shredsandpatches:skeleton-richard:ooldtunes:One of the world’s most famous medieval music manuscript
shredsandpatches:skeleton-richard:ooldtunes:One of the world’s most famous medieval music manuscripts, Harley 978, is now available in full online on the British Library’s Digitised Manuscripts site. Written in 13th-century England, and belonging at one stage to the monks of Reading Abbey, the book in question contains the fables of Marie de France and the poems of Walter Map plus, most importantly to musicologists, the Middle English canon “Sumer is icumen in”, written in square notation on a five-line red stave. The manuscript also contains medical texts and recipes and a glossary of herbs, and for that reason was included in our Harley Science Project. “Sumer is icumen in” is found on f. 11v of Harley MS 978.@arundels I find something incredibly moving about this song: it ends with an encouragement to the cuckoo, “ne swik thu naver nu” (don’t ever stop), and 700 years later we still sing the song. He never has. -- source link
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