New evidence from Shrewsbury on the creation and circulation of music in high-medieval England

Abstract

This article presents new discoveries from a manuscript from the Collegiate Church of St Chad, Shrewsbury, with implications for the circulation of ecclesiastical music, particularly sequences, in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England. It begins with a brief examination of the twelfth-century musical contents of the manuscript, which are shown to hold close scribal affinities: in particular, a ‘winged’ neume shape is contextualised by contemporaneous musical inscriptions found in a manuscript probably written at Haughmond Abbey. The remainder of the article considers music, mostly sequences, inscribed in a palimpsest gathering at the back of the St Chad's manuscript in the thirteenth century. Two of these are compared for the first time with their concordances, one concordance newly discovered. Examination of the preservation and record of these musical entries (with discussion of contrafacture and marginalia) sheds light on creative practices of citation and intertextuality, performance traditions, and processes of reading and recording music at St Chad's, ultimately illuminating the role the church played within a creative network across England and northern Europe.