This groundbreaking anthology brings together for the first time the works of women poet-composers, or trouveres, in northern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Refuting the long-held notion that there are no extant Old French lyrics by women from this period, the editors of the volume present songs attributed to eight named female trouveres along with a varied selection of anonymous compositions in the feminine voice that may have been composed by women. The book includes the Old French texts of seventy-five compositions, extant music for eighteen monophonic songs and nineteen polyphonic motets, English translations, and a substantial introduction.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This volume brings together literary and musical compositions of medieval France, including the Occitanian region, identifying the use of voice in these works as a way of articulating gendered identities. The contributors to this volume argue that because medieval texts were often read or sung aloud, voice is central for understanding the performance, transmission, and reception of work from the period across a wide variety of genres. These essays offer close readings of narrative and lyric poetry, chivalric romance, sermons, letters, political writing, motets, troubadour and trouvère lyric, crusade songs, love songs, and debate songs. Through literary, musical, and historiographical analyses, contributors highlight the voicing of gendered perspectives, expressions of sexuality, and power dynamics. The volume includes feminist readings, investigations of masculinity, queer theory, and intersectional approaches. The contributors interpret literary or musical works by Chrétien de Troyes, Aimeric de Peguilhan, Hue de la Ferté, the Chastelain de Couci, Jacques de Vitry, Christine de Pizan, Anne de Graville, Alain Chartier, and Giovanni Boccaccio, among others. Gender and Voice in Medieval French Literature and Song offers a valuable interdisciplinary approach and contributes to the history of women’s voices in the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods. It illuminates the critical role of voice in negotiating culture, celebrating and innovating traditions, advancing personal and political projects, and defining the literary and musical developments that shaped medieval France. Contributors: Lisa Colton | Emily J Hutchinson | Daisy Delogu | Tamara Bentley Caudill | Katherine Kong | Meghan Quinlan | Lydia M Walker | Rachel May Golden | Anna Kathryn Grau | Anne Adele Levitsky

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This collection presents fresh evidence and new perspectives on the diverse ways in which women created and interacted with cultures of song between c. 600 and c. 1500.

This groundbreaking anthology brings together for the first time the works of women poet-composers, or trouveres, in northern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Refuting the long-held notion that there are no extant Old France lyrics by women from this period, the editors of the volume present songs attributed to eight named female trouveres along with a varied selection of anonymous compositions in the feminine voice that may have been composed by women. This book includes the Old French texts of seventy-five compositions, English translations, extant music for eighteen monophonic songs and nineteen polyphonic motets, and a substantial introduction.

This classic reference work, the best one-volume music dictionary available, has been brought completely up to date in this new edition. Combining authoritative scholarship and lucid, lively prose, the Fourth Edition of The Harvard Dictionary of Music is the essential guide for musicians, students, and everyone who appreciates music. The Harvard Dictionary of Music has long been admired for its wide range as well as its reliability. This treasure trove includes entries on all the styles and forms in Western music; comprehensive articles on the music of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Near East; descriptions of instruments enriched by historical background; and articles that reflect today’s beat, including popular music, jazz, and rock. Throughout this Fourth Edition, existing articles have been fine-tuned and new entries added so that the dictionary fully reflects current music scholarship and recent developments in musical culture. Encyclopedia-length articles by notable experts alternate with short entries for quick reference, including definitions and identifications of works and instruments. More than 220 drawings and 250 musical examples enhance the text. This is an invaluable book that no music lover can afford to be without.

"The Music of the Troubadours is the first comprehensive critical study of the extant melodies of the troubadours of Occitania. It begins with an overview of their social and political milieu in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, then provides brief biographies of the troubadours whose music survives. The four manuscripts that transmit this music are described in detail, with attention to their genesis in the overlapping roles of composers, singers, and scribes"--Back cover

Texts centred on the mother of Jesus abound in religious traditions the world over, but thirteenth-century Old French lyric stands apart, both because of the enormous size of the Marian cult in thirteenth-century France and the lack of critical attention the genre has garnered from scholars. As hybrid texts, Old French Marian songs combine motifs from several genres and registers to articulate a devotional message. In this comprehensive and illuminating study, Daniel E. O'Sullivan examines the movement between secular and religious traditions in medieval culture that Old French religious song embodies. He demonstrates that Marian lyric was far more than a simple, mindless imitation of secular love song. On the contrary, Marian lyric participated in a dynamic interplay with the secular tradition that different composers shaped and reshaped in light of particular doctrinal and aesthetic concerns. It is a corpus that reveals itself to be far more malleable and supple than past readers have admitted. With an extensive index of musical and textual editions of dozens of songs, Marian Devotion in Thirteenth-Century French Lyric brings a heretofore neglected genre to light.

Song, Landscape, and Identity in Medieval Northern France offers a new perspective on how medieval song expressed relationships between people and their environments. Informed by environmental history and harnessing musicological and ecocritical approaches, author Jennifer Saltzstein draws connections between the nature imagery that pervades songs written by the trouvères of northern France to the physical terrain and climate of the lands on which their authors lived. In doing so, she analyzes the different ways in which composers' lived environments related to their songs and categorizes their use of nature imagery as realistic, aspirational, or nostalgic. Demonstrating a cycle of mutual impact between nature and culture, Saltzstein argues that trouvère songs influenced the ways particular groups of medieval people defined their identities, encouraging them to view themselves as belonging to specific landscapes. The book offers close readings of love songs, pastourelles, motets, and rondets from the likes of Gace Brulé, Adam de la Halle, Guillaume de Machaut, and many others. Saltzstein shows how their music-text relationships illuminate the ways in which song helped to foster identities tied to specific landscapes among the knightly classes, the clergy, aristocratic women, and peasants. By connecting social types to topographies, trouvère songs and the manuscripts in which they were preserved presented models of identity for later generations of songwriters, performers, listeners, patrons, and readers to emulate, thereby projecting into the future specific ways of being on the land. Written in the long thirteenth century during the last major era of climate change, trouvère songs, as Saltzstein demonstrates, shape our understanding of how identity formation has rested on relationships between nature, culture, and change.