The period c1480-1560 in Europe witnessed an explosion of creativity in composing sacred music for unprecedentedly large ensembles: pieces such as Antoine Brumel’s 12-part ‘Earthquake’ mass (Ferrara, 1506-1510) and Robert Carver’s 19-part motet O Bone Jesu (Scotland, 1513) testify to a new desire to expand the limits of vocal composition. These and other works of ‘many-voice’ polyphony continue to inspire and excite today’s audiences: they feature on many modern recordings and are favourites of concert-goers. This music’s monumental scale often invites comparisons with other ambitious early modern artistic products, especially in the visual arts and architecture. Yet while we are relatively well-informed about the techniques underpinning paintings, sculptures, or cathedrals, we know very little about how many-voice polyphony was put together on paper and realised in performance. This project fills this knowledge gap by using a combination of music analysis and archival work to investigate the skillsets and institutional resources required to create many-voice polyphony in 16th-century Europe, with a focus on Scotland, a region that has been marginalised in traditional music-historiography. Understanding the creative process behind many-voice music in 16th-century Scotland will not only reveal the relationship between extant sources and the world which produced them, but will also yield new insights into the flow of musical ideas and techniques across early modern Europe.

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