The essays gathered here represent the principal themes and issues that have occupied scholars of late medieval monophonic songs over the last half century: their place in history and society; the role of women as composers and performers; poetic and musical structures, styles and genres; relationships between poems and melodies; written and oral transmission; and performance practices. Studying how each of these themes is played out across repertoires, cultures, decades and locations offers a rich and variegated panorama of the practice of song in late medieval Europe.

Elizabeth Aubrey is Professor of Music at the University of Iowa and an internationally- acclaimed scholar of medieval music and literature, with numerous publications on the music of France during the Middle Ages. Her articles and reviews appear in American and European journals of musicology, literature, and medieval studies, in conference proceedings of international musical and literary societies, and in other important volumes published in the US and Europe.

Contents: Introduction: poets, singers, scribes and historians; Part I History and Society: Music and chivalric fiction in France 1150-1300, Christopher Page; Joglars and the professional status of the early troubadours, Ruth E. Harvey; Turtles, helmets, parasites and goliards, Bryan Gillingham; Introduction, Cyrilla Barr. Part II Women: Diminishing the trobairitz, excluding the women trouvères, Joan Tasker Grimbert; Women's performance of the lyric before 1500, Susan Boynton. Part III Poetry and Music: Poetics and music, Elizabeth Aubrey; Johannes de Grocheio on secular music: a corrected text and a new translation, Christopher Page; Genre as a determinant of melody in the songs of the troubadours and the trouvères, Elizabeth Aubrey; 'La grande chanson courtoise': the chansons of Adam de la Halle, John Stevens; Interrelationships between poetic and musical form in trouvère song, Theodore Karp; Andalusian music and the Cantigas de Santa Maria, Manuel Pedro Ferreira; Rondeau and virelai: the music of Andalus and the Cantigas de Santa Maria, Manuel Pedro Ferreira. Part IV Transmission: The trouvère MS tradition, Theodore Karp; The trouvère chansons as creations of a notationless musical culture, Hendrik van der Werf; Probleme um die melodien des Minnesangs, Ursula Aarburg. Part V Performance: The 12th century in the South, Christopher Page; Voices and instruments in medieval French secular music: on the use of literary texts as evidence for performance practice, Sylvia Huot; References to music in old Occitan literature, Elizabeth Aubrey; Mensura and the rhythm of medieval monodic song, J.E. Maddrell; Concerning the measurability of medieval music, Hendrik van der Werf; Grocheo and The Measurability of Medieval Music: a reply to Hendik van der Werf, J.E. Maddrell; Rhythm, meter, and melodic organization in medieval songs, Hans Tischler; The 'Not-so-precisely Measured' music of the Middle Ages, Hendrik van der Werf; Index.