Old Hall Manuscript
The Old Hall Manuscript (sometimes Old Hall MS)(British Library, Add. MS 57950) is the largest, most complete, and most significant source of English sacred music of the late 14th and early 15th centuries, and as such represents the best source for English music of the late Medieval era. It is named after the Old Hall at the College of St. Edmund (near Ware), and rather miraculously survived the destruction of manuscripts carried out by Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s.
The manuscript is in three volumes, the third of which contains revisions of material in the first, and the manuscript contains 148 compositions overall. 77 of them are written in score rather than in separate parts. Most of the pieces are settings of parts of the ordinary of the Mass, and are grouped by section, i.e. the settings of the Gloria are together, as are the settings of the Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei. Between these grouped settings are some motets and pieces related to the conductus.
Various musical styles and techniques are represented including English discant, treble-dominated works, isorhythmic compositions, and canons. It is significant because it confirms the existence and character of specifically English musical traits and reveals the extent of the development of English music and the influence of continental practices.
Composers with works in the Old Hall Manuscript include Leonel Power, Pycard, William Typp, Thomas Byttering, Oliver, Chirbury, Excetre, John Cooke, Roy Henry (probably King Henry IV), Queldryk, John Tyes, Aleyn, Fonteyns, Gervays, Lambe, Nicholas Sturgeon, Thomas Damett, and others. John Dunstable is among a handful of composers whose work was added in a later hand, probably in the period immediately before 1420.
External links
Sources
- Margaret Bent, "Old Hall MS"; "Sources, Medieval, England"; The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1561591742
- Harold Gleason and Warren Becker, Music in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Music Literature Outlines Series I). Bloomington, Indiana. Frangipani Press, 1986. ISBN 089917034X