Fragments of English Polyphonic Music

This long-awaited volume contains fragments of English polyphonic music from the 1390s to the 1470s. Like the previous facsimile volume (EC57) it has a large page format maximising the number of manuscripts that can be reproduced at full size; colour reproduction conveys the syntax of late-medieval notation, particularly the use of red notation; page-turns follow the recto-verso arrangement of the original manuscripts as far as possible; extensive image editing restores a degree of legibility to much-degraded manuscripts. The manuscripts reproduced here include the famous Coventry Caput Mass, vestiges of a royal choirbook virtually reassembled by Bent and a systematic investigation by Wathey of the Beverley fragments. Although fragmentary, these fifteenth-century sources, containing music by Dunstaple, Power, Plummer and their contemporaries, attest to the vitality of the English polyphonic tradition as it neared its pre-Reformation zenith.