The date of his birth is unknown, but personal references within his poem Narratio metrica de S. Swithuno suggest he was a child at the time of St. Swithun’s canonization in 971.
These references have led scholars to believe that Wulfstan was born in about 960 and was given as a child to the Old Minster, where he spent his mature life.
As precentor, Wulfstan would have been responsible for leading chants, recruiting and training the choir, and composing poems and hymns, among other things.
The work is 46 chapters long, elaborately composed using complex sentences and displays a familiarity with many earlier hagiographic writings.
For example, in Wulfstan's poem Narratio metrica de S. Swithuno, several phrases and even large sections of text, including two entire chapters from Vita S. Aethelwoldi, appear.
[6] Wulfstan's poem Narratio metrica de S. Swithuno is a hexametrical version of Lantfred of Winchester's Translatio et miracula S. Swwithuni (c.975).
[8] Breuiloquium de omnibus sanctis is a metrical version of an anonymous Carolingian sermon on All Saints called Legimus in ecclesiasticis historiis.
The author of De musica makes four references to the work of a figure named ‘Wulstan’, which is likely Wulfstan.
The references reveal that De tonorum harmonia, or Breuiloquium super musica as it is sometimes called, was concerned with the theory rather than the practice of music.
Although now lost, Wulfstan's De tonorum harmonia is of unique value in that it is the only known work on music composed by an Anglo-Saxon.
[11] Wulfstan's Vita S. Aethelwoldi is the principal source for knowledge of St. Aethelwold, who was one of the champions of the Monastic Reform movement in Winchester.
The promotion of the cult was dependent on the publication of a suitable Vita text to display Aethelwold's sanctity and miraculous powers, as well as the composition of the necessary hymns and prayers for the liturgical commemoration of the saint on his feast-day.
In fact, scholars believed that Wulfstan's Vita was one of the most widely read of all pre-Conquest Anglo-Latin saints' lives.