Dominican chant and liturgical practices in the English province

Only a handful of liturgical books survive from the English Dominican Province, and only one contains musical notation. Consequently, it is difficult to make any generalisations about English Dominican liturgical and musical practices, and to ascertain the extent to which houses in this province followed or deviated from Order-wide norms. Nonetheless, an examination of the sole musical witness (Oxford, Bodleian, Rawl. liturg. G. 13, a sequentiary dating from c. 1300) opens a window into the needs of one English cantor, revealing both conformity with the standard authorised repertory of Dominican sequences, and a degree of local creativity and adaptation in the form of a section of supplementary material, much of which was used for Marian devotion. Stepping back from the close reading of this Mass book, the second part of this chapter considers the Dominican Office liturgy with regards to its similarities to liturgical practices in the British Isles.