A singularly elaborate specimen of the Rota, composed around 1250, probably in Reading (and therefore often referred to as the Reading Rota). It is also known as the Summer Canon. The piece is related to the motet, because the round is supported by a texted pes (see Pes (i)), the two halves of which are combined with each other by means of voice-exchange. The secondary Latin poem (Perspice christicola) may have been added in order to make the composition fit for inclusion in the manuscript (now GB-Lbl Harl.978, f.11v; see illustration). It seems to have been an afterthought, since the pes has only an English text, which is related to the English words of the rota. It has been contended that the piece was conceived as a special kind of Latin motet (Harrison), since the first five notes of one of the pedes happen to represent the beginning of a Gregorian cantus firmus that might be considered seasonally relevant to the Latin text of the rota. A good many factors, however, argue against this suggestion (Sanders, 1965). A more recent argument for the priority of the Latin poem (proposed by Obst) is of questionable validity; it is based on less than impartial evaluations of the musical treatment of the prosody of the two texts, which is in any case of limited relevance.
The proper mode of performance is explained in the source (Hanc rotam …):
This round can be sung by four fellows, but must not be performed by fewer than three, or at least two, apart from those performing the pes. It is sung as follows: While the others remain silent, one begins together with those who have the pes, and when he shall have come to the first note after the cross, another begins, and so on with the rest. But each shall pause at the written rests, and not elsewhere, for the duration of one long note. One singer repeats this [the first pes] as often as necessary, observing the rest at the end. Another sings this [the second pes] with a rest in the middle but not at the end, at which point he at once repeats the beginning.
No ending is specified for the piece, which may be conveniently concluded when the leading voice has sung its part twice. No other composition specifically written for as many as six voices is known before the late 15th century. (Actually, the tune is so constructed that it could be sung as a rondellus for three, four, six, eight or twelve voices.)
Facets characteristic of most 13th-century polyphony preserved in English sources are quintessentially embodied in the Summer Canon: major mode, stress on the chords of tonic and supertonic, pes, frequency of triads, predilection for regular periodicity, and the easy rhythmic swing best represented by 6/8 metre in modern transcription. (Both the date and the rhythm of Sumer is icumen in suggested by Bukofzer in 1944 are erroneous.) The Summer Canon is the earliest extant secular composition that must be called a tonal organism, both harmonically and melodically. Owing to freakish luck it has been preserved through the centuries and indicates the prior existence of a highly developed musical culture that evidently exerted a vital influence on the specifically English evolution of the conductus and the motet in 13th-century England as well as on the second generation of Notre Dame composers.
See also Wycombe, W. de.
HarrisonMMB
C. Brown and R.H. Robbins: The Index of Middle English Verse (New York, 1943; suppl. 1965 by R.H. Robbins and J.L. Cutler), no.3223
M.F. Bukofzer: ‘“Sumer is icumen in”: a Revision’, University of California Publications in Music, ii (1944), 79–113
B. Schofield: ‘The Provenance and Date of “Sumer is icumen in”’, MR, ix (1948), 81–6
N. Pirrotta: ‘On the Problem of “Sumer is icumen in”’, MD, ii (1948), 205–16
J. Handschin: ‘The Summer Canon and its Background’, MD, iii (1949), 55–94; v (1951), 65–113
W. Wiora: ‘Der mittelalterliche Liedkanon’, GfMKB: Lüneburg 1950, 71–5
A. Hughes, ed.: The History of Music in Sound, ii: Early Medieval Music up to 1300 (London, 1953), frontispiece, 42–3
E.H. Sanders: ‘Duple Rhythm and Alternate Third Mode in the 13th Century’, JAMS, xv (1962), 249–91, esp. 263–72
E.H. Sanders: ‘Tonal Aspects of 13th-Century English Polyphony’, AcM, xxxvii (1965), 19–34
E. Reiss: The Art of the Middle English Lyric (Athens, GA, 1972), 8ff
W. Obst: ‘“Summer is icumen in”: a Contrafactum?’, ML, lxiv (1983), 151–61
ERNEST H. SANDERS