Thomas Mulliner revived

Abstract

The keyboard manuscript known as the Mulliner Book (British Library, Add. Ms.30513) has long been recognized as a major source of English music of the mid-16th century. It contains a particularly large number of pieces by John Redford, pointing to a strong connection with musicians at St Paul's Cathedral, alongside sizable quantities of music by other important near-contemporaries such as Thomas Tallis, John Blytheman and John Sheppard. The contents of the manuscript were first published in their entirety 60 years ago, edited by Denis Stevens, the 120 keyboard pieces appearing as the first volume in the Musica Britannica series (1951, revised 1954), while eleven pieces for cittern and gittern were published as an appendix, transcribed into staff notation, in Stevens's The Mulliner Book: a commentary (London, 1952). Stevens was the first to recognize the full importance of the manuscript, drawing attention to the fact that it is the sole source for a large proportion of its music. Although the Commentary was published in a limited edition of 500, alongside the edition itself it proved influential. It was the first attempt to study the entire contents of the manuscript in detail (a plea for such a study had been made by Charles Van Den Borren 40 years previously in The sources of keyboard music in England, trans. James E. Matthew (London, 1913), p.11), covering a wide range of topics. For example, it discusses the authorship of the pieces, the extensive use of cantus firmus technique, and matters of textual criticism. Stevens also drew attention to a large body of ‘concordant’ sources, especially for non-keyboard versions of the pieces. This offered, in some instances, the opportunity for considering a repertory of ‘lost’ polyphonic vocal music, elsewhere preserved imperfectly or not at all. Indeed, in an article prompted by the two publications, Edward Lowinsky wrote that: ‘Undoubtedly the Mulliner Book is going to play a significant part in any future history of English song’ (‘English organ music of the Renaissance’, Musical Quarterly, xxxix (1953), pp.373–95, 528–53, at p.376).