St. Dunstan in the Eleventh through the Thirteenth Centuries: Transition
within the Interaction of Texts and Music
Margot Fassler, Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Music History and Liturgy,
University of Notre Dame
The five surviving medieval vitae of Dunstan of Canterbury were composed
by an unknown Anglo-Saxon author (B); Adelard of Ghent; Osbern of Canterbury;
Eadmer of Canterbury, and William of Malmesbury. In addition there is a twelvelesson historia, complete with transcribable music found in the early thirteenthcentury antiphoner Worcester 160, which was probably copied for the use of
Worcester Cathedral. These rich materials provide a unique opportunity to think
about the ways that musicians and hagiographers handled their materials over the
course of nearly two centuries, and during a time that the most important and
interesting music was being written for cults of the saints.
A saint's cult in a particular place can offer a way into the processes
musicians worked with, both as individuals, and within a communal context. This is
especially true in England in the decades after the conquest when a significant
group of cantor-historians worked on saints' cults at a time of transition from one
political sphere to another. Political change of a significant magnitude meant that
artistic and ecclesial expectations were in flux. The shifts that were taking place can
be seen in the five vitae of Dunstan, and their authors' attitudes toward the saint and
toward the making of history; these changes in their turn are embodied with the
several layers discernable in the office chants.
When the hagiographical and the musical materials are brought into close
conversation, various kinds of carefully wrought interplay can be seen. I conclude
that the framework for Dunstan's office was already established in late tenth and
early eleventh century, probably through chants from an Anglo Saxon office that
does not survive. After the conquest, Osbern of Canterbury's hand passed
vigorously over inherited material, and it is he who most likely shaped the office
chants that appear in Worcester 160. However, Eadmer of Canterbury, refined
Osborn work on the chants, just as he did in the rewriting of Osbern's prose life of
Dunstan. (Study of William of Malmesbury's life of Dunstan, on the other hand,
reveals no influence on the office.) Further proof for the influence of Eadmer's work
in Worcester is gleaned from Cotton Eton Ms. E 1, a passionale from Worchester. It
contains the life of Dunstan in the version written by Eadmer of Canterbury.