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Songs materialising as music: medieval monophony in song books and music manuscripts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2023

OLIVER HUCK
OLIVER HUCK*
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[email protected]
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Abstract

This survey of the mise-en-page of manuscripts that include medieval monophonic song focuses on complex multigraphic written artefacts presenting music on staves. Comparing the formatting of thirteenth-century French chansonniers and fifteenth-century collections of monophonic songs (BnF fr. 9346 and BnF fr. 12744), there are obvious differences in the mise-en-page. But when, where and why did the changes in the production of manuscripts and the materialisation of songs take place? This article proposes a distinction between entirely pre-ruled ‘“full” music manuscripts’, ‘music manuscripts’ employing pre-ruling and ‘manuscripts with music’ where the staves were drawn only after the text has been written. Moreover, ‘songbooks’ mainly interested in lyrics can be distinguished from ‘song books’ focusing on the music. The interrelation of production process, content and manuscript type is discussed using the example of the conductus In hoc ortus occidente. The emergence, interrelation and particularities of layouts are discussed for vernacular thirteenth- or fourteenth-century songbooks with Dutch, English/Anglo-Norman, French, Galego-Portuguese, German, Italian and Occitan texts. The two-column layout is found in songbooks all over Europe (except for Italian laudari). This article examines models such as rolls, libelli, Dominican liturgical books, particularities of layouts such as different strophic page layouts and as the separation of verses in some troubadour chansonniers and Galego-Portuguese cancionieros as well as the dissemination in German speaking regions through minstrel schools. Comparing French, German and Italian song books of monophonic song as well lais/Leich and/or polyphony reveals differences in the production process of Italian ‘“full” music manuscripts’ (BAV Rossi 215/I-OST, I-REas and I-Fl Mediceo Palatino 87), German ‘music manuscripts’ (A-Wn 2701, A-Wn 2777 and CZ-Pu XI E 9) and French ‘manuscripts with music’ (BnF fr. 146 and the Machaut-collections).

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Research Article
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Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , October 2023 , pp. 147 - 166
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

The ninth- or tenth-century manuscript BnF lat. 1154 from the Abbey of St Martial de Limoges has been named ‘the earliest medieval song book’ because it includes two songs labelled ‘versus’.Footnote 1 As in all manuscripts of the first millennium and in many afterwards, its preparation does not include the drawing of musical staves. The music was added above the text, which was written first. John Haines considers that the ‘divorce’ of stave ruling from basic ruling took place from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries as a ‘spectacular writing achievement that signals the independence of music from text’.Footnote 2 The production of all kinds of manuscripts that include music on staves starts with the decision either to write the text and leave blank space for the music, or to rule entire pages with musical staves before writing both music and text.Footnote 3 I refer to this stave ruling simply as ‘ruling’ in the context of this article, and this should be differentiated from the basic ruling of the page before the addition of any graphic elements. Such pre-ruling has been regarded as a distinctive marker of late medieval manuscripts of polyphonic music, which Albert Derolez refers to as ‘“full” music manuscripts’.Footnote 4

At first glance, there are obvious differences between the formatting of thirteenth-century and late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century French collections of monophonic songs, despite their almost identical dimensions (c.30 × 20 cm). In the thirteenth-century manuscripts, there is what Uri Jacob, discussing the earliest manuscripts including French and Anglo-Norman songs on staves, calls ‘strophic page layout’.Footnote 5 The first strophe of the text, which is accompanied by music, is closely followed by the text of the subsequent strophes without music, but in fact there are three different strophic page layouts (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Layouts for subsequent strophes.

By contrast, in fifteenth-century manuscripts, the music is separated from the text block, either by writing the subsequent strophes on the other page of the opening (BnF fr. 9346) or by first presenting the entire poem and then the music accompanied by a repetition of the first strophe at the bottom of the page (BnF fr. 12744).Footnote 6 Moreover, not only is there a change in the layout, but a fundamental change in the production process of these manuscripts also took place. In the thirteenth century, the first step after pricking and ruling the folio was to copy the text; staves, music and decoration were added only later.Footnote 7 In the two fifteenth-century manuscripts, the musical staves were entered first, obviously so, because there are empty staves leftover.Footnote 8 The underlaid text often exceeds the writing block on the right side in order to be aligned with the music that has been written first, as visible on the final pages of BnF fr. 12744 (fols. 98v–99r) with the complete text block but no text under the staves.

Lawrence M. Earp observes that further research is required ‘to determine how long this most meticulous manner’ of ‘initially copying text’ in thirteenth-century manuscripts was followed and ‘to determine when scribal practice definitively changed to the entry of all music before text’,Footnote 9 as in the French chansonniers with polyphony from c.1460 onwards.Footnote 10 This study addresses these questions, additionally taking into account the distribution of different layouts and asking how the manuscript types of song book and music manuscript interrelate.

Manuscript types

In contrast to French thirteenth- and fifteenth-century chansonniers, other song collections do not match Marisa Galvez's definition of ‘songbook’ as a ‘multiauthor and anonymous lyric anthology contained in a manuscript codex or volume of parchment leaves bound together in book form … that displays an intention to gather and organize different vernacular lyric texts as an overall collection’.Footnote 11 The scribes of CZ-Pu XI E 9, a music manuscript including a music treatise written prior to 1415 in Strasbourg, are not interested in lyrics at all and give only the incipits of the texts.Footnote 12 There is not only a ‘textualisation of music’ as in all manuscripts including songs with music, but also a materialisation of songs only as music.Footnote 13 In contrast to Galvez's ‘songbooks’, which must contain lyrics but need not contain music, ‘song books’ of this kind must contain music and need not contain lyrics. Neither French thirteenth- nor fifteenth-century chansonniers can be conceived as ‘“full” music manuscripts’. But even if the latter contain pages without music as well, I propose to recognise the different production process employing pre-ruling in labelling them ‘music manuscripts’ in contrast with the thirteenth-century ‘manuscripts with music’.Footnote 14

The conductus In hoc ortus occidente is found with music in three manuscripts: GB-Cu Ff.i.17(1),Footnote 15 I-Fl Plut. 29.1Footnote 16 and E-BUlh.Footnote 17 It may serve as an example to test and refine these distinctions. A comparison of these sources reveals remarkable differences in their production methods. The earliest of these manuscripts is the so-called twelfth-century Later Cambridge Songs (GB-Cu Ff.i.17[1]), consisting of only four small bifolios and containing thirty-five songs, including thirteen monophonic songs with music and thirteen polyphonic ones. It was clearly conceived as a songbook and was apparently written in England.Footnote 18 It is evident that the texts were copied first and the four-line staves were added later according to the pre-disposition of the text (layout 3, also in the polyphonic songs),Footnote 19 because they are lacking elsewhere, (e.g., on fol. 4r). Sometimes the staves have been left blank.Footnote 20 John Stevens considers that a rastrum was used on the first few pages only,Footnote 21 but Haines doubts that a rake or rastrum was in use to draw staves before the end of the thirteenth century.Footnote 22

The latest of these three manuscripts is the Las Huelgas Codex (E-BUlh), a small quarto manuscript produced at the Cistercian convent in Burgos for its female choir. It is definitely not a songbook. Only at the end of this manuscript – containing for the most part polyphonic organa, motets, sequences and conducti as well as monophonic sequences and Benedicamus tropes – are fifteen monophonic conducti included.Footnote 23 E-BUlh was prepared c.1319–40 by Johannes Roderici who acted as a scribe, compiler and corrector by first ruling the book throughout with six red five-line staves per page. This is obvious because there are staves without music, there is text written between the lines of some staves (fols. 155r and 164r) and the initials are written over some staves too.Footnote 24 None of the monophonic conducti has the texts of subsequent strophes, which are known from other sources.

The slightly smaller Notre-Dame manuscript F (I-Fl Plut. 29.1), produced in Paris in the atelier of Johannes Grusch c.1248 (with additions up to 1252),Footnote 25 includes – beyond twenty-three gatherings of polyphonic organa, clausulae, conducti and motets – two fascicles with monophonic songs.Footnote 26 The pages at the end of all the fascicles are ruled, two of these with ten red five-line staves. This is by no means proof that the entire manuscript was pre-ruled. In the rondellus gathering and in the first of the conductus gatherings (fols. 415–430) the mise-en-page is arranged throughout according to the strophic texts. What makes a difference to the layout of chansonniers employing layout 3 (Table 1) is that here the next song begins within the line if there is enough space. Musical staves do not interrupt a text block, but text blocks interrupt staves. It is evident that the staves were ruled after the text was copied because the top lines of the staves are sometimes interrupted in order to avoid overlapping with the text (e.g. fols. 421v, 423v and 424r). Only in gatherings 25–26 (fols. 431v–462v, except for the first page) have the staves been ruled to fill the entire writing block. As Susan Rankin observes, almost all the songs entered here have only one strophe while in other manuscripts many of them are found with multiple strophes (in three songs the subsequent strophes are included but accompanied with music as in the case of the first strophe so that there are no text blocks).Footnote 27 From fol. 437r onwards up to the end of gathering 26, the coloured initials overwrite the staves because no blank space has been left for them. Fols. 447v–448r, which lack both musical notation and decoration, suggest that the decoration was added after the music. However, the most convincing evidence that the staves were ruled after the text is that the red lines of the staves overwrite the larger black letters that are not part of the decoration.Footnote 28

Table 1. Trouvère manuscripts

a See Elizabeth Aubrey, ‘Sources, MS III, 4 Secular Monophony: French’, in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, 29 vols. (London, 2001), 23: 851–60 and Gaël Saint-Cricq, ‘Motets in Chansonniers and the Other Culture of the Thirteenth-Century Motet’, in A Critical Companion to Medieval Motets, ed. Jared C. Hartt, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music 17 (Woodbridge, 2018), 225–42, except for i, D, e and j; on K, N and O, see Everist, Polyphonic Music, 187–203.

How might the three aforementioned manuscripts in question here be categorised? I would argue that GB-Cu Ff.i.17(1) is a songbook due to its content (even if there are a few sequences and tropes) and a manuscript with music due to its production process and layout. I-Fl Plut. 29.1 is what in the thirteenth century was called a liber organorum, a book of polyphony, including a song collection of which the first and third parts could be conceived as songbooks and the middle part as song book. Its production process in the fascicles with monophonic song is akin to that of a manuscript with music. E-BUlh is neither a songbook nor a song book and, even if it were for use in the liturgy, its contents, layout and preparation qualify it as a liber organorum and as a music manuscript.Footnote 29 In sum, none of these three manuscripts is both music manuscript and a songbook nor a song book.

Vernacular songbooks

The subsequent discussion focuses on manuscripts designed as collections of vernacular songs without considering various isolated songs in Occitan,Footnote 30 Catalan,Footnote 31 Italian,Footnote 32 French,Footnote 33 Anglo-Norman,Footnote 34 English,Footnote 35 Dutch,Footnote 36 CzechFootnote 37 and German,Footnote 38 which have been added to manuscripts with unrelated contents or can be found on flyleaves of uncertain provenance. Without any doubt, every single manuscript is unique and it must be considered that many manuscripts have been lost. Therefore, the aim of this synopsis is not to suggest teleological developments but to overcome the current scholarly tendency to separate repertories by the language of their texts in order to point out similarities and differences, respecting the otherness and plurality of medieval manuscripts.Footnote 39

Helen Deeming states that none of the extant manuscripts including songs with musical notation in British sources up to c.1300 are ‘what we might call a song book’.Footnote 40 But GB-Ob Rawl. G. 22, a small (21.5 × 15 cm) bifolio containing an English and two Anglo-Norman songs, the latter with strophic texts, has presumably been cut away from a songbook.Footnote 41 This manuscript is the earliest (c.1225–40) extant songbook to make use of a two-column layout (layout 1); a layout which became characteristic in French, Occitan and Galego-Portuguese chansonniers during the course of the thirteenth century and was also adopted in German and Dutch songbooks in the fourteenth century. But it is unlikely that the scribe of GB-Ob Rawl. G. 22 followed French models because early French (and Occitan) chansonniers do not employ a layout in columns.

From 1231 onwards, a good number of French trouvère chansonniers with musical notation survive (see Table 1).Footnote 42 In all these songbooks, red staves are drawn according to the already prepared layout of the text (only the second part of V has black stave lines).Footnote 43 This is most often in layout 3, which in all single-column manuscripts (as in the conductus manuscripts discussed and in BL Harley 1717, fol. 251v)Footnote 44 is predominantly and often exclusively employed,Footnote 45 alternating with layout 2 in F, T and B/L. Some two-column manuscripts adopted this early practice, Q and the second part of V show only layout 3, which alternates with layout 2 in K, N, P, O, I and j and the second part of M. In M, O and j, music for the beginning of the second strophe was added.Footnote 46 As in the single-column manuscripts, in K and N there is no music for a second strophe and in P the staves were only drawn until the end of the first strophe. The first part of V abandoned this practice (as sometimes did B/L), the beginning of the second strophe was written on a new line, and the end of the line with the last stave was left blank. In W the last stave was drawn across the whole column, if not in layout 3, then in layout 1 (sometimes also in i). A, the first part of M, X and a show only a unified layout 1. The only single-column manuscript employing layout 1 alternating with layout 3 is R, in which a rastrum was in use.Footnote 47 The trouvère manuscripts are predominantly arranged in two columns with four-line staves,Footnote 48 five-line staves are found in all manuscripts including polyphony and in some late manuscripts,Footnote 49 but five-lines staves and layout 1 do not coincide and therefore, in contrast to the difference between liturgical manuscripts and music manuscripts observed elsewhere,Footnote 50 the number of stave lines is not significant in the songbooks.

In the light of these different layouts, GB-Ob Rawl. 22 raises even more questions because its layout (1) does not occur in French chansonniers before the last third of the thirteenth century. Even if there is no extant roll preserving monophonic song with music, one could speculate that, at the outset, the use of a two-column layout was as a result of copying songs from small single-column rolls or libelli into a codex, maintaining the width of their columns.Footnote 51 Considering that columns are only and predominantly in use from the 1260s onwards,Footnote 52 the influence of Dominican models of liturgical books developed c.1260 with a similar mise-en-page is most likely.Footnote 53 Nevertheless, some later manuscripts are not arranged in columns. Albeit U and F are significantly smaller than most of the chansonniers in a two-column layout, and format is not the only reason for employing a single-column layout here, because P and W have almost the same format and are in any case smaller than other two-column-layout chansonniers.Footnote 54 It is clear that some (but not all) of the chansonniers with a single-column layout were produced in the Lorraine region, which was somewhat peripheral with regard to the activities of the trouvères and that the layout of exemplars was sometimes preserved.Footnote 55

Apart from the Occitan troubadour songs included in some of the thirteenth-century trouvère manuscripts,Footnote 56 there are two troubadour chansonniers with music, another one with blank space for staves, and a fragment (Table 2). V and I-CF 1484 both make use of a single-column layout, like the earliest trouvère chansonniers, and were produced in peripheral regions.Footnote 57 G and R have a two-column layout akin to many of the later trouvère chansonniers. The small number of extant troubadour chansonniers does not allow conclusions to be drawn as to whether the two-column layout first occurred in troubadour or trouvère chansonniers and was then adopted in the other tradition. While R shows layout 3, G is different from all other extant Occitan and French chansonniers in its layout because at the beginning, each verse has been written into a stave of its own, which is also the case for the text of the subsequent strophes throughout.Footnote 58 This disposition of the subsequent strophes is also found in the manuscripts of the Breviari d'Amore by Matfre Ermengaud, including only one song.Footnote 59

Table 2. Troubadour manuscripts

a See Elizabeth Aubrey, ‘Sources, MS III, 3 Secular Monophony: Occitan’, The New Grove Dictionary, 23: 848–51 for G and R.

The making of such songbooks was a practice not confined to France, but is also evident in troubadour sources from Languedoc, Lombardy, Catalonia or Aragon and perhaps Friuli. Owing to its early date, V – the only extant troubadour manuscript designed for music and produced on the Iberian peninsula – is not arranged in columns, but it is likely that models of troubadour chansonniers, whose repertory was well known there,Footnote 60 were picked up in the Galego-Portuguese cancioneiros, all of them with five-line staves and most of them very large (Table 3).

Table 3. Galego-Portuguese manuscripts

a See David Fallows and Manuel Ferreira, ‘Sources, MS III, 6 Secular Monophony: Galego-Portuguese’, The New Grove Dictionary, 23: 865–6 except for the fragments.

The single (bi-)folios including the Galego-Portuguese songs of Martim Codax and Don Dinis were once part of songbooks.Footnote 61 They have a layout (1) comparable to that of the troubadour chansonnier I-Ma R 71 sup., presenting each verse of their subsequent strophes in a separate line. The same holds true for the Cancioneiro da Ajuda (P-La, in which space for the music has been left blank, but no staves have been drawn), and for the three earlier manuscripts of the Cantigas di Santa Marìa from the scriptorium of Alfonso X. One could speculate that the custom to present each verse in a separate line originated on the Iberian peninsula but it is just as plausible that troubadour chansonniers prior to I-Ma R 71 sup. served as models for the Galego-Portuguese cancioneiros. With the exception of E, the manuscripts of the Cantigas di Santa Marìa include some pages in a single-column layout.Footnote 62 In T and F (where only the first part of the manuscript includes musical notation, but it was clearly planned for the second half too, since staves have been ruled but the music has not been copied), there are pages with the music arranged in a single column and the text block in one, two or three columns. In To, there are some folios with a single-column layout but the staves do not fill the same writing block and are not always filled with text and music to the end of each line.Footnote 63 Stephen Parkinson has shown that ‘the cantigas with planned single-column layout represent the majority of those in To with long lines (12 syllables or more)’.Footnote 64 The reason for this change in layout is that, in contrast to the other two manuscripts in which the metrical structure of the texts does not have any impact on the format, the scribes of To favoured the copying of each verse on a separate stave, much like at the beginning of I-Ma R 71 sup. Thus, the changing layout between one and two columns did not have any musical implications, but rather followed a structured presentation of the lyrics. These two manuscripts may indicate that the emergence of a two-column layout in songbooks in the Mediterranean region might have been promoted by copying each verse on a single line. Further, this layout suggests that song was conceived as a sequence of verses to which music was aligned.

There is no German songbook of Minnesang and Sangspruch with music before 1300.Footnote 65 The earliest is the Jena Liederhandschrift,Footnote 66 with a two-column layout with four-line staves (as in all German manuscripts except CH-Bu Cod. N I 3.145).Footnote 67 It differs from all the other German manuscripts in a similar two-column layout due to its extra-large format, the red ink for the four-line staves and the use of square notation instead of German chant notation (Table 4).Footnote 68 The difference in the type of notation employed is remarkable in the case of CH-Bu Cod. N I 3.145, which shares repertory, readings and provenance with the Jena Liederhandschrift.Footnote 69 It has been argued that plenary missals may have served as a model for both sources.Footnote 70 But taking into account the northwestern provenance of some of the other fragments,Footnote 71 one might question whether their scribes were also familiar with French rolls, libelli or chansonniers that they may have encountered; for example, at one of the minstrel schools, which from 1313 at the latest are documented in the Netherlands,Footnote 72 Germany and France.Footnote 73 While the extant chansonniers were not designed for performance and it is unlikely that musicians carried them to such events, there is evidence for the existence of French single-author libelli in two columns (such as fols. 2–9 in BnF fr. 25566 and fols. 13+59–77 in BnF fr. 844).

Table 4. Manuscripts with German Minnesang and Sangspruch

Given the importance of Italian poetry in the Duecento,Footnote 74 the number of Italian secular songs preserved with musical notation is rather small. Italian lyrics from the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries did not find their way into canzonieri with music and no such manuscript is extant at all. On the other hand, the lauda as the devotional song of the lay confraternities is found with music in two extant laudarii and fragments of two more such manuscripts (Table 5).Footnote 75 All the laudarii are in single-column layout, red four-line staves reminiscent of liturgical manuscripts are drawn according to the text layout, filling the entire writing space.Footnote 76 These manuscripts were purposely designed in a style that bears no relation to a chansonnier, a manuscript type that was well known in northern Italy due to the dissemination of the troubadour and trouvère repertory including the production and circulation of manuscripts there. The later (not before 1282) additions in one such source – BnF fr. 844, of which at least some parts were probably written in NaplesFootnote 77 – demonstrate a new approach to writing monophonic songs, because pages used for them were pre-ruled in two columns.Footnote 78

Table 5. Italian laudarii

Manuscripts with music, music manuscripts and ‘full’ music manuscripts

In contrast to French, Occitan, Galego-Portuguese and German songbooks, none of the Italian manuscripts including monophonic songs with music indicates their poets. But I-Fl Mediceo Palatino 87 not only indicates the musical composers but also is subdivided in distinct composer sections. Such Italian collections of mainly polyphonic songs were designed as well as songbooks as ‘full’ music manuscripts written on pre-ruled pages.Footnote 79 Three of them – BAV Rossi 215/I-OST,Footnote 80 I-REas,Footnote 81 I-Fl Mediceo Palatino 87Footnote 82 – include monophonic ballate. Between the first two manuscripts, dating from the third quarter of the fourteenth century,Footnote 83 and the latter compiled in the second decade of the fifteenth century,Footnote 84 there is no change to the practice of including monophonic song in ‘full’ music manuscripts prepared for polyphony on pre-ruled pages with red six-line staves. This predominance of six-line staves in Italian music manuscripts might be seen as an emphatic means of distinguishing them from manuscripts with music, such as the laudarii. Regarding their qualities as songbooks, the three aforementioned manuscripts differ from others sharing the polyphonic repertory (as, e.g., BL 29987) in neither including French songs, nor songs without text or music of other genres.

Neither in France, nor on the Iberian Peninsula, nor in England were vernacular monophonic songs included in such music manuscripts.Footnote 85 Only in the German manuscript CZ-Pu XI E 9 are there tenors from German Lieder and a monophonic Italian song. French fourteenth-century manuscripts preserving song, such as the large (34 × 24 cm) manuscript of the Roman the Fauvel compiled in 1317 as well as the Machaut collections from the second half of the fourteenth century, are neither music manuscripts nor songbooks. Despite their different content, from the point of view of production process and layout they continue the manuscript tradition of the trouvère chansonniers, with staves (albeit using a rake)Footnote 86 still ruled according to the disposition of the text, which was written first.Footnote 87 BnF fr. 146 has a three-column layout. It includes a fascicle with songs by Jehannot de Lescurel that may have previously belonged to a larger manuscript due to their alphabetical ordering, which ends here at ‘G’ (fols. 57r–59v).Footnote 88 However, there are other musical interpolations within in the Roman de Fauvel. Changes in its layout not only occur in some double motets where columns have been connected with continuous staves drawn across them,Footnote 89 but also in the French lais due to their structure in unequal strophes.Footnote 90 The four lais have been arranged in two rather than three columns, with entire pages devoted to a single lai.Footnote 91

In all the Machaut manuscripts containing music, the music of the lais is arranged in a single-column layout (Table 6).Footnote 92 For the chansons, ballades, virelais and rondeaux with strophic texts, four manuscripts have music copied in a single-column layout, C has a section with and another without columns,Footnote 93 and only F–G has two columns throughout. There is no real pre-ruling of pages in the song sections, but in A and B,Footnote 94 empty space has been filled with staves (as in I-Fl Plut. 29.1).Footnote 95 In A, these pages have been used by a different scribe to add the lai Qui bien aime.Footnote 96 In the Remede de Fortune, the layout of the music shows the different copying practices for lais in the French manuscript tradition.Footnote 97 In Vg and B, all the songs are written in two columns. In all the other manuscripts, the lai Qui n'aroit autre deport occupies a full page and has a single-column layout; in C and E, in contrast to the text, the music of all the songs in the Remede is copied in a single-column layout, as it is for the Voir dit in E.

Table 6. Machaut manuscripts

Except for the Jena Liederhandschrift, all the fourteenth-century German manuscripts including Leich make use of a single-column layout (Table 7). In contrast to BnF fr. 146 and the Machaut-manuscripts, in all these German manuscripts (except for A-Wn 2856 with staves interrupted for the rubrics)Footnote 98 no space has been reserved for coloured initials and rubrics.Footnote 99 In D-Mu 4° Cod. ms. 921,Footnote 100 the staves have only been drawn after the initials, and the number of staves changes from twelve (fol. 1) to eleven (fol. 2), though the production process of this manuscript is the same as that of the earlier discussed Liederhandschriften. In D-MZs Hs. Frag 3a–c, A-SPL Cod. 24/8 and PL-WRu Cod. I Q 368a, the number of staves is consistent on all pages (9, 14 and 8 staves, respectively) and the rubrics have only been added after the staves were ruled.Footnote 101 However, it is impossible to discern from the extant folios whether the staves or the text were entered first. It has been convincingly argued that the antigraph of A-SPL Cod. 24/8 was a manuscript in two-column layout,Footnote 102 so the change in the layout by the scribe(s) of this source and the use of five-line staves point to the intention to create a music manuscript akin to A-Wn 2701. This latter manuscript, the so-called Wiener Leichhandschrift, consists of three parts, all of which may have formerly been part of a larger manuscript.Footnote 103 Apart from the later additions on fols. 1 and 10 (and with the exception of the first part of the manuscript, where the space needed for the Latin translation of Frauenlob's Marienleich has been calculated rather than ruled with staves) all the other pages have been pre-ruled. This is evident because the subsequent strophes have been written onto the staves on fols. 17r–18v and 49r, but the underlaid text has been written before the music, which is lacking on fols. 16v and 49v–50r (Table 8).

Table 7. Manuscripts with German Leich in single-column layout

Table 8. Structure and content of A-Wn 2701

Clearly, this manuscript is both a songbook and a music manuscript. But in contrast to the later music manuscript CZ-Pu XI E 9,Footnote 104 the main interest in A-Wn 2701 is still in the text, as the two songs without music show. The early fifteenth-century manuscript A of Oswald von Wolkenstein (A-Wn 2777, c.1425, with later additions up to 1436) merges characteristics of the literary tradition – a single-author collection and portrait, here with a music manuscript in his hand presenting Oswald as a composer despite his having borrowed much of the musicFootnote 105 – with the new type of the music manuscript including polyphony to create a unique, complex, multigraphic written artefact. In contrast to manuscript B (A-Iu) and other contemporary songbooks such as A-Wn 2856, in Wolkenstein A the main corpus up to fol. 49r is entirely pre-ruled with nine five-line (fol. 28r–38v four-line) staves.Footnote 106 Only on some pages has space been left blank for the insertion of initials, in the upper left corner at the beginning of the first stave (fol. 25r) or the first two staves.Footnote 107 Text of subsequent strophes, initials and rubrics are written on the staves. Laurenz Lütteken argues that the layout as well as the large format (37 × 27 cm) – which is comparable to that of some contemporary Italian music manuscripts such as I-Bu 2216 (39.7 × 28.9 cm) and I-Moe α.XX.1.11 (41.1 × 28.2 cm) – point to northern Italian models for this manuscript.Footnote 108 But regardless of whether or not Wolkenstein A was written in the scriptorium of Ulrich and Wolfgang von Starkenberg,Footnote 109 pre-ruled manuscripts such as A-Iu 457 evidently not only circulated but were also produced in the region of Oswald's castle.Footnote 110 Furthermore, there were German song collections, such as A-Wn 2701 and CZ-Pu XI E 9, designed as music manuscripts before Oswald, the latter containing the French model for one of Oswald's songs.Footnote 111

A-Wn 2777 is unique in merging song book and music manuscript, but it does not establish a model. The Lochamer Liederbuch (D-B mus. ms. 40613), written c.1453–60 and containing one of Oswald's songs,Footnote 112 includes only at its end some pre-ruled pages (pp. 38–42). The Lochamer Liederbuch scribes are interested neither in the poets nor in the composers, just as in the French fifteenth-century manuscripts with monophonic songs. Nevertheless, the change in the materialisation of song is first visible in the different approach towards lais and Leich in French and German manuscripts, and some of the latter represent the very first pre-ruled song books as music manuscripts.

Footnotes

The research for this paper was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany's Excellence Strategy: EXC 2176 ‘Understanding Written Artefacts: Material, Interaction and Transmission in Manuscript Cultures’, project no. 390893796. The research was conducted within the scope of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at Universität Hamburg. All websites cited were last accessed on 31 May 2022.

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1 Barrett, Sam, ‘New Light on the Earliest Medieval Song Book’, in Manuscripts and Medieval Song. Inscription, Performance, Context, ed. Deeming, Helen and Leach, Elizabeth Eva (Cambridge, 2015), 9–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Haines, John, ‘The Origins of the Musical Staff’, Musical Quarterly, 91 (2008), 327–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 338.

3 On stave ruling, see Stephen Joseph Peter van Dijk, ‘An Advertisement Sheet of an Early Fourteenth-Century Writing Master at Oxford’, Scriptorium, 10 (1956), 47–64; Andrew Hughes, ‘The Scribe and the Late Medieval Liturgical Manuscript: Page Layout and Order of Work’, in The Centre and Its Compass: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor John Leyerle, ed. Robert A Taylor (Kalamazoo, 1993), 151–224; Helen Deeming, ‘Observations on the Habits of Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Music Scribes’, Scriptorium, 60 (2006), 38–59; Haines, ‘The Origins’; Albert Derolez, ‘The Codicology of Late Medieval Music Manuscripts: Some Preliminary Observations’, in The Calligraphy of Medieval Music, ed. John Haines (Turnhout, 2011), 23–36.

4 Derolez, ‘The Codicology’, 25.

5 Uri Jacob, ‘Chevalier mult estes guariz and the pre-chansonnier vernacular lyric’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 30 (2021), 119–40, at 122.

6 On questions of dating, with a strong argument for BnF fr. 9346 not before 1505, see Carlo Bosi, ‘Zu Stil und Form einstimmiger Melodien um 1500 – Einige Fälle in den Pariser monophonen Chansonniers’, troja, 13 (2014), 81–103, at 84–5, see also Isabel Kraft, Einstimmigkeit um 1500: der Chansonnier Paris, BnF f. fr. 12744, Beihefte zum Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 64 (Stuttgart, 2009).

7 On the multimodality of text, music and illuminations (not considered here) and the functions of decorated manuscripts, see Sylvia Huot, From Song to Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry (Ithaca, 1987); Emma Dillon, Medieval Music-Making and the Roman the Fauvel (Cambridge, 2002); Sheila Kate Maxwell, ‘Guillaume de Machaut and the mise en page of Medieval French Sung Verse’, Ph.D. diss., University of Glasgow (2009).

8 See the blank ruled fol. 107v in BnF fr. 9346. In BnF fr. 12744, there are only a few recto folios without staves where a song covers the whole opening (fols. 90r, 91r and 92r), but many folios where the staves on the recto folio have not been filled for the same reason (e.g., fol. 2r). At the beginning, pages were ruled with two staves to which more staves were added above when needed (fols. 3r, 8v and 9v–10r), and from fol. 42v onwards there are constantly three staves. That some of the folios in the first part were pre-ruled with three staves is obvious on fols. 12r, 18r, 26r, 27v and 39r and possible for fols. 13v, 17r, 19v, 20v–21r, 23r–26r, 27r–30v, 35r, 37v and 38v–40v.

9 Lawrence M. Earp, ‘Interpreting the Deluxe Manuscript’, in The Calligraphy of Medieval Music, ed. Haines, 223–40, at 231.

10 See Jane Alden, Songs, Scribes, and Society. The History of the Loire Valley Chansonniers (Oxford, 2010).

11 Marisa Galvez, Songbook. How Lyrics Became Poetry in Medieval Europe (Chicago, 2012), 2.

12 Friedrich Kammerer, Die Musikstücke des Prager Kodex XI E 9 (Augsburg, 1931), calls fascicle 13 of this small (14.5 × 21 cm) composite manuscript a ‘Musiksammlung’ (at 12). It opens with the Tractatus de cantu perfectio et imperfectio by Henricus de Zeelandia and includes mainly polyphonic songs, but also eleven monophonic songs (on fols. 247v and 260v). The pages are pre-ruled with seven (fols. 247r and 257v–262r) and eight staves (fols. 247v–251v)

13 Helen Deeming, ‘Music and the Book: The Textualisation of Music and the Musicalisation of Text’, in The Edinburgh Companion to Literature and Music, ed. Delia da Sousa Correa (Edinburgh, 2020), 48–62.

14 For this distinction, see Oliver Huck, ‘Early Polyphonic Settings of the Mass Ordinary and the Emergence of the Music Manuscript’, in Liturgical Books and Music Manuscripts with Polyphonic Settings of the Mass in Medieval Europe, ed. Oliver Huck and Andreas Janke, Musica mensurabilis 9 (Hildesheim, 2020), 27–37, at 31.

15 Fols. 3v–4r. The manuscript (19.8 × 14.5 cm) is dated c.1180–1230, see The Later Cambridge Songs. An English Song Collection of the Twelfth Century, ed. John Stevens (Oxford, 2005).

16 Fols. 417v–418r. For the production context of this source, revealing a number of similarities to E-Mn 6528, see Gregorio Bevilacqua, David Catalunya and Nuria Torres, ‘The Production of Polyphonic Manuscripts in Thirteenth-Century Paris: New Evidence for Standardised Procedures’, Early Music History, 37 (2018), 91–139.

17 Fol. 167r–v. On the preparation of this manuscript (26 × 18 cm), see Nicolas Bell, El códice musical de las Huelgas. Un studio complementario del facsímil (Madrid, 2004), 24–7.

18 See Bryan Gillingham, ‘The Provenance of Cambridge, University Library, Ff.I.17 (1)’, in Studies in Medieval Chant and Liturgy in Honor of David Hiley, ed. Terence Bailey and László Dobszay, Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen 87 (Ottawa, 2007), 229–45, who argues for a Cluniac Ecclesia context.

19 In the polyphonic songs, double versicles are both underlaid. In In hoc ortus occidente, all the second lines are misplaced under the lowest stave.

20 See, for example, the top of fol. 1v, bottom of fol. 3r and top of fol. 3v.

21 See Stevens, ed., The Later Cambridge Songs, 7–8.

22 See Haines, ‘The Origins’, 365.

23 For the original gathering structure – a gathering with polyphonic conducti and a gathering with monophonic conducti at the end of the manuscript – see Bell, El códice musical, 75.

24 See, for example, fols. 159r, 161r, 163r, 164r and 165r.

25 On the date of this manuscript (23.2 × 15.7 cm), see Barbara Haggh and Michel Huglo, ‘Magnus liber, maius munus: The Origin and Fortune of the F-Manuscript’, Revue de musicologie, 90 (2004), 193–230 and Susan Rankin, ‘Some Medieval Songs’, Early Music, 31 (2003), 326–44, at 329.

26 Eighty-three conducti in fascicle 10 (gatherings 24–26, fols. 415–430, 431–445 and 446–462) and 60 rondelli in fascicle 11 (gathering 27, fols. 463–476).

27 See Rankin, ‘Some Medieval Songs’, 334. On O mens cogita (fols. 438v–439r), Veritas equitas largitas (fols. 440v–442v) and Ave gloriosa virginum (fols. 447r–448r), see Susan Rankin, ‘Taking the Rough with the Smooth: Melodic Versions and Manuscript Status’, in The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages, ed. Margot E. Fassler and Rebecca A. Baltzer (Oxford, 2000), 213–33, at 221.

28 Mark Everist, Polyphonic Music in Thirteenth-Century France. Aspects of Sources and Distribution (New York and London, 1989), 69–71, assumes that the manuscript was pre-ruled.

29 Huck, ‘Early Polyphonic Settings’, 33.

30 BAV Reg. lat. 1659, fol. 89v and E-Bbc 3871. On the latter, see Gerald A. Bond, ‘The Last Unpublished Troubadour Song’, Speculum, 60 (1985), 827–49 and Jordi Badiella, ‘De les cançons trobadoresques de Sant Joan de les Abadesses’, Sonograma, 25 (2015), http://sonograma.org/2015/01/de-les-cancons-trobadoresques-de-sant-joan-de-les-abadesses. The songs without staves are in BL Harley 2750 and BnF lat. 1139, on which, see John Haines, Medieval Song in Romance Languages (Cambridge, 2016), 208, 214 and 216.

31 E-Mn 105.

32 I-PCsa cass. C. 49/10, see Tracce di una tradizione sommersa, ed. Maria Sofia Lannutti and Massimiliano Locanto, Studi e testi 3 (Florence, 2005), and perhaps one song in E-Bbc 3871, see Joachim Schulze, ‘Eine bisher übersehene sizilianische Kanzone mit Melodie in Katalonien’, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 118 (2002), 430–40. I-MC Compactiones XVIII lacks staves, see Haines, Medieval Song, 224 and I-RAaa 11518ter, see Tracce.

33 A-SPL 134/6 (olim 29.4.3), B-Ta 924a, CH-BEsu A 421, F-BSM 119, F-Pm 753, BnF lat. 11412, BnF fr. 19525 and F-Psg 1273. NL-DHk 72 J 17 may be a fragment of a chansonnier as the folio number ‘ccxxv’ suggests. This small manuscript (15.4 × 8.9 cm) is in single-column layout (layout 1) on black five-line staves. Sources without staves are: D-Asa Urkundensammlung fol. 5, F-CFbp 240 (189), BAV Reg. lat. 1462 and F-CHRm 520. See Haines, Medieval Song, 196, 198, 200, 204 and 226.

34 BL Royal 12 E. I, D-EFu 8° 32, GB-Ob Ashmole 1285, GB-Cpc 113, GB-Llma COL/CS/01/001/001, BnF fr. 19525, BL Harley 3775, IRL-Dtc 432, GB-Lpro E163/22/1/2, BL Harley 3775 and GB-Ccc 8. See John Stevens ‘Alphabetical Check List of Anglo-Norman Songs’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 3 (1994), 1–22 and Jacob, ‘Chevalier’.

35 GB-Cu Mm. iv. 28, BL Royal 5 F. vii, GB-MAm A 13, GB-Cjc E.8, BL Harley 322, BL Royal 12 E. I, GB-Llma COL/CS/01/001/001, GB-Ob Rawl. G. 18 and GB-Ob Tanner 169*. See Songs in British Sources c. 1150–1300, ed. Helen Deeming, Musica Britannica 95 (London, 2013).

36 B-Br 15589–15623 and NL-DH Nationaal Archief, archief Graven van Holland, inv. no. 2150, fol. 54v, both with stroke notation.

37 A-Wn 4558, CZ-Pu XVII F 9 and CZ-OLa 300, see František Mužík, ‘Systém rytmiky česke písnĕ 14. Století’, Miscellanea musicologice, 18 (1965), 7–30.

38 Schreibers Bruchstück (lost, see Taschenbuch für Geschichte und Alterthum in Süddeutschland, ed. Heinrich Schreiber (Freiburg, 1839), 1: 352–7), A-Wn 4989, PL-Kj Berlin Mus. ms. 40580 and CH-Bu Cod. B XI 8. With stroke notation: Dießenhofener Liederblatt (private ownership), see Eckart Conrad Lutz, Das Dießenhofener Liederblatt. Ein Zeugnis späthöfischer Kultur, Literatur und Geschichte am Oberrhein 3 (Freiburg, 1994), A-Wn 5455, D-AN lat. 161 and D-B mgf 922. Without staves, apart from D-Mbs Clm 4460/4460a and songs with Old High German texts: A-KR Cod. 127, A-Su Cod. M II 6, A-VOR Cod. 401, D-ERu B 5, D-HTd 468, D-LEu 1285 and D-Mbs Cgm 5249/42a, see Ernst Hellgardt, ‘Neumen in Handschriften mit deutschen Texten. Ein Katalog’, in ‘Ieglicher sang sein eigen ticht’, Germanistische und musikwissenschaftliche Beiträge zum deutschen Lied im Mittelalter, ed. Christoph März, Lorenz Welker and Nicola Zotz, Elementa musicae 4 (Wiesbaden, 2011), 163–207. In addition: F-MEm 327, see Christian Meyer, Collections d'Alsace, de Franche-Comté et de Lorraine II, Catalogue des manuscrits notés du Moyen âge (Turnhout, 2008), 65. For all manuscripts with German texts, see https://handschriftencensus.de.

39 See Judith A. Peraino, ‘Re-Placing Medieval Music’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 54 (2001), 209–64, at 217–18.

40 Deeming, ed., Songs in British Sources, xxxi.

41 See Karl Reichl, Die Anfänge der mittelenglischen weltlichen Lyrik: Text, Musik, Kontext, Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Vorträge G 404 (Paderborn, 1995), 24–33.

42 On the date of U, see Robert Lug, ‘Katharer und Waldenser in Metz: Zur Herkunft der ältesten Sammlung von Trobador-Liedern (1231)’, in Okzitanistik, Altokzitanistik und Provenzalistik. Geschichte und Auftrag einer europäischen Philologie, ed. Angelica Rieger (Frankfurt 2000), 249–74 and Robert Lug, ‘Common Exemplars of U and C’, in A Medieval Songbook: Trouvère MS C, ed. Elizabeth Eva Leach, Joseph W. Mason and Matthew P. Thompson, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music 24 (Woodbridge, 2022), 82–120, at 93.

43 On V, see Nicolas Bleisch, ‘The Copying and Collection of Music in the Trouvère Chansonnier BnF fr. 24406’, Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge (2019).

44 See Jacob, ‘Chevalier’, 130–1.

45 On Z, see Marcello Spaziani, Il canzoniere francese di Siena (Biblioteca comunale H-X-36). Introduzione, testo critico e traduzione, Biblioteca dell'Archivum Romanicum 46 (Florence, 1957).

46 On the date of O, see Lug, ‘Common Exemplars’, 89–90. The same layout is found in one manuscript of Gautier de Coincis Miracles de Nostre Dame (BnF N.A.F. 24541).

47 See John Haines, ‘The Transformations of the Manuscrit du Roi’, Musica disciplina, 52 (2002), 6–54, at 29.

48 The manuscripts of Gautier de Coinci's Miracles de Nostre Dame that include music (B-Br 10747, F-Pa 3517–18, BnF fr. 986, BnF fr. 1530, BnF Fr.1536, BnF fr. 22928, BnF N.A.F. 24541, BnF fr. 25532, BL Harley 4401 and RUS-SPsc fr. F. v XIV9) conform with this: except for BnF fr. 2163, they all have a two-column layout. See Gautier de Coinci. Miracles, Music, and Manuscripts, ed. Kathy M. Krause and Alison Stones, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe (Turnhout, 2006), 367–8. The jeux and romans manuscripts with music have a two-column layout as well, see BnF fr. 372, BnF fr. 776, BnF fr. 1581, BnF fr. 1593, BnF fr. 2168, BnF fr. 24431, BnF fr. 25532, BnF fr. 25566, BnF N.A.F. 10036, A-Wn 2542 and A-Wn 2621.

49 F, T, M, W and a include polyphony, particularly motets. On the layout of the motets in these manuscripts, see Oliver Huck, ‘The Layout of the Early Motet’, Journal of the Alamire Foundation, 7 (2015), 11–32, at 12–15.

50 See Huck, ‘Early Polyphonic Settings’, 31.

51 On the evidence of copying in thirteenth-century songbooks, see John Haines, ‘Erasures in Thirteenth-Century Music’, in Music and Medieval Manuscripts. Paleography and Performance, ed. John Haines and Randall Rosenfeld (Aldershot, 2004), 60–90. There are single-column rolls with songs without music, see Richard H. Rouse, ‘Roll and Codex. The Transmission of the Works of Reinmar von Zweter’, in Paläographie 1981. Colloquium des Comité International de Paléographie München, 15–18 September 1981, ed. Gabriel Silagi, Münchener Beiträge zur Mediävistik und Renaissance-Forschung 32 (Munich, 1982), 107–23; Franz H. Bäuml and Richard H. Rouse, ‘Roll and Codex: A New Manuscript Fragment of Reinmar von Zweter’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 105 (1983), 192–231 and 317–30 and William D. Paden, ‘Lyrics on Rolls’, in ‘Li premerains vers’: Essays in Honor of Keith Busby, ed. Catherine M. Jones and Logan E. Whalen, Faux titre 361 (Amsterdam, 2011), 325–40. On rolls with motets as models for the layout in codices, see Huck, ‘The Layout’, 20–1. In contrast to the layout of the extant manuscripts, there is a miniature (B-Br 10747, fol. 3r) showing Gautier de Coinci playing the vielle with an open libellus in single-column layout, see John Haines, ‘A Sight-Reading Vielle Player from the Thirteenth Century’, in The Sounds and Sights of Early Music. Essays in Honour of Timothy J. McGee, ed. Maureen Epp and Brian E. Power (Farnham, 2009), 13–26.

52 See, in addition, the French trope Entendez tuit a cest sermon, which is preserved in single-column layout in two early thirteenth-century manuscripts (BnF lat. 238 and F-LG 2) and in four-column layout in a late thirteenth-century manuscript (BnF fr. 375). See Haines, Medieval Song, 244, 258 and 273.

53 On I-Rss XIV L1 and one of the copies of this model (BL Add. 23935), see Haines, ‘The Origins’, 361–3.

54 See Mary O'Neill, Courtly Love Songs of Medieval France. Transmission and Style in the Trouvère Repertoire (Oxford, 2006), 25–7.

55 See Christopher Callahan, ‘Collecting Trouvère Lyric at the Peripheries: The Lessons of MSS Paris, BnF fr. 20050 and Bern, Burgerbibliothek 389’, Textual Cultures: Text, Contexts, Interpretation, 8 (2013), 15–30 and on the similarities of the layout of U and C, Lug, ‘Common Exemplars’, 82–3. On C, see A Medieval Songbook. On D/e see Rodney C. Dennis, ‘Ein wiederaufgefundenes Fragment eines Chansonniers aus dem 13. Jahrhundert’, Die Musikforschung, 12 (1959), 462–6.

56 BnF fr. 844, BnF fr. 846, BnF fr. 12615 and BnF fr. 20050.

57 See Venezia, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana V (Str. App. 11 = 278), ed. Ilaria Zamuner, Intavolature 1/3 (Modena, 2003). Quar nueg e jorn trist soi et esbahit in I-CF 1484 is a planh on the death of Giovanni di Cucagna, who was active in Cividale di Friuli.

58 See fols. 1v–4r, 5r, 6v (with the exception of one line) and 7v–8r. The beginning of each verse is highlighted in red. The scribe struggles with the layout at the beginning: in the first two songs (fol. 1r–v) there is a text line for each stave, from fol. 2r onwards the last stave has no text line but is placed above the text block, that is, the first line of the second strophe, with music. On fol. 1r the text is not aligned verse by verse because the space does not fit the length of the verses.

59 A-Wn 2563, A-Wn 2583, E-E S.I.3 and RUS-SPsc EEsp. F. v. XIV.I.

60 There are at least two contrafacta of songs by Piere Vidal by Don Dinis: Amor fez a mim amar after Be⋅m pac d'ivern e d'estiu (BnF fr. 22543, fol. 48r, I-Ma R 71 sup., fol. 40v and BnF fr. 20050, fol. 87v) and Quer'eu em maneira de proençal after Plus que.l paubres, quan jai (BnF fr. 22543, fol. 64r). See Paolo Canettieri and Carlo Pulsoni, ‘Contrafacta galego-portoghesi’, in Medioevo y Literatura. Actas del V Congreso de la Asociación Hispánica de Literatura Medieval (Granada, 27 septiembre – 1 octubre 1993), ed. Juan Paredes (Granada, 1995), 1: 479–98, at 484–6.

61 William D. Paden, ‘On the Music of Galician-Portuguese Secular Lyric. Sources, Genres, Performance’, in Culture and Society in Medieval Galicia. A Cultural Crossroads at the Edge of Europe, ed. James d'Emilio, The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World 58 (Leiden and Boston, 2015), 862–93, argues convincingly that the Vindel parchment is not a roll, but the central bifolio of a quire.

62 Stephen Parkinson, ‘Layout and Structure of the Toledo Manuscript of the Cantigas de Santa Maria’, in Cobras e Son. Papers on the Text, Music and Manuscripts of the ‘Cantigas de Santa Maria’, ed. Stephen Parkinson (Oxford, 2000), 133–53, at 146–7.

63 See fols. 22v–23r, 29v–30r, 49v–50r, 54v–56v and 65v–70r.

64 Parkinson, ‘Layout and Structure’, 146.

65 On D-MGs Best. 147, Hr. 1, Nr. 2, see Frauenlob (Heinrich von Meissen). Leichs, Sangsprüche, Lieder. 1. Teil. Einleitungen, Texte, ed. Karl Stackmann and Karl Bertau, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philol.-Hist. Klasse III, 119 (Göttingen, 1981), 150–1. On D-Fu germ. oct. 18, see Marc Lewon, ‘Die Melodieüberlieferung zu Neidhart. Konkordanz zur Überlieferung von Neidhart-Melodien’, in Neidhart und die Neidhart-Lieder. Ein Handbuch, ed. Margarete Springeth and Franz-Viktor Spechtler (Berlin and Boston, 2018), 169–240, at 176–81. For more Neidhart manuscripts – including CH-Fcu Ms. L 24 (late fourteenth century, neumes), I-VIPac (early fifteenth century, German choral notation as well as black and white mensural notation) and A-Wn s.n. 3344 (c.1430, in two columns) – see ibid., 182–217. There is doubt as to whether the bifolio D-MÜsa VII.51 belonged to a songbook. Ulrich Seelbach, ‘Ein Münsterer Fragment von Konrads von Würzburg “Goldener Schmiede”’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum, 124 (1995), 303–18, at 303–5, argues that it belonged to a manuscript that also included Konrad von Würzburg's Goldene Schmiede (D-MÜsa Msc. VII 2d Nr. 29).

66 See Die ‘Jenaer Liederhandschrift’. Codex – Geschichte – Umfeld, ed. Jens Haustein and Franz Körndle (Berlin and New York, 2010).

67 See Wolfgang von Wangenheim, Das Basler Fragment einer mitteldeutsch-niederdeutschen Liederhandschrift und sein Spruchdichter-Repertoire (Kelin, Fegfeuer) (Genf, 1972).

68 The only fragment (22 × 16 cm) of a songbook in single column layout is D-B mgq 981 (fourteenth century, 22 × 16 cm). In all these German manuscripts the subsequent strophes are arranged in layout 1. Only in the Jena Liederhandschrift and in D-HEu cpg 329 space for the initials was left blank, in the other manuscripts, initials or rubrics were written on the staves.

69 On the relationship between these two manuscripts, see Oliver Huck, ‘Die Notation der mehrfach überlieferten Melodien in der Jenaer Liederhandschrift’, Die ‘Jenaer Liederhandschrift’, 99–120 and Franz Koerndle, ‘Die Jenaer Liederhandschrift und die Basler Fragmente. Aspekte notenschriftlicher Traditionen’, ibid., 121–36.

70 Lorenz Welker, ‘Die “Jenaer Liederhandschrift” im Kontext großformatiger liturgischer Bücher des 14. Jahrhunderts aus dem deutschen Sprachraum’, ibid., 137–48, at 140, notes that square notation is often employed in German liturgical books of a large format.

71 See Thomas Klein, ‘Zur Verbreitung mittelhochdeutscher Lyrik in Norddeutschland (Walther, Neidhart, Frauenlob)’, Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, 106 (1987), 72–112.

72 The only complete early (c.1400) Dutch songbook is the Gruuthuse-manuscript (NL-DHk KW 79 K 10) with a two-column layout with five-line staves. The music is written in stroke notation. Unlike all the other songbooks in columns, the staves are not aligned to the width of the text columns but drawn beyond them. The reason for this is that the songs are predominantly written on a single stave or perhaps two, and the text of the first strophe is written in a block and not aligned with the music.

73 See Rob C. Wegman, ‘The Minstrel School in the Late Middle Ages’, Historic Brass Society Journal, 14 (2002), 11–30. The Minnesänger were familiar with the Occitan and French repertories. D-MÜsa VII.51 includes Walter's Palästinalied, arguably a contrafactum of Jaufre Rudel's Lanquan li jorn, which is found in three French chansonniers (BnF fr. 844, fol. 189v, BnF fr. 20050, fol. 81v and BnF fr. 22543, fol. 63r). See Florian Kragl, ‘Musik’, in Lyrische Werke, ed. Volker Mertens and Anton Touber, Germania litteraria medievalis francigena 3 (Berlin and Boston, 2012), 347–89.

74 See Joachim Schulze, ‘Das Lied in der höfischen Kultur des Duecento’, in Kontinuität und Transformation in der italienischen Vokalmusik zwischen Due- und Quattrocento, ed. Sandra Dieckmann, Oliver Huck, Signe Rotter-Broman and Alba Scotti, Musica mensurabilis 3 (Hildesheim, 2007), 141–66.

75 I-Fn Banco rari 18 was formerly in the possession of the Compagnia di Santo Spirito, Florence. It also contains motets and this last section (fols. 144r–151v) seems to have been pre-ruled. Fols. 152–153 are written on five-line staves and seem to have previously been part of another laudario. On I-Fn Mss. da ordinare 97/1 nr. 94 and 97/2 nr. 43, see Sandro Bertelli, I manoscritti della letteratura italiana delle origini. Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (Florence 2002), 147 and Concetto del Popolo, ‘Un nuovo frammento di laudario musicato’, Medioevo letterario d'Italia: Rivista internazionale di filologia, linguistica e letteratura, 10 (2013), 155–62. The Laudario di St. Agnese has been cut into folios, some of which ended up as part of different collections due to their elaborate miniatures, see Francesco Zimei, ‘New Light on the so-called Laudario di Sant'Agnese’, Musica disciplina, 56 (2011), 463–90, at 484–5. I-Tn Bobbiense F.I.4 in single-column layout contains Latin laude employing layout 3 and a modified layout 2 with only the incipit of the ripresa and the beginning of the second strophe with music.

76 See also I-Af 338 where no music has been entered, but staves have been ruled on fols. 11r and 11v.

77 Fol. 185r–187v, see Alexandros Maria Hatzikiriakos and Maria Teresa Rachetta, ‘Lo Chansonnier du roi (BnF fr. 844) e la sua storia: Un nuovo approcio alle aggiunte successive’, in Philologie et musicologie: des sources à l'interprétation poetico-musicale (XIIe–XIVe siècle), ed. Christelle Chaillou-Amadieu et al. (Paris, 2019), 143–58 and Stefano Asperti, Carlo I d'Angiò e i trovatori. Componenti ‘provencali’ e angioine nella tradizione manoscritta della lirica trobadorica (Ravenna 1995), 121–33. The same scribe has written fol. 117r–v with the same layout, see Judith Peraino: Giving Voice to Love: Song and Self-expression from the Troubadours to Guillaume de Machaut (Oxford, 2011), 161.

78 On fol. 186v the text of the subsequent strophes is neatly written between the stave lines. Apart from the additions of scribe 1, there are more pre-ruled pages (fols. 77r–78v, 103v–104v and 210r–211v).

79 See Oliver Huck, ‘Schreibprozesse in italienischen Musikhandschriften des 14. und frühen 15. Jahrhunderts’, Die Musikforschung, 56 (2003), 366–74.

80 Fols. 18r, 18v, 19r, 22r and 23r.

81 Fol. Bv, see Marco Gozzi and Agostino Ziino, ‘The Mischiati Fragment. A New Source of Italian Trecento Music’, in Kontinuität und Transformation, ed. Dieckmann et al., 281–314.

82 Five ballate by Gherardello da Firenze (fols. 28v, 29r, 30v and 31v) and five by Lorenzo da Firenze (fols. 47r, 47v, 48r, 50r and 51r).

83 See Gozzi and Ziino, ‘The Mischiati Fragment’, 298–9.

84 See Luciano Bellosi, ‘The Squarcialupi Master’, Il codice Squarcialupi: ms. Mediceo Palatino 87 Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana di Firenze (Florence, 1992), 145–57.

85 The late fourteenth-century Libre Vermell (E-MO 1) includes a section with songs (fols. 21v–27r), their layout follows the disposition of the text. Of the ten songs only four are monophonic, one in Castilian and three in Latin. The two manuscripts with pre-ruled staves (BL Harley 978 and BL Arundel 248), containing polyphonic English songs only, include Latin monophonic songs, see Deeming, ‘Observations’, 45.

86 See Haines, ‘The Origins’, 366.

87 See Lawrence M. Earp, ‘Scribal Practice, Manuscript Production and the Transmission of Music in Late Medieval France: The Manuscripts of Guillaume de Machaut’, Ph.D. diss., Princeon University (1983), 186–90 on ruling staves.

88 See Joseph C. Morin, ‘Jehannot de Lescurel's Chansons, Geoffrey de Paris’ Dits, and the Process of Design in BN fr. 146’, in Fauvel Studies. Allegory, Chronicle, Music, and Image in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France MS 146, ed. Margaret Bent and Andrew Wathey (Oxford, 1998), 321–36. As well as layout 1, this fascicle employs the somewhat old-fashioned layout 3.

89 See Huck, ‘The Layout’, 12–20.

90 In BnF fr. 844, they are written in two columns as are those in the manuscripts of the Roman de Tristan (A-Wn 2542 and BnF fr. 776). On BnF fr. 776, see John Haines, ‘Lai Layout in the Paris Prose Tristan Manuscripts’, Scriptorium, 59 (2005), 3–28.

91 Fols. 17r–18v, 19r–v, 28(bis)r–28(ter)v and 34v–36v.

92 On F-LA 134, see David Fallows, ‘Guillaume de Machaut and the Lai: A New Source’, Early Music, 5 (1977), 477–83. On F-DOU 1105/3 fragment 75, see Christian Meyer, Collections du Nord – Pas-de-Calais et Picardie II, Catalogue des manuscrits notés du Moyen âge 4 (Turnhout, 2017), 119–20. On the folio is a note dated 1344.

93 See Elizabeth Eva Leach, ‘Machaut's First Single-Author Compilation’, in Manuscripts and Medieval Song, ed. Deeming and Leach, 247–70.

94 Fol. 297 ff. See Earp, Scribal Practice, 187. The staves are always drawn to the end of the writing block (on fol. 200v one stave is longer according to the text line), as they are in Vg.

95 See Earp, Scribal Practice, 187–8.

96 Fols. 410v–412v, see Earp, Scribal Practice, 188–9. This lai is elsewhere found outside of the lai section, see C (fols. 87v–189r), Vg (fols. 87v–89v), B (fols. 104v–106v) and E (fols. 57v–58r).

97 The beginning of the lai section in B is lost; perhaps the beginning of the first of the lais, which was on the lost folio before fol. 218, was in two columns. In F-G, at the beginning of the lai section (fols. 76v–81r), the staves cut into the initials where no space between the sections was left in the text line and the staves was not interrupted; only from fol. 81v onwards are they interrupted throughout according to the text, see Earp, Scribal Practice, 187.

98 See Mondsee-Wiener Liederhandschrift aus dem Codex Vindobonensis 2856, ed. Helge Heger (Graz 1968). For manuscripts with single entries of the Mönch von Salzburg's songs, see Die weltlichen Lieder des Mönchs von Salzburg, ed. Christoph März (Tübingen, 1999), including the fourteenth-century manuscripts D-BAs Msc. Astr. 4, D-Mbs Clm 7543 and D-MZs I 572.

99 On D-B mgf 757 fol. 17, see Hellgardt, ‘Neumen’, 166, but the notation is on staves. There are only two strips with a line of text and the lowest stave line each, so nothing can be concluded about the layout, except that there was a single column. On D-Bga XX. HA Hs. 33, Bd. 1, see Karl Heinrich Bertau, ‘Wenig beachtete Frauenlobfragmente II’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum, 93 (1964), 215–26; Frauenlob (Heinrich von Meissen), 139. On A-M Fragm. germ. 3, see Joachim F. Angerer, Lateinische und deutsche Gesänge aus der Zeit der Melker Reform, Forschungen zur älteren Musikgeschichte 2 (Vienna, 1979), 7–23. The notation changes from square notation to German choral notation and neumes without staves; Frauenlob (Heinrich von Meissen), 146. On RUS-SPsc O. v. XIV N. 6, see Teresa Proto, Studio ecdotico, linguistico e musicologico dei Geißlerlieder (Göppingen 2014). The Geißlerlieder are labelled as ‘Leich’ in other chronicles, see Hermann Apfelböck, Tradition und Gattungsbewußtsein im deutschen Leich. Ein Beitrag zur Gattungsgeschichte mittelalterlicher musikalischer ‘discordia’ (Tübingen, 1991), 110–13, where Apfelböck acknowledges the difference between Leich and Leise, but he admits some formal correspondences between the Geißlerlieder and the Leich.

100 See Bertau, ‘Wenig beachtete Frauenlobfragmente II’.

101 On D-MZs Hs. Frag 3a–c, see Georg Objartel, ‘Zwei wenig beachtete Fragmente Reinmars von Zweter und ein lateinisches Gegenstück seines Leichs’, Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, 90 (1971), Sonderheft 217–31. On A-SPL Cod. 24/8, see Hans Gröchenig, Peter Hans Pascher, Karl Stackmann, Karl Bertau and Christoph März, ‘Ein neues Fragment aus Frauenlobs Kreuzleich’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum, 113 (1984), 246–86. On PL-WRu Cod. I Q 368a, see Joseph Klapper, ‘Frauenlobfragmente’, in Festschrift Theodor Siebs zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Walther Steller (Breslau, 1933), 69–88; Frauenlob (Heinrich von Meissen), 149.

102 See Gröchenig/Pascher/Stackmann/Bertau/März, ‘Ein neues Fragment’, 260–1.

103 Birkhan, Helmut, ‘Wer byn ich – daz bist du: Eyn narre. Bemerkungen zur sogenannten Wiener Leich-Handschrift’, in Wiener Quellen der älteren Musikgeschichte zum Sprechen gebracht, ed. Lodes, Birgit, Wiener Forum für ältere Musikgeschichte 1 (Tutzing, 2007), 161–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 161.

104 In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, German and Czech sacred songs were preserved in some pre-ruled manuscripts, which contain for the most part chants for the liturgy and some polyphonic music. For example, CH-EN 314, fols. 1–14 (and an additional German song with music on fol. 131r), but the outer three bifolios are lost, see Engelberg Codex 314, ed. Wulf Arlt and Matthias Stauffacher, Schweizerische Musikdenkmale 2 (Winterthur, 1986), 4 and CZ-VB 42 fols. 159v–161r, 161v–162r and 162v–163v. The sacred songs in Czech are found in manuscripts that could legitimately be called liturgical books. The cantionale from Vyšší Brod written by Přibík (c.1410) includes three monophonic songs with music in Czech. It has been pre-ruled with six red five-line staves per page. The Engelberg Codex (late fourteenth century), which was bound in the early fifteenth century under the direction of Abbot Walther Mirer dates back to the 1360s. Most of the German songs with music are found in the first fascicle, written by Mirer himself on folios that have been pre-ruled with black five-line staves. In its original state this fascicle was part of a songbook (including some dictamen) that now constitutes part of a manuscript used for instructing the monks in singing.

105 See Lorenz Welker, ‘Die Überlieferung französischer Chansons in der Wolkenstein-Handschrift A’, in Wiener Quellen, ed. Lodes, 311–30.

106 From fol. 51r onwards black staves are drawn according to the pre-disposition of the text, but staves are ruled filling the whole writing space and some text of subsequent strophes is neatly written between the lines of the staves. The same holds true for A-Iu (1432–38, 49 × 34 cm).

107 Fols. 1r, 1v, 2v, 4v, 5v, 9r, 14v, 17r, 17v, 18v, 19v, 20v, 21v and 23v.

108 Laurenz Lütteken, ‘Musikalischer Text – Musikalische Wirklichkeit. Probleme spätmittelalterlicher Schriftlichkeit im Licht der Wolkenstein-Handschrift A’, in Wiener Quellen, ed. Lodes, 287–310, at 297–8.

109 Delbono identified one of the later hands as that of Oswald Holler, who wrote another manuscript (D-Mbs Cgm 3897) in 1428, see Oswald von Wolkenstein, Handschrift A. Vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe im Originalformat des Codex Vindobonensis 2777 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, ed. Francesco Delbono, Codices selecti 59 (Graz, 1977), 43. Reinhard Strohm, however, in ‘Native and Foreign Polyphony in Late Medieval Austria’, Musica disciplina 38 (1984), 205–30, at 210 and 213, argues on the basis of concordances in other manuscripts related to Vienna that at least parts of this manuscript were prepared in the Dorotheenkloster, Vienna.

110 A-Iu 457 is from the scriptorium in Novacella, see Gozzi, Marco, ‘The Abbey of Novacella and Local Polyphonic Traditions’, in Oswald von Wolkenstein. Die Rezeption eines internationalen Liedrepertoires im deutschen Sprachbereich um 1400, ed. Berger, Christian, Voces 14 (Freiburg, 2011), 17–32Google Scholar.

111 See fol. 249v, Fuyés de moy and Oswald's Wohlauf, Gesell, wer jagen will.

112 Oswald's song is Wach auf mein hort on p. 2. See Salmen, Walter, Das Lochamer Liederbuch, Sammlung musikwissenschaftlicher Einzeldarstellungen 18 (Leipzig, 1951)Google Scholar.

Figure 0

Figure 1. Layouts for subsequent strophes.

Figure 1

Table 1. Trouvère manuscripts

Figure 2

Table 2. Troubadour manuscripts

Figure 3

Table 3. Galego-Portuguese manuscripts

Figure 4

Table 4. Manuscripts with German Minnesang and Sangspruch

Figure 5

Table 5. Italian laudarii

Figure 6

Table 6. Machaut manuscripts

Figure 7

Table 7. Manuscripts with German Leich in single-column layout

Figure 8

Table 8. Structure and content of A-Wn 2701