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Reviews Aubrey, Elizabeth, The Music of the Troubadours, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2000; paper; pp. 352, 99 musical examples, 16 tables, 1 map; R R P SUS24.95; ISBN 0253213894. In her acknowledgments Elizabeth Aubrey thanks the general editor of the ser for which this was commissioned, the 'Music: Scholarship and Performance' series founded by the late Thomas Brinkley. She mentions that he instructed her to cut the content by a third and the result is the volume under review. I have a sneaking regret for that discarded fraction; the content is so dense with information, I would have liked some lighter amplification. I a m delighted that Aubrey pays tribute to the work of Hendrik van der Werf, whose book The Chansons of the Troubadors and Trouveres. A study of the melodies and their relation to the poems (Utrecht, 1972) was one of thefirstto discuss in depth the music and the poetry together. He told m e at a conference in 1995 that he felt that he had been accepted neither by the musicologists nor by the literary critics because he had tried to create a synthesis of the two disciplines. Aubrey's book is divided into seven chapters: historical background, transmission, poetics and music, genre, form, style, performance. She has also given in the table of contents a brief summary of the contents of each chapter, which she then amplifies in her introduction. For w h o m was this book intended? Take for example the following statement in the discussion of form: In the second generation, Bernart de Ventadorn was a master of motivic manipulation and used it widely. The melody in Example 5-7 seems to 154 Reviews be built upon two small motives, thefirstascending C-D-E (often with a descending plica on the E), the second descending E-D-C.[ . . . ] In the following graph the letter 'x' refers to thefirstof these motives and 'y' to the second: (p. 188) A B C D E F G H Alxy3xy3 xy5B2 C6y2 D6xyl y3E4 F3xy5 G H6xyl Given the complexity of some of the inner content such as this, is it necessary, in a book as technical as this is, one which will be read by those already familiar with the poetic oeuvre of the troubadour poets, to have as Chapter One, 'Historical background'? Despite having said above that I would welcome a more extended discussion ofthe contents, this chapter could have been omitted. There are already excellent books that give more than adequate backgrounds to the troubadours. Linda Paterson's The World of the Troubadours (Cambridge, 1993), the collection of essays entitled A Handbook of the Troubadours edited by Ron Akehurst and Judith Davis (California, 1995), both give full introductions to the historical and political milieux of the troubadours, and if the general reader wants something concise in French, it is hard to go beyond Les troubadours by Henri Davenson (Seuil), with its simple end-maps which explain far more than pages of text the initial location of the Occitan troubadours and the dispersal of their art into the surrounding countries. For the w o m e n troubadours, as well as M e g Bogin's book ofthat title, there is the more recent collection of essays edited by William Paden, The Voice of the Trobairitz (Pennsylvania, 1989), both of which have excellent introductions. This book under review is specifically about those troubadours whose musical notation has been recorded in manuscript. For that reason, there is little discussion of the trobairitz beyond brief entries about the Comtessa de Dia whose only surviving melody is analysed on p. 162. This book is dense with information. The scholarship of Elizabeth Aubrey is never in doubt: her endnotes are meticulous and the bibliography comprehensive . Apart from the opening chapter, which could well have been replaced by material more relevant to the body of the book, the contents are invaluable for an understanding of the entire process of composition, both poetic and musical, of the troubadours. There is a full analysis of the four manuscripts in which the musical notation of their songs is given; what a pity that the book could not have been accompanied by a...

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