It is but fair to say that while this canon may owe its origin to the principles of the Gallo-Belgic school, it stands alone as an article of historical interest to the musician. Nowhere on the Continent has a work of equal importance of so early a date been brought to view. Mr. Wm. Chappell, the English antiquarian, brought to light several other productions of early English composers, including a hymn in English, scored for two voices, and another in Latin, for three voices. The manuscript has been definitely attributed to the middle of the 13th century. There can be little doubt that when so many monasteries, with their treasures of learning, were suppressed and their inmates scattered, in the time of Henry VIII, owing to the national change from the Romish faith, many valuable manuscripts that would today have the utmost interest to the musical historian were destroyed.
Old English Canon “Sumer Is Icumen In.”
Whether this is purely English or not matters little, for it is a fine specimen and exemplifies Walter Odington’s rule for the construction of a Roundel, cited in a former lesson. This is more than a mere roundel, having not only a little Inversion and much Imitation, managed in a most ingenious manner, but also the whole canon is founded on a ground bass in two parts, themselves in canonic form. This bass consists of the regulation metrical form as seen at A and the following two measures, has one measure forming a connecting passage, thus bringing in the portion marked B which is the same as A only a fifth higher; the whole forms a remarkable evidence of an early conception of the relation of the Tonic and Dominant, hardly to be believed. This metrical form is introduced, slightly changed and inverted, in the upper voices at A and B. The first voice states in all five melodies and the other voices follow at intervals of 4, 8, and 12 measures; in ending voice number two omits part of theme V, voice number three all of it and voice number four all of V and the imitation of the metrical bass.
Outside this one example, England produced little but moderately good polyphonic music in the form of motets and madrigals, and in the time of Gibbons and Purcell, sonatas and operas. There were also anthems, the old plain chant and much Folk-music, but nothing that can be considered as important. The Folk-music is all that can claim originality, and that ranks favorably with the best examples of other nations and is, indeed, in advance of that of other nations considered more musical.