Henry V and the Earliest English Carols: 1413–1440

David Fallows

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780367589950
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317049623
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

As a distinctive and attractive musical repertory, the hundred-odd English carols of the fifteenth century have always had a ready audience. But some of the key viewpoints about them date back to the late 1920s, when Richard L. Greene first defined the poetic form; and little has been published about them since the burst of activity around 1950, when a new manuscript was found and when John Stevens published his still definitive edition of all the music, both giving rise to substantial publications by major scholars in both music and literature. This book offers a new survey of the repertory with a firmer focus on the form and its history. Fresh examination of the manuscripts and of the styles of the music they contain leads to new proposals about their dates, origins and purposes. Placing them in the context of the massive growth of scholarly research on other fifteenth-century music over the past fifty years gives rise to several fresh angles on the music.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Notes on musical examples and text citations
• Musical examples and figures
• 1 ‘Straightforward songs’
• 2 The musical repertory
• 3 Definitions and terminology: carol, burden, refrain, chorus, verse
• 4 The musical form and virelai forms in general
• 5 Burdens and double burdens
• 6 Fauxbourdon
• 7 Metre and rhythm
• 8 The main poetry sources
• 9 The earliest English poems in carol form
• 10 Monophony for the carol
• 11 Add. MS 5666
• 12 Awareness of the carol, 1: 1600–1890
• 13 Composers
• 14 Social context, 1: The Royal Court and Political Propaganda
• 15 Social context, 2: Orality and the Polyphonic Carol
• 16 Social context, 3: The Notion of Communal Song
• 17 Awareness of the carol, 2: 1891–1901
• 18 The date and origin of Ritson
• 19 The date and origin of Egerton
• 20 The date and origin of Trinity
• 21 The date and origin of Selden
• 22 Chronology
• 23 The later carols
• 24 Binchois, Dufay and the contenance angloise
• 25 Awareness of the carol, 3: 1902–2017
• 26 ‘Blessid Inglond ful of melody’
• Bibliography
• General index
• Index of carols
• Index of other songs and poems
• Index of manuscripts