English Saints Offices

Edited by David Hiley: publication expected 2024. With thanks to the British Academy's Small Research Grants scheme.

This edition will comprise the cycles of liturgical chants composed for English saints, complemented by two cycles composed in England for non-English saints. Twenty-seven offices are known, 21 in complete form, six only in fragmentary sources. Four of the offices are known only from neumed sources (and facsimiles of the originals should be considered for these).

Each cycle comprises around 30 chants (typically 17 antiphons and 9 responsories for the secular or cathedral cursus, 21 antiphons and 12 responsories for the monastic cursus), so that an edition of roughly 600 chants is envisaged.

The date of composition of the offices extends from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, the majority being of the eleventh century (nine) and the twelfth (eight). Their Latin texts employ not only prose but also hexameters and other classical metres, and (from the late twelfth century) regular rhyming, rhythmic verse. Altogether they form a very significant body of newly-composed liturgical chant, which often contrasts strongly in melodic style with ‘classical Gregorian’ layers of the repertory of ecclesiastical chant. Some offices are more conservative in this respect, others strikingly new.

The main purpose of the proposed edition is to present this body of unknown or little known chant in a critical edition appropriate for comparative historical, liturgical, literary and musical analysis. More extended studies of individual offices may follow in due course, but the prime necessity in the present state of research is simply to make the chants available.