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The Eton Choirbook

Composer: Various Composers (15-16th C.)

Instrumentation: Voices

Author/editor/arranger:

Publisher: DIAMM Publications

Format: Facsimile

Product code: DIAMM001

Tags: Vocal

£200.00

*Sept 2026: Please note we have now sold our last “good” copy. The remaining copies have slight blemishes on the covers, and we are selling them at the discounted price of GBP 200; the book will then be out of print. Please email (sales@recordermail.co.uk) to request a scan of the cover.*

One of the most iconic of music manuscripts, the Eton Choirbook is of unique importance, as a cultural artefact and as a source of English choral polyphony composed during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Ever since it was first copied for use in the college chapel in the early 1500s, the choirbook has been continuously in the possession of Eton College. Several composers whose works were included in it had close associations with the college, not least Robert Wylkynson, who served as the college's informator choristarum from 1500. Other composers represented include Banastre, Browne, Cornyshe, Davy, Fawkyner, Fayrfax, Hygons, Lambe and Turges. Most of its original contents (67 out of a total of 93 pieces) were votive antiphons, or devotional motets of prayer and praise, sung each evening to the Virgin Mary, the college's dedicatee. The Salve ceremony, familiar to worshippers throughout Catholic Europe, lay at the heart of Eton College's raison d'être as a chantry college.

The product images shown are for illustrative purposes only and may not be an exact representation of the product, e.g. an image of the full score may illustrate an instrumental part.