Andrew Kirkman, Music and Musicians at the Collegiate Church of St Omer: Crucible of Song, 1350–1550. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. xvii + 311 pp. ISBN 978-1-108-88104-3.

Abstract

Over the course of the last generation, Andrew Kirkman’s scholarship, particularly his important 2010 monograph The Cultural Life of the Early Polyphonic Mass, has deeply shaped our appreciation of fifteenth-century musical life. His latest offering, Music and Musicians at the Collegiate Church of St Omer, is the fruit of decades of painstaking labour in the archive of a single church in modern-day northern France, then part of disputed territory between the kingdom of France and territories of the Dukes of Burgundy. Kirkman’s care is manifest in the work’s attention to archival detail. It is richly documented – the transcriptions offered in the text, footnotes and appendices alone make it a significant contribution to our knowledge of this important site of music-making. And the work has implications for a wider appreciation of the networks of music and musicians in the Burgundian Netherlands and beyond. After an introductory chapter outlining the history of St Omer, the book loosely follows the life cycle of a chorister, moving from the maîtrise and the duties of choirboys in liturgy and ritual, through the careers of famous choristers and musicians associated with the production of the church’s music books (most famously by Jean Mouton), through discussions of the polyphonic and chant repertoire of the church, its organs and bells, politicking in the college of canons, and finally traces of the death and endowments of several particularly important canons of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Several themes emerge as crucial to the musical life of the region and period. The first is the fiscal structure of the church’s benefices. Kirkman traces in detail how music was funded in the period, inter alia Early Music History (2022) Volume 40. © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press.