Winchester Troper

The Winchester Troper refers to two eleventh-century manuscripts of liturgical plainchant and two-voice polyphony copied and used in the Old Minster at Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire, England. The manuscripts are now held at Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 473 (Corpus 473) and Oxford, Bodleian Library Bodley 775 (Bodley 775). The term "Winchester Troper" is best understood as the repertory of music contained in the two manuscripts. Both manuscripts contain a variety of liturgical genres, including Proper and Ordinary chants for both the Mass and the Divine Office. Many of the chants can also be found in other English and Northern French tropers, graduals, and antiphoners. However, some chants are unique to Winchester, including those for local saints such as St. Æthelwold and St. Swithun, who were influential Bishops of Winchester in the previous centuries. Corpus 473 contains the most significant and largest surviving collection of eleventh-century organum (i.e. polyphony). This polyphonic repertoire is unique to that manuscript (Bodley 775 contains no polyphony).

In the late nineteenth century, Walter Frere and the Solesmes monks were the first to refer to these manuscripts as the "Winchester Troper." Despite the implications of the name, the manuscripts are not identical, not part of a set (such as Volume 1 and Volume 2), and contain liturgical genres other than tropes. The term "Winchester Troper" can refer to either manuscript or to the repertory of the two as a collective.

The dating of the two manuscripts has been subject of debate. The core repertory of Corpus 473 was likely copied in the 1020s-1030s. Bodley 775 was possibly copied in the 1050s. However, scholars disagree about the dating of the possible exemplars on which Bodley 775 was based. Perhaps Bodley 775 was copied directly from a now lost exemplar dating from the late 970s or 980s. Therefore, the manuscript is retrospective because it reflects practices different than those at the time it was copied. On the other hand, Bodley 775 may have been copied from two preexisting manuscripts: a late tenth-century gradual and a troper of a possibly later date. This hypothesis considers both the retrospective characteristics of Bodley 775 and its status as a later manuscript than Corpus 473. Bodley 775 was not modeled after Corpus 473.

Each manuscript contains additional chants copied by scribes throughout the eleventh century. Although the core of each manuscript reflects a connection to Northern France, the supplementary chants copied by scribes in the latter half of the eleventh century exhibit a very strong Norman influence. In 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, conquered England, strengthening the cultural connection between northern France and England. As a result, chant in England began to reflect this new political reality. This influence is especially strong in the later sequences of the Winchester Troper; increasing Norman influence did not impact the Alleluia series. Thus, while the core of each manuscript dates to Anglo-Saxon England, they also contain some post-Conquest music.

Corpus 473 contains 199 folios of parchment with dimensions of 140/145 x 90/93 mm. The final folio dates to the sixteenth century and is not original to the manuscript. The complete manuscript was rebound and conserved in 2004. It is written mostly in dark brown ink with colored capitals; the handwriting is Caroline minuscule. Corpus 473 may have been used by the succentor or cantor of the Old Minster and Bodley 775 by its cantor.

Bodley 775 contains 191 folios of parchment of the size 273 x 167 mm. The manuscript retains its eleventh-century binding, consisting of two quarter-cut oak boards covered in whittawed skin. The first quire (ff. 1-7^v, col. 1 seven) is a later eleventh-century addition and is misbound, with the original sequence of leaves being 1-3, 5, 6, 4, 7. The remainder of the book is organized in quires of 8, with half sheets appearing in quires 3, 12, 14, 16, 20 and 23. It is written in black and brown ink with red rubrics and colored initials. Some proses were subsequently erased and cannot be recovered.

Although Wulfstan the Cantor was once thought to have a direct role in the copying of these manuscripts (and perhaps even composing the organa of Corpus 473), more recent dating makes this impossible because the manuscripts are now believed to have been copied after Wulfstan's death. The organa were possibly composed by several people at Winchester and represented the best attempts at improvised polyphony that were deemed worthy of memory.

Corpus 473 and Bodley 775 share much of the same music for many of the same feasts, but there are some notable differences between the contents and organization of the two manuscripts. Corpus 473 contains the voces organales (Latin: organal voices) to 174 organa, making it the largest extant collection of liturgical polyphony in the eleventh century, while Bodley 775 contains no such organa. Both manuscripts contain both proper and ordinary tropes for the Mass and Divine Office, proses, and sequences. In Corpus 473, different genres are grouped into different gatherings. Within each genre, the chants are organized according to the liturgical calendar. The organization of Bodley 775 is not nearly as systematic. Although pieces of similar genres are generally grouped together, each genre is not placed in a distinct fascicle, and chants are sometimes mistakenly placed out of liturgical order or under the incorrect rubric. Unlike Corpus 473, Bodley 775 separates the tropes for feasts of the Temporale and Sactorale. Corpus 473 contains only half of an Alleluia cycle; it is possible that a gathering containing the second half of the cycle has been lost. The two tables below list the general contents of the two manuscripts. However, because later additions were often copied wherever there was available space, not every piece is accounted for in the tables. For instance, in Corpus 473 two proses, copied in the late eleventh century, are located at the end of the early eleventh century Alleluia cycle and are not listed below.