Historical Research and Performances.
My area of research is the transcription of early song manuscripts, and the research of their performance history. Since 1998 I've been giving lecture-recitals at University Conferences and Historical Societies based on my PhD/post-doctoral research on French song manuscripts c. 1250-1320. Hopefully informative as well as entertaining, these recitals can be tailored to suit Conferences, Arts Festivals, Book Launches, etc.
These recitals have taken me to Canterbury Cathedral, Lincoln Cathedral Library, the IMC (the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds) the Royal Armouries Museum (Leeds), Boston 'Stump' (St. Botolph's Church, Boston) and to many university conferences, including University of York (ISRHSC: International Society for Robin Hood Studies Conference) University of Nottingham (BAJS: British Association for Japanese Studies, ISFH: International Society for French History) and the Royal Historical Association Centenary Conference, etc. In 2004 I gave a recital at the University of Nagoya in Japan.
Publications:
'Praga Rosa Bohemiae: Music in Renaissance Prague' Consort LXXVI (2020) 136-7.
'Johannes de Lymburgia: Gaude felix Padua' Consort LXXVI (2020) 134-6.
'The Dufay Spectacle: motets and chansons of Guillaume Dufay' Consort LXXV (2019) 139-141.
'A Critical Companion to Medieval Motets' Consort LXXV (2019) 98-101.
'Le Codex de Chypre' Consort LXXIV (2018) 122-4.
'Machaut: a burning heart' Consort LXXIII (2017) 145-6.
'Ramon Llull (1232-1316): un viatge medieval' Consort LXXIII (2017) 144-5.
'The Ars Musica attributed to Magister Lambertus/Aristoteles' Consort LLXXII (2016) 110-113.
'Senza Vestimenta: the literary tradition of Trecento Song' Consort LLXXI (2015) 95-7.
'The Art of Grafted Song: citation and allusion in the age of Machaut' Consort LLXXI (2015) 93-5.
‘Minstrels and trobadors, c. 1150-c.1350: professionals or not?’ Consort LXX (2014) 1-15.
'The Ars Musica attributed to Magister Lambertus/Aristoteles' Consort LLXXII (2016) 110-113.
‘Songs in British Sources, c. 1150-c.1300’ Consort LXX (2014) 125-6.
‘Medieval English Lyrics and Carols’ Consort LXX (2014) 111-2.
‘The Vision of Music in Hildegard’s Scivias: synthesising image, text, notation and theory’ (Review) Consort LXX (2014) 108-9.
‘Neidhart: a Minnesinger and his ‘Vale of Tears’ – songs and interludes’ (Review of Naxos CD 8.572449) Consort LXX (2014) 145-6.
‘The Refrain and the Rise of the Vernacular in Medieval French Music and Poetry’ Consort LXX (2014) 109-111.
‘Tristan’s Harp: Arthurian Medieval Music’ (Review of Naxos CD 8.572784) Consort LXX (2014) 146-7.
Accompanying Trobador and Trouvère Song’, Consort LXIX (2013) 3-19.
‘Conductus: music and poetry from 13th-century France’ (Review of Hyperion CDA 67949) Consort LXIX (2013) 135- 7.
‘Le Codex de Chypre: Torino, Biblioteca Universitaria J.II.9’ (Review) Consort LXIX (2013) 114-6.
‘Performance and the Middle English Romance’ (Review) Consort LXIX (2013) 102-4.
‘Bede: a sequence of music and words’ (Review) Consort LXIX (2013) 133-4.
‘Singing Trouvère and Trobador Chansons: Vocal Style in Medieval Song’, Consort LXVIII (2012) 3-25.
‘Medieval Song in Romance Languages’ Consort LXVIII (2012) 116-18.
‘The Canterbury Pilgrims: Music for Chaucer’s Prologue’ (Review) Consort LXVIII (2012) 150-152.
‘Musical Instruments and the Performance of Medieval Song’, Consort LXVII (2011) 3-22.
‘The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory: Guido of Arezzo, Myth and History’ (Review) Consort LXVII (2011) 107-109.
‘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.
‘Quality Issues and Cultural Tourism: the changing role of reconstructions and musical performances’, Proceedings of the De Haan Tourism and Management Conference II (2003) 70-75.
‘The Myth of the Medieval Minstrel: interdisciplinary approaches to the performers of the Old French chansonnier repertory’, Viator, XXXIII (2002) 100-116.
Other publications include Music Businesses in the Greater Nottingham Area: evidence for a functional business cluster, a report commissioned by the Nottingham City Council in partnership with the University of Nottingham Business School in 2003. I've written numerous concert programme and CD liner notes, book and concert reviews, and contributed articles to the British Heritage Database (2000 Project CD Rom) on various subjects including ‘Music in Medieval Britain’; ‘John Dunstable’; ‘Chansons de geste’ etc.
FAQs:
You also produce soundtracks? Yes - I've also created unique recorded soundtracks of medieval music for several exhibitions - notably the Froissart/Hundred Years War Exhibition at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds. I've also recorded a version of the medieval Chanson de Roland, the Old French chanson de geste, which probably dates from the very last years of the 11th century. This is currently available as a digital download from the Chaucer Studio. I've also recorded some medieval songs and some later (i.e. 16th and 17th-century) songs. The recording of medieval songs (CD cover shown above - 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 copyright free to institutions.
What are the themes of the lecture recitals? There's a list of sample titles below, although the list of publications probably gives a clearer idea of my specialisms.
Non angli sed angeli: One Thousand Years of English Song.
To the Greenwood Gone: Medieval Songs and Robin Hood Ballads.
Chaucer and Christianity.
Les troubadours d'outremer: Songs of the Crusades.
Amor de lonh: The Troubadours and the Medieval Languedoc.
Froissart and the Hundred Years War.
War and Memory: Soldiers and their Songs.
Pack up your Sea-Stores: Music of the Atlantic Trade Routes.
Research: My main area of research is medieval 'secular’ song, specifically the tradition of lyric song in Occitan and Old French flourishing between about 1100 and 1300. These songs, often described as the songs of the ‘trobadors and trouvères’ are the one of the oldest substantial groups of vernacular songs to survive in written form from the Western European ‘Middle Ages’. They survive in manuscripts (mostly now held in the BN in Paris) written between about 1250 and 1320 and thus post-date the tradition itself. Scholarly opinion is divided on the 'origin' of these songs, and how and why they were so carefully recorded from around 1250 onward. The answer is surely complex: many of these songs seem to have circulated in ‘oral tradition’ for some time before being ‘fixed’ in written form, while there is clear evidence that others have been transmitted through a process of written transmission - i.e. through copying by scribes. I've transcribed over 200 songs and made detailed comparisons of different surviving versions of the same song. These are quite revealing - showing that some of the scribes scribes altered and adapted both the melodies and the lyrics of songs during the process of writing them up.
Overall, these surviving chansonnier manuscripts contain about 2,500 trobador poems (in Occitan) around 300 of which have decipherable music, as well as some 2,400 trouvère poems (in Old French) of which about 1,700 have music. The oldest of these manuscripts has been dated to 1254 - a period when the writing of musical notation was becoming increasingly sophisticated, and was being gradually professionalized, with a growing number of music scribes working in Paris and Arras, using a form of ‘square notation’ on a four-line stave.
My doctoral thesis (2001) includes transcriptions, translations and detailed analysis of more than 200 of these songs with commentary on the different scribes and their methods of working. However, more general overviews of this repertoire may be found in 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 investigates the performance tradition of this song repertoire as revealed 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) Christopher Page. I regard this work as important because the song manuscripts themselves contain no performance directions whatsoever - the only real evidence about their performance comes from contemporary descriptions of performances. These descriptions are not found in music manuscripts: they often occur as short passages dotted through the Old French literature of the period: courtly romances, chronicles, epic narrative poetry. There are also fragments of evidence in Latin treatises and some Occitan texts etc. of the period 1200-1350. In addition, there are a few tiny fragments of 'internal evidence' in the song lyrics themselves, as well as some interesting clues in royal 'wardrobe accounts' which include records of payments to so-called 'minstrels', and some oblique remarks about them! 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.
These songs are from an age long before the formal 'concert' had been conceived, and the position of music in society was quite different to what it is now. Music and other art forms connected with the chivalric elite of this period were often used as vehicles for making political statements, for diplomacy and propaganda, and the petitioning of feudal superiors concerning 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, acting as diplomats and anxious to make their mark in courtly circles. Their 'performances' can be seen as attempts to draw attention to their accomplishments in the hope of social advancement. Some of my work in this specific area includes:
‘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.
