Mid-Fifteenth-Century English Mass Cycles in Continental Sources, vol. 1 James Matthew Cook Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 2014 Abstract Fifteenth-century English music had a profound impact on mainland Europe, with several important innovations (e.g. the cyclic cantus firmus Mass) credited as English in origin. However, the turbulent history of the Church in England has left few English sources for this deeply influential repertory. The developing narrative surrounding apparently English technical innovations has therefore often focussed on the recognition of English works in continental manuscripts, with these efforts most recently crystallised in Curtis and Wathey’s ‘Fifteenth-Century English Liturgical Music: A List of the Surviving Repertory’. The focus of discussion until now has generally been on a dichotomy between English and continental origin. However, as more details emerge of the opportunities for cultural cross-fertilisation, it becomes increasingly clear that this may be a false dichotomy. This thesis re-evaluates the complex issues of provenance and diffusion affecting the mid-fifteenth-century cyclic Mass. By breaking down the polarization between English and continental origins, it offers a new understanding of the provenance and subsequent use of many Mass cycles. Contact between England and the continent was frequent, multifarious and quite possibly reciprocal and, despite strong national trends, there exists a body of work that can best be understood in relation to international cultural exchange. This thesis helps to clarify the i provenance of a number of Mass cycles, but also suggests that, for Masses such as the anonymous Thomas cesus and Du cuer je souspier, Le Rouge’s So ys emprentid, and even perhaps Bedyngham’s Sine nomine, cultural exchange is key to our understanding. This thesis also offers a more detailed overview of the chronology of fifteenth-century English Mass cycles and defines their various structural norms, as well as those Masses which depart from these. ii Acknowledgments: On the face of it, a three-year project seems relatively short. It is only now – with the end very much in sight – that I feel able to look back and realise just how much has been packed into those three years. That they have seemed to fly by is testament to the people I have met and worked with along the way. I hope they all already realise how important they were to the completion of this project, but I would like to thank some of them in print nonetheless. Firstly, I would like to thank both of my supervisors, Peter Wright and Philip Weller, for their immense support, erudition and time. Many other scholars have helped me along the way with words of advice, encouragement and useful discussion. I would particularly like to thank Andrew Kirkman, Kate Helsen, Andrew Hughes, Reinhard Strohm, Bob Mitchell, Tim Shephard, David Fallows and Jeff Dean. I would also like to thank Britta Lukow-Willms from the Lübeck archive for her help and undeserved complements on my German. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, Adam Whittaker and Chloe Harrison for reading early drafts of some chapters and the AHRC for funding my research. Through the course of my study at Nottingham the close-knit postgraduate community has been wonderful. I would especially like to thank Dave Ingram, Chloe Harrison, Alex Kolassa, Jono Herrick, Adam Whittaker, Angela Slater and Katherine Williams who have all helped to keep me sane over the years. iii My wife Katie deserves special thanks for enduring the highs and lows of PhD completion with me. Her love and support has helped me immeasurably and I am not sure I could have done it without her. iv Table of Contents Abbreviations vi Introduction: The Mass Cycle as Cultural 1 Phenomenon and as Object of Inquiry Chapter 1: England and Europe: 21 Insularity and Cultural Exchange Chapter 2: English Music on the Continent: 60 Dissemination and Scribal Practice Chapter 3: Innovation and Adaptation: 91 The English Mass Cycle into the Mid-Century Chapter 4: Mid-Fifteenth-Century English Cycles 156 and their Continental Contemporaries – A Focus on Kyries Chapter 5: Mid-Fifteenth-Century English Cycles 214 and their Continental Contemporaries – Further Investigations Chapter 6: Case Studies: A Focus on Du cuer je souspier 277 and Thomas cesus Conclusion: England and Europe: 343 New Directions and Perspectives Excursus: Source Distribution, Cyclicity and the Caput Mass 350 Bibliography 359 v Abbreviations of Journals and Series: AM – Acta Musicologica CM – Camden Miscellany CMM – Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae DTO – Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich DIAMM – Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music EECM – Early English Church Music EM – Early Music EMH – Early Music History FCLM – Fifteenth-Century Liturgical Music HR – Historical Research HV – Hudební věda JAMS – Journal of the American Musicological Association JM – Journal of Musicology JRMA – Journal of the Royal Musical Association M&L – Music & Letters MB – Musica Britanica MD – Musica Disciplina MMM – Monuments of Medieval Music MRM – Monuments or Renaissance Music MS – Musica Sacra MSS – Medieval Sermon Studies NGD – New Grove Dictionary NH – Northern History PMM – Plainsong and Medieval Music PRMA – Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association RBM – Revue Belge de Musicologie RMARC – Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle REED – Records of Early English Drama vi RES – Review of English Studies SS – Surtees Society TMQ – The Musical Quarterly TVNM – Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis Music Sources: AO Aosta, Biblioteca del Seminario Maggiore, MS A1D19 AS1519 Antiphonale ad Usum Sarum, Paris, 1519 (Print) BcQ15 Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico-Musicale, MS 16bis Bu2216 Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, MS 2216 Br5557 Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, MS 5557 (Brussels Choirbook) BEV DDHU 19/2 Beverley, Humberside Record Office (Beverley fragments) CA11 Cambrai, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 11 (Cambrai Cathedral Choirbook) Cfm369 Cambridge, Fitzilliam Museum, MS 369 GMaE A Mainz, Bischöfliches Dom- und Diözesanmuseum, MS A Eul123 Edinburgh, University Library, MS 123 EV.111.24 Madrid, Biblioteca del Monasterio El Escorial, MS V III 24 Kkar5 Kraków, Klastor OO. Karmelitów na Piasku (Carmelite Convent), Ms.5 (rkp. Perg. 13) Kkar2 Kraków, Klastor OO. Karmelitów na Piasku (Carmelite Convent), Ms.2 (rkp. Perg. 14) Las238 Lucca, Archivio Di Stato , MS 238 (Lucca Choirbook) Lbl57950 London, British Library, MS Add.57950 (formerly Old Hall) vii LEu1084 Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 1084 Lbm6632 Lyon, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 6632 Mb49 Milan, Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, MS AD.XIV.49 Mbs14274 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Clm 14274 (St Emmeram) Md2269 Milan, Archivio della Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo, Sezione Musicale, MS 2269 (Librone 1) Ob Add. C87* Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Add.C87* Pn1090 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France - Département des Manuscrits, MS lat. 1090 Ps47 Prague, Strahovska Knihovna, MS D.G.IV.47 (Strahov Codex) Ranworth Ranworth Antiphoner, St Helen’s Church, Ranworth Rvat14 Rome, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Archivio della Cappella Sistina, MS 14 Rvat San Pietro Rome, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, B80 MS San Pietro B80 Tr87 Trent, Museo Provinciale d’Arte, MS 1374 (Formerly 87) Tr88 Trent, Museo Provinciale d’Arte, MS 1375 (Formerly 88) Tr89 Trent, Museo Provinciale d’Arte, MS 1376 (Formerly 89) Tr90 Trent, Museo Provinciale d’Arte, MS 1377 (Formerly 90) Tr91 Trent, Museo Provinciale d’Arte, MS 1378 (Formerly 91) Tr92 Trent, Museo Provinciale d’Arte, MS 1379 (Formerly 92) Tr93 Trent, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS ‘BL’ VECap755 Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS DCCLV VECap759 Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS DCCLIX viii YSIE17 Ljubljana, Nadškofijski arhiv (Archiepiscopal Archives), MS 18 (olim 17) Archival Sources: Guildhall library, London, MS 4889/PC. National Archives: Public Record Office, PROB 11/15 NCC, will register, Heydon, f.199. ix Introduction The Mass Cycle as Cultural Phenomenon and as Object of Inquiry Since the earliest scholarly studies on the subject, the cyclic Mass has been seen as a highly significant development in the course of Western music history. Many scholars have seen it as the beginning of a primarily compositional interest in coherence and in longer-term motivic and structural cogency – elements that later came to form the key aesthetic and ideological principles behind the enshrined canon of art music in the West. It is even tempting to see the cyclic Mass as the start of a long road that eventually leads to large-scale orchestral compositions in the form of ‘unified multi-movement works’ in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. As Andrew Kirkman has shown – just as for the symphonies of the Great Masters of the Western canon – it is ideas of organic unity, coherence and self-conscious control of both local and longer-term musical effect that seem to have been most valued by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century commentators on the renaissance Mass cycle.1 Indeed, it is largely due to the diagnosis of this alleged organicism within what – in its way legitimately – can be seen as the first recognisably multi-movement polyphonic form, that the earliest scholars of this repertoire raised the Mass cycle to its place of historical and critical prominence. However, as Kirkman has argued, the fact that the cyclic Mass took its place as the pre-eminent