I'm interested in early song manuscripts and choral music - anything before 1600 - including Gregorian Chant, early narrative ballads and so-called 'broadsides' etc. However, my main research interest is in manuscripts of medieval 'secular’ song. My PhD thesis and subsequent publications focus on lyric song in Occitan and Old French between 1100 and 1300. These songs, often described as the songs of the ‘trobadors and trouvères’ (to use the correct spellings from the original languages) are the oldest vernacular songs to survive in written form from the European ‘Middle Ages’. The songs survive in manuscripts (chansonniers) mostly held in the BN in Paris and written between about 1250 and 1320. I was fortunate enough to be able to work on these in Paris (1997-2000) with the aid of a British Academy PhD Scholarship, making hundreds of transcriptions and translations.
Since 2000, I've published and given lecture-recitals based on on this material at academic conferences including: International Medieval Congress (University of Leeds) International Society for Robin Hood Studies Conference (University of York) International Society for French History (University of Nottingham) Royal Historical Association Centenary Conference (University of Nottingham) Chaucer and Christianity Conference (University of Kent in Canterbury) The Royal Armouries Museum (Leeds) British Association for Japanese Studies (Nottingham University) etc.
I've also created unique recorded soundtracks of medieval music for several exhibitions - notably for the Froissart/Hundred Years War Exhibition at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds (2008) and at Les Invalides in Paris (2010). I've also recorded a version of the medieval Chanson de Roland, the Old French chanson de geste, which dates from the very last years of the 11th century, currently available as a digital download from the Chaucer Studio. I've also recorded some later songs - 16th and 17th-century ballads etc.
The recording of medieval songs, Code No. MS9TR15, has the following tracklist:
1. La Peronelle (trad. French, perhaps 15th century)
2. Ja nuls hons pris (attrib. Richard I, r. 1189-99)
3. Fortz chausa es (Gaucelm Faidit, c. 1200)
4. Reis Glorios (Guiraut de Bornelh, c. 1200)
5. Douce Dame (Guillaume de Machaut, c.1300-77)
6. Quant voi la flor (Anon. 14th century)
7. Ahi! Mi Dame de Valor (Guillaume de Machaut, c. 1300-77)
8. Robin Hood and the Friars (Anon. ballad, perhaps 16th century)
9. Guillaume's Lament (Text by Guillaume IX of Aquitaine, c. 1100, melody trad. Breton)
These recordings are based on my own transcriptions from manuscripts, and therefore available (by arrangement) copyright free to universities and museums.
Research: The repertoire of lyric songs in Occitan and Old French, usually described as the songs of the ‘trobadors and trouvères’ dates from c. 1100 - c. 1300, and is the oldest substantial groups of vernacular songs to survive in written form from the Western European ‘Middle Ages’. These important songs are also the earliest written secular music in Europe, and are therefore of enormous importance. They survive in a group of manuscripts written between about 1250 and 1320 and thus slightly post-dating the high point of the tradition itself - which was (arguably) around 1200.
Various questions surround this song repertoire. Why are there no extant manuscripts before 1250? Why were the songs so carefully recorded in such large 'anthologies'? Did the songs circulate in oral tradition before 'crystallizing' into written form at a later date? There is no real agreement on these questions: many of these songs probably survived because they were composed by aristocrats, although a few of the songs seem to have been composed by 'minstrels' of relatively low social status. Close examination of variant versions of songs suggests that many of them circulated in ‘oral tradition’ for some time before being ‘fixed’ in written form. However, there is also clear 'internal' evidence that other songs were transmitted through a process of written transmission - copying by professional scribes - and my own research shows clearly that some scribes altered and adapted both the melodies and the lyrics of songs during the process of copying.
The oldest of these chansonniers dates from 1254 - unusually, the scribe dated the manuscript. This was a period when the writing of musical notation was becoming increasingly sophisticated, and also being gradually 'professionalized' by music scribes. Many of these scribes were working in urban centres in northern France, notably Paris and Arras, using a form of ‘square notation’ on a four-line stave, but often adding other small marks and details reflecting the poetic structure and the relationships between melody and poem. Overall, this group of surviving manuscripts contains about 2,500 trobador poems (in Occitan) around 300 of which have music, as well as some 2,400 trouvère poems (in Old French) of which about 1,700 have music. My doctoral thesis (2001) includes transcriptions, translations and analysis of many of these songs, with detailed commentaries on the different scribes and their methods of working. However, more general overviews of this repertoire in English include: Rosenburg, S.N., Switten, M. and Le Vot, G. (Eds.) Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères: an anthology of poems and melodies, New York and London, 1998. More recent 'surveys' in this field include Haines, J. Eight Centuries of Troubadours and Trouvères: the changing identity of medieval music, Cambridge, 2004; Haines, J. Medieval Songs in Romance Languages, Cambridge, 2010.
My research also considers what we can learn about the performance tradition of this song repertoire from performance descriptions in Old French and Occitan literary texts of the period. This is an area of research which builds on earlier work in this field by John Stevens and especially by Christopher Page. This work is important because the song manuscripts themselves contain no performance directions whatsoever - the only real evidence about their performance comes from contemporary texts which include descriptions of performances - sometimes even including quotes from known songs. These descriptions occur as short passages dotted through Old French literature of the period, especially courtly romances, chronicles and epic narrative poetry. There are also fragments of relevant evidence in early Latin didactic texts from the period 1200-1350, and a few tiny fragments of 'internal evidence' in the song lyrics themselves. In addition, some interesting clues can be found in administrative documents such as the English royal 'wardrobe accounts' which include records of payments to so-called 'minstrels'. Sometimes these payment records include interesting remarks about performers - what they received, and why they received it. However, this evidence needs careful sifting and evaluation - as does the pictorial evidence of the period, which is highly stylized/symbolic and was never intended to give technical details about performance. In my view, earlier researchers have placed far too much emphasis on medieval paintings and sculptures which show performers, while giving texts, potentially a rich source of more precise historical information, very little attention.
These songs are from an age long before the formal 'concert' had been conceived, and therefore it's important to recognize that the position of music in society was quite different to today. Music and other art forms connected with the chivalric elite of this period were often used as a vehicle for political statements, diplomacy, propaganda and the petitioning of feudal superiors for military aid or marriage alliances. Furthermore, many performers of this particular song repertoire (paid or not) were not necessarily music 'professionals'. Indeed, the available evidence suggests that they were often members of a nobleman's entourage - young warriors anxious to make their mark at court and to draw attention to their musical and social accomplishments in the hope of advancement. Some of my work on this subject have appeared in journals such as Nottingham Medieval Studies, Viator, French Studies and in recent years in The Consort.
‘Musical Instruments and the Performance of Medieval Song’, Consort LXVII (2011) 3-22.
‘Chansons de geste: the peripheralization of a central tradition’, in: Smith, P. (Ed.) Proceedings of the 2003 Conference of the British Society for the Study of French History (2003): Special issue of Nottingham French Studies XLIV (2005) 5-19.
‘Halt sunt li pui: towards a performance of the Song of Roland’, Nottingham Medieval Studies XLVII (2003) 73-106.
‘The Myth of the Medieval Minstrel: interdisciplinary approaches to the performers of the Old French chansonnier repertory’, Viator, XXXIII (2002) 100-116.