Music as Divine Order

Although there is no internal evidence to confirm that this decorated volume was made for or presented to Queens’, there is also no evidence that it ever had another provenance. Thought to date from around 1450, the many additions and deletions that have been made to the volume, some as recently as 1569, speak to the religious disputes that defined England in the sixteenth century. The possibility that the volume contains the specific music and liturgy practised at Queens’ during the turbulent Tudor age adds considerably to its interest. Queens’ MS 28 contains service settings for the whole year according to the Sarum Rite. A variant of the Roman Rite, the Sarum Rite was widely used for the ordering of Christian public worship in England from the eleventh century until the Reformation. However, the deliberate erasure of the title for the feast of St Thomas of Canterbury (fo. 24v), together with a reference to the pope ('cum papa nostro N atque') (fo. 87v) suggests that the book was still in use after the break with Rome (1534). At a later date, other missing leaves (including the first of those for the feast of St Thomas of Canterbury) have been re-inserted - perhaps during the reign of Mary Tudor.

Music from this Gradual can be heard here.

Title: Gradual for the use of Sarum (15th century)
Shelfmark: Queens' College MS 28