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Early Masses and Mass-Pairs.

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Early Masses and Mass-Pairs. Transcribed and edited by Gareth Curtis. (Fifteenth-Century Liturgical Music, 4.) (Early English Church Music, 42.) London: Published for the British Academy by Stainer and Bell, c2001. [Foreword (John Caldwell), 1 p.; acknowledgments, 1 p.; contents, 1 p; introd., p. ix-xiii; scores (each preceded by sources and crit. notes), p. 1-177. Cloth. ISMN M-2202-1931-3; ISBN 0-85249-846-2. [pounds sterling]55.]

This volume of early Masses and Masspairs edited by Gareth Curtis is the start of a new editorial direction, and a distinctly new "look" for the venerable series Early English Church Music, inaugurated in 1963 with John D. Bergsagel's edition of the first volume of Early Tudor Masses (London: Stainer and Bell)

to make available church music by British composers of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in a form designed to serve both scholarly and practical needs. The series is intended to complete the publication in modern editions of all early sacred music in Britain from the Norman Conquest to the Commonwealth. (vol. 1 of series, p. iv)

Since then, Early English Church Music has proved to be a valuable resource for students and performers of this music, providing a clear and well-edited entry into this large repertory. The first forty-one volumes comprise many subseries, including five volumes devoted to the sacred music of John Taverner (ca. 1490-1545) and six to Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656). Curtis's new volume is a continuation of another of these subseries devoted broadly to fifteenth-century liturgical music. These volumes, including Curtis's previous edition of the Brussels Masses from the manuscript Bibliotheque Royale Albert 1er 5557 (Early English Church Music, 34; hereinafter EECM), as well as two volumes published much earlier (Antiphons and Music for Holy Week and Easter, ed. Andrew Hughes, EECM, 8 [1968] and Four Anonymous Masses, ed. Margaret Bent, EECM, 22 [1979]), cover repertory that would otherwise fall through the cracks of editions of collected works and...

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