Liturgical Polyphony in the Pre-Reformation English Parish Church: A Provisional List and Commentary

Abstract

The great majority of late-medieval lay people encountered the Universal Church most directly, and in some cases exclusively, through their local parish church. The parish has therefore been at the heart of research into lay piety, as witnessed in a range of detailed studies of pre-Reformation beliefs, rituals, rites of passage, clergy, episcopal oversight, parochial administration and social organization. Until recently, however, the ‘soundscape’ of the pre-Reformation parish has received less exhaustive attention, perhaps because the parish has been seen as peripheral or subordinate to the mainstream of musicological research (few first-rank composers are known to have worked within English parish churches), but also because the documentary sources are more disparate and often less complete and informative than the archives of more superficially prestigious institutions. Nevertheless, if the widespread cultivation of polyphonic singing within divine worship was one of the seminal cultural achievements of late-medieval England, what contribution did the parish make towards this revolution? How many parishes maintained polyphonic choirs? What role did the laity play in promoting liturgical polyphony? And what might such initiatives reveal concerning lay attitudes towards liturgical music? Studies of Bristol, London, Louth, Ludlow and York have highlighted the potential of the parish as a focus for musicological research, and have begun to answer some of these questions. The following handlist, an earlier form of which was prepared for the 2002 Harlaxton Medieval Symposium, is intended to serve as a springboard for further research in this field. Although neither complete nor definitive, its aims are to bring together, as comprehensively as possible, the available evidence concerning the singing of liturgical polyphony before 1559, and to provide an overview of the contextual factors which have informed the underlying methodology: to this end, the list itself is preceded by an extended commentary.