Medieval carols: Origins, forms, and performance contexts.

Abstract

Late medieval carols have long been thought to descend from the <italic> carole</italic>, inheriting name and form from secular dance songs, but this study demonstrates that was not the case. Products of an ecclesiastical culture that was international in its outlook, carols drew on many text and music antecedents including hymns, <italic>Benedicamus</italic> substitutes, antiphons, and earlier polyphonic carols, as well as lullabies, themes of popular preaching, and vernacular prayers. Functions varied similarly. Prior scholarship shows that some were sung as accompaniments to feasting, in church processions, in place of the Office <italic>Benedicamus</italic>, and in preaching on the Passion. This study proposes additional performance contexts: as accretions or substitutes in the Ladymass, in connection with preaching on moralizing themes, and as interpolations in Corpus Christi plays. The carol corpus is parsed systematically in terms of source types, Latin and English-language antecedents, and subject. This enables, for the first time, the identification of distinct strata. Various kinds of carols were associated with particular source types, and copied at different times. Their emergence and subsequent transmission patterns provide evidence of function, intended audience, and relative popularity. This dissertation has eight chapters, the first of which casts doubt on the carol's putative descent from the <italic>carole</italic>. Chapter 2 draws on competing theories advanced in previous scholarship demonstrating the need for an approach taking into account multiple origins and performance contexts. The remaining chapters develop and demonstrate the value of this approach. Chapter 3 categorizes carols according to chronology and source type, bringing to light information embedded in the manuscript and printed contexts. A methodology is developed in Chapter 4 for tracing proximate antecedents of carols. This is applied in Chapters 5 and 6 to assess Latin and English-language antecedents respectively. Chapter 7 identifies four main musical forms in the fifteenth-century repertoire, including a strophic-influenced form hitherto unnoticed. Finally, Chapter 8 examines two carol families that demonstrate the multiplicity of antecedents associated with this genre, as well as its connections to compositional practices used internationally, rather than in a limited insular context.