Compiling their reading lists for seminars on medieval music or notation, past scholars might have wondered whether there might be a recommendable standard reference work about medieval song repertories that also contains decent accounts of the manuscripts that transmit them. This gap has now been filled: in this collection of articles, ten selected manuscripts are introduced, carefully chosen as ‘representatives of a very broad and diverse base of materials for the study of medieval song’ (p. 271). The focus lies ‘on important manuscripts that for various reasons had all previously been considered to some extent “peripheral”’ (p. 271). Material aspects of the manuscripts are used across the volume to shed new light on aspects of performance and context. Instead of binary concepts such as ‘categories of “practical” and “non-practical”’ (p. 275), a much wider range of functions is explored.

Written by eight different authors, the ten case studies about individual manuscripts form self-contained units which clearly reflect the particular methodological approaches and scholarly voices of their authors. Beyond these individual contributions, however, a comparative perspective relating to all of these manuscripts is developed in the final chapter, jointly written by Helen Deeming and Elizabeth Eva Leach, and divided into sections on Inscription, Performance and Context. Due to its innovative understanding of musical inscription, including not only musical notation but also various ways of inscribing music ‘pictorially, verbally, and contextually’ (p. 272), this section takes pride of place. The authors demonstrate ‘that the gatherers of song took care to avoid redundancy in the form and extent of the musical inscriptions, and were acutely aware of the degree of musical knowledge (or foreknowledge) they could expect of those using the books that they assembled’ (p. 273).

At a first and superficial glance, critical readers might ask themselves how the high expectations produced by the introduction can be satisfied. When musical examples in modern notation dominate the book and depictions of actual manuscripts are few and far between, how will the authors be able to demonstrate the multiple ways ‘songs (whether musically notated or not) were gathered onto the page, specifically their layout, organization, and alignment with other texts’, and how will this approach yield ‘new insights into the musical culture of the medieval lyric’ and challenge ‘assumptions that have underpinned existing scholarship’ (p. 1)? One has to admit that there are no easy answers to this complex set of questions; rather, the readers are invited to take their own look at the manuscripts, the majority of which are available through digital resources, and each chapter will give the active reader enough food for thought for future study and research.

The volume includes a variety of songbook types, covering a broad time span from ‘the earliest medieval songbook’ (BNF lat. 1154, Sam Barrett) to ‘Machaut's first single-author compilation’ (BNF fr. 1586, Elizabeth Eva Leach), as well as a variety of manuscript types on a broad spectrum between single-author compilation, miscellanies and composite manuscripts.Footnote ¹ Some of the songs or repertories are well known, even beyond the ivory tower of scholarship; for example, the Carmina burana, the Codex Manesse, or Sumer is icumen in, famous as ‘the Summer Canon’ or ‘the first song in the English language’ (p. 116). On closer inspection, however, past scholarship has neglected some crucial aspects, and this is where the present volume enters the debate.

In her article about the miscellany in which the Summer Canon is found, BL Harley 978, Helen Deeming emphasises the ongoing ‘nostalgic reception of Sumer is icumen in’ (p. 116), from nineteenth-century interpretations of this seemingly unique musical monument of medieval England up to modern marketing strategies. At the same time, the manuscript as a whole represents ‘simultaneously one of the best known and possibly least understood sources of medieval song’ (p. 140). As Deeming demonstrates, the historiographical balance suffered from the ‘disproportionate attention given to the manuscript's only English-language text and its list of lost polyphony, to the detriment of the other musical pieces and their non-musical companions in the manuscript’ (p. 117). Contradicting past scholarship, Deeming emphasises that this miscellany ‘is much less unusual than was once thought’ (p. 117) and integrates it into the context of other miscellanies from twelfth- and thirteenth-century Britain, ‘exploring new ways of reading its contents against those of similar manuscripts’ (pp. 117–18).

Similar to the disproportionate scholarly attention to the Summer Canon, a poem known as De Heinrico, ‘a macaronic text in Old High German and Latin on a certain Henry of Bavaria’ (p. 36), shaped the early reception of what Jeremy Llewellyn calls ‘one of the most extensive miscellanies of medieval Latin poetry between the Carolingians and the Carmina Burana’ (p. 38).Footnote ² German philologists were thus the first scholars to study the famous song collection named the Carmina Cantabrigiensia (Cambridge University Library Gg.5.35, fols. 432–46), which does ‘not represent a judiciously assembled repertory, stylishly arranged on parchment, but rather a somewhat unwieldy anthology or florilegium’ (p. 38). Based on at least some continental exemplars, the miscellany was ‘most probably copied around the middle of the eleventh century at St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury’ (p. 36) and contains a variety of Late Antique Christian Latin poetry, Carolingian prose and verse texts as well as a music treatise, Anglo-Latin and continental prose as well as verse texts, miscellaneous Latin texts and Greek prayers, and finally the Carmina Cantabrigiensia. Because his focus is on a profound case study on transmission and analysis of Hec est clara dies, Llewellyn only briefly touches questions of layout, geographical origins, manuscript organisation and performative function. What would have been most interesting in the context of this volume, the position of the Carmina Cantabrigiensia in the context of the whole miscellany, is not extensively treated. Apart from the shared ‘presence of neumes’ (p. 44) in various sections of the manuscript, morality – ‘or the concern for and cultivation of right living’ (p. 57) as well as ‘matters of right singing’ (p. 35) – seems to be the common denominator to which this problem is reduced. This is where the ‘careful cantor’ comes in, present all across the manuscript in treatises as well as songs written in the second half of the eleventh century, among them Guido of Arezzo's Regulae ritmicae and the Cambridge songs, particularly no. 30, based on the alliterative poem Caute cane, cantor care, as the cantor was the very individual ‘charged with carrying out this musical and moral task’ (p. 57) to keep the singers on the right path.

In the compilation of the majority of manuscripts discussed in this volume, concepts of authorship do not play a central role, and only a few examples of author attribution are found. For BL Egerton 274, Helen Deeming demonstrates how the author attributions in fascicles I and IV have led to the manuscript's ‘uneven reception’ (p. 141) by modern scholars. While, however, the rubric containing the author attribution to Philip the Chancellor alongside the precious miniature at the beginning of the first fascicle was part of the manuscript's overall design from the outset, some of the author attributions in the fourth fascicle were added to the margins at ‘a later stage in the manuscript's history’ (p. 155).

During the fourteenth century there was a growth in the importance of authorial identity.Footnote ³ When, around 1300, ‘a circle of high-standing personalities surrounding the patrician Rüdiger Manesse in Zurich’ (p. 164) compiled the Manesse Codex, now Cod. Pal. germ. 848 in Heidelberg University Library, both the poets as well as their social status shaped the ordering of the codex. In his evaluation of the full-folio miniatures of the manuscript, Henry Hope argues ‘that the Codex Manesse's pictorial representations of the Minnesänger can be sounded out and heard as embodiments of their identity as musicians’ (p. 167). The concept of authorship as presented in this codex, however, is ‘broader than the present-day understanding of an author as someone who has produced a work, replacing it with one of personal ownership’ (p. 181). Following Denis Dechant's idea of ‘the authors as perceiving and experiencing characters rather than as creators’ (p. 181), Hope sees the Minnesänger as owners of their songs because they have experienced the events reported in the songs.

The case study on BNF fr. 1586, ‘Machaut's first single-author compilation’ (p. 247), likewise represents an example of a new type of manuscript, resulting from a growing awareness of authorial identity. Elizabeth Eva Leach reads this manuscript ‘as an initial attempt to exploit a scribal poetics of authorship and in particular to integrate music within this project’ (p. 257). She locates Machaut's first single-author compilation at the interface between past manuscript production and future development: it ‘not only provided a logical culmination of the trouvère chansonniers of the early fourteenth century, but also prompted Machaut to further copying and collecting’ (p. 259). Although ‘the precise level of authorial involvement in most of his manuscripts’ planning is unknowable’ (p. 258), Machaut's role in the production of manuscripts containing his works is documented to some extent. In an article of 1989, Lawrence Earp summarised:

Apart from drawing the readers’ attention to Machaut's ongoing ‘interest in himself as an author figure’ (p. 258), Leach focuses on questions of scribal planning in the development of the manuscript's layout, covering both ‘the copying of music into a predominantly non-musical part of the manuscript’ (p. 260), the Remede de Fortune, and the different musical sections. In three case studies, she takes a close look at ‘the planning of space and staves for text’ and the scribal skills required ‘to anticipate the musico-textual form of not only a given genre, but of specific variants within that genre’ (p. 260). Here, only one example shows the scribe getting into so much trouble that the result is unperformable (pp. 265–6). In all of the other cases, even if certain mishaps in the planning of space are visible, the scribe planned ahead so well that ‘the musical copy is effectively complete for a singer or reader who knows the form, implicitly knowledge assumed by the scribe’ (p. 269). While the reader of this volume ‘is urged to follow the footnote links to the specific folios in the digital surrogate’ (p. 260), even the hurried reader will benefit from the very clear descriptions of the various types of column formats and text underlays or separated text boxes.Footnote ⁵

Whereas Leach's article on BNF fr. 1586 is an excellent example of innovative concepts as to the examination of the mise en page, Helen Deeming's chapter on BL Egerton 274, a non-homogeneous codex consisting of various ‘Layers of addition and revision’ (p. 156), demonstrates a prime example of differentiated codicological study. Due to the manuscript's ‘uneven reception’ (p. 141), previous research usually concentrated on single fascicles, particularly the first, which contains a collection of twenty-eight Latin songs attributed to Philip the Chancellor, and the fourth with its eighteen French chansons and their marginal attributions to trouvères, commonly known as ‘trouvère chansonnier F’. In her thorough examination of the ‘functional multiplicity and shifting priorities in the compilation and continued use’ of BL Egerton 274, Deeming convincingly demonstrates that the ‘manuscript is codicologically much less disjointed than its (modern) division into separate fascicles would suggest’ (p. 144). As in many other cases, the present gathering structure of the manuscript does not represent its original state; in the course of the manuscript's continued use, some ‘disruption in the ordering of the first three fascicles’ (p. 145) came about, detected by prior scholars such as Thomas Payne. Indeed, the manuscript was ‘subject to several layers of accretion and revision by its later thirteenth- and fourteenth-century owners, and thus provides a rare and precious insight into how a thirteenth-century music-book continued to be used later in the Middle Ages’ (p. 141). Altogether, Deeming identifies ‘three stages in the medieval afterlife’ of the manuscript and shows that ‘each of these stages reveals a shift in the way the book was perceived, valued, and used by its subsequent owners’ (p. 149).

Since issues of authorship do not play a role in the earliest manuscripts under discussion in this volume, the role of the scribes, editors and compilers inevitably comes under scrutiny. In this respect, Sam Barrett's article about the manuscript BNF lat. 1154 deserves special attention. Like the composite manuscript BL Add. 36881, later discussed by Rachel May Golden, the earliest medieval songbook now in Paris points to an origin in Aquitaine. Revisiting the manuscript lat. 1154, Sam Barrett provides new evidence to argue ‘that the main body of the manuscript was copied and notated at the Abbey of St Martial, most likely in the late ninth century, and that the compilation served a distinct purpose as a book for private devotion’ (p. 9). Codicologically, the ‘multipartite construction’ (p. 14) of the manuscript, which also contains a litany, prayers and collects, as well as Isidore of Seville's Synonyma, does not yet seem to be fully understood. In the context of parallel collections of the time, however, general patterns of devotion are discernible, suggesting that the four parts of the manuscript might have belonged together early on. Barrett draws attention to an earlier source, the Vita Alcuini written before 829, which instructs Charlemagne to follow ‘a pattern of private devotion consisting of litanies, collects, prayers, and psalms’ (p. 29). Various prayer books ‘belonging to rulers from the late ninth century onwards’ (p. 30) show a similar overall programme.

While lat. 1154 is clearly written for a Benedictine community, private prayer still had its place. Barrett cites further historical sources which show that ‘a book might be read by a monk in the oratory for the purpose of private prayer during tearful contemplation’ (p. 32). The role of music in such situations of personal prayer is further documented by the survival of various private prayerbooks from the ninth century onwards (p. 32). According to Barrett, the contents of lat. 1154 ‘would seem particularly suited to the type of personal prayer that is always described in association with tears of compunction in the Benedictine Rule’ (p. 32). This function is confirmed by the opening rubric of the versus collection, which shows strong indications ‘of the intertwined traditions of song and prayer’ (p. 23). By analysing the various scribal hands, Barrett demonstrates the manuscript's additional use in teaching: ‘Changes of scribe happen at least three times in the middle of sentences, indicating that at least one other less skilled scribe was working closely alongside the main scribe’ (p. 12). He concludes that ‘what has often been considered the earliest notated songbook can equally be considered a prayerbook’ (p. 34).

While the prayerbook and songbook lat. 1154 can be assigned to Aquitaine by a closely matching entry in the medieval library catalogue of St Martial (p. 14), the twelfth-century versarium BL Add. 36881 is associated with Aquitaine because of its repertorial relationship to the three famous St Martial versaria BNF lat. 1139, 3545 and 3719. While all the manuscripts now in Paris came to the then Bibliothèque du Roi (later renamed Bibliothèque Nationale) after the Abbey's collection was sold in 1730, the various owners of BL Add. 36881 as well as codicological matters have not yet been closely examined.Footnote ⁶ In her chapter about this versarium, Rachel May Golden focuses on the development of the versus as a genre and ‘its integration with the twelfth-century Marian cult’ (p. 61) as well as ‘the close integration of monophonic and polyphonic composition’ (p. 59) in the first two libelli of the composite manuscript. Accordingly, Golden dedicates her two case studies to one monophonic and one polyphonic composition. While no concordances to the polyphonic versus Quam felix cubiculum have survived, the monophonic Ave mater salvatoris shares the melody with the monophonic conductus Decet vox letitie (in the Notre-Dame manuscript F, fol. 463r), thus representing ‘the only concordance with Notre-Dame from the Aquitanian versaria’ (p. 71). No extra-musical items are found, except for the added text on the last surviving page of the second libellus of the composite manuscript (fol. 24v), ‘entered in an apparently later hand’ and containing ‘a collection of short devotional texts, often in heavily abbreviated Latin’ (p. 68), including prayers as well as charms. Here, Golden briefly draws connections with medieval charm manuscripts and their inherent orality, and future research is invited to expand on these issues. Apart from this exception, the manuscript ‘contains only lyric-musical items, no prose pieces such as sermons, tracts, or letters’ (p. 65).

In the light of various scholarly controversies as to the medieval provenance of the manuscript commonly known as the Codex Buranus found in the Benedictine monastery at Benediktbeuern at the point of its dissolution in 1803 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek c.l.m. 4660–4660a), Gundela Bobeth diplomatically summarises that the manuscript must have ‘originated at a cultural nexus which guaranteed access to song repertories from across Europe’ (p. 83). On its reception in modern times, the ‘tremendous popularity of the Carmina burana is [   ] nurtured not so much by a historically verified knowledge of the medieval repertory's sound and context, but by its eclectic artistic reception by a composer who is likely to have been unaware of the musical notation’ (pp. 79–80). In this context it would have been desirable to mention at least selected research literature about Carl Orff's ambivalent reception during the Nazi period and beyond.Footnote ⁷ For example, the extraordinary success of Orff's Carmina burana, premiered in Frankfurt am Main in 1937, led to the composer receiving and accepting a commission to compose a replacement for Mendelssohn's incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream, to comply with the anti-Semitic cultural policy of the city of Frankfurt.Footnote ⁸ Seen in the context of its time, Orff's composition triggers much more ambivalent connotations than just ‘a reflective space for romantic visions of the Middle Ages’ (p. 80).

Blind spots aside, Bobeth successfully manages to demonstrate that ‘much remains to be done for the most famous song book of the thirteenth century’ (p. 115). She draws the reader's attention to the ‘traditional philological denigration of the text variants’ (p. 86) and to newer perspectives from the New Philology, which call for ‘a methodology which takes seriously the specifics of any given transmission and seeks to understand these in the context of their transmitting medium’ (p. 88). She reiterates the desideratum that ‘there is still no comprehensive study of the manuscript from a musical vantage point, which fully takes into account the specific textual and musical transmission of the manuscript without prejudice’ (p. 87). The table of the main corpus (pp. 93–7), which shows musical concordances to other repertories as well as several unique songs not known from other sources, could be a point of departure for such a study. Since no ‘systematic analysis of all the pieces [   ] that have concordances in the Notre-Dame repertory and their comparison to the corresponding Notre-Dame versions’ has yet been undertaken (p. 112), Bobeth chooses her examples and case studies mainly from this area of research. She convincingly explains how the monophonic and unnotated song Gaude, Cur gaudeas vide, a unique textual variant of Homo, quo vigeas vide, deliberately draws on Et gaudebit, the motet tenor on which this motetus is based (pp. 88–90). Afterwards, Bobeth dedicates an extensive case study to the idiosyncratic ‘combination of stanzas from different pieces’ (p. 101) found in the merging of a monophonic reduction of Dic Christi veritas and Bulla fulminante to a combined version (pp. 101–12). By analysing the combined version in its own right and comparing it with the two other neumed versions from German-speaking Europe, Bobeth concludes that the inserted stanzas of Bulla fulminante were indeed ‘intended for alternatim performance’ with the stanzas of Dic Christi veritas (p. 111).

A follow-up study on this complex alone could, for example, further delve into the intricacies of transmission of text and music, including Veste nuptiali, the other monophonic conductus based on the final melisma of Dic Christi veritas.Footnote ⁹ Even though Bobeth focuses on the three monophonic versions from the German-speaking area, a sideways glance to the idiosyncratic scribe of E-SAu 226, fol. 100v, would have been an interesting point of comparison.Footnote ¹⁰ Furthermore, the extremely early dating of the unfinished fragment F-T 1471, recently proposed by Gregorio Bevilacqua, is subject to controversy and invites further studies.Footnote ¹¹ For the sake of completeness, it should be mentioned that the Frankfurt conductus fragments (consisting of D-F Fragm. lat. VI. 41 and US-NYcub N-66) also transmit a three-part version of Dic Christi veritas.Footnote ¹² Finally, it has not yet been examined how the text of Dic Christi veritas made its way into two manuscripts as diverse as I-Rc 1404 and D-B Cod. theol. lat. fol. 312.Footnote ¹³

Based on his own original research from his 2013 Berkeley dissertation, Sean Curran offers a fresh and innovative approach to the ‘La Clayette’ manuscript (BNF n.a.f. 13521). Contrary to past scholarship and on the basis of thorough codicological observation, Curran argues that ‘music took a place in the collection at the first stage’ (p. 202). He demonstrates that the manuscript underwent ‘a period of active growth’ (p. 203) over decades and that the compilers ‘developed techniques that permitted them to copy whatever useful text came to hand, as it became available, without delimiting future repertorial choices’ (p. 204). Considering the motets in the context of the whole book, which also contains ‘vernacular literary materials of a pastoral kind’ (p. 202), Curran draws conclusions on the use of the book, stating that ‘one solution (doubtless among others) would be to suppose that a single reader beheld the manuscript, and taught others from the book, by whatever didactic means proved effective’ (p. 208). In line with ‘the manuscript's devotional purpose’ (p. 208), the opening and closing motets ‘place a devotional frame around the collection as a whole’ (p. 209). To illustrate how exactly this devotion is transformed into music, Curran offers a close analysis of the opening motet Ave virgo regia/Ave gloriosa mater salvatoris/Domino (pp. 208–19). He convincingly argues that the polytextuality is much more than ‘merely the default texture of the thirteenth-century motet’ (p. 216) and explains how the motet becomes ‘a ritualizing event’ (p. 219). To a certain extent, the focus of previous scholarship on ‘the polytextual motet's perceptual difficulty’ (p. 217) has obscured the understanding of the genre. Trenchantly, Curran remarks that it has proved ‘complicated to distinguish the historical difficulty of the genre from the historiographical difficulty of reconstructing old music’ (p. 217).

Curran's critical observation of previous scholarship's ‘unexamined – indeed, unarticulated – assumption that the only kind of literate musical practice is one where all singers read all of the time’ (p. 207; see also p. 279) also applies to the volume as a whole. In fact, as Elizabeth Eva Leach emphasises, the present volume challenges one of the key paradigms of past research, ‘the assumption that verbal and musical notation are two discrete systems and that musical manuscripts signal this through musical notation and that “songs” without musical notation might be songs only in the allusive sense of “lyrics”, for reading aloud or silently, but not for real singing’ (p. 233). Today's students, familiar with popular culture and new media from the outset, will probably find it hard to disagree with Leach's statement that ‘verbal notation (that is, the written words of a song) is a sufficient way to notate a sung performance when the song is familiar or can be heard from the singing of those to whom it is familiar. In short, one can even learn a song one does not know and whose words are difficult to hear from the sound of a YouTube video, provided one has the verbal text and the sung song in combination’ (p. 233). Nevertheless, the importance of this approach cannot be overstated. What is at stake is nothing less than a challenge to past historiography, in which all too often only a notated music manuscript was considered to be a proper music manuscript and thus worthy of inclusion in the fuller historiographical picture. By integrating into this book two such manuscripts which were neglected by past musicological research on account of their lack of musical notation (the Manesse Codex and the Douce Chansonnier), the present volume has attempted to create a new historiographical balance and it is hoped will inspire future research in this underexplored area.Footnote ¹⁴

In his article about the above-mentioned Manesse Codex, Henry Hope gives insights into methodology and results of his doctoral research about the Minnesang manuscript, which has been largely neglected in musicology as it does not contain ‘any conventional musical notation that can be recognized and understood by modern scholars’ (p. 164).Footnote ¹⁵ In an avowedly interdisciplinary approach, Hope develops a new ontology of Minnesang and music, expressing criticism that ‘the present ontology of music considers only explicit references to the production of sound, such as the depiction of instruments or musical notation, as instances of musical visualisation’ (p. 191). Instead, ‘this modern, narrowly delimited ontology of music’ needs to be reconsidered, and ‘a wider understanding of music that includes its performative, textual, and especially its non-sounding components’ needs to be developed (p. 191). Methodologically, Hope follows ‘Norbert Ott's call to look at manuscript illuminations and to listen to their texts’ (p. 167). He first reviews the miniatures containing obvious references to music by depicting musical instruments, relating to Reinmar der Fiedler and Heinrich Frauenlob, nuancing their interpretation by a ‘study of the characters’ gestures and glances’ (p. 170). While prior scholarship interpreted the allegorical depiction of the lady on the helm in the Frauenlob miniature either as Frau Minne or as the Virgin Mary, Hope offers an alternative reading as Lady Music (pp. 172–4). In spite of very detailed descriptions, however, questions of number symbolism remain open, which would have offered themselves as additional tools for interpretation. Seven instruments and nine musicians might, for example, refer to the Seven Joys and Sorrows of the Virgin Mary as well as to the nine muses of Greek mythology. Afterwards, Hope addresses issues of ‘Courtliness and the absence of music’ (p. 174), analysing ‘markers of social status’ (p. 175) as well as the importance for the commissioners of the manuscript of showing the Minnesänger ‘in a context of elevated social status’ (p. 177). The section about ‘Orality and ownership’ (pp. 179–83) presents the most thought-provoking ideas. Hope discerns ‘two main ways in which the images in the Codex Manesse visualize orality: the pointing index finger and the depiction of scrolls’ (p. 179), understanding any reference to orality ‘as a potential reference to music’ or at least as some other kind of acoustic performance or verbal exchange (pp. 179–81).

In her chapter on the Chansonnier Douce 308 in the Bodleian Library, Elizabeth Eva Leach gives a little foretaste of her ongoing project on this ‘large book with a complex mixture of contents’ (p. 221).Footnote ¹⁶ Because of its lack of musical notation, the early fourteenth-century composite manuscript ‘has not been fully incorporated within any of the musicological scholarship’ (p. 230). In spite of what she describes as its ‘part-literate’ state, the manuscript ‘should nonetheless be considered a music manuscript’ (p. 245). Miniatures ‘show dancing and singing’, and ‘the songs themselves make copious reference to their own status as sung songs’ (p. 234). The first two sections form ‘separate codicological units’ (p. 226), containing copies of Jacques de Longuyon's Voeux de Paon (Section A, fascicle 1), ‘a sequence of old French text on the Alexander legend’ (pp. 221–3), and Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'amour (Section B, fascicle 2), which is also often found ‘copied in musical sources for the trouvère repertory’ (p. 224). As for Section E at the beginning of the fourth fascicle, only a fragment of anonymous thirteenth-century prose known as La Prophetie Sebile has remained, while section F in the same fascicle transmits Huon de Méry's Le Tornoiement Antecrist, ‘a moralizing dream vision’ (p. 225).

The third fascicle, containing Sections C and D, serves as a first case study to demonstrate ‘the holistic and inter-textual moves taking place at the larger level of the overall contents of the manuscript’ (p. 233). Section C contains Jacques Bretel's Le Tournoi de Chauvency, and Section D, a chansonnier, presents a collection of song texts organised by genre (pp. 227–33). While the texts of these songs have recently been edited by Eglal Doss-Quinby, Samuel N. Rosenberg and Elizabeth Aubrey, their connection to the other parts of the manuscript has not yet found the scholarly attention it deserves. Section C, ‘Jacques Bretel's intriguing account [   ] of several days of courtly festivities at Chauvency-le-Château’ (p. 225) in 1285, also includes various references to musical performance. Leach summarises the narrative action (pp. 240–1), pointing to ‘verbal and personal links between the two sections’ (p. 234) and listing the shared refrains of both sections (table 9.3, between pp. 234 and 240). She also highlights ‘the centrality of women to the culture of song’ (p. 246). Through the example of the Chauvency (pp. 234–42), Leach demonstrates how the ‘various parts and various media within those parts work together’ (p. 241), and further research on this significant ‘document of reception and synthesis of an older tradition’ (p. 230) is in progress.

Has medieval musicology thus finally discovered the manuscript (qua manuscript) as the new paradigm? Through the lens of eight different authors, this volume has shown what a manuscript-centred approach can contribute to the understanding of medieval song. Indeed, the materiality of medieval manuscripts can serve as the most immediate conceivable link to the past, and it is desirable that students learn to evaluate codicological evidence early on. Serious study of the individual case studies of this volume will also increase the general awareness about scribal and layout strategies as well as questions of analysis and edition. Needless to say, the historiographical potential of one single manuscript does not replace a solid overview of broader tendencies relating to music history as well as music aesthetics.Footnote ¹⁷ However, this issue also applies for the examples of close musical analysis presented in this volume. Without a clear understanding of general goals and criteria of musical analysis as well as edition, undergraduate students might easily get lost in the detailed analytical examples of this volume. Another barrier to understanding might be the unfortunate placement of the figures, tables and examples, which throughout the volume are not placed well and sometimes seriously disturb the train of reading. As with the references to digital images of manuscripts discussed in this volume, an additional digital portal containing comprehensive tables could have been created as a helpful tool to navigate through this rich source of extensive material. Except for these minor barriers, this volume as a whole is highly recommended for both students and experienced scholars. The editors emphasise that this book is ‘merely the starting point from which to open up newer perspectives’ (p. 284). Now future research is invited to develop the presented methodologies further and integrate these newer perspectives into a fuller historiographical picture.