Mapping Medieval Identities in Occitanian Crusade Song brings together crusading exhortations, chronicles and song in Latin and Occitan to illuminate the ways in which medieval thinking about crusade journeys interacted with historical reality. Rachel May Golden distils an impressive array of contemporary theoretical concepts down to an incisive analysis of medieval crusade song and crusade writing more generally. Using an extensive catalogue of primary sources, she is then able to outline the key preoccupations of crusading thought in Occitania, such as ideas of pilgrimage and return (pp. 66–76, 142–54), physical and spiritual ideas of place (pp. 50–61, 167–87) and conceptions of the non-Christian enemy both near and far (pp. 135–9, 180–3). It is these conceptions, she argues, that create the dialectical space that enables Occitanian identity to be defined. Golden then traces how these preoccupations could play out in the unfolding of lyric performance through a close reading of the forms and rhetoric employed in the strophic songs of the troubadours and the versus associated with the Abbey of Saint-Martial. While not the first monograph on crusade song, Mapping Medieval Identities forges an entirely new approach to the subject, one that discards tired questions of generic identity in favour of viewing song as encapsulating a cultural moment. Given the broad scope of the repertoires she considers, Golden wisely limits herself primarily to the period of the first two crusades, with brief digressions to incorporate revealing works from the time of the Fourth and Albigensian Crusades. Golden's work focuses on the topics of violence, space and difference in troubadour song, concepts rarely explored from a musicological perspective in this area. Golden's work is thus timely and unique: it complements other recent research by addressing songs responding to an earlier period of the crusades and goes beyond it by supporting textual investigations with specifically musical points.Footnote ¹

In the conceptually rich first chapter, Golden introduces us to ideas of mapping, how writers in Occitania conceived of their own ‘local reality’ and how the crusades altered the way their worldview incorporated distant, Saracen lands. She also deconstructs the category of crusade song, arguing against any formal definitions while demonstrating that genres such as Sirventes, Pastorela and Canso and themes such as laments, exhortations and songs about pilgrimage could all reflect the Crusade environment and react to exhortations and doctrines of the Church.

Chapter 2 presents us with the emerging identity of Occitania, as reflected in political realities, in the resolute self-determination of the Abbey of Saint-Martial, and in vernacular song. Whereas close analysis of monastic versus is deferred until the following chapter, we here receive a first taste of Golden's close reading of text and melody in Raimon de Miraval's Albigensian Crusade song, Bel m'es q'ieu chant e coindei. The song expresses a picture of a fully fledged Occitanian identity under threat from northern invaders, presented through the lyric and musical idea of return.

In Chapter 3, Golden deftly weaves together the historical narratives of medieval chronicles, the language of papal exhortation and expressions of church doctrine, and songs both Latin and Occitan. Here too we begin to see Occitania imagining and imagined by the outside world. Golden considers crusade chronicles by northern and southern authors, including the anonymous Gesta Francorum, and the narratives by Peter Tudebode, Raymond of Aguilers and Fulcher of Chartres, as well as literary treatments such as the Occitan epic Canso d'Antioca. From the outsiders’ perspective, ‘Frankish’ identity tends to subsume that of Occitanian identity. Meanwhile, the regional pride of Occitania as a crusader nation, as witnessed for example by the claim of Raymond of Saint-Gilles on the Holy Lance, became a focal point for asserting identity and difference. Golden traces these local values in songs, particularly in her close readings of Gaucelm Faidit's Chant e deport and the versus Nube carnis maiestatis. By addressing song, chronicle, exhortation and doctrine, Golden's scope for analysis remains truly interdisciplinary. By focusing her close readings on Saint-Martial and the troubadours, she remains resolutely grounded in a geographical place: the Occitanian homeland.

Chapters 4 and 5 are the most analytically substantial. Still drawing on the wealth of the crusade chroniclers introduced in Chapter 2, Golden links the temporo-spatial framing of Jerusalem and pilgrimage in documented church propaganda to its expression in song. The centrepiece of Chapter 4 is an analysis of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras's Ara pot hom conoisser, which interprets the song as a poetic and musical mapping of the imagined pilgrimage journey to be undertaken in the imminent Fourth Crusade. The song plays out dialectics of sacred and secular, of reality and artifice, of the suffering on the ‘crotz’ and on the road to crusade against reward in the heavenly and earthly Jerusalem. The close readings in Chapter 5 are of two Aquitanian versus: Ierusalem mirabilis, composed in response to Urban's call to Crusade, and Nomen a solemnibus, a response to the reconquest of Jerusalem in 1099. The differences in diectic language, in person and tense, and in the use of musical space between these two songs betray the shift in the Occitanian imagination of crusades and of their relation to distant lands and places.

Some of Golden's close readings are more convincing than others. The existence of a musico-textual cross in Ara pot hom conoisser in Chapter 4 (pp. 148–9) would require that medieval musicians possessed a specific abstract conceptualization of lyrical and musical space that seems at odds with other well-documented medieval mappings of song onto the physical world, such as the Guidonian hand or the manuscript layout of chansonniers. It is thanks to the examples in the rest of the book that this example remains persuasive. The application of modal analysis to troubadour song, particularly in Chapters 4 and 5, occasionally undermines Golden's more brilliant points, which at their core are unrelated to the thorny question of modal categorization.

Where Golden's analysis is most dazzling is in Chapter 5. Her contrast of Ierusalem mirabilis with Nomen a solemnibus is impressive in its command of music palaeography, as textual interpretation and as cultural analysis. When dealing with a piece whose exact transcription remains contested, Golden nonetheless demonstrates how the musical reading of the text functions through contour and the exploration and juxtaposition of near and distant pitch spaces. Despite introducing modal language to convey the point, she does not rely on it. Simply sight-singing the musical examples renders the contrasts between them palpable, yet Golden's description further elucidates how these contrasts reflect the textual and in turn cultural shift between them. Here, ideas of violence, difference, distance, nearness and circularity coalesce once again in both music and text.

In Chapter 6, Golden brings her interpretation of the crusading imagination to bear on two of the best-known songs of the troubadour repertoire: Marcabru's Pax in nomine Domini and Jaufre Rudel's Lanquan li jorn. In the Conclusion, Golden takes a step further, discussing the most famous contrafaction of Lanquan li jorn, the 1224 or 1225 Palästinalied of Walther von der Vogelweide. Golden's ability to present a new perspective on these songs is impressive and her contextualisation of them in the Occitanian crusading imagination refreshing. Her analyses develop previous scholarship without being beholden to it, as they are built first and foremost on what has been established in the previous chapters.

Mapping Medieval Identities in Occitanian Crusade Song is no less masterful than it is wide-ranging. Rachel May Golden's expertise encompasses history and literary criticism as well as musical analysis. She shines in her ability both to narrate historical events and to parse medieval authors’ imaginary or interpreted versions of those events. Over the course of the book, the reader cannot help but be convinced by the narrative told by the songs Golden selects for scrutiny. It is of particular importance that Golden carries this scrutiny through to the music itself. Such a thoroughly hermeneutic approach is bold in a repertoire sometimes viewed as resistant to affective and symbolic analysis. The disconnect between the expressive capabilities of troubadour music and the inconvenient contradictions of text–music relations caused by strophic repetition and contrafaction is a challenge all analysis of this repertoire must face.Footnote ² Yet Golden's approach to the issue is refreshing and creative. When not pushed too far, recognising the structural echoes between poetry and music is an illuminating exercise. Golden's analysis draws a convincing picture of a multivalent rhetorical art both influenced by and influential on historical events. In her close readings, she expands the field of possible meanings that the hearer or reader of these songs might take away, and invites us to consider their emotional efficacy from a novel standpoint. Refraining from treating music as a code to be deciphered by the listener (or musicologist), she convincingly demonstrates how mappings of categories could suffuse melody as well as verse.

Mapping Medieval Identities contains an ‘Appendix of Selected Songs Consulted’, listing their titles, attributions, any editions and the dating or relevant contexts of their composition. As explained in Chapter 1, this does not constitute a handlist of Crusade songs, but rather includes those songs relevant to the Crusades Golden discusses, regardless of their genre. The list is extremely useful, as Golden references many of these songs in passing in addition to the songs she analyses. These are pristinely reproduced in full, including melodic transcriptions, in the body of the relevant chapters. The reader is aided in navigating the work by an elegantly compiled subject index and a song index. The numerous subheadings within each chapter, listed in the table of contents, are also a boon to the reader.