Sumer Is Icumen In - Medieval English Song

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Description

Vocals and arrangement by Farya Faraji. Sumer is icumen in is a song from the mid 1200's, written in the Wessex dialect of Middle English, and the author may possibly be W. de Wycombe, a composer and copyist. I've always seen this song as a coincidental companion piece to "Miri it is while sumer ilast," another song from the same era that laments the end of summer, whilst this one rejoices in the arrival of either spring or summer, some having theorised that the song is actually about the arrival of spring, and that the term sumer at the time was a larger, all encompassing term for the warmer periods of the year. My rendition of "Miri it is" can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIT8gvn6caY&t=119s

It is a canon, or a round: the idea being that a minimum of three people sing the exact same melody, but not at the same time: someone starts the song, then someone starts singing the same song at a certain point after the other has started, and so on, creating a form of recycling polyphony where the same song harmonises with itself. Many renditions put a great emphasis on the additional voices adding themselves on top of each other, to the point where one loses the first melody completely and hears a vague totality of voices together. I tried reducing this aspect with my rendition by keeping the additional voices lower in volume so that the first melody remains the main one that is being followed by the listener: this is due to the fact that we often project Renaissance and Baroque era logic of polyphony onto the earlier forms of polyphony in the Middle-Ages.

Polyphony as it would evolve in the 16th to 17th centuries did not exist in the Middle-Ages: and in the Middle-Ages the emphasis on the main, principal melodic line always remained. Medieval music remained, in large part, a heterophonic, melodic and linearly driven form of music as opposed to the vertically driven polyphony that would arise later, it is thus my belief that, in this early a period the additional voices of the round would be there to harmonise with and ornament the main melodic line, but not completely take over it--that to me is an anachronistic taste of the later eras, although that is speculation on my part and I could be wrong. Apart from the repeating vocal segments, there is also a "pes," two people repeating a phrase that together constitutes a bass line supporting the rest of the song.

The arrangement is designed to be historically accurate, however the vocals might not be: significant data shows that Medieval European singing was almost universally ornamented in roughly the way that modern Balkanic or Middle-Eastern singing is today, however I sang this in a completely syllabic and simple way, which is probably contrary to what evidence shows was the singing norm in England back then.

The manuscript of the song has these instructions written in Latin: Four companions can sing this round. But it should not be sung by fewer than three, or at the very least, two in addition to those who sing the pes. This is how it is sung. While all the others are silent, one person begins at the same time as those who sing the ground. And when he comes to the first note after the cross [which marks the end of the first two bars], another singer is to begin, and thus for the others. Each shall observe the written rests for the space of one long note [triplet], but not elsewhere.

Lyrics in Wessex Middle-English:
Sumer is icumen in
Lhude sing cuccu
Groweþ sed
and bloweþ med
and springþ þe wde nu
Sing cuccu

Awe bleteþ after lomb
lhouþ after calue cu
Bulluc sterteþ
bucke uerteþ
murie sing cuccu

Cuccu cuccu
Wel singes þu cuccu
ne swik þu nauer nu

Sing cuccu nu • Sing cuccu.
Sing cuccu • Sing cuccu nu

Lyrics in Modern English:
Summer has arrived,
Loudly sing, cuckoo!
The seed is growing
And the meadow is blooming,
And the wood is coming into leaf now,
Sing, cuckoo!

The ewe is bleating after her lamb,
The cow is lowing after her calf;
The bullock is prancing,
The billy-goat farting,*
Sing merrily, cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo,
You sing well, cuckoo,
Never stop now.

Sing, cuckoo, now; sing, cuckoo;
Sing, cuckoo; sing, cuckoo, now

*This was once controversial, as Victorian editors, due to the prudishness of the era, desperately tried giving some alternative meaning to "uerteþ," but all serious translations I've seen of this text support the "farting" meaning.