As Joan Abela argues cogently in the following pages, the history of early modern Malta can truly be regarded as the epitome of the history of the Mediterranean. This authoritative and lively portrait of Maltese society and economy introduces us to a complex and diverse world in the midst of transformation. It opens exciting new areas of investigation, and is an impressive contribution to the new historiographical approach to Mediterranean history, which focuses on interaction and crossfertilisation between different customary and legal traditions. Abela's detailed and lucid analysis brings into focus how the establishment of the Hospitaller Order in the Maltese archipelago gave rise to important structural transformations – in terms of administration, the economy and society. For the first time, the maritime economy of Malta is the focus of a sharp and comprehensive analysis which takes all these elements into account and produces a nuanced portrait of the socio-economic development of a heavily militarised society, a distinct frontier world where a crusading mission co-existed with conspicuous consumption and the challenges of provisioning an arid land which was experiencing a veritable demographic boom.

The real protagonist of this book is the population of Malta itself; not the wellknown Knights of St John, the offspring of European Catholic nobility, but the local notables, merchants, seafarers and those small-scale entrepreneurs of both sexes who responded to epochal challenges with remarkable resilience and inventiveness. Joan Abela effectively demonstrates how the Maltese population, confronted with the arrival of new ‘masters’, found ways to negotiate their institutional and social role within this new balance of power; how they successfully took advantage both of the islands’ strategic value vis-a-vis the Barbary regencies and of the multi-faceted economic opportunities afforded by the arrival of the Knights. The socio-economic consequences of corsairing activities – the foundation of the Order's existence in the fractured sixteenth-century Mediterranean – are also discussed, but with a particular focus on the ways in which, paradoxically, they gave women a greater capacity for independent action, given the men's constant exposure to the threat of captivity and relative absence from the islands.

This exciting research work builds on the recent opening of Malta's Notarial Archive to scholars and the general public, itself a wonderful story of collaborative endeavour on the part of the community to preserve its historical heritage through the establishment of a private-public partnership.

Relatively little has been written about urban history as a medieval genre in Britain, mainly because there are few examples of chronological histories of individual towns in Britain before the late seventeenth century. This chapter makes a new contribution to medieval urban historiography by proposing a redefinition of what urban history was and what forms it took in medieval Britain, and by arguing that there has in fact been a continuous, if diverse, tradition of urban history from Bede to the modern period. In presenting the evidence for a continuous tradition, the chapter takes a new look at the influence of classical and Italian urban historical genres on British writing, particularly the genre of chorography, which is repositioned here as a form of urban history.

By ‘urban history’ I mean a diachronic historical survey of a town or city over a period of time – not simply synchronic studies of a town or aspects of urban life at particular historical moments. As a modern genre, the diachronic type of urban history in the form of civic or municipal histories of individual towns and cities is essentially an eighteenth- century phenomenon in Britain. The emergence of chronological histories of British towns can be linked to a move towards increased autonomy in urban governance, the growth of commerce and trade and the development of distinctive civic identities in the larger towns. With the growth of tourism, urban histories were commodified to appeal both to the citizens of the town and to the outsiders who might choose to visit it. From the twentieth century, urban history has been absorbed into, or rather overshadowed by, a wider field of urban studies which concerns itself particularly with economics, planning, population growth, demographics and geographies of urban space. Yet urban history, as distinct from the social history of urban life, retains its distinctiveness in producing accounts of the city as a ‘historicized subject’: ‘The urban historian considers the multiple variables that together constitute the city as both a historicized subject and an object for historical study. The city is thus accorded an agency in its own construction and synthesis.’

❧ An Institutional Peak? Sacred Polyphony Before the Reformation

MUSIC, even folksinging, only happens with institutional support. Performers need to learn, to teach, to join together, and to network, acquiring or exchanging artefacts as well as experience. Audiences need gathering places and occasions, agreement as to how and when these should be activated, and frameworks within which they are willing to pay with their money or with their effort to hear music, doing so to a set of shared and understood values that render the experience worthwhile for them. Beyond private patronage and individual enterprise, the institutions facilitating and regulating these equations have been the Church, the military and civil authorities, educational establishments, and the entertainment industry. They have sustained music in places where one worships, where one prepares to fight or consolidate one's citizenship, where one learns, and where one enjoys oneself. The music may be subsidiary to some other institutional function (a church service, a march, a civic procession, a ball, a show), or may be an end in itself, as with concerts, musical interludes in theatres, and singing in pubs. This chapter will examine the Church, educational establishments, and entertainment networks (including broadcasting) as institutional providers. The military and civil authorities have already been considered in the context of bands in chapter 3, although the development of municipal orchestras requires separate treatment here, providing as it does the touchstone for the aspirations and limitations of regional musical culture in the case of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

By far the most pervasive musical institution in any English region, over a period of hundreds of years, has been the Church. Greatly disrupted as its musical provision was at the Reformation, and again during the Civil War and Commonwealth, its provision of cathedrals was never entirely lost, indeed was enhanced when the Augustinian abbey in Bristol was suppressed and its church became the city's ‘new foundation’ cathedral. (Bath Abbey was the new name for what had already been a monastic cathedral, Bath Priory. The other three mediaeval cathedrals in the west country, Exeter, Salisbury, and Wells, were ‘secular’, i.e. they lacked a community of monks.)

Honored Sir

You are by his Majestys expresse Command to send a Messenger for the Partys named in this inclosed, and to send such a Messenger as you can trust, and will be able to bringe him safe. And when he comes up, you must be sure to laye him safe until his Majestys pleasure be farther knowne. Soe in great hast I leave you to Gods grace and rest

Your Honours very lovinge Frend

W: Cant:

Whitehall September 3. 1639

For the Right Honourable Mr Secretary Windebanke. these.

Two distinct polyphonic settings of Deus in adiutorium intende laborantium hold places of prominence in various late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century motet collections. One or both of these settings, notated in score, commonly appear either at the very beginning of a codex or rotulus, or at the beginning of a fascicle. The first of the two settings (hereafter Deus in adiutorium intende I) opens the first fascicle of Mo. It is based on a pre-existing liturgical trope melody, to which it adds two upper voices. The other setting (hereafter Deus in adiutorium intende II), which opens Mo 8, does not appear to use pre-existing chant material. It starts with a cauda and presents newly composed material – typical features of the conductus. How did Deus in adiutorium intende laborantium become such a characteristic opening piece? Or, in Emma Dillon's words, ‘Why was material both stylistically and functionally distinct from the main body deemed a fitting opening?’

While the choice of the different three-part settings of Deus in adiutorium intende in Mo 1 and Mo 8 led Yvonne Rokseth to argue for the eighth fascicle having originally been an independent manuscript,4 Dillon considers this choice to be central to the devotional framework of the whole codex. In her monograph The Sense of Sound, she sees the opening folio of Mo's first fascicle as ‘a miniature devotional exercise, readying the reader to embark on prayer’. The reappearance of the same trope in a different setting at the beginning of the last fascicle completes this experience.

Dillon emphasizes the ‘new media of prayer books’ flourishing during the middle of the thirteenth century. She discusses various examples of books of hours, many of which open with the (untroped) versicle Deus in adiutorium meum intende. This approach, however, does not differentiate clearly enough between the two different instantiations of Deus in adiutorium meum intende and its trope Deus in adiutorium intende laborantium, nor does it take a closer look at the connections between motet collections and books of hours. Thus, Dillon's statement that Deus in adiutorium ‘serves a bibliographic function’ and has a ‘meditative potential – as a ruminative space’ remains slightly vague. More importantly, the geographical patterns of transmission of the different polyphonic settings, as well as the monophonic trope on which one of the two settings is based, have been neglected in this discourse and are considered in more detail in this article.

THE later parts of the Montpellier codex are fascinating in so many ways. First of all, the complexity of exactly how these later parts – the seventh fascicle, the two appendices or supplements for the seventh fascicle, and the eighth fascicle – relate to each other is in itself a conundrum; second, these later fascicles and their supplements effortlessly hurdle the entirely false chronological barrier of 1300 erected by the term ‘thirteenth-century motet’; and, third, the later parts of the manuscript contain such a profusion, an abundance, a cornucopia, of different types of work. This essay brings together for the first time answers to the most important questions that might be asked about Mo 8. Some of these relate to topics addressed elsewhere in this volume, but in most other cases, sketching out the questions and drafting answers is this essay's purpose. The title of this chapter could well allude to Otto Preminger's 1959 classic film Anatomy of a Murder, with a stellar performance by James Stewart and an equally stellar score by Duke Ellington and Billy Strahorn, music that has been recognized for its effective alignment of various strands in Ellington's late oeuvre. Alternatively, it might reference the 2006 album The Anatomy of by the thrash metal band Between the Buried and Me, which covers more than a dozen classics from Pink Floyd, through King Crimson and Metallica, to The Smashing Pumpkins and Counting Crows. But actually, anatomy, tout court, describes what Mo 8 needs, as well as defining music that brings various traditions into alignment and that provides, in some cases, ‘covers’ of medieval classics: disassembling the component parts of the corpus and setting them out on a stainless steel dissecting table – a tenor here, a refrain there, a group of ‘Petronian’ semibreves over there – at which a dispassionate look may be taken, and of which some sense can begin to be made.

Recent work on the subject of the history of Mo in its entirety has shown that Robert Branner's 1977 re-shading of Friedrich Ludwig and Yvonne Rokseth's views remains largely accepted. Ludwig and Rokseth – for different reasons and probably independently – proposed that the first six fascicles of the manuscript constituted its corpus ancien or alte Corpus, while the seventh fascicle was later and the eighth even later still, perhaps as late as the early fourteenth century.

Revision is an intrinsic stage of the compositional process. Aside from the fortunate few who may write down a musical idea in polished form, composers constantly rework, refine and hone their material during the process of writing a new piece. This is not revelatory; and yet the status of a musical work, once premiered or published, changes. The present chapter considers two of Hindemith's revised works through the lens of his compositional development and theoretical re-workings, in addition to evaluating their critical reception. Its investigation is made all the more enticing given the timing and substance of Hindemith's revisions. The two examples, Das Marienleben for soprano and piano (1923 and 1948) and Lieder nach alten Texten for SSATB choir (1923 and 1937–1938) were crucially written before Hindemith devoted his time to writing the Unterweisung, and then subsequently revised as a corollary of his theory. They therefore provide a unique opportunity to analyse the relationship of Hindemith's music theory to his compositional practice, not just as a prescriptive device, but as a corrective tool. Marienleben and Lieder are set apart from a composition such as the Ludus Tonalis, which was written with fresh, theoretical ideas in mind. The revisions may be understood as a comparison of instinctive versus systematic musical composition. Along the way, we need to bear in mind the fundamental distinction between revision as process, and the revision of published scores to produce a simultaneously accessible second version. A draft, and a publication, possess different statuses. The difference is key to understanding the mixed, tangled and sometimes abrasive reception of several of Hindemith's revised scores.

Similar to the Ludus Tonalis, the Marienleben cycle is a composition of noteworthy length and scope. That all of the songs in the cycle, which lasts approximately sixty minutes in performance, underwent revision offers an enormous array of musical data which can be analysed to further understand the relationship of Hindemith's music theory to his own compositional practice. A comparison of the two versions also helps to quantify the stylistic difference between Hindemith's early and later styles. Lieder nach alten Texten, of smaller design, is instructive as an unaccompanied choral work, which affords an opportunity to engage with the revisions to Hindemith's counterpoint, in a way not found in a composition for soprano and piano. Hindemith's treatment of cadences, in particular, is noteworthy.

Mye verye good Lord.

Upon Whitsondaye I receaved Leters from a frendlye hand at Barwick that 3500 of your Men wear sent for to augment the Kings forces. I Confess it shooke me Exceedinglye deeplye. But upon Whitson-Mundaye beinge June 3 I receaved your Lordships owne Leters, with Expression of your owne greef, for thiss accident. Mye Lord I love not to spend tyme in bemoninge, but thiss I’ll saye to you: Noe newes from thence hath trobed me soe much as thiss. I knowe the Kinge must be supplyed. But what on Gods-Name is the matter, that in all thiss tyme supplyes Could not be had but out of your Troapes, whear I Conceave the best service hath bin hitherto done?

The rest of your Lordships Leter is Couradge and Comfort togeather, but it Comes with such an (if) that I Cannot tell what to make of it. Confident I am you will doe your part, as far as soe manye, or rather as far as soe fewe men, as ar left with you Can act it. But great pitye it is your forces are divided from you.

Wee ar heare all quiett for the outsyde, but full of all Expectation, and with faction Enough. And mye penn itches to Express it self in some particulars, which worke upon mye spiritts. But I dare not send them to sea, nor shall they (God willinge) gett that power upon mye spiritts as to dull them in mye Masters service. Mye prayers you have, and mye service you shall have beinge

your Lordships most faythfull frend and humble servant.

W: Cant:

Lambeth. Junij. 4. 1639.

For the right Honourable the Lord Marquis Hamilton His Grace.

Mr. Attorney.

His Majestie out of his royall grace to the prosperous estate of his Universitye of Oxford is pleased to renew and confirme to them and theire successors theire former Charters and Priviledges with explanations and enlargements of some of theire auncient liberties together with additions of some new grants conteined under them; as also of some other new priveledges as by the particulars heretounto annexed may appeare; According unto which his Majesties pleasure is; That you prepare a Bill for his royall Signature with such further beneficiall clauses as you shall thinke fitt for the good of the said Universitye. And this shall bee your warrant in that behalf.

W: Cant:

January. 1. 1635

After my hearty Commendations etc.

I had hoped that my Commissioners in my late Metropolticall [sic] Visitation for those parts had taken so good Order in reforming abuses of all sorts that I should have heard of no further complaints, especially from that place which I wish so well, and sure I am there wanted no Care nor directions on my part to that purpose. Nevertheless since that time I have been inform’d of some things amiss at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in Glouster whereof ye are Governors and that this may be the better amended for the future. These are to Will and require you to send me up by the beginning of Michaelmas Term next at the furthest the Books themselves or at least a True Copy of the several Orders there, Whether new or old that upon Sight and consideration had of them I may take such further Course as shall be fitting for the good and Settlement of the place. So not doubting of your care herein I leave you to God's Grace and rest

your loving Friend

Lambeth June the 4th. 1636.

To my loving Friends the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Gloucester and to the Governors of the Hospital of Saint Bartholomew there These

MONTPELLIER 8's motet On parole/A Paris/FRESE NOUVELE (Mo 8,319, fols 368v–369v) is an intriguing polytextual work with an equally intriguing performance history. It has caught the imagination of many musicians who have explored the various performance possibilities suggested by the text.

The written personal communication of Thurston Dart offers a unique opportunity to understand how his performance of this particular motet was planned and executed in the late 1960s. It also suggests ways in which his opinion influenced some of the first performances to be recorded. ‘Make the music sound robust now and again’ was Dart's advice to Michael Morrow and his ensemble Musica Reservata. Little did Dart know just quite how literally these young musicians would take him at his word. For Musica Reservata, On parole/A Paris/FRESE NOUVELE required an almost military approach to rhythmic drive, resulting in a highly organized market-traders’ cacophony, whereas in Dart's own conception this street scene unfolded across the newly available stereophonic soundscape of late 1960s LP technology. As Emma Dillon explains, the attraction of On parole/A Paris/FRESE NOUVELE is that it ‘offers us a rare instance where the city itself is the topic of the motet’. Through this urban prism Dart (re)constructed a vision of medieval Paris which made sense in his modern world, and subsequent performances reacted to his historical imagination.

This paper explores the first four recordings of this evocative motet, with particular emphasis on the circumstances surrounding Dart's much-delayed album, and probes the musicological climate behind each. With reference to the influential work of Yvonne Rokseth, it asks how much these performances say about the changing twentieth-century sense of the medieval and what they suggest about the changing musicological approaches to the famous Montpellier codex itself.

Central to understanding these performances is the tenor voice whose melody and words appear to preserve a street cry:

Such is the musicological temptation to seek the evanescent traces of folk practice in secular motet voices that performers have been tempted to approach this motet as an orchestrated song collected from the street: the ‘Jesus’ Blood’ of its day, if you will. Yet might this tenor voice parody, rather than preserve, a well-known cry or cries of its day by making humorous the fruit vendor whose singing is steady enough to create a motet tenor?

Salutem in Christo

My very good Lord.

This inclosed was deliverd me by a poore old Minister, but what his Offence hath been more then is suggested in the Petition I cannot tell. And therfore in regard of his Age and wantes, I have written these few lines, and doe hartily pray your Lordship if his Errors have been noe other then is here sett downe, to take him into your consideration, and to doe what you shall thinke fitting for him by setling him in his former poore Place as is desired, or any where else, that he may spend the short remainder of his life with some comfort, and be bound to pray for your Lordship. Soe I leave him to you, and your selfe to Gods grace, resting

Your Lordships very lovinge Freind and Brother.

W: Cant:

Lambeth. May. 12. 1636

To the right Reverend Father in God, my very good Lord and Brother, the Lord Bishop of Chester. these

Salutem in Christo.

After my verie hartie commendations.

you cannot but take notice of his Majesties most honourable and pious intention, for the Repaire of the decayes of St Pawles Church, here in London, being the Mother Church of this Citty and Diocess, and the greate Cathedrall of this Kingdome. A greate dishonour it is not onely to this Citty, but to the whole State to see that Auncient and goodly Pyle of building soe decayed as it is, but it will be a farr greater, if care should not be taken to prevent the fall of it into ruin. And it would be noe lesse disgrace to Religion happily established in this Kingdome, if it should have soe litle power over the mindes of men, as not to prevaile with them to keepe those eminent places of Gods service in due and decent repaire which their Forefathers buylt in tymes, by their owne confession, not soe full of the full of the knowledge of gods truth, as this present Age is. I am not ignorant how many worthy workes have bene done of late, in, and about this Citty towards the building the building and repayring of Churches, which makes me hope that every mans purse will open to this greate and necessary worke (according to Gods blessinge upon him) soe much tending to the service of God and the honour of this nation. The generall body of the Cittye have done verie worthily in theyr bounty allready, as alsoe the lord Maiour, Aldermen, and Sheriffes severally for their owne persons. Theis are therefore accordinge to theire examples hartily to pray and desire you, the Maister, Wardeins, and other Assistants of the worthy Company of Barbar Surgions, to contribute out of your publike Stock to the worke aforesaid, what you, out of your Charitye and devosion shall thinke fitt, and to pay the Summe resolved on by you into the Chamber of London, at or before our Lady Day next, praying you that I may receave by any servant of your Companye, a note what the Summe is, which you resolve to give. And for this Charity of yours whatsoever it shall prove to be, I shall not onely give you harty thankes but be as ready to serve you, and every of you, as you are to serve God and his Church.

In the years following Richard II's deposition by his cousin Henry IV, rumours concerning his survival were in abundance. As Simon Walker has observed, these were ‘nourished in the fertile ground of prophetic speculation’. Certainly, this was a period of considerable prophetic activity, and I suggest that the rumour of Richard's return may, at least in one of its earliest forms, owe a considerable debt to contemporary prophecy. I refer to the claims of a number of Franciscan friars in the years 1401–2, who prophesied the old king's return to do battle against the new. The details of this prophetic activity survive only as shadowy allusions in contemporary chronicles, but there is a distinctive politicalliterary context on which we might draw to understand the uses of prophecy among the English Franciscans during this period.

This chapter considers Franciscan, and broader monastic, English engagements with prophetic texts inspired by the prophetic exegeses of Joachim of Fiore, the twelfth-century Calabrian abbot and founder of the monastery of San Giovanni. This material blurred the division between the sacred and secular, and gave ecclesiastical authors a mechanism through which they might withstand tyrants and hail imperial heroes. A prophetic vogue that began in southern Italy during the early thirteenth century, political Joachite texts circulated across Europe, and, I suggest, came to determine the shape of political involvements among the English Franciscans in the troubled years of the early fifteenth century. This is an important period in the history of English political prophecy: during these years the earliest legislation against the dissemination of political prophecies was introduced, in 1402, and again in 1406. Although the wording of these laws suggests that they were directed against the Welsh in 1402, and in 1406 against the Lollards (whose own engagements with prophecy remain obscure), they might be more fully understood as a response to a broader contemporary prophetic oppositional vogue, a movement in which the Franciscans stood front and centre.

The return rumour

The rumour of Richard's return appears to have first taken root among Franciscan friars in Norfolk towards the end of 1401 or early 1402, and reappeared in the spring of 1402 at a number of houses in the English Midlands, at Aylesbury, Leicester and Northampton. The fullest account of the trials of friars charged with the dissemination of the rumour is preserved in the first continuation of the Eulogium historiarum.