As a distinctive and attractive musical repertory, the hundred-odd English carols of the fifteenth century have always had a ready audience. But some of the key viewpoints about them date back to the late 1920s, when Richard L. Greene first defined the poetic form; and little has been published about them since the burst of activity around 1950, when a new manuscript was found and when John Stevens published his still definitive edition of all the music, both giving rise to substantial publications by major scholars in both music and literature. This book offers a new survey of the repertory with a firmer focus on the form and its history. Fresh examination of the manuscripts and of the styles of the music they contain leads to new proposals about their dates, origins and purposes. Placing them in the context of the massive growth of scholarly research on other fifteenth-century music over the past fifty years gives rise to several fresh angles on the music.
1. Straightforward songs
2. The musical repertory
3. Definitions and
terminology: carol; burden; refrain; chorus
4. The musical form and the
virelai forms in general
5. Burdens and double burdens
6. Fauxbourdon
7.
Metre and rhythm
8. The main poetry sources
9. The earliest English poems in
carol form
10. Monophony for the carol
11. Add. MS 5666
12. Awareness of the
carol, 1: 16001890
13. Composers
14. Social context, 1: The royal court and
political propaganda
15. Social context, 2: Orality and the polyphonic carol
16. Social context, 3: The notion of communal song
17. Awareness of the
carol, 2: 18911901
18. The date and origin of Ritson
19. The date and origin
of Egerton
20. The date and origin of Trinity
21. The date and origin of
Selden
22. Chronology
23. The later carols
24. Binchois, Dufay and the
contenance angloise
25. Awareness of the carol, 3: 19022017
26. Blessid
Inglond ful of melody
David Fallows taught at the University of Manchester for thirty-five years until his retirement in 2011. He is author of Dufay (1982), Josquin (2009), several critical editions and many articles about the 'long' fifteenth century from Zachara da Teramo to Henry VIII some of them reissued in two Variorum volumes of his essays published by Ashgate (1996 and 2010).