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A Worcester Ladymass

This scholarly edition was prepared for Trio Mediaeval in 2009, who asked for a programme of English medieval music which would contain some 3-part polyphony and some chant. The research content of this submission lies in the re-editing and reconstruction of this set of pieces from notation which has a high degree of latitude in interpretation and from manuscripts where material is missing.

In previous research (_The Best Concords_, 1993) I posited reconstructions of three codices from the English, thirteenth-century manuscripts known as the ‘Worcester fragments’; these contained polyphonic mass items and Marian pieces. Many of these pieces are loosely connected with the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, with plainchant taken from the Worcester Gradual (Wo, F 160). The opportunity to present these in a new edition was very welcome.

There have been two previous editions of Worcester polyphony: Luther Dittmer, _The Worcester fragments: a catalogue raisonné and transcription_ (American Institute of Musicology, 1957) and Ernest Sanders, _English music of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries; Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, vol. XIV_ (Monaco, 1979). Sanders states that his readings are ‘not always justified’ by the notoriously inexact thirteenth-century notation; this is an invitation for another edition. As well as the problematic notation, the parlous state of the manuscripts means that a certain amount of reconstruction is needed where voices are missing. Dittmer’s and Sanders’s editions show different approaches to this; but there are many different possibilities.