English Saints’ Offices: II

A major addition to the plainsong subseries of Early English Church Music, and the first tripartite collection of music in the edition, EC volumes 68–70 present transcriptions from over forty cycles of liturgical chants for the Office hours, in alphabetical listing and with English translations by Henry Howard, and comprising over 1,300 individual chants composed in England from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries. While the history and context of the veneration of saints has been extensively studied, the aim of these volumes, drawing on the lifetime’s expertise of the editor, is to enhance our knowledge of the melodies, to facilitate comparison between cycles, and to make possible a better appreciation of their character and relation both to one another and to older parts of the chant repertory. Augustine of Canterbury, Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, Edward the Confessor and Ermenhild of Ely are among the notable figures to be found in EC68, which also includes the authoritative editorial apparatus for the three volumes. There are notes on liturgical form, chronology and style, manuscript sources, performance of antiphons and responsories, and Susan Rankin’s account of the transcription of organal voices. Where the only known source of an office has neumatic notation, manuscript images are provided. Volumes II (EC69) and III (EC70) will be published in March and May 2026 respectively.