Early Masses and Mass-Pairs (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Early Masses and Mass-Pairs J. Michael Allsen Early Masses and Mass-Pairs. Transcribed and edited by Gareth Curtis . ( Fifteenth-Century Liturgical Music, 4.) ( Early English Church Music, 42.) London: Published for the British Academy by Stainer and Bell, c 2001. [Foreword ( John Caldwell ), 1 p.; acknowledgments, 1 p.; contents, 1 p; introd., p. ix–xiii; scores (each preceded by sources and crit. notes), p. 1–177 Cloth. ISMN M-2202-1931-3; ISBN 0-85249-846-2. £55.] This volume of early Masses and Mass-pairs edited by Gareth Curtis is the start of a new editorial direction, and a distinctly new "look" for the venerable series Early English Church Music, inaugurated in 1963 with John D. Bergsagel's edition of the first volume of Early Tudor Masses (London: Stainer and Bell) to make available church music by British composers of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in a form designed to serve both scholarly and practical needs. The series is intended to complete the publication in modern editions of all early sacred music in Britain from the Norman Conquest to the Commonwealth. (vol. 1 of series, p. iv) Since then, Early English Church Music has proved to be a valuable resource for students and performers of this music, providing a clear and well-edited entry into this large repertory. The first forty-one volumes comprise many subseries, including five volumes devoted to the sacred music of John Taverner (ca. 1490-1545) and six to Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656). Curtis's new volume is a continuation of another of these subseries devoted broadly to fifteenth-century liturgical music. These volumes, including Curtis's previous edition of the Brussels Masses from the manuscript Bibliothèque Royale Albert 1er 5557 (Early English Church Music, 34; hereinafter EECM), as well as two volumes published much earlier (Antiphons and Music for Holy Week and Easter, ed. Andrew Hughes, EECM, 8 [1968] and Four Anonymous Masses, ed. Margaret Bent, EECM, 22 [1979]), cover repertory that would otherwise fall through the cracks of editions of collected works and monuments devoted to a single manuscript: anonymous and occasionally fragmentary music, as well as works by composers who are largely unknown aside from a piece or two. With the exception of a single volume devoted to facsimiles of late medieval fragments (Manuscripts of Fourteenth Century English Polyphony: A Selection of Facsimiles, ed. Frank Llewellyn Harrison and Roger Wibberley, EECM, 26 [1981]), and the recent edition of Thomas Morley's (1557/8- 1602) Services edited by John Morehen (EECM, 41 [1998]), the series has heretofore been weighted toward the "practical." Volumes appeared in a roughly octavo-size [End Page 219] format in paper covers, with large, clear typography eminently suited for singers. The music itself was presented in modern notation and clefs, with bar lines, two-to-one or four-to-one reductions of note values, and the standard equipment of scholarly editions (brackets above ligatures, barring that reflects modus-level notation, etc.). Though each volume included a full critical apparatus, and occasionally appendices with plainchant sources, the music itself seems to have been set out primarily with performance in mind. Many of the volumes, for example, include a keyboard reduction to facilitate rehearsal and performance. Along with Morehen's Morley edition, Curtis's Early Masses and Mass-Pairs represents a new style for Early English Church Music editions (see Lionel Pike's review of the Morley in Notes 58, no 1 [September 2001]: 176-79). It is a weighty, large-format (9" X 12.5"), hardcover volume. Critical notes are now integrated into the edition, directly preceding each piece or set of pieces. The most important change, however, is in the method for transcribing the works. While score format and modern treble and bass clefs are retained, the music itself appears in the original mensural notation. In his foreword to the edition, John Caldwell, general editor of Early English Church Music, explains this change in editorial procedure (p. v): It was widely felt that traditional methods of transcription . . . were no longer adequate to convey the essential nature of this freely flowing yet mensurally disciplined music. In these new editions, note-values will be unreduced, the...