Liturgy, Music, and Identity in Medieval St Andrews

Analyses the role of music and liturgy at St Andrews, through a detailed study of one of the most important extant musical manuscripts from the thirteenth century. Medieval musical and liturgical sources both prescribed ritual performance and represented identity in material form, but their makers and owners are usually unknown or little studied. This book is a study of the musical and liturgical sources produced for St Andrews Cathedral, the ecclesial centre of the Scottish kingdom, during the pivotal years of the thirteenth century. Focusing on the unique copy of polyphony emerging from Paris, known as W1 (Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. Guelf. 628, Helmst.), as well as the St Andrews antiphoner (Paris, BN MS Lat. 12036) commissioned by William Malveisin, the bishop of St Andrews, a decade earlier, it presents new liturgical, musical, and textual analyses that reveal the complex nature of identity in medieval Scotland. These close readings are framed by broader contextual studies of the religious communities of St Andrews and their contribution to the cult of Saint Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland, illuminating the interactions between politics, religion and music.