Early music of Britain and Ireland, from the earliest recorded times until the beginnings of the Baroque in the 17th century, was a diverse and rich culture, including sacred and secular music and ranging from the popular to the elite. Each of the major nations of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales retained unique forms of music and of instrumentation, but British music was highly influenced by continental developments, while British composers made an important contribution to many of the major movements in early music in Europe, including the polyphony of the Ars Nova and laid some of the foundations of later national and international classical music. Musicians from the British Isles also developed some distinctive forms of music, including Celtic chant, the Contenance Angloise, the rota, polyphonic votive antiphons, and the carol in the medieval era and English madrigals, lute ayres, and masques in the Renaissance era, which would lead to the development of English language opera at the height of the Baroque in the 18th century.
Medieval music to 1450
Surviving sources indicate that there was a rich and varied musical soundscape in medieval Britain.R. McKitterick, C. T. Allmand, T. Reuter, D. Abulafia, P. Fouracre, J. Simon, C. Riley-Smith, M. Jones, eds, The New Cambridge Medieval History: C. 1415- C. 1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 319–25. Historians usually distinguish between ecclesiastical music, designed for use in church, or in religious ceremonies, and secular music for use from royal and baronial courts, celebrations of some religious events, to public and private entertainments of the people. Our understanding of this music is limited by a lack of written sources for much of what was an oral culture.
Church music
In the early Middle Ages, ecclesiastical music was dominated by monophonic plainchant. The separate development of British Christianity from the direct influence of Rome until the 8th century, with its flourishing monastic culture, led to the development of a distinct form of liturgical Celtic chant.D. O. Croinin, ed., Prehistoric and Early Ireland: Prehistoric and Early Ireland, vol I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 798. Although no notations of this music survive, later sources suggest distinctive melodic patterns. This was superseded, as elsewhere in Europe, from the 11th century by Gregorian chant.D. Hiley, Western Plainchant: a Handbook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 483. The version of this chant linked to the liturgy as used in the Diocese of Salisbury, the Sarum Use, first recorded from the 13th century, became dominant in England. This Sarum Chant became the model for English composers until it was supplanted at the Reformation in the mid-16th century, influencing settings for masses, hymns and Magnificats.E. Foley, M. Paul Bangert, Worship Music: a Concise Dictionary (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), p. 273. Scottish music was highly influenced by continental developments, with figures like thirteenth-century musical theorist Simon Tailler who studied in Paris, before returning to Scotland where he introduced several reforms of church music.K. Elliott and F. Rimmer, A History of Scottish Music (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1973), pp. 8–12. Scottish collections of music like the thirteenth-century 'Wolfenbüttel 677', which is associated with St Andrews, contain mostly French compositions, but with some distinctive local styles. The first notations of Welsh music that survive are from the 14th century, including matins, lauds and vespers for St David's Day.J. T. Koch, Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2006), p. 1765.
Ars nova
In the 14th century, the English Franciscan friar Simon Tunsted, usually credited with the authorship of Quatuor Principalia Musicae: a treatise on musical composition, is believed to have been one of the theorists who influenced the 'ars nova', a movement which developed in France and then Italy, replacing the restrictive styles of Gregorian plainchant with complex polyphony.W. Lovelock, A Concise History of Music (New York NY: Frederick Ungar, 1953), p. 57. The tradition was well established in England by the 15th century and was widely used in religious, and what became, purely educational establishments, including Eton College, and the colleges that became the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The motet 'Sub Arturo plebs' attributed to Johannes Alanus and dated to the mid or late 14th century, includes a list of Latinised names of musicians from the English court that shows the flourishing of court music, the importance of royal patronage in this era and the growing influence of the ars nova.M. Bent, Two Fourteenth-Century Motets in Praise of Music (Lustleigh: Antico, 1986). Included in the list is J. de Alto Bosco, who has been identified with the composer and theorist John Hanboys, author of Summa super musicam continuam et discretam, a work that discusses the origins of musical notation and mensuration from the 13th century and proposed several new methods for recording music.P. M. Lefferts, ed., Regule, by Johannes Hanboys (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), pp. 30–1.
Contenance Angloise
From the mid-15th century we begin to have relatively large numbers of works that have survived from English composers in documents such as the early 15th century Old Hall Manuscript. Probably the first, and one of the best represented is Leonel Power (c. 1380–1445), who was probably the choir master of Christ Church, Canterbury and enjoyed noble patronage from Thomas of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Clarence and John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford (1389–1435). John Dunstaple (or Dunstable) was the most celebrated composer of the 'Contenance Angloise' (English manner), a distinctive style of polyphony that used full, rich harmonies based on the third and sixth, which was highly influential in the fashionable Burgundian court of Philip the Good.R. H. Fritze and W. B. Robison, Historical Dictionary of Late Medieval England, 1272–1485 (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2002), p. 363. Nearly all his manuscript music in England was lost during the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536–1540), but some of his works have been reconstructed from copies found in continental Europe, particularly in Italy. The existence of these copies is testament to his widespread fame within Europe. He may have been the first composer to provide liturgical music with an instrumental accompaniment.S. Sadie and A. Latham, The Cambridge Music Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 101–2. Royal interest in music is suggested by the works attributed to Roy Henry in the Old Hall Manuscript, suspected to be Henry IV or Henry V.N. Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530 (London: Taylor and Francis, 1984), p. 169. This tradition was continued by figures such as Walter Frye (c. 1420–1475), whose masses were recorded and highly influential in France and the Netherlands.J. Caldwell, The Oxford History of English Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 151–2. Similarly, John Hothby (c. 1410–1487), an English Carmelite friar, who travelled widely and, although leaving little composed music, wrote several theoretical treatises, including La Calliopea legale, and is credited with introducing innovations to the medieval pitch system.T. Dumitrescu, The Early Tudor Court and International Musical Relations (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 63 and 197–9. The Scottish king James I was in captivity in England from 1406 to 1423, where he earned a reputation as a poet and composer and may have been responsible for taking English and continental styles and musicians back to the Scottish court on his release.
Secular music
Ireland, Scotland, and Wales shared a tradition of bards, who acted as musicians, but also as poets, story tellers, historians, genealogists, and lawyers, relying on an oral tradition that stretched back generations.M. J. Green, The Celtic World (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 428. Often accompanying themselves on the harp, they can also be seen in records of the Scottish courts throughout the medieval period.W. McLeod, Divided Gaels: Gaelic Cultural Identities in Scotland and Ireland, C.1200-c.1650 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 102. We also know from the work of Gerald of Wales that at least from the 12th century, group singing was a major part of the social life of ordinary people in Wales. From the 11th century particularly important in English secular music were minstrels, sometimes attached to a wealthy household, noble, or royal court, but probably more often moving from place to place and occasion to occasion in pursuit of payment. Many appear to have composed their own works, and can be seen as the first secular composers, and some crossed international boundaries, transferring songs and styles of music. Because literacy, and musical notation in particular, were preserves of the clergy in this period the survival of secular music is much more limited than for church music. Nevertheless, some were noted, occasionally by clergymen who had an interest in secular music. England in particular produced three distinctive secular musical forms in this period: the rota, the polyphonic votive antiphon, and the carol.
Rotas
A rota is a form of round, known to have been used from the 13th century in England. The earliest surviving piece of composed music in the British Isles, and perhaps the oldest recorded folk song in Europe, is a rota: a setting of 'Sumer Is Icumen In' ('Summer is a-coming in') from the mid-13th century, possibly written by W. de Wycombe, precentor of the priory of Leominster in Herefordshire, and set for six parts.H. Morley and W. H. Griffin, English Writers: An Attempt Towards a History of English Literature vol. 10 (1887, BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2008), p. 227. Although few are recorded, the use of rotas seems to have been widespread in England and it has been suggested that the English talent for polyphony may have its origins in this form of music.
Votive Antiphons
Polyphonic votive antiphons emerged in England in the 14th century as a setting of a text honouring the Virgin Mary, but separate from the mass and office, often after compline. Towards the end of the 15th century they began to be written by English composers as expanded settings for as many as nine parts with increasing complexity and vocal range. The largest collection of such antiphons is in the late 15th century Eton choirbook.H. Benham, John Taverner: His Life and Music (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 48–9.
Carols
Carols developed in the 14th century as simple songs with a verse and refrain structure. Carols were usually connected with a religious festival, particularly Christmas. They were derived from a form of circle dance accompanied by singers, which was popular from the mid-12th century.J. J. Walsh, Were They Wise Men Or Kings?: The Book of Christmas Questions (Westminster: John Knox Press, 2001), p. 60. From the 14th century they were used as processional songs, particularly at Advent, Easter, and Christmas, and to accompany religious mystery plays.W. J. Phillips, Carols; Their Origin, Music, and Connection with Mystery-Plays (Routledge, 1921, Read Books, 2008), p. 24. Because the tradition of carols continued into the modern era, we know more of their structure and variety than most other secular forms of medieval music.
Renaissance c. 1450–c. 1660