in 1703.
Walter Frye was an English composer of the early Renaissance.
"The First Nowell", modernised as "The First Noel", is a traditional English Christmas carol with Cornish origins most likely from the early modern period, although possibly earlier. It is listed as number 682 in the Roud Folk Song Index.
The Eton Choirbook is a richly illuminated manuscript collection of English sacred music composed during the late 15th century. It was one of very few collections of Latin liturgical music to survive the English Reformation, and hence is an important source. It originally contained music by 24 different composers; however, many of the pieces are damaged or incomplete. It is one of three large choirbooks surviving from early-Tudor England.
The Old Hall Manuscript is the largest, most complete, and most significant source of English sacred music of the late 14th and early 15th centuries, and as such represents the best source for late Medieval English music. The manuscript somehow survived the Reformation, and formerly belonged to St. Edmund's College, a Roman Catholic school located at Old Hall Green in Hertfordshire. It was sold to the British Library after an auction at Sotheby's in 1973.
The Codex Las Huelgas is a music manuscript or codex from c. 1300 which originated in and has remained in the Cistercian convent of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas in Burgos, in northern Spain. The convent was a wealthy one which had connections with the royal family of Castile.
William Horwood, also Horewud, was an English polyphonic vocal composer in the late-medieval period. In 1470, he was a singer at Lincoln Cathedral, in 1476, he was a vicar choral at Lincoln, and from 1477 until 1484, he was the Cathedral choirmaster. He is one of the earliest composers represented in the Eton Choirbook, with three complete pieces and one incomplete piece. There is also one incomplete piece in the fragmentary York mass manuscript, Borthwick Institute MS Mus.1; however, Theodor Dumitrescu in his edition of the mass manuscript suggests this may be a different composer with the same surname.
"I syng of a mayden" is a Middle English lyric poem or carol of the 15th century celebrating the Annunciation and the Virgin Birth of Jesus. It has been described as one of the most admired short vernacular English poems of the late Middle Ages.
The Pepys Manuscript is a late fifteenth-century English choirbook, in the library of Magdalene College, Cambridge, MS Pepys 1236. Along with the Ritson Manuscript it is much less elaborate than the Eton, Lambeth and Caius Choirbooks; it contains shorter and simpler pieces which appear to have been written for smaller and less able choirs. The book received its name because it was part of the collection owned by Samuel Pepys. He described it as containing "monkish music of Edward IV's time, " but it appears on internal evidence to have been begun a year or two earlier. It was likely completed after 1465, as it contains music ascribed to Sir William Hawte – also referred to as a "Knight" – who was knighted in that year.
The Lambeth Choirbook – also known as the Arundel Choirbook – is an illuminated choirbook dating to the sixteenth century. It contains music for 7 Masses, 4 Magnificats, and 8 motets. Much of the music is by Tudor-period composers. The major contributors are Robert Fayrfax and Nicholas Ludford; between them they contributed at least ten of its nineteen pieces. Only three of Fayrfax's works have his name attached to them, but five other pieces are known as his; these, along with two by Ludford, are known from concordances in the Caius Choirbook and other manuscripts. Seven anonymous pieces exist in the book:
Edmund Turges thought to be also Edmund Sturges was an English Renaissance era composer who came from Petworth, was ordained by Bishop Ridley in 155 0, and joined the Fraternity of St. Nicholas in 1522.
The Leiden choirbooks are six volumes of polyphonic renaissance music of the Franco-Flemish school copied for the Pieterskerk, Leiden and now preserved at the Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken.
Add MS 29987 is a mediaeval Tuscan musical manuscript dating from the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, held in the British Library in London. It contains a number of polyphonic Italian Trecento madrigals, ballate, sacred mass movements, and motets, and 15 untexted monophonic instrumental dances, which are among the earliest purely instrumental pieces in the Western musical tradition. The manuscript apparently belonged to the de' Medici family in the fifteenth century, and by 1670 was in the possession of Carlo di Tommaso Strozzi; it was in the British Museum from 1876, where it was catalogued as item 29987 of the Additional manuscripts series. It is now in the British Library.
The Trinity Carol Roll is a 15th-century manuscript of thirteen English carols held by the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge. It is the earliest surviving example of polyphonic music written in English. Compiled after 1415, it contains the earliest of two manuscript sources for the Agincourt Carol which tells of Henry V's victory at the Battle of Agincourt, as well as several early Christmas carols. The majority of texts are in Middle English with some of the carols alternating between Latin and Middle English, a common form for carols of the period known as macaronic.
Music in Medieval England, from the end of Roman rule in the fifth century until the Reformation in the sixteenth century, was a diverse and rich culture, including sacred and secular music and ranging from the popular to the elite.
Osbert Parsley was an English Renaissance composer and chorister. Few details of his life are known, but he evidently married in 1558, and lived for a period in the parish of St Saviour's Church, Norwich. A boy chorister at Norwich Cathedral, Parsley worked there throughout his musical career. He was first mentioned as a lay clerk, was appointed a "singing man" in c. 1534, and was probably the cathedral's unofficial organist for half a century. His career spanned the reigns of Henry VIII and all three of his children. After the Reformation of 1534, the lives of English church musicians changed according to the official policy of each monarch.
The Peterhouse partbooks are a collection of English partbooks dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They are named "Peterhouse" after Peterhouse in Cambridge, where the books were kept for some time, and are now preserved in the Cambridge University Library. They are handwritten manuscripts, all written on paper. At some point in the mid-eighteenth century, the books were rebound, although the foliation and indices remained unchanged.
The Selden Carol Book is a medieval carol manuscript held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Along with the Trinity Carol Roll, with which it shares five contemporaneous carols and texts, it is one of the main sources for 15th century English carols, and like the Trinity Roll contains the music as the well as the texts. The inclusion of Deo Gracias Anglia referencing Henry V's victory at Agincourt in 1415 gives an indication of the date of composition of the carols.
Francis Llewellyn Harrison, FBA, better known as "Frank Harrison" or "Frank Ll. Harrison" was one of the leading musicologists of his time and a pioneering ethnomusicologist. Initially trained as an organist and composer, he turned to musicology in the early 1950s, first specialising in English and Irish music of the Middle Ages and increasingly turning to ethnomusicological subjects in the course of his career. His Music in Medieval Britain (1958) is still a standard work on the subject, and Time, Place and Music (1973) is a key textbook on ethnomusicology.