Music in pre-Reformation York: a new source and some thoughts on the York Masses

Ever since Hugh Baillie and Philippe Oboussier’s pioneering study of York, Borthwick Institute MS Mus 1, better known as the York Masses, it has been generally accepted that its compositions, if not the choirbook itself, originated elsewhere than York. Two locations claimed primacy in their bid for the manuscript’s original provenance, Lincoln and London, owing to the internal evidence of two composers named in the manuscript, ‘Johannes Cuke’ and ‘Horwod’. The evidence is reassessed here with regard to an important new source relating to polyphonic music and other fragments of music preserved in post-Reformation York bindings. It is suggested that these fragments originated at one or more churches in York in the late fifteenth century, and that they were finally sold for binding material c. 1583, resulting in their appearance in the same series of court books for York Minster. The cultural background for the genesis and performance of polyphonic music is then addressed, with reference to York and other northern locations such as Durham, Beverley and Selby. The musical traditions of London and of the larger monastic establishments during the Middle Ages and early Renaissance have long been recognized and their place in the transmission and cultivation of written vocal polyphony has been explored in detail on many occasions. Outside of this, it is only relatively recently that attention has been drawn to the various smaller foundations that have been linked with the cultivation of polyphonic music from at least the end of the fourteenth century. Of the larger urban centres outside of London, the *[email protected] 1 I am grateful to Margaret Bent and Magnus Williamson for reading earlier versions of this paper, and to the staff of the Borthwick Institute for their help and advice. Documents in the custody of the Borthwick Institute are reproduced with permission. 2 See especially Margaret Bent, ‘The Transmission of English Music 1300–1500: Some Aspects of Repertory and Presentation’, in Studien zur Tradition in der Musik: Kurt von Fischer zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Hans Heirrich Eggebrecht and Max Lütolf (Munich, 1973), 65–83; Peter M. Lefferts and Margaret Bent comp., ‘New Sources of English Thirteenthand Fourteenth-Century Polyphony’, Early Music History, 2 (1982), 273–362. 3 Andrew Wathey, ‘Lost Books of Polyphony in England: A List to 1500’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 21 (1988), 1–19; Fiona Kisby: ‘Books in London Parish Churches, 1400–1603’, Proceedings of the 1999 Harlaxton Symposium, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 11 (Stamford, 2001); Magnus Williamson, ed., ‘Lost Sources of Liturgical Polyphony in England, 1500–1550’ (forthcoming).