Manuscripts and Medieval Song

Inscription, Performance, Context

Helen Deeming, Elizabeth Eva Leach

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781107062634
• eBook ISBN:
  9781316236680
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

The manuscript sources of medieval song rarely fit the description of 'songbook' easily. Instead, they are very often mixed compilations that place songs alongside other diverse contents, and the songs themselves may be inscribed as texts alone or as verbal and musical notation. This book looks afresh at these manuscripts through ten case studies, representing key sources in Latin, French, German, and English from across Europe during the Middle Ages. Each chapter is authored by a leading expert and treats a case study in detail, including a listing of the manuscript's overall contents, a summary of its treatment in scholarship, and up-to-date bibliographical references. Drawing on recent scholarly methodologies, the contributors uncover what these books and the songs within them meant to their medieval audience and reveal a wealth of new information about the original contexts of songs both in performance and as committed to parchment.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Series information
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Table of contents
• List of figures
• List of music examples
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• A note on manuscript sigla
• List of manuscripts cited (with links to online surrogates where present)
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 New light on the earliest medieval songbook
• 2 The careful cantor and the Carmina Cantabrigiensia
• 3 Across divides: Aquitaine's new song and London, British Library, Additional 36881
• 4 Wine, women, and song? Reconsidering the Carmina Burana
• 5 An English monastic miscellany: the Reading manuscript of Sumer is icumen in
• 6 Preserving and recycling: functional multiplicity and shifting priorities in the compilation and continued use of London, British Library, Egerton 274
• 7 Miniatures, Minnesänger, music: the Codex Manesse
• 8 Writing, performance, and devotion in the thirteenth-century motet: the 'La Clayette' manuscript
• 9 A courtly compilation: the Douce Chansonnier
• 10 Machaut's first single-author compilation
• 11 Songs, scattered and gathered
• Bibliography
• Index