Whilst scholars often rely on a close reading of the score to understand English musical style at the turn of the fifteenth century, a study of the compositional techniques composers were taught provides complementary evidence of how and why specific stylistic traits came to dominate this repertory. This essay examines the relationship between practical and theoretical sources in late medieval England, demonstrating a link between the writings of two Oxford-educated musicians, John Tucke and John Dygon, and the polyphonic repertory of the Eton Choirbook (Eton College Library, MS 178), compiled c. 1500–4. Select case studies from this manuscript suggest that compositional and notational solutions adopted at the turn of the fifteenth century, having to do particularly with metrical proportions, echo music-theoretical concepts elucidated by Tucke and Dygon. These findings impinge upon the current debate concerning the presence of a network between educational institutions in the south-east of England during this period.

In 1553, the Chapel Royal composer Christopher Tye published a volume containing polyphonic settings of the first fourteen chapters of the biblical book of Acts in metrical verse. This chapter analyses extant copies — the earliest of which includes a significant typographical lacuna — in order to shed light on the early practices and difficulties of printing polyphonic music in England. A comparison with contemporary English music prints reveals that English music printers were often hampered by their lack of musical literacy. Examining the extant copies of Tye’s Actes offers an opportunity to examine a range of possible errors in the process of printing musical notation in the sixteenth century, revealing the categories of musical mistakes printers and the public were willing to overlook in mid-Tudor England, and demonstrates that the level of functionality required by contemporary amateur audiences was considerably lower than that which professionalstypically expected from music manuscripts.

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