Untitled

'ENGLISH DESCANT* 351
years no confirmatory evidence was forthcoming, and as a result
some scholars, led by Wooldridge, began to be suspicious of the fact.
But from the publication of the Worcester manuscripts in 1928
onwards many dozens of specimens have been placed on record. The
geographical position of Worcester links up with one of the most
familiar passages in the medieval treatises, where Anonymus IV
gives an early recognition of the third as a consonant interval:
Ditonus et semiditonus non sic reputantur. Tamen apud organistas
optimos et prout in quibusdam terris, sicut in Anglia, in patria quae
dicitur Westcuntre, optimae concordantiae dicuntur, quoniam apud tales
magis sunt in usu. 1
(The major and minor third do not rank thus [i.e. as perfect concords] : though
with the best composers and moreover in certain countries such as England, in
the region known as the West Country, they are held to be excellent con
sonances, for they are more frequently used by such composers.)
While Worcester still seems to be the most prolific source, other places
have produced specimens, e.g. Bury St. Edmunds, Tattershall in
Lincolnshire (the probable original home of Brit. Mus. Sloane 1210),
and the unknown places in which Brit. Mus. Arundel 14 and many
fly-leaves at Cambridge (University Library and Caius College) were
written.
The form uses three voices and is essentially simple. A phrase is
sung in a succession of six-three chords, two, three, four, five, or more
in number, ending on an open fifth, the lowest voice falling a step
while the others rise:
(Blessed is the womb of the Virgin Mary.)
Ma - ri - ae vir - gi - nis
It will be noticed that in this example the melody is in the highest
voice. This feature is a novelty in the Worcester examples; and in
most of them the melody remains in the lowest part. Sometimes it
1 Coussemaker, Scriptores, i, p. 358.
* Worcester, Chapter Lib. Add. 68, xix a. Printed complete in Dom A. Hughes,
Worcester Mediceval Harmony (Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society, 1928), p. 108.
Recorded in The History of Music in Sound, ii, side 18.
etc.