In de ban van vijf liederenhandschriften

Abstract

In her recent monograph, Cécile de Morrée (Nijmegen) provides a detailed codicological description of five Middle Dutch manuscripts with religious songs – Berlin 185, Berlin 280, Paris 39, Tirs and Werden. In reconstructing the circles in which these manuscripts were written, she analyses their composition and concludes that the songs in these books do not only follow the liturgical calendar, but also reflect the changing of the seasons and the repeating structures of social life. The aim of her research is to assess how the concept of ‘time’ influenced the makers and users of song collections. The Berlin 185 manuscript is central to her reasoning, and is collated with four others. The order of the songs in all of the manuscripts seems to be indicated by the cycle of the year. The five codices contain no less than 323 song texts, including 29 in Latin. Some of them come with a written indication of their tunes, which indicates that they were intended to be sung. The author has provided a chronological list of incipits. This contribution adds to this an alphabetic index of the songs and a comparison of the text of 52 songs that are included in several of the manuscripts, and are therefore believed to be common knowledge to contemporaries.