Music in Medieval England, from the end of Roman rule in the fifth century until the Reformation in the sixteenth century, was a diverse and rich culture, including sacred and secular music and ranging from the popular to the elite.

The sources of English secular music are much more limited than for ecclesiastical music. Medieval musicians had a wide variety of instruments available to them. The Anglo-Saxon scop and gleeman were replaced in the thirteenth century by the minstrel.

In the early Middle Ages, ecclesiastical music was dominated by monophonic plainchant, the separate development of British Christianity until the eighth century, led to the development of a distinct form of liturgical Celtic chant. This was superseded, from the eleventh century by Gregorian chant. England retained unique forms of music and of instrumentation, but English music was highly influenced by continental developments, while British composers made an important contribution to many of the major movements in early music in Europe, including the polyphony of the Ars Nova and laid some of the foundations of later national and international classical music. English musicians also developed some distinctive forms of music, including the Contenance Angloise, the rota, polyphonic votive antiphons and the carol and the ballad.

The impact of humanism on music can be seen in England the late fifteenth century. Edward IV chartered and patronised the first guild of musicians in London in 1472, a pattern copied in other major towns cities as musicians formed guilds or waites, creating local monopolies with greater organisation, but arguably ending the role of the itinerant minstrel. There were increasing numbers of foreign musicians, particularly those from France and the Netherlands, at the court. The result was a very elaborate style which balanced the many parts of the setting and prefigured Renaissance developments elsewhere.

Surviving sources indicate that there was a rich and varied musical soundscape in medieval England. Historians usually distinguish between ecclesiastical music, designed for use in church, or in religious ceremonies, and secular music for use in places from royal and baronial courts, celebrations of some religious events, to public and private entertainments of the people. Because literacy, and musical notation in particular, were preserves of the clergy in this period, the survival of secular music is much more limited than for church music. Nevertheless, some were noted, often by clergymen who had an interest in secular music.

Medieval musicians had a wide variety of instruments available to them. These included the shawm, fiddles, rebec, crwth, portative organ, trumpet, timbrel, lute and bagpipe. In Anglo-Saxon England, the professional poet was known as a scop ("shaper" or "maker"). Often attached to a royal or noble court, he composed his own poems, and sang them accompanied by an instrument, usually a harp. Beneath the scop was the gleeman, who was usually itinerant, and performed the works of others. In the late thirteenth century, the term minstrel began to be used to designate a performer who earned their living with poetry and song. They often performed other entertainments, such as jesting and acrobatics.

The Venerable Bede's story of the cattleman, and later ecclesiastical musician, Cædmon, indicates that at feasts in the early medieval period it was normal to pass around the harp and sing 'vain and idle songs'. The existence of an oral tradition of music is suggested by Aldhelm, who was of Bishop of Sherborne from 715, and who set religious lyrics to popular songs in order to spread the Christian message. Thanks to Bede, one of Cædmon's songs survive as "Cædmon's Hymn", but since this type of music was rarely notated, there is now little knowledge of its form or content.

In the early Middle Ages, ecclesiastical music was dominated by monophonic plainchant. The separate development of British Christianity from the direct influence of Rome until the eighth century, with its flourishing monastic culture, led to the development of a distinct form of liturgical Celtic chant. Although no notations of this music survive, later sources suggest distinctive melodic patterns. This was superseded, as elsewhere in Europe, from the eleventh century by Gregorian chant. The version of this chant linked to the liturgy as used in the Diocese of Salisbury, the Sarum Use, first recorded from the thirteenth century, became dominant in England. This Sarum Chant became the model for English composers until it was supplanted at the Reformation in the mid-sixteenth century, influencing settings for masses, hymns and Magnificats. Singing techniques called gymel, a technique of temporarily dividing up one voice part, usually an upper one, into two parts of equal range, but singing different music, were introduced in England in the thirteenth century. Church music was often accompanied by instruments such as the guitar, harp, pipes and organ. The earliest evidence of two handed, polyphonic organ music is in the Robertsbridge Codex, from around 1325.