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• 5 English Medieval Carols

5 English Medieval Carols

for 3 voices or instruments.

This little selection of early-fifteenth-century English carols is designed to demonstrate the stylistic variety of a magnificent repertoire, in which the music can sometimes be very simple and conductus-like, as in Hail, Mary, full of grace, or on occasions, as in Marvel not Joseph, almost rhapsodic in its use of elaborate melismas.
Hail Mary, full of grace is printed here after Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS 03 58, with certain illegible notes restored from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Selden B. 26. Deo gracias and There is no rose also follow the Cambridge Ms. Ave rex angelorum is printed after British Library, MS Egerton 3307, while the beautiful Marvel not, Joseph comes from the so-called Ritson manuscript (British Library, Add. MS 5665).
The note values have been halved in this edition, which makes the music "whiter" than most other editions of this repertoire, but which allows the rhythmic irregularities of the more complex pieces to come through without the constraints of beams. The texts have been modernised here. Editorial accidentals appear printed small above the stave, applying to the one note only.
The original sources for this repertoire do not make the forms entirely clear, but it is a reasonable assumption that each piece should end with the refrain: where there are two refrains, the first should probably be treated as a sort of introduction, and the second as the real refrain that punctuates the verses and ends the piece.