In a manuscript dated 1395–1401 is a most unusual two part polyphonic song in Middle English, which begins: “Me lykyþ ever þe lenger þe bet by Wyngestyr þat joly syte”. It is a song in praise of Winchester, a city in Hampshire, 60 miles southwest of London. In modern English, the words are: “I am always pleased, better as time passes, by Winchester, that jolly city. The town is good and in a fine location. The people are beautiful to look upon. The air is good, both inside and outside. The city stands beneath a hill, the rivers run all around. The town is ruled over with reason.”
The verse reads like a jingle for the Winchester tourist board. Who would write or sing such a song? This article investigates, starting with a video performance on voices and symphonie.
Me lykyþ ever þe lenger þe bet, sung accompanied by symphonie.
(Best heard on headphones.)
The words are as follows, each line in the original Middle English followed by modern English in italics.
Me lykyþ ever þe lenger þe bet
I am always pleased, better as time passes
by Wyngestyr þat joly syte
by Winchester, that jolly city
þe toun ys god and wel yset
The town is good and in a fine location
þe folk ys comely on to see
The people are beautiful to look upon
þe ayer ys good boþe yn and out
The air is good, both inside and outside
þe syte stont bineþ an hylle
The city stands beneath a hill
þe ryuerys rennyt[h] al about
the rivers run all around
þe toun ys rulyd apon skylle
The town is ruled over with reason
The Winchester manuscript
The manuscript which includes Me lykyþ ever þe lenger þe bet is Cambridge University Library MS Additional 5943. The folios are paper, except for six parchment fly-leaves. The various parts of the collection did not originally belong together, but most are in a single hand. The collection includes sermons, poems, songs, religious tracts, works by the English mystic Richard Rolle and tables of solar and lunar eclipses for the years 1415–62.
Folios 5r and 5v state in Latin that the collection is the work of Thomas Turke, given to John Morton. In English: “This book is the property of John Morton the elder, for it had been compiled for himself by Master Thomas Turke, formerly perpetual vicar of Bere. But now he is a monk in the Carthusian house at Hinton, and he gave it to me as above on the 10th day of December 1418 A. D. The Lord be with him. Amen.” Thomas Turke was a Fellow (an honorary title given to a recognised expert in their field, and/or a member of the governing body) of Winchester College from 1395 to 1398, then again from 1400 to 1401, after which he became vicar of Downton, Wiltshire. It appears that the relinquishing by Thomas Turke of his property to become a monk was the occasion of gifting the manuscript to John Morton. If Thomas Turke is the scribe of the songs as well as the other material, we must date them before 1418, and probably to his period in Winchester, 1401 or before.
A song on folio 162r appears to confirm the connection with Winchester College. Thys ȝol, thys ȝol – This Yule, this Yule – advises its singers and listeners to put away strife and make mirth. Below the music, the scribe wrote “qd Edmund”, qd for the Latin quod, often used in English writing to mean quoth or said, denoting the source or authorship of the song. Frank Llewellyn Harrison (1958) discovered the name Edmund as a clerk of the chapel and instructor of choristers in the Winchester College accounts for 1396–97.
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William Longe, known as William of Wykeham (1320/1324–1404), was Bishop of Winchester from 1368. In 1379 he founded New College and New College School, Oxford, and in 1382 he founded Winchester College. Bishop Longe’s statutes for Winchester College emphasise good conduct. He was keen, for example, that scholars avoid the destructiveness of “idle gossip”. For this reason, he instructed them to leave the hall as soon as food was eaten. However, on winter feast days, when the hall’s fires were lit, fellows and scholars were permitted after eating to remain and “amuse themselves decently for the purposes of recreation with songs and other honest pastimes”, those “other honest pastimes” being the recitation of poetry and the chronicles of kings.
William of Wykeham, in his chantry chapel in Winchester Cathedral. In a chantry chapel, a priest
sings masses for the soul of the chapel’s founder and others nominated by the founder.
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The songs and poems of the manuscript are fit for the purpose of Bishop Longe’s recommended after-dinner pastimes at Winchester College. For example, Si quis amat is a round for three voices, warning those at table during a meal to refrain from backbiting against those who are absent. The text also appears in Furnivall ms. 28, a 16th century treatise on etiquette, in the section, How to Order Thyself Sitting at the Table. Other songs in CUL MS Add 5943 are I rede þat þu be ioly and glad, which advises its singers and listeners to avoid angry people so the anger does not spread; the aforementioned Thys ȝol, thys ȝol, advising singers and listeners to give up strife and be merry; Wel wer hym þat wyst, expressing the wish that God would put a physical mark on people so others could judge their trustworthiness; six devotional songs (i. Pater noster, most of myȝt ii. Ave Maria I say iii. Pange lingua gloriosi corporis iv. Benedicamus domino v. Gloria in excelcis deo vi. Credo in deum that ys withowt begynnyng); two English love songs in the troubadour tradition (i. Trew on wam ys al my tryst ii. Danger me haþ unskylfuly); four French songs (i. Plus pur l’enoryr ii. Esperanse ky en mon quer s’embath iii. Le grant pleyser iv. Jeo hay en vos tote may fiance); and Me lykyþ ever þe lenger þe bet, praising Winchester.
To summarise the evidence for the Winchester College connection and for dating: we have a Winchester scribe, Thomas Turke; a probable Winchester source or composer for one of the songs, Edmund, clerk of the Winchester College chapel; and a probable social context for the collection of songs in the life of Winchester College, worthy after-dinner pastimes. This explains the purpose of the song about good manners during mealtime, the song praising the city of Winchester, and the morally edifying and devotional songs. This gives an overall date of 1395–98 and 1400–01 for collecting the songs, when Thomas Turke was a Fellow of Winchester College, and 1396–97 specifically for the song composed by or collected from Edmund.
The music I: notation and date
The music, shown above, is in white notation, a form of mensural music which modified the black square notation developed by Franco of Cologne in his Ars cantus mensurabilis, 1250–80. White or void notation was established by the mid–15th century. Musicologists are in disagreement about its earliest appearance, and that matters for the dating of the music in this manuscript. Thomas Turke was a Fellow of Winchester College from 1395–98, then again from 1400 until 1401. The earliest estimates for the use of white notation are c. 1400, which means we can date the songs to the end of Turke’s residency in Winchester. Since Edmund was clerk of the Winchester College chapel, 1396–97, it would make sense to move the date back a little, unless we assume the song was written from memory by Turke after Edmund had left office.
The music II: musica ficta
A literal reading of the music in modern notation is shown below, followed by a sound file of the same. The original neume notation does not have bar lines, and the music does not fit a modern time signature without adding half bars or elongated bars: bar lines are added in modern notation to aid phrasing. Click the soundfile below the music to hear it.
It is unlikely that Me lykyþ ever would have been performed as the literal reading above, due to a late medieval practice known as musica ficta.
The range of available notes in medieval music theory was known as the gamut. As we see below, the gamut included only diatonic or natural notes, with the exception of Bb. These notes are musica recta or musica vera, correct or true music, all the notes needed for medieval modes. (For more on modes, click here and go to the subheading, Medieval modes.)
By the early 14th century, general rules had developed among church singers to make some interval movements between voices sound smoother by sharpening or flattening one of the notes by a semitone. This practice was known as musica ficta or musica falsa – fictitious or false music. One of the earliest to write about musica ficta was James of Hesbaye, also known as Iacobus de Ispania, Jacques de Liège or Iacobus Leodiensis. In c. 1325 he wrote a treatise of seven books, Speculum musicae (Mirror of Music), the largest surviving medieval work of music theory. In Book II, Chapter 80, he noted that when two polyphonic voices sing notes moving to a unison, and the notes prior to the unison form a major third, singers prefer to alter the interval to a minor third: “And if two people sing at the same time, one la la la sol and the other la fa fa sol, does not the one descending to fa sing musica falsa? This singer would rather use not the major third but the minor third, because its voices more greatly please the ear.”
If we take James of Hesbaye’s example in the dorian mode, it would mean changing this diatonic interval relationship …
… to the musica ficta of sharpening fa, changing the major third to a minor third before the unison.
James of Hesbaye also observed singers’ preference to sing a major third before a fifth, employing musica ficta to make it so where a minor third was written (Book IV, Chapter 11). This means a written interval such as this …
… would be changed in practice to this:
Medieval polyphony was based on beginning with a resolved and stable interval – a unison, fifth or octave – then moving harmonically through the other unresolved and unstable intervals, back to stability at resolving cadences. Musica ficta means that some notes in written music were altered in practice, based on the principle of the closest approach from an unstable to a stable interval. Thus, if it was not already so in the written music, the movement between two voices of thirds to fifths or sixths to octaves would become major, and thirds to unisons or thirds to lower fifths would become minor, as illustrated below.
The influential French composer Philippe de Vitry (1291–1361) spoke for this ars nova or new art in music when he stated that musica ficta was “true and necessary”. Thus, by the time of Me lykyþ in the late 14th or early 15th century, it would have been common practice for singers to see the movement between the two voices in the red boxes below, written in the manuscript as the natural notes of the gamut, and change them in performance as follows. Click the soundfile below the music to hear it.
The musica ficta changes above are as follows.
Boxes 1, 2, 3 and 4: unstable minor 6th resolving to stable octave: sharpen the c’ to make a closer approach of major 6th to resolving octave.
Boxes 5, 6 and 7: There is also the question of whether to flatten the b in the tenor to remove the tritone between the b and f’ for musical smoothness. In the staff music and soundfile above, the b has been flattened for this reason in boxes 5 and 6. In box 5, there is an additional reason to flatten the b, as it leads to a stable octave between tenor and melody, so the b is flattened for the closest approach from an unstable to a stable interval, as is also the case in box 7.
To demonstrate the removal of the tritone, the soundfile below plays the phrase in box 6, from the beginning of the bar prior to the first time bar, first with the b in the tenor remaining natural and the tritone unchanged, then again with the b flattened and the tritone removed. (For more on the tritone and modern mythology about it, click here and go to the subheading, Claim 3: This is Gregorian notation.)
The music III: syllable placement
The precision of vertical syllable placement of words against notes in medieval music manuscripts is usually good, but there are exceptions. When syllables and notes are askew, it is easy to resolve in a song where each syllable of a song has one note, as there is only one possible solution. In Me lykyþ, often one syllable is sung over several notes (singularly called a melisma, plural melismata), resulting in more than one possible solution if the syllable placement against notes was not clear. As we see below, the scribe of Me lykyþ made a concerted and successful effort to make plain to singers exactly which syllable is sung to which note by precise vertical alignment.
In modern notation:
Me lykyþ is written in two parts, a melody over a slower-moving tenor. As we have seen, the use of melismata means the melody has more notes than syllables. Do the fewer notes of the tenor also fit the syllables, indicating a song for two voices?
As we see below, if we think of the melody as two sections, the through-section and the repeat-section, the tenor notes of the through-section fit the words well, in most places one note per syllable. The syllables do not always fit the notes in the same places as the melody, but this is not unusual in medieval and renaissance polyphonic music. Viewing only the through-section, we might believe this is a song for two voices. That idea is dispelled by the repeat-section, in which there are not sufficient notes in the tenor to carry all the words, as indicated by the left-over red text in the first and second time bars. We can only conclude that this is a song for one voice, or multiple voices in unison, with the tenor played by an instrument.
The music IV: accompaniment
In common with all medieval manuscripts, the instrument isn’t indicated but left to the player to decide, so the instrument or instruments used by the singers at Winchester College isn’t known.
In the video which begins this article (also available by clicking here), I choose the symphonie (the Anglo-Norman, Old French and Middle High German name for the instrument), also called the organistrum (Latin), simfonia (Latin, Castilian), sinfonye (Middle English), chiphonie, chifonie (Old French), symfenyge (Middle Low German), ciunfonie or sampogna (Italian). For fullness of sound, the symphonie has the additional advantage of playing, along with the tenor, two accompanying drones at the finalis and fifth. Due to the range of the symphonie, the tenor is played an octave above the pitch in the manuscript.
the Virgin, Adderbury, Oxfordshire, carved c. 1340–50. Photograph © Ian Pittaway.
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Diatonic medieval instruments like the symphonie, psaltery and harp raise questions about the practical and historical performance of musica ficta. A singer can sing any note at will, and a chromatic instrument such as a recorder, lute or gittern can play all semitones within its range. On a diatonic harp, musica ficta is possible by fretting, pressing the string against the wood just below the tuning pin to raise the note by a semitone (as this article on historical harp practice explains under the subheading, Scordatura: transposition and musica ficta). Polyphony is lost for the fretted note on a harp, as it requires both hands, one to press the string, the other to pluck it, which limits its application. There is evidence that some late psalteries had various means of playing ficta, either by adding extra strings or by fretting (as this article explains under the subheading, The development of the psaltery 1: Berkeley, Memling, Albani and Girolamo), but this appears to have been the exception on the psaltery. On a diatonic symphonie, a note cannot be made ficta by any means. Practically, for Me lykyþ, this means the note bb in the tenor line is available as there is a key for it, bb being part of the gamut; but there is no key for the ficta c#’ in the melody line. Thus c#’ can be sung when the symphonie is playing the tenor, but c#’ is not available when the symphonie is playing the melody, so c♮’must be played. Historically, such practical questions about the performability of musica ficta on diatonic instruments must also have faced 14th and 15th century musicians.
Social context and song
Some sources of early music give important internal clues about performance context and, where they do, they can help us make more complete sense of the music. The evidence for Me lykyþ leads us in two contextual directions.
First, what appears at first to be an oddity of a song in Me lykyþ, praising Winchester like an advertisement for the city, turns out to be comprehensible when viewed as part of the life of Winchester College, with the scribe being Winchester College Fellow, Thomas Turke; one song source in the Winchester manuscript being Edmund, the choristers’ instructor and chapel clerk; and the social setting being Bishop William Longe’s statutes for wholesome communal after-meal entertainment.
Second, the song raises the question of historical performance for players of diatonic instruments. Were pieces with musica ficta played only on instruments with the necessary ficta notes; or were such pieces also played on diatonic instruments, but without the added condiment of ficta? In the medieval period, there is no indication of any particular instrument to play a piece of music, so the answer can only be guessed or inferred.
© Ian Pittaway. Not to be reproduced in any form without permission. All rights reserved.
Bibliography
Cross, Lucy E. (2000) Musica ficta. In: Duffin, Ross W. A Performer’s Guide to Medieval Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Dobson, E. J. & Harrison, F. Ll. (1979) Medieval English Songs. London: Faber and Faber.
Harrison, Frank Ll. (1958) Music in Medieval Britain. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Pittaway, Ian (2015) The Psilvery Psound of the Psaltery: a brief history. Available online by clicking here.
Pittaway, Ian (2018) Performing medieval music. Part 2/3: Turning monophony into polyphony. Available online by clicking here.
Pittaway, Ian (2022) The medieval harp (3/3): performance practice. Available online by clicking here.
Rastall, Richard (1973) A Fifteenth-Century Song Book. Cambridge University Library Add. MS 5943 made in facsimile. Leeds: Boethius Press.
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Rickert, Edith & Naylor, L. J. (transl.) (1908) The Babees’ Book. Mediæval Manners for the Young Now first done into Modern English from The Texts of Dr. F. J. Furnivall. London: Chatto & Windus. Available online by clicking here.
Schulter, Margo (2002) Hexachords, solmization, and musica ficta. Available online by clicking here.