Thomas Cranmer's Preface to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer pointed out the “great diversity in saying and singing in churches within this realm”, and this comment was no less applicable to earlier medieval England, which presented a patchwork of some eight-hundred religious communities scattered throughout the country, working under various religious Rules, and often following diverse liturgies.

This is a study of five offertory antiphons and the prosulas written to fit them (and in some cases to fit their verses as well). The original focus of the investigation was three of the prosulas written on the last folio of the 10th-century manuscript Apt, Basilique Sainte-Anne, 18 (shown on Plates 1 and 2). The study was then enlarged to bring in prosulas for two offertories whose melodies are similar to those first investigated. There is a special point in studying these particular compositions, since the four prosulas central to the discussion are rare examples of prosulas for the antiphon of the offertory, rather than its verse. But they are treated as broadly as possible in this paper, and made the subject of comment on the origin and nature of the base antiphon, its text and music, the function of the prosulas, the technique of their composition and the relationship between their text and their music. A critical edition and translation of each prosula is provided, and the first of these is preceded by a brief discussion of the problems of editing prosula texts. It is hoped that a fully rounded view will thereby be provided of the offertory antiphon and the prosula as a musical, literary and liturgical unit, and that fresh insights into their composition will be gained.

The changes in the chant and liturgy which took place in northern Europe during the eighth and ninth centuries affected not only those portions of the rite based on biblical texts, but also included modifications of portions using non-biblical texts. These texts were generally in the form of poetry or rhythmic prose – such as the hymns of the office, processional chants for Sundays and feast days between Terce and Mass, and (in the ninth century) the sequence following the alleluia of the mass.

‘Nationalism’ in medieval liturgical music implies contradiction. First, the concept of a ‘nation’ in the Middle Ages is problematic; secondly, similarities that transcend geographical boundaries and which are indicated by concordances between manuscripts or groups of manuscripts dictate research orientation. Anomalies have not been discussed, nor related to musical style. Similarities are easier to locate and interpret. Finding concordances as a method for dealing with historical ‘data’ has the strength of tradition. Statistics such as the percentage of their compositions which sources have in common have been compiled in order to evaluate communication between sources and places; these are important, and will become increasingly free of error and amenable to interpretation with the development and use of the computer. But they tend to focus attention away from a more elusive area of information in medieval liturgical music, pieces of music with few or no concordances. Such pieces are found in localized areas, that is, they were never performed and disseminated widely. Many show melodic individuality, and this aspect is found particularly in the sequence. The purpose of this paper is therefore to draw attention, not especially to so-called unica, but to melodic ‘languages’ in the sequence, and to show that these ways of dealing with melody were characteristic of specific regions. The question of why the sequence is the transmitter of melodic individuality is also important: many factors account for the peculiar magnetism of the sequence as a compositional genre in the Middle Ages.