This book examines the relation of words and music in England and France during the three centuries following the Norman Conquest. The basic material of the study includes the chansons of the troubadours and trouvères and the varied Latin songs of the period. In addition to these 'lyric' forms, the author discusses the relations of music and poetry in dance-song, in narrative and in the ecclesiastical drama. Professor Stevens examines the ready-made, often unconscious, and misleading assumptions we bring to the study and performance of early music. In particular he affirms the importance of Number, in more than one sense, as a clue to the 'aesthetic' of the greater part of repertoire, to the relation of words and melody. and to the baffling problem of their rhythmic interpretation. This is the first wide-ranging study of words and music in this period in any language. It will be essential reading for scholars of the music and the literature of medieval Europe and will provide a basic and comprehensive introduction to the repertoire for students.

In these essays, five noted scholars draw upon the insights of musicology, philology, linguistics, and metrics to illuminate central aspects of the relationship between poetry and music in the Middle Ages. Rebecca A. Baltzer adds notes on the accompanying musical tape made by the professional ensemble Sequentia, which significantly illustrates the topics under consideration, while offering the experience of listening to superb musical performances.

Is birdsong music? The most frequent answer to this question in the Middle Ages was resoundingly "no." In Sung Birds, Elizabeth Eva Leach traces postmedieval uses of birdsong within Western musical culture. She first explains why such melodious sound was not music for medieval thinkers and then goes on to consider the ontology of music, the significance of comparisons between singers and birds, and the relationship between art and nature as enacted by the musical performance of late-medieval poetry. If birdsong was not music, how should we interpret the musical depiction of birdsong in human music-making? What does it tell us about the singers, their listeners, and the moral status of secular polyphony? Why was it the fourteenth century that saw the beginnings of this practice, continued to this day in the music of Messiaen and others?Leach explores medieval arguments about song, language, and rationality whose basic terms survive undiminished into the present. She considers not only lyrics that have their singers voice the songs or speech of birds but also those that represent other natural, nonmusical, sounds such as human cries or the barks of dogs. The dangerous sweetness of birdsong was invoked in discussions of musical ethics, which, because of the potential slippage between irrational beast and less rational woman in comparisons with rational human masculinity, depict women's singing as less than fully human. Leach's argument comes full circle with the advent of sound recording. This technological revolution-like its medieval equivalent, the invention of the music book-once again made the relationship between music and nature an acute preoccupation of Western culture.

A unique history of the vast repertory of monophonic music of the Middle Ages.

This selection of nineteen essays by Nigel Wilkins, in English and in French, is characterised by an inter-disciplinary approach crossing the borders between music, language, literature, history, palaeography and iconography. The principal topic is lyric poetry in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, mostly French and English, both with and without music, and in various contexts. Wider themes are also explored, such as the association of music with the Devil, the use of several languages combined in certain musical contexts, and the controversial role of inspiration in musical composition.

This selection of nineteen essays by Nigel Wilkins, in English and in French, is characterised by an inter-disciplinary approach crossing the borders between music, language, literature, history, palaeography and iconography. The principal topic is lyric poetry in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, mostly French and English, both with and without music, and in various contexts. Guillaume de Machaut, the dominant poet-musician of the age, is the central figure: his influence is traced in poets such as Froissart, Deschamps, Christine de Pisan, Charles d'Orléans, Villon, Gower and Chaucer, and in the poet-musicians who came after him. The question of patronage is investigated. The development of the principal lyric forms, rondeau, ballade and virelai, is explored on both sides of the Channel, as is the way they were used, for example in miracle plays and in court entertainment. A Flemish painting of 1493 helps us discover the rà ́le of music in the ceremonies of trade and religious guilds; a memorial brass from King's Lynn reveals the importance of music in the ceremonial of feasts. Wider themes are also explored, such as the association of music with the Devil, the use of several languages combined in certain musical contexts, and the controversial role of inspiration in musical composition.

What were the methods and educational philosophies of music teachers in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance? What did students study? What were the motivations of teacher and student? Contributors to this volume address these topics and other -- including gender, social status, and the role of the Church -- to better understand the identities of music teachers and students from 650 to 1650 in Western Europe. This volume provides an expansive view of the beginnings of music pedagogy, and shows how the act of learning was embedded in the broader context of the early Western art music tradition.