Music and Medieval Manuscripts: Paleography and Performance (review)

Abstract

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN TOPICS Music and Medieval Manuscripts: Paleography and Performance. Edited by John Haines and Randall Rosenfeld. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2004. [xxxiv, 438 p. ISBN 0-7546-0991-X. $104.95.] Music examples, index, bibliography. In a twelfth-century colophon, pen warns scribe: Hold me firmly and put me down gently. If you have not you will have a bad day.(from Arras, Mediatheque 924, fol. I, as translated by Richard Gameson, The Scribe Speaks? Colophons in Early English Manuscripts, H. M. Chadwick Memorial Lectures, 12 [Cambridge: Department of Anglo Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, University of Cambridge, 2001], 2.) In this collection of essays, edited by a musicologist with profound interests in paleography (John Haines) and a codicologist who is a specialist in performance of early music (Randall Rosenfeld), a diverse group has written well, offering a good day to scholars and performers alike. The book is dedicated to distinguished musicologist Andrew Hughes, whose studies in a broad array of repertories have always been well grounded in sources themselves; it is prefaced by a brief essay introducing his work as teacher as well as scholar. Much of collection centers on two general topics: ways in which close source studies yield new understandings of performance; and recontextualization of familiar materials in order to challenge or expand upon commonly held ideas. A third group of papers relates to broader studies recendy finished or currendy in progress, allowing for a detailed look at particular examples. As to close analysis and performance practice, John Haines' fascinating of erasure patterns in several major thirteenth-century sources allows him to predict how familiar scribe was with music being copied and also nature of sources from which scribe worked, including notauonal style and arrangement of parts. Haines demonstrates that of scribes' working habits across a range of sources testifies to their dependence upon sources, cautioning that the stereotype of extemporizing scribe should not be exaggerated (p. 88). Randall Rosenfeld too takes us into world of medieval scribe, demonstrating how difficult it is to say precisely how they held their pens, and warning against misinterpretation of visual depictions of scribes at work. Jan Ziolkowski turns to neuming of women's laments in classical texts and, pointing to the spirit of experimentation that a woman's lament elicited (p. 140), uses them as evidence for culture of schools and music's role within it, as well as sometimes thin line between secular and sacred studies. Ziolkowski's engaging presentation makes reader want to hear these pieces and calls for further exploration. In another paper that combines of texts and music, George Dimitri Sawa explores rhythmic modes in Baghdad! rhythmic theories and practices in twelfth-century Andalusia, showing how study of rhythm eventually became one of most sophisticated arts in Arabic theory (p. 181). His work leaves reader wondering if or how these ideas made their ways to West in twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Brian Power opens a musicological can of worms in his of polyphonic introits in Trent 93 and demonstrates that performers who wish to hear these pieces will need to be creative, interpreting meaning of missing sections, working around what are clearly mistakes, and deciding whether or not to improvise apparently missing parts. Close studies abound too in papers of scholars whose works serve to challenge commonly held ideas. Albert Derolez, a specialist in Gothic and late medieval book hands, here takes on role of Petrarch in development of humanistic script and judges that he was not instrumental after all. Timothy McGee looks for ways in which techniques of rhetoric serve as basic formative principles for composition of late medieval music (p. …