The earliest polyphony and Winchester boozers

[LeMartinPecheur]

Interesting piece in the latest BBC MM. Seems we have to shift back the date when polyphony started a hundred years or so to c.900AD, thanks to a sharp-eyed academic noticing a 2vv organum for St Boniface in a MS dating from a hundred years before the Winchester Troper, the previous earliest candidate.

Unfortunately, 'Winchester Toper' is how BBC MM reports it, so it must be true!

Speaking as a seasoned Winchester Toper myself in earlier years, maybe they got muddled by this famous gravestone in the cathedral precincts


The inscription reads:
"In Memory of
Thomas Thetcher
a Grenadier in the North Reg. of Hants Militia, who died of
a violent Fever contracted by drinking Small Beer when hot the 12 May 1764. Aged 26 Years.
In grateful remembrance of whose universal good will towards his Comrades, this Stone is placed here at their expence, as a small testimony of their regard and concern.

Here sleeps in peace a Hampshire Grenadier,
Who caught his death by drinking cold small Beer,
Soldiers be wise from his untimely fall
And when ye're hot drink Strong or none at all.

This memorial being decay'd was restor'd by the Officers of the Garrison A.D. 1781.

An Honest Soldier never is forgot
Whether he die by Musket or by Pot.

The Stone was replaced by the North Hants Militia when disembodied at Winchester, on 26 April 1802, in consequence of the original Stone being destroyed.
And again replaced by The Royal Hampshire Regiment 1966."

[french frank]

:-)

I remember using the word toper in a headline once. Nobody knew what it meant. Anyway, several other sources for the story. I chose this one rather than Classic FM ... It has a video performance.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Thanks for that ff, I shall listen later, once past Elgar's In the South

A propos the Hampshire grenadier, I've wondered whether the exhortation to 'drink Strong or none at all' had anything to do with the fact that Strong's was a noted Hampshire brewery that certainly went back to the C18, even if their Romsey brewery that I recall was built after the demise of Mr Thetcher http://www.breweryhistory.com/Brewer...seyStrongs.htm

Perhaps they did go back to his time: does anyone recall?

[subcontrabass]

There are two matters concerning this which come to my mind.

(1) Why is this being widely disseminated now? The journal article concerning the findings was published in 2013, and was put on line in September 2013.

(2) This work comes from Cambridge, and ignores work done in Oxford. In my undergraduate days (late 1960s) I sang in a small choir directed by a musicologist. We went with him on several occasions to provide the musical illustrations for public lectures that he gave. One of our "party pieces" was some two-part counterpoint from the tenth century (an interpolated Sanctus). This was a transcription from an early manuscript that had been recycled into the binding of a later book. Musically it was much more interesting than the organum that is used in the fragments now published. The parts were much more independent and there was much use of dissonance. I suspect that this transcription was not published (as it was not related to his DPhil work) and so still just remains in the handwritten copies from which we sang.