Previous commentators have maligned the La Clayette manuscript as a source of Ars Antiqua motets on three grounds: that its layout is not arranged for use in performance; that its notation is unsophisticated in its use of mensural forms; and that it is heavy with errors. This article offers a palaeographical account of the music fascicle and its methods of production, arguing that its layout was tailored to match the manuscript's literary portions, and was designed first by a text scribe specialising in the vernacular, which accounts for many of the supposed problems. The article describes the notator's ‘house style’ and his means of dealing with the text scribe's frequent errors, suggesting he was largely successful in transmitting usable musical readings. All this provides an opportunity to think through the historical possibilities for literate interaction with written polyphony in the thirteenth century. It is suggested that La Clayette was understood by its users as a tool with which a single reader could teach other, perhaps non-literate people to sing polytextual pieces.

This article examines the thinking of Guy of Saint-Denis about plainchant tones as formulated in his Tractatus de Tonis (c.1300), preserved as the final item in an anthology of texts that he prepared (British Library, MS Harley 281). It examines his attitude to each of the major theorists singled out in this anthology. It argues that Guy's approach to chant combines the practically oriented writings of Guido of Arezzo with the Aristotelian perspective formulated by Johannes de Grocheio, but takes that perspective a step further by reflecting on the ways different types of chant impact on the emotions. Guy was also much influenced by Peter of Auvergne, a philosopher in the Arts Faculty at Paris committed to developing the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. Careful corrections to the Tractatus in Harley 281 reflect this ongoing concern to refine his thinking, possibly stimulated by Jerome of Moravia. His core conviction is that chant modes each have an affective attribute, and need to be chosen according to the subject matter of the text being sung. Guy criticised the practice of choosing modes sequentially in liturgical offices composed by those he calls ‘moderns’. Guy argues his case by drawing on examples of chant from Saint-Denis. A case can be made, on palaeographic grounds, for identifying him with Guy of Châtres, abbot of Saint-Denis (1326–42) and author of a Sanctilogium that updates the traditional monastic martyrology by reference to more recent Dominican collections of saints' lives in order to make them more accessible for liturgical use.

Changing attitudes towards violence and war are important markers of medieval European cultural development and, as such, have been the focus of numerous historical studies. Saints' offices have not, however, been analysed along these lines, an unjustified neglect given their central place in the daily cultural life of ecclesiastical institutions, not to mention the large range of related scholarly topics they represent. Offered here is an overview of these topics, beginning with an examination of offices with roots in Merovingian and Carolingian times, and proceeding to later offices originating in the crucial time of the first crusades and beyond. How is violence described in chants with texts drawn from the Old and New Testaments? How is it handled in chants based on later hagiographic literature? Is Christian military violence legitimised in these chants? How are enemies portrayed? How are the messages of these texts articulated in their musical settings? Answers to these questions might place the sacred monophony of the Latin Church into its proper context, that is, as a means of socio-political reflexion during the Middle Ages.

This article aims to show the relevance of musical and musical-textual analysis of saints' offices in approaching socio-historical aspects of the Middle Age. It investigates the moral and socio-historical concepts conveyed by the responsoria prolixa in honour of martyred saints in the famous Codex Hartker (CH-SGs 390–391, c.1000). What were the right ways to deal with violence and suffering? Did these differ for men, women and children? In the analysis of responsories in honour of St Stephen, St Lawrence, the Holy Innocents, Sts Cecilia and Agatha, striking musical or textual-musical features which emphasise or even interpret the message of the text have repeatedly been found. The quantity and similarity of such observations lifts them out of the haze of arbitrariness Indeed, it is possible to identify gender-specific and role-specific differences with regard to the behaviours which enabled people to attain the degree of sainthood.

Canonic techniques in the Trecento caccia reveal a wide spectrum of ostinato procedures ranging from brief cadence patterns to large-scale harmonic and/or melodic repetition schemes. The ostinato phenomenon is thus an important structural component of canonic technique in the caccia. This article examines these ostinato patterns in terms of a putative historical and structural transformation of the genre at the intersection of unwritten and written practices. Special emphasis is placed on the definition of the caccia from the anonymous Trecento treatise, Capitulum de vocibus applicatis verbis, and its correlation with the early layer of the caccia repertoire.

During the reconquest of Islamic territories on the Spanish March, Iberian lands witnessed a religious transformation enacted by the Christian victors and characterised by the resurgence of devotion to both old and new saintly figures. The present article explores how the music of saints represents, and thus interprets, issues related to violence and suffering so prevalent on the frontier. The chants for prominent saints in the area, Paul of Narbonne, Eulalia of Barcelona and Saturninus of Toulouse, are explored here in relation to how words and music interacted to illustrate the saints' position in relation to violence and suffering. Musical analyses trace how the topoi of orthodoxy in faith and confronting bloodshed with devout resolution are cast in the chants of earlier styles to those of the late twelfth century. Differences in musical depictions of these subjects underscore how the saints, in their changing sonic personae, were made to engage with the realities confronting Christian frontier communities.

This article discusses the theology of the late twelfth-century offices in honour of the Danish patron saint Knud Lavard, asking to what extent this theology can be seen to have been underlined in musical representations. Altogether, there is surprisingly little war imagery in the offices. Although Knud Lavard was a military leader, a dux, and is presented in the offices as a miles Christi, and although some formulations in the office can be read to construct him as a crusader, his mildness and his passive suffering are much more emphasized. Indeed, the theological tenor is that of a Christ-like martyr being slaughtered without resistance. The emphasis is thus on suffering as a consequence of evil and unprovoked aggression, verbally as well as musically. This will be underscored by textual as well as musical analysis of central parts of the offices, focusing on the relationship between the responsories and the homiletic readings of the last Nocturns of Matins, which so far have not been much discussed in scholarship, taking also the sequence for the Translation Mass, Diem festum veneremur, into consideration.