David Skinner

Further thoughts on the Lambeth Choirbook and Jena

The evidence available for the provenance of the Lambeth Choirbook, a source of both Mass and Magnificat [‘O bone Iesu’], points all but conclusively not to the collegiate church of Arundel but to a totally different organization, the household chapel of the Earl of Arundel; the manuscript accountroll on the back of which the Lambeth scribe also worked (entering the bass part of a Ludford antiphon) relates to properties which belonged not among the endowments of the college but among the estates of the earldom, so that the place in which he would have encountered this archive was not the college but the earl’s household.

The Marian Anthem in Late Medieval England

Alma redemptoris mater is one of the four ancient antiphons or anthems in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This anthem may recall Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale , and the image of a choirboy, seven years of age, who, having learnt his Alma redemptoris , sang daily the Virgin’s praises even beyond death. Primer in hand he learnt his Alma by heart, only to be murdered in a Jewish ghetto for singing the anthem that he took such pains to perfect. With the song on his lips his throat was cut; but Mary intervened, placed a precious pearl on his tongue, saying, My litel child, nowe wol I fecche thee, Whan that the greyn is fro thy tonge ytake. Be not agast; I wol the nat forsake.