The Heaven Singing I

Where should there be music in an anonymous English religious play of the fifteenth or sixteenth century? What sort of music should it be, and by what forces should it be performed? What clues are to be found in the place of music in the wider intellectual and artistic life of the late middle ages? In answering such questions, this study makes an important contribution towards understanding not only how music was used at the time of the plays' production, but also how it should be used in a modern production (taking in on the way medieval cosmology, construction of the plays, and boy actors, among many other subjects). The author considers the internal literary evidence of the play texts, the surviving notated music in the plays, the documentary evidence of their production and the cultural context in which the plays were performed: this latter section covers the representational and dynamic functions of music in the plays, the relationship between music, drama and liturgy, and the requirements for performers. Dr RICHARD RASTALL is Reader in Historical Musicology and Dean of the Faculty of Music, Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Leeds.