3-061-213 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

'Sumer is icumen in', mid 13th century. Sheet music, a vocal composition for several voices; it is probably the most celebrated piece of English medieval music. The melody is one of the earliest known examples of what is now the major mode, and the earliest example of ground-bass. Besides the English secular text 'Sumer is icumen in', the melody is provided with a Latin sacred one 'Perspice Christicola', and it is the earliest known manuscript in which both secular and sacred words are written to the same piece of music. From Summer Canon [Reading Rota].