W. de Wycombe

W. de Wycombe (Wicumbe, and perhaps Whichbury) (late 13th century) was an English composer and copyist of the Medieval era. He was precentor of the priory of Leominster in Herefordshire. He may have been the composer of the most famous tune from medieval England, "Sumer is icumen in", though the identification is considered by most scholars to be tenuous.

Wycombe's main period of activity was probably the 1270s and 1280s. He is best known as the composer of polyphonic alleluias. Over 40 settings have been identified in several sources, a group of compositions almost equal in size to that of Léonin, the earlier composer of the continental Notre Dame school; however only one of the 40 can be restored completely: the others exist only in fragments. Some of his work appears in the Worcester Fragments, a collection of 59 manuscript leaves which represents about a third of the total surviving polyphony from England in the 13th century.

Each of Wycombe's alleluias is in four parts. The second and fourth contain the solo respond and verse sections, while the first and third consist of free polyphony. Stylistically they are similar to the Reading Rota itself ("Sumer is icumen in"), emphasizing tonic and supertonic, and showing the English preference for the harmonic interval of the third.

ources

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* Richard H. Hoppin, "Medieval Music". New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1978. ISBN 0-393-09090-6