Geoffrey Chaucer, in The Prioress's Tale, relates how a young boy went to school to learn ‘doctrine’, that is ‘to syngen and to rede’. Learning his Latin from the Psalms and prayers in the Primer, the boy hears the other children singing Alma redemptoris mater as they ‘lerned hire antiphoner’. The kind of schooling which Chaucer describes in this Tale was the foundation of many productive clerical lives spent in the cloister, in the cathedral close or in the service of a magnate. To sing and to read: that was the ‘doctrine’ that promising young boys were taught in medieval Europe, and a man of clerical education never became so grand that he outgrew the simple compliment of the Old French poets: il scet bien lire et chanter.

The purpose of this book is to provide a new text and translation, briefly introduced and succinctly annotated, of a manual written c. 1200 for masters teaching boys to sing plainchant and to appreciate Latin eloquence. The work of two authors whose names have hitherto been obscured, it is a practical manual which has been known since Gerbert's pioneering edition of 1784 as the Summa musice. It is remarkable for many things, not least for its highly unusual form comprising prose chapters followed by versified treatments of the same teaching using a wealth of figurative language. Among the many sections of special interest are a chapter on polyphony and several chapters on composition. There are practical hints for performers of chant, and the treatise also refers to musical instruments in an unusually informative manner, discussing the way in which they are tuned and mentioning their use in the training of novices.