In an article that appeared in a recent issue of this journal, William J. Summers presented an extensive discussion of a fragmentary fourteenth-century polyphonic setting of a Latin poem, beginning Generosi germinis (Bodleian Library, Dept. Deeds, Christ Church, C.34/D.R.3∗, f. Bv). His conclusion that this is an offertory setting, however, seems to be less clear-cut than he proposes.

As a last-minute postscript to his Music & Poetry in the Early Tudor Court, John Stevens gave what he called a ‘preliminary report’ on a group of nine fragmentary song leaves that Thurston Dart had found in the New York Public Library. They were binding pastedowns in the seventeenth-century English partbooks copied by John Merro, Drexel MSS 4180–5. Since then some of these leaves have been used in various editions, and they have had their place in discussions of the Shakespearean ‘Willow song’ and of John Taverner's music. But they have not received any further study either as a group or in the context of other early Tudor sources. This was perhaps to be expected: a major book often leaves the impression that further work on the topic will have little to contribute; and it must be a disappointment to John Stevens as much as to anyone else that so little has been written on early Tudor song since he published his brilliant study in 1961. Even so, if fragments often yield their secrets less easily than complete manuscripts they sometimes tell us rather more; and besides, we occasionally find that a fragment is not as isolated as it now looks.

The ‘Gyffard’ partbooks (British Library, Add. MSS 17802–5) are perhaps the most important source of Tudor sacred music of the mid-sixteenth century, for unlike the only other collection that could reasonably lay claim to that title—the Henrician partbooks at Peterhouse, Cambridge—they have survived intact. Just six of Gyffard's 94 pieces have contemporary concordances, and only three of these are wholly straightforward. Taverner's Western Wind Mass (no. 24) turns up again in John Sadler's partbooks; two voices only of Redford's Christus resurgens (no. 58) are found in Tenbury MS 389 and its companion, the James part-book; and Van Wilder's Pater noster (no. 6) is printed in Susato's Liber quartus ecclesiasticarum cantionum quatuor vocum (Antwerp, 1554). Two of the three problematic items appear to be four-part reworkings of what were originally five-voice pieces. Taverner's Dum transisset (no. 61) appears a5 in both the Dow and Baldwin partbooks; Johnson's Gaude Maria Virgo (no. 85) is found in its five-part version, though textless, in British Library, Add. MS 31390; finally, a fragment of Tye's Western Wind Mass resurfaces in British Library, Add. MSS 18936–9, attributed to ‘Alphonsus’. There are therefore at least 88 unica in Gyffard—a significantly higher proportion than in any other contemporary source of comparable size. Our knowledge of the state of English sacred polyphony on the eve of the Reformation is heavily dependent on these partbooks, for they preserve a representative cross-section of liturgical genres by a wide range of composers encompassing the great and the obscure.

The archives of the Inns of Court have been described as ‘a historical no-man's land’, occasionally dipped into only by ‘antiquaries’ on the one hand and ‘domestic chroniclers’ on the other. To these two categories might be added theatre-historians and musicologists, since we have long known that many of the leading playwrights of the Tudor-Stuart period were members of the Inns, and that their colleagues there were prodigious consumers as well as producers of music, dance and drama. Yet it has been difficult to reach any accurate conclusions about the archival evidence in the Inns because it has never been published in editions that are both reliable and complete.

René of Anjou (1409–80) was a major figure in the French royal family in the fifteenth century. He inherited some of his titles and lands from his brother Louis III, held previously by his father Louis II and grandfather Louis I (the second son of John II, King of France). But marriage and politics had also increased the wealth and power of the Angevins, adding to the Dukedom of Anjou the Dukedoms of Lorraine and of Bar, the County of Provence, the Kingdoms of Sicily and of Naples, and the title of King of Jerusalem. In the later phases of the Anglo-French conflicts of the fifteenth century René initially supported the Anglo-Burgundian alliance, but later (by 16 July 1429) he transferred his allegiance to the French crown. Captured by the Burgundians at the Battle of Bulgneville on 2 July 1431, he was held prisoner at Dijon until 1437. He was granted provisional liberty between 1432 and 1434, and again in 1435, and was finally released in 1437 after payment of a large ransom.

… as they say in Germany, ‘in music, Cherubini is a hundred years ahead of us’. trans. from Correspondance des Arrwteurs musiciens, 8 October 1803

Attitudes to Cherubini have been affected by the knowledge that his most important operas had scant success in Paris after 1800. This lack of a continuous French performing tradition has encouraged the feeling that they were perhaps unviable or unattractive. It is not one shared by the author of a substantial dissertation on Cherubini, Stephen C. Willis; but Willis's work was focussed on the composer rather than his operas’ reception. In fact, neither the performance history nor reception of these five main works has apparently, until now, been investigated. They are: Démophoon (text by J. F. Marmontel, Paris Opéra, 2 December 1788); Lodoïska (C. F. Fillette, or ‘Fillette Loraux’, 18 July 1791); Eliza, ou Le voyage aux glaciers du Mont St Bernard, J. A. Révéroni St-Cyr, 13 December 1794); Médée (F. B. Hoffman, 13 March 1797); and Les Deux journées (J. N. Bouilly, 16 January 1800). The last four were all produced at the Théâtre Feydeau. A properly detailed account of Cherubini's involvement at this theatre must be reserved for another occasion: part of the ignorance surrounding the genesis of these extraordinary operas lies simply in the fact than no history of the Feydeau has been written. Cherubini produced two comedies at the Feydeau which were unsuccessful and are not considered here: L'Hôtellerie portugaise (25 July 1798) and La Punition (23 February 1799).