THE INVERNESS FRAGMENTS: MUSIC FROM A PRE-REFORMATION SCOTTISH PARISH CHURCH AND SCHOOL

Abstract

DESPITE the recent proliferation of known sources of late medieval English church music, particularly those reconstructed from binding fragments, one area remains largely unknown. Most reliably attributed sources come from well-endowed ecclesiastical establishments in England, and copies made for such establishments were apt to be elaborate. Parish church communities, however, assuming that they had resources enough to sing polyphonic music of whatever level of sophistication, would presumably have had neither sufficient space nor particular inclination to preserve copies of music which had ceased to be used regularly. That the normal repertory of a parish church might be preserved is therefore unlikely, since copies would presumably have been regularly discarded and replaced. The provision for music in such establishments, especially those remote from supposed cultural centres, thus remains unclear. We know very little of the musical organization of Scottish ecclesiastical establishments, of whatever type, except hypothetically in terms of comparison with equivalent establishments in England. To questions about the musical organization and repertory of the ordinary pre-Reformation parish church and parish school the source described in the present article may not offer definitive answers, but it may help to provide the background essential to further enquiry. The source may in fact be from a Scottish parish church, probably that of Inverness, and its associated school; it preserves simple music for ritual use without concordances elsewhere, most of which is associated with the liturgy of Holy Week and the office of Compline during Lent. In particular it includes a sequence of settings for use during the procession on Palm Sunday. ' The fragments include, in addition, a substantial part of a secular breviary containing the Sanctorale for the first half of August, and a collection of six separate polyphonic faburden settings of the vesper psalm 'Laudate pueri Dominum' (112), which was sung in procession to the font at Second Vespers on Easter Day. These appear to come from the parish school. A number of smaller paper fragments include a single voice from a faburden setting of the Lenten Compline hymn 'Christe qui lux es et dies'; another