Editing Twelfth-Century Music

The Later Cambridge Songs: An English Song Collection of the Twelfth Century, edited with an Introduction by John Stevens. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. xi + 196 pp. ISBN 0 19 816725.

Le Magnus liber organi de Notre-Dame de Paris. Volumes II–IV, edited by Mark Everist. Volume II: Les organa à deux voix pour l'Office du manuscrit de Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Plut. 29. Monaco: Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre, 2003. xcvi + 332 pp. Volume III: Les organa à deux voix pour la Messe (de Noël à la Fête de Saint-Pierre et Saint-Paul). Monaco: Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre, 2001. xxxiv + 258 pp. Volume IV: Les organa à deux voix pour la Messe (de l'Assomption au Commun des Saints). Monaco: Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre, 2002. xxxiv + 251 pp. ISBN: 2 87855 002 8 (volume II); 2 87855 003 X (volume III); 2 87855 004 8 (volume IV); 2 87855 000 5 (series).

To refer to the common factor uniting these two very disparate editorial projects as twelfth-century music might seem to be stretching a point.¹ I find it difficult to accept that the two-part liturgical organa of the manuscript F represent the twelfth-century repertory associated with the name of Leoninus unchanged and unexpanded; yet there are clearly those, probably the majority of present-day scholars, who believe that they do more or less represent just that, and that F contains the best evidence of what that music was like. I shall return to this point later, but we may concede that the repertory is at least in some sense the product of twelfth-century Paris.

There is no doubt that the Cambridge songs edited by John Stevens are of the twelfth century, but this repertory could not be more different from that of the Magnus liber organi. It is small, non-liturgical and partly monophonic; the state of its preservation is extremely poor. Its main links are with the monophonic and polyphonic repertory associated principally with the south of France, though there is plenty of evidence to show that, like that of Notre Dame, it was widely known across Europe.

In discussing these two projects I shall concentrate mainly on editorial matters, although inevitably wider questions of style and historical circumstances will have to be addressed. It would be an understatement to describe these endeavours as challenging, and both editors have spent a good part of their academic lives in bringing their work to fruition. Stevens, alas, died before he could see his labours in print, and his edition has been put in order for publication by Christopher Page, who deserves much of the credit for the form it has finally taken.

The 'Cambridge' songs, the contents of what literary scholars have called the 'more recent' Cambridge manuscript (the older one being an eleventh-century collection from Canterbury), have not been entirely neglected, but their musical treatment has been unsatisfactory. The polyphonic contents were published in facsimile by H. E. Wooldridge in his Early English Harmony (1897; still a valuable resource, given the quality of the reproduction and the fact that the manuscript was probably in better condition then), and in transcription by H. V. (later Anselm) Hughes. Ludwig published an accurate list of its contents in his Repertorium. Much more recently, a facsimile and transcription was published by the Institute of Mediaeval Music in Ottawa; but the photography is not perfect, and the transcriptions suffer from an unpersuasive application of ternary metre, not throughout but in many passages. The literary contents, on the other hand, were edited in exemplary fashion by Otto Schumann,² and if an occasional correction or alternative can now be offered, this in no way impugns the value of his publication.

Stevens's edition includes a substantial introduction that deals with the nature of the manuscript, its script and notation, the songs in their context, and issues of performance practice. The manuscript is a small booklet of eight leaves...