Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing Cuccu; Groweth sed and bloweth med, and springth the wude nu, Sing Cuccu. . . .
Up to last week Sumer is icumen in had been regarded by music historians as both the oldest six-part song and the oldest canon* in existence. But its date, set by 19th-Century historians as around 1240, had always made it something of a historical curiosity, since no music even remotely resembling it appeared anywhere else until about a century later.
Poring over the original manuscript in the British Museum, Musicologist...
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