This article traces the early reception of Ludovicus Decus Regnantium, the most common Proper Office for Saint Louis, King of France, canonized in 1297. It is generally considered a Dominican Office thought to have been produced on commission by the Dominican, Arnaud DuPrat, after his Order instituted Louis’ feast day. A number of factors confuse this attribution, including the existence of an earlier, rare Office for Louis, Nunc Laudare. A close examination of the extant evidence for the attribution and early reception of the Office leads to the conclusion that the Office was not celebrated by most, or even many, of the Dominican convents in France. It can thus be better understood in its Parisian and royal milieu within the context of the close relationship between the royal court of Philip the Fair (r. 1285–1314) and the Dominican convent of the Rue St-Jacques in Paris.

Recent developments have uncovered the early correspondence of Heloise and Abelard. This discovery has allowed the identification of a number of ‘lost’ lyrics by Abelard and has revealed that Heloise, too, was a lyricist of great stature. This article reviews some of their works and touches upon their connection with the ‘goliardic’ tradition, the Carmina Burana, and their influence upon Walther von der Vogelweide and other poets. The sequences and liturgical dramas of Heloise survive with music of an individual style. The dramas, moreover, are of notable originality: they influenced the later history of the genre (including the Carmina Burana Easter dramas) to a considerable and enduring extent.

The employment of castrati in the Byzantine Church can be traced back to the choirmaster Brison in the fourth century. Brison was called upon by John Chrysostom to organize the antiphonal hymn-singing in the patriarchal church. Since eunuchs were generally considered to be remnants of a pagan past, castrati are seldom mentioned in early Byzantine sources, but beginning in the tenth century references to eunuchs or castrati became more and more frequent. By the twelfth century all the professional singers in the Hagia Sophia were castrati. The repertory of the castrati is discussed and the question is raised whether the introduction of castrati to the Sistine Chapel was influenced by the employment of castrati in Italo-Greek cloisters.

Following the Council of Basel in 1439, which initiated the papal schism between Eugenius IV and Felix V (Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy), Guillaume Du Fay appears to have resumed his northern connections, leaving the court of Savoy and returning to the patronage of the Duke of Burgundy. This article sheds new light on the timing of the composer's move, and on his continued contact with the court of Savoy during the schism of the 1440s. Examination of liturgical sources from the cathedral of Cambrai and elsewhere brings to light a liturgical and musical anomaly in Du Fay's polyphonic settings of Mass Propers for St Maurice, composed during this period, suggesting that this cycle may have been commissioned from Savoy, although Du Fay seems to have had access only to Cambrai chant sources for its cantus firmi.

Thomas Cranmer's Preface to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer pointed out the “great diversity in saying and singing in churches within this realm”, and this comment was no less applicable to earlier medieval England, which presented a patchwork of some eight-hundred religious communities scattered throughout the country, working under various religious Rules, and often following diverse liturgies.

The phrase ‘the language of music’, made famous by Deryck Cooke's book of that name, is much repeated in modern music criticism. Is it possible to use this phrase in a medieval context? In what ways is the relationship between music and language in the medieval period best described? The importance of this question is clear when one considers both how high a proportion of medieval music was texted, and conversely, the extent to which the performance of much medieval poetry (even narrative poetry) involved music. We are fortunate that this very large issue has received detailed attention in John Stevens's magisterial account of medieval monophony. My attempt here is to extend the argument into the area of polyphony, concentrating on the nature of compositional activity in thirteenthcentury France. This will include discussion of how far the compositional processes of music and poetry are comparable in this period, and indeed whether they are in any way collaborative. Do the two structural systems – languages, perhaps – of music and words have any effect on each other's system of meaning?

The manuscript Chicago, Newberry Library 54.1, copied in Pavia in 1391 by an English friar, has been the object of attention of scholars for some time now. Because of the presence of Senleches's song La harpe de melodie (famously notated in the shape of a harp), and of the earliest known dated copy of the Tractatus figurarum (which reflects late fourteenth-century developments in the notation of complex rhythms), the Chicago manuscript has often been cited in support of the historiographical hypothesis which sees the Visconti court of Pavia–Milan as the main centre of production of Ars subtilior repertory in Italy. In the absence of records on the scribe ‘G de Anglia’ and the context in which he worked, it has been almost inevitable thus far to associate the compilation of the manuscript with the Visconti court and the city university (founded and supported by the Visconti). A recently identified document, however, provides some clues to the identity of the scribe of Chicago 54.1, who can now be identified as an Augustinian Hermit. This is confirmed by various elements in the manuscript that also indicate Augustinian connections, placing the compilation of the manuscript in the context of the Augustinian house of Pavia. These elements help to shift the focus of attention to other cultural contexts that may have played a role in the compilation of the manuscript, and invite a reassessment of the hitherto assumed connections with the Visconti court and secular university.

In the years before his death, Johannes Ciconia (1370?–1412) set to music several poems penned by the young Venetian humanist Leonardo Giustinian. One of the earliest of these settings is Con lagreme bagnandome el viso. This article proposes that both the poem and its setting by Ciconia operate within the emotional community of early humanists active at Padua in the decades around the year 1400. The public funeral oratory of one of the high-profile humanists active in this community in Padua, Pier Paolo Vergerio, reveals a renewed interest in ancient rhetoric that was instrumental in the development of new modes of self-expression within this emotional community. Different types of musical repetition in Ciconia's setting of Con lagreme serve as musical analogues to rhetorical figures of pathos witnessed in the orations of Vergerio.

The Lambeth and Caius Choirbooks (London, Lambeth Palace Library, ms.1; Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, ms.667/760 [since 1947 deposited in the University Library, Cambridge]) are two of the most important sources of music by composers of the generations of Fayrfax and Ludford. Their importance is heightened by the fact that, of the scores of such choirbooks that must once have existed in England, only one other, the famous Eton Choirbook (Eton College, ms.178.), survives in anything remotely like a complete state.

The end of a century, like the end of any era, is a time to take stock and lay plans. This is no less true of plainsong and medieval music than of any field of human endeavour. So it comes as no surprise to encounter in our professional literature exhortations to re-envision our subject and to contemplate its direction in the twenty-first century. Richard Crocker has been particularly cogent in recommending the abandonment of lost causes and the adoption of new or neglected research methods.1 The attempt to read the oldest melodic texts of plainchant as the trace of the sumptuous oral tradition that preceded them, however tantalizing, is ultimately unsatisfying in his view, perhaps even vain. In its place he urges us to cultivate a critical, evaluative understanding of chants composed in the era of musical notation, that is, as authoritative compositions of the time when they were copied rather than as witnesses to an obsolescent oral tradition. Putting this advice into practice would require more listening, performing and remembering of chants as they are and less speculation about how they got that way.

It is common knowledge that the repertory of thirteenth-century Latin motets exhibits a great variety of poetic themes. Many of the earliest motets comment upon the feast of their parent chant and are therefore classified as ‘troping’; others praise the Virgin Mary – sometimes regardless of their associated chant; still others avoid obvious connections with the liturgy and either criticize, admonish or exhort listeners to reform. The classification of motet texts according to content has increased our understanding of overall themes and of the chronological relationships between them, but it has also raised questions. Some questions arise from the fact that the general categories of troping, Marian and hortatory texts are not mutually exclusive. Should we distinguish a ‘general’ Marian motet, like Virgo mater salutis (386) / JOHANNE (M 29), which superimposes general epithets and intercessions to the Virgin above a chant in honour of John the Baptist, from a ‘troping’ Marian motet, such as Flos de spina rumpitur (437), built over the Assumption tenor, REGNAT (M 34), which makes specific references to its associated feast? Or does this added taxonomic layer only distract us from the task of interpreting these texts?

This article presents a typology for a large corpus of Proper Offices from the former Francia occidentalis, composed before the year 1000. A threefold classification for these historiae will be proposed: (1) the Carolingian basilical Office (8–9 c.); (2) Offices organized in modal order (after 900); and (3) Offices composed around the year 1000. The methodology established for this hitherto unpublished, not widely known repertory will permit certain conclusions to be drawn. For example, some Offices have historical importance either because of their age or because of the evolution of the style of melodic composition which they imply, or because they belong to a hagiographic output significant in the history of Carolingian texts. These historiae suppose the literary participation of well-known authors like Hilduin of St Denis, Hincmar of Rheims or Milo and Hucbald of St Amand, thus inviting us to rethink attribution criteria applicable to these historiae. I propose to focus essentially on the written transmission of the repertory in Western sources of plainchant. This transmission is characterized by a series of continuities and disruptions in the process of diffusion and exchanges among basilicas, monasteries and cathedrals of Carolingian and post-Carolingian Francia. The reworking of hagiographic texts suggests a model applicable to the rewriting process found in musical compositions.

Included in the collection of cantiones and Benedicamus tropes copied at the end of the Moosburger Graduale (München, Universitätsbibliothek, CIM 100 [olim 2o Cod. ms. 156], ff. 30v–250v) are five songs attributed to ‘Johannes Decanus’ (Johannes de Perchausen, †15.VIII.1362). In his preface to the song collection, Johannes describes three distinct repertoires (those ‘sung from antiquity’, ‘a few modern songs’ and ‘some of my own [songs]’) and through the examination of concordances it is possible to sort the songs into each of Johannes's categories. Against this background, three of Johannes's songs (Mos florentis venustatis, Flos campi profert lilium and Ad cultum tue laudis) demonstrate the consistent use of melodic rhyme, internal repetition of phrase units in both the verses and the refrains, and clear modal centring, found in most of the other Latin songs in the Moosburg collection. Two songs (Castis psallamus mentibus, and his Benedicamus trope, Florizet vox dulcisonans), however, represent a radical departure from these ‘norms’, through the unusual structuring of their melodies. These anomalous songs may reflect Johannes's desire to stretch the training and musicality of the young students of the Moosburg church with more modern melodic concepts.

The non-liturgical songs of twelfth- and thirteenth-century England were recorded, for the most part, not in dedicated song books, but on occasional pages in manuscript miscellanies. Away from the context of fully musical books, there were no fixed procedures for the layout of music, and scribes devised new approaches to layout as they worked. This article considers three Latin songs from such sources and explores the evidence for experimentation, both in scribal technique and in musical procedures, that may have contributed to their specific manuscript presentations.

Chants based on Crucem tuam in the second medial mode are examined in Greek, Slavonic and Latin sources. Central to the discussion is the role of Jerusalem in the dissemination of the modal system. On the Latin side, the emphasis is on Old Roman melodies, showing how they reproduce the prototypes more faithfully than Beneventan or Frankish melodies. The analysis does not support certain conclusions regarding the origins of the modal system and the relationship of Old Roman and Gregorian melodies advanced by Robert Snow, Helmut Hucke and Leo Treitler.

Simon Mellet, scribe and vicar at the cathedral of Cambrai, is among the best-known music scribes of the fifteenth century. Jules Houdoy's classic study of Cambrai Cathedral (1880) documented numerous payments made to Mellet for copying, payments which have remained an important source of information for our understanding of the career of Guillaume Du Fay and the role of the Cambrai Cathedral as a vital musical centre in the fifteenth century. Simon Mellet's thirty-six-year career dominates the study of the production of music manuscripts at Cambrai. Payments made to Mellet are mentioned in most research on Du Fay and on sacred polyphony in the Franco-Burgundian regions. It is through these documents that we know of lost works by Du Fay, such as the Requiem, and of the existence of the composer Rasse de Lavenne. The payments even tell us of apparently wholly lost genres, such as the lamentations by Busnois, Ockeghem and Fremiet that were copied by Mellet in 1475–6.

Only two large collections of Hildegard of Bingen's music are extant, today housed in the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven (B-LVu, no shelf number) and in the Hochschul-und Landesbibliothek RheinMain in Wiesbaden (D-WI1 2, the so-called ‘Riesencodex’). The Riesencodex, though, was almost lost during World War II. It survived both bombing and plundering in Dresden in February 1945, only to be appropriated by the Soviet Administration in 1947. Using archival records from the Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv in Wiesbaden from the 1940s and 1950s, I detail the efforts of a number of people to retrieve the manuscript after the war and bring it back to Wiesbaden. Franz Götting, the director of the Wiesbaden library, spent several years trying to recover the manuscript through official channels. Its eventual return to Wiesbaden in 1948, however, came about surreptitiously, largely through the efforts of Margarete Kühn at the German Academy in East Berlin and an American woman, Caroline Walsh, in Berlin as a military spouse.

In his lucid discussion of genre in medieval treatises on music, Lawrence Gushee states that: The main part of Gushee's discussion is taken up with documents written up to the thirteenth century; for that reason he pays only a brief visit to treatises written thereafter, recognizing, however, a generic category in ‘works of the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries which can be classed together merely by virtue of their size and synthetic character’. Among these he counts the treatises of Jacques de Liège, Walter Odington, Engelbert of Admont, Marchettus of Padua and Jerome of Moravia. One could add a few others to this list, such as the Tractatus de musica of Magister Lambertus and the work largely derived from that one, the Quatuor principalia musicae. These are ‘synthetic’, to use Gushee's word, in that they attempt a comprehensive treatment of their subject – they cover both theoretical and practical aspects of pitch and rhythm, and usually begin with a mythic/historic overview of music and a classification scheme that situates it within the sphere of other disciplines.