Matthew Cheung Salisbury

My research, supported by a fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, concerns the texts and plainsong in the extant sources of the medieval liturgical Office in England. My The Use of York is the first study to examine comprehensively the evidence from the surviving manuscripts of the York Office, the dominant pattern in the medieval north of England. I am contributing to a project, now in its final stages, examining the history of the sources, texts and chants of the Office to Thomas Becket. I teach early music history for several colleges. In addition, I am a trustee of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, direct the Cantores in Aede, a group specializing in plainsong based at Christ Church Cathedral, and produce reconstructions of medieval liturgies at Worcester College.

  Forthcoming, spring 2010
Cataloguing Discrepancies: the printed York Breviary of 1493
by Andrew Hughes, Heather Robbins, Matthew Salisbury
This study reviews the description and cataloguing, from the early eighteenth century to the present day, of an early English printed Breviary. The book exists in photographic and digital facsimiles; the relative merits and shortcomings of these methods of reproduction are also described. Dissatisfied with the accommodations in current descriptive bibliography for liturgical books, and based on the discrepancies and errors in the existing catalogues, many of which, including the most recent, repeat erroneous and unintentionally misleading information for generations, the authors suggest practical means for the future description of early printed books of this kind.


Upcoming
The publication (Spring 2010) of Cataloguing Discrepancies. Talks at the Medieval Academy of America annual meeting; the Church and Culture seminar, Oxford; and the University of Nottingham.


Some publications

The Use of York: characteristics of the medieval liturgical Office in York. (York, 2008).

‘An alternative Office for St Thomas Becket and its implications’, Anaphora 2, no. 1 (June 2008).

‘A “trivial” variant: filled thirds in the Office for St Thomas Becket.’ Plainsong and Medieval Music 16, no. 1 (April, 2007).

'The ideal copy: fallacies in the cataloguing of liturgical books' Notes and Queries 2009 56: 490-496


Some lectures and conference papers

‘The rationalization of English liturgical Uses, a field-report’ AHRC Interpreting Medieval Liturgy Network, Exeter, 6 January 2010

‘Patterns in order of service as a method of categorization’ Traditions in Western Plainchant, Gregorian Institute of Canada, McMaster University, Hamilton, 14 August 2009.

‘From north to south: liturgy borrowed from a Northern saint’ Nothing new? Understanding newness in medieval and contemporary music. Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, University of Huddersfield, 26 April 2009.

‘Non Sarum sed Ebor: regional variants in the standard chant repertory.’ 43rd International Medieval Congress, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA, 11 May 2008.

‘Alternative offices for Thomas Becket’. Society for Liturgical Study Research Day, Merton College, Oxford, 26 January 2008.


Hear an excerpt from First Vespers of Corpus Christi sung at Worcester in Trinity Term 2008 (listen)

Read about the digitisation of the York Antiphonal at Arundel Castle (here)


               
mcs

Worcester College Chapel
The Becket Project
 		Plainsong and Medieval Music Society
OCMH webpage
Contact:
matthew.salisbury at worc.oxon.org
Worcester College, Oxford OX1 2HB
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