It is possible to attach too much significance to the names of both the hypakoae and the prokeimena. The word ‘hypakoe’ means ‘respond’, but this by itself does not mean that the Byzantine hypakoae were chants that derived from responsorially performed psalms (even though that is what they may ultimately have been), for the name might well refer simply to a responsorial method of singing them which, evidence suggests, prevailed between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.

The extent to which the surviving sources can demonstrate the cultivation and consumption of the music of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries differs for each of the genres represented in them. Thus although the versions of the so-called Magnus liber organi contained in the three principal ‘Notre-Dame’ sources are sufficiently different to suggest that in a critical edition they should be edited separately, they are similar enough to allow us to infer a certain amount about the origins and cultivation of the music.

Two recently discovered manuscripts have shed new light on chant cultivation at Egmond Abbey during the late Middle Ages. Together with the only previously known chant source from the abbey, these enable us to reconstruct the hitherto unknown Office of its patron saint, Adalbert (25th of June). Palaeographic details, moreover, provide new insights into the significance of Egmond as a centre of chant cultivation.

The foregoing quotation from an epitaph in the church of St Nicholas Olave, Queenhithe, summarizes most of what we know about the career of John Blitheman (c. 1525–91), one of the composers of keyboard plainsong settings represented in the so-called Mulliner Book, compiled probably in London sometime between the mid-1550s and about 1570. All but one of Blitheman's surviving keyboard works is contained in this manuscript.

The study of chant is perhaps at a turning point, with scholars pausing to consolidate recent gains before seeking to move forward once again. One sign of this is the large number of honorific and celebratory volumes devoted to chant studies, including the new Festschrift for Helmut Hucke.