A music roll in Princeton and its origins in thirteenth-century Yorkshire

Abstract This article reconsiders the polyphonic music fragments used within in an English manuscript copy of Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreis , now Princeton University Library, Garrett 119. Extensive reuse of parchment characterises this manuscript: in addition to three music rolls, a chronicle roll and multiple account rolls were systematically repurposed to assemble the parchment used as the manuscript’s endleaves and also internally, when some of the rolls were erased and overwritten with the Alexandreis text. Through a close analysis of all these materials, the specific local contexts of the manuscript’s production is considered. The article demonstrates that this occurred in two stages, begun in the early thirteenth century and completed in the fourteenth century. While previous scholarship had located the host manuscript and music fragments in Lincolnshire, a Yorkshire location and a Cistercian institution is proposed here, possibly Rievaulx Abbey, at least for the initial compilation of the host manuscript and the copying of at least one of the music fragments. This opens up new possibilities for a flourishing network of written polyphony in this region.