Here is the inauguration of a new subseries devoted to plainsong and monophony, edited by Magnus Williamson. If this first item in the series is any indication, subsequent volumes are eagerly to be anticipated. Early English Church Music has produced works designed for performance and works of scholarship, but scarcely ever has their publication provided both at the same time in the unique fashion present in these two volumes. On the one hand, this is a magnificent scholarly edition of the English Lady Mass including extensive historical information, while on the other hand, the music is placed in the context of liturgical practice and this in order to provide for an actual liturgical performance, ‘or enactment’, as the editor calls it – the actual celebration of a Sarum Lady Mass in all its details. Two volumes provide for different elements of a liturgical performance. The first, corresponding to the gradual, provides the choir with all the music they sing, and their rubrics (directions). The second, corresponding to the missal, provides the ministers (priest, deacon and subdeacon) with the music they must sing, together with rubrics for how they are actually to conduct the Mass.

A unique feature of the edition is that, unlike most editions of chant, it represents the usage of chant at a historical peak. The Sarum Use stems from the late twelfth century, but a high point was at the beginning of the sixteenth century, perhaps encouraged by the availability of printed liturgical books,Footnote ¹ just before the Reformation. At this point, the Lady Mass had been celebrated for over three hundred years in its own chapel at Salisbury as a Solemn High Mass – priest, deacon, subdeacon, acolyte, thurifer and two candlebearers, with a choir of thirteen voices, in plenum servitium – celebrated together with the Office of the Blessed Virgin, every day of the year except Good Friday and Holy Saturday (when there was no Mass). This was in addition to the conventual Mass and office in the cycle of the feasts of the liturgical year, celebrated in the principal choir of the cathedral, which included the traditional Marian Mass on Saturday in the choir, but only when it was not impeded by a higher-ranking feast (in which case, it was transferred to another day in the week, when possible). The present edition includes both the daily Mass in the Lady Chapel and the weekly Mass in the choir. The texts of the edition are based principally upon printed liturgical books, the gradual of 1527Footnote ² and the missal of 1528.

This edition is the result of a project of the actual recreation of a Lady Mass, undertaken by John Harper,Footnote ³ together with a team of specialists – musicians, liturgists, historians of both liturgy and music, clergy and more – at the University of Bangor in Wales in collaboration with Salisbury Cathedral, and described in an extensive collection of essays and a website supporting the project.Footnote ⁴

The first volume provides for the choir at Lady Masses in both Lady Chapel and choir. The introduction includes an extensive history of the Lady Mass by John Harper, beginning with a miraculous veiled image of the Blessed Virgin in Hagia Sophia in the fifth century and the declaration by the Council of Ephesus of the Theotokos (431), then confirmation by Pope Sergius (687–700) of four principal feasts that would ultimately be Marian feasts,Footnote ⁵ and with Alcuin's institution of weekly votive Masses, including a Mass of Our Lady on Saturdays (something that continues to this day when not impeded).

In England, beginning in the early tenth century, weekly Marian Masses were celebrated, especially in Benedictine houses; by the end of the tenth century, seasonal orders were instituted,Footnote ⁶ and by the end of the twelfth century, there were daily Marian Masses. The Propers of many of these Masses were often borrowed from Marian feast-day Masses and those of female saints, frequently using texts from Psalm 44 (45). By the mid-twelfth century, three different Benedictine Houses were celebrating a daily Marian Mass, and in at least two cases, the Masses were solemn (with priest, deacon and subdeacon), and in one case, the abbot presided regularly.

Salisbury Cathedral was moved from Old Fort Sarum to the plain below, where the new early English Gothic building was constructed (1220–58). The singing of a daily Marian Mass there was not secure until 1225, following the completion of the Trinity chapel, where the Mass was celebrated.Footnote ⁷ However, Harper posits considerable development at Old Sarum. The foundation of the liturgy there is always attributed to St Osmund and its development immediately before the move to the new cathedral to Richard Poore (dean, 1197–1214, bishop, 1217–28), but Harper proposes that the main work on the liturgy at Old Sarum was done by Bishop Jocelyn (1142–84), with Poore providing backup that was principally administrative. A reason to infer this is the substantial expansion of the cathedral at Old Sarum mid-century.

By 1225, a fully solemn Lady Mass was celebrated in the Trinity Chapel at the new cathedral every day of the year, regardless of what day it was celebrated in the choir; even Christmas and Easter were the occasion for these Lady Masses; the only interruption of this schedule was when one of the six feasts of the Blessed Virgin occurred; thus on the Assumption, the proper Mass of the Assumption was celebrated, rather than Salve sancte parens, with the rest of its texts, and this occurred throughout the octave of three of them.Footnote ⁸ Harper provides extensive tables, fourteen in all, illustrating all the proper texts of the liturgy in the various uses and their development. There are many concurrences between Salisbury and the other uses, from both Britain and the continent, and while there is still considerable variation from place to place, the concurrences are impressive. There are, however, three points of divergence of Salisbury from the other uses. In the Lady Masses, while the cycle of Propers remained essentially the same through the week as in other uses – the Masses for Advent Rorate caeli, for Christmastide Vultum tuum, and for most of the year Salve sancte parens – the alleluias and the sequences had a unique development at Salisbury: for the seasonal Propers, cycles of alleluias and sequences ran through the weekdays – while the same introit would be sung each day, a different alleluia and a different sequence would be sung each day of the week, some of these being prescribed, some being by choice. The chants for both cycles were drawn from the much larger repertory of the Sarum Use, all of them being found in the chants of the liturgical year in the choir. Uniquely, for the daily Mass, there was no tract in Septuagesima and Lent; the sequence followed upon the gradual. There were, however, four different orders for the Mass Salve sancte parens, depending upon the usage of the alleluia. There were cycles of the Ordinary of the Mass as well; for each day of the week a different set of Ordinary chants was sung.

After this magisterial historical introduction (of fifty-four folio pages), the rest of the first volume provides several elements for the choir, thus functioning as a gradual, sometimes giving different directions for the daily Mass in the Lady Chapel and for the Saturday Mass in the choir. There is a grain of truth to Archbishop Cranmer's wry comment that they spend more time looking up in books than doing – the order of Mass is headed with the direction that singers must consult the Directory and Ordinal both for the daily Mass for each day in the week in the Lady Chapel and for the weekly Mass in choir, according to the season for both, principally to determine the Proper of the Mass, the sequence, and the Ordinary of the Mass.

Ritual directions for the choir are explicit, and often deal with turning to the altar and bowing, for instance upon intoning a chant. Some interesting ones follow:

• • The introit antiphon is sung three times, after the verse and again after the Gloria Patri.

• • At three points in the Gloria in excelsis, all turn to the altar: ‘Adoramus te’, ‘Suscipe deprecationem nostram’ and ‘Jesu Christe’.

• • In the Lady Chapel, the gradual verse is sung by all, which seems to indicate that boys did not sing for the Lady Mass, since on Saturday in choir, boys sang the verse.

• • In the Credo all face the altar and make three bows: at ‘Et incarnatus est’, ‘Et homo factus est’ and ‘Crucifixus’; they then turn back. On more important days, when the Credo is sung, at the offertory the thurifer censes each individual singer in turn and then the subdeacon offers the TextFootnote ⁹ to each to be kissed. The peace is given to the ministers and choir after the Agnus Dei, though it had been exchanged between the ministers at the beginning of the Mass.

• • From the beginning of the preface to the Lord's Prayer, the acolyte, not the subdeacon, using a veil, holds the paten.

The preponderance of the choir volume is taken with a presentation of the Proper chants, noted, both for the commemorative Masses, and for the six Marian feasts and the octaves of the three of them. Translations are given for all the Proper chants, including the sequences. The notation of the chant is in a typeface adapted from the 1527 gradual by Timothy Symons: it is a bold, black, square notation on red lines, large enough that several singers could sing from the book, and is one of the most beautiful aspects of this volume. The only use of bar lines is as an indication of the beginning of a chant to be intoned by cantors before the whole choir begins. An interesting feature of the notation is the occasional use of a ‘b’ clef. A stylised letter ‘b’ is placed on the top space of the four-line staff, and it serves as a b-flat signature for a staff that would otherwise simply have a ‘c’ clef on the top line. Accidentals vary somewhat between sources, and even the two facsimiles of the introit Rorate caeli show some slight discrepancies.

The layout of the chants reflects their textual structures. The sequences are generally metric texts, and they are laid out with two short lines of text per chant line, allowing the metric structure and rhyme to be seen clearly. Introits in some cases show the parallelism of the two parts of the antiphon, and in any case, the parallelism of the verse and the doxology. Each invocation of a Kyrie is set to a separate line, allowing easy view of internal repeats within the whole piece. This is true also for the longer Gloria and Credo chants, where the lines of varying length benefit from being shown as integral. The same is true for the Sanctus and Agnus Dei melodies.

The second volume is for the ministers – priest, deacon and subdeacon – and is therefore effectively a missal. Harper notes the simultaneity of liturgical actions: at certain times during the liturgy, up to five different actions take place at the same time. This is a commonplace in medieval liturgy, but was ironed out in the Reformation. For the Middle Ages, liturgy represents cosmic order, and that can be complex; no one need comprehend each of the actions all the time. The liturgy of the Reformation was linear: only one thing generally took place at a time. The medieval liturgy thus requires the three ministers to read silently all of the texts which are sung by the choir, both Ordinary and Proper, and so the texts of these parts are presented in print large enough for three people to read from the same book.

Rubrics prescribe differences, according to the rank of the day, even though they are all commemorative Marian Masses. Vestments are always white, even in the depths of Lent, but the vestments of deacon and subdeacon vary somewhat: on major days, about half of the days of the year, they wear dalmatic and tunicle, but on lesser days, only alb with amice; however, during Lent, it is chasubles. This seems contradictory, since the chasuble is the priest's vestment and ought to be reserved for the most solemn days. Nothing is said, but in supplementary rubrics from a manuscript ordinal and customary, this is described as ‘with his chasuble gathered over his shoulder in the manner of a stole’; this describes exactly the usage of the folded chasuble, which was commonly worn by deacon and subdeacon in the penitential season.

The Ordinary and Canon of the Mass are given a prominent place in this volume; they contain many rubrics, and so the edition presents in clear, large type its Latin text with rubrics, appropriately in red,Footnote ¹⁰ but with English translations of the rubrics in a side column. The takes enough space that the English translations of the texts themselves are relegated to a position towards the end of the volume. The ministers must sing important parts of the liturgy (priest, collects, preface, and Lord's Prayer; deacon, the gospel of the day; and subdeacon, the epistle of the day). The volume provides extensive examples of each of these, sometimes completely written out, sometimes with the musical formula heading the text and the complete text pointed, so that the task of the melody of the minister is unambiguous. Lessons for the daily Mass are written out completely; those for the feast days are pointed. The method of pointing is quite simple, yet unambiguous; the music is all done in square notation. From the beginning of the preface to the Lord's Prayer, the acolyte, not the subdeacon, using a veil, holds the paten. It is clear that there were people attending these Masses, for the rubric speaks of the priest who in order to say ‘Dominus vobiscum’, turns to the people ‘vertat se sacerdos ad populum’.

The order of the Canon is quite fixed, and while it is presented very explicitly, there is little that is unusual about it. It is the entrance rite, however, which is most remarkable. There are several prayers for the priest to say in the sacristy while vesting, including Psalm 42. This accounts for the fact that this approach to the altar took place only during the Gloria Patri of the introit (after two iterations of the antiphon), during which a brief Confiteor with absolution was made, the altar approached and incensed while the Kyrie was sung, after which the three read the text of the introit and Kyrie; this seems not always to have taken all the time, since the rubric permits them to sit down while the choir finishes the Kyrie.

Likewise, the conclusion of the Mass in the chapel was a little briefer; the reading from the beginning of the Gospel of St John was said by the priest on his way out into the vestry, but that is not the conclusion, for after having taken off their vestments, the priest and ministers say together several canticles and psalms, the Lord's Prayer, versicles and responses, and collects.

In spite of the fact that trope texts identified the Kyrie melodies, none were sung; only the Gloria trope, Spiritus et alme, was sung, on Saturdays together with the corresponding Sanctus trope.

Together, the two volumes form an invitation to celebrate a Sarum Lady Mass; their beautiful presentation of melodies for choir and texts for ministers, together with detailed rubrics and extensive historical commentary, makes the liturgy very attractive and gives both performers and scholars a perspective somewhat broader than they might expect. The whole thing is a masterful presentation.

That said, I would raise a few minor questions. The notation modelled upon the sixteenth-century gradual is very successful; it is understandable why the sixteenth-century text was not similarly modelled, as the stocky gothic lettering of the original is difficult to read (see vol. I, pp. xxiv, xxv). Replacing it with the Italianate typeface Bembo, however, is curious. It is said that this is the face for the series, but this series has experimented with many formats, so that a more suitable typeface might have been designed. At the least, if the Bembo had been made slightly larger and bolder, it would have been more congruent with the remarkable chant notation.

A few questions of terminology: the Masses are called commemorative Masses, but the usual term is ‘votive Mass’; is there a reason for not using this term at all? The discussion is always about Salisbury, even when it pertains to Old Sarum; it is true that there is a substantial continuity of liturgy between the old cathedral and new, but the identity is far from complete, and a greater distinction is usually drawn between Old Sarum and Salisbury.

Another question that John Harper has addressed in his companion volume Experience of Worship is the designation of the project as ‘enactment’. What should it be called? Reconstruction, re-enactment, celebration, restoration, historical liturgy? None of these quite describes the project, yet ‘enactment’ has tones of the dramatic that are not completely appropriate for the medieval liturgy. The discussion is of ‘experience’, but I would suggest that the principal aim for a medieval worshipper, whether cleric or lay, was beyond experience; this was a part of it, and there were even dramatic aspects, but in the end it was the fulfilment of a munus, the offering of divine worship that transcended experience and drama, an action whose significance was different from the artistic, musical or dramatic; the object was not the thing done but rather beyond the thing done, transcendent, an object which does not denigrate experience or even beauty, but transforms it by a metaphysical purpose. It is clear that for Harper this is real liturgy; at one point he uses the word ‘enactment’ to describe a sixteenth-century liturgy. He is to be commended for his presentation of rubrics all in the present tense, since his purpose is to provide for present-day celebration or at least ‘to envision it in action’. It is not a ‘dry Mass’, as one can sometimes view online, in which a priest goes through all the actions, to instruct on how the liturgy was done, using a plastic disk for a host, so that there is no confusion that anything is being consecrated. John Harper's commitment is much greater, and he is to be congratulated for the depth of the vision he has offered his readers, through this magnificent work.