The sources and origin of the ‘Agincourt Carol’
Helen Deeming is a lecturer in music at the University of Southampton. Her interests lie in medieval song and the history of notation: recent publications have investigated the earliest songs in the English language to survive with music, the challenges faced by music scribes in the earliest era of stave notation, and experiments with form and layout in manuscripts of 12th- and 13th-century Latin songs. hld{at}soton.ac.uk
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Abstract |
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The origins of the infamous ‘Agincourt Carol’, celebrating Henry v's military campaign of 1415, have often been the subject of fanciful speculation, but very little concrete evidence has so far been discovered. This article reports the new discovery that the carol's text relates closely to other poems celebrating the event, and may have been their source. It explores in more detail the surviving accounts of the victory pageant mounted in London on the king's return, during which the carol may have been performed. New evidence concerning the carol's earliest musical source has allowed a more precise dating and possible provenance to be established, elucidating the musical and literary worlds in which this most intriguing of medieval songs was composed.
Key Words: Agincourt carol • medieval song • carol • Henry V • the Trinity Roll • Mettingham