Overview

Fully revised and updated, Leo Treitler's seventeen classic essays trace the creation and spread of song (cantus), sacred and secular, through oral tradition and writing, in the European Middle Ages. The author examines songs in particular - their design, their qualities and character, their expressive meanings, and their adaptation to their communal and ritual roles - and explores the chances for, and the obstacles to, our understanding of traditions that were alive a thousand years ago. Ranging from c. 900 (when the written transmission of medieval songs began) to 1200, Treitler shows how the earlier, purely oral traditions can be examined only through the lens of what has been captured in writing, and focuses on the invention and uses of writing systems for representing these oral traditions. Each of these seminally influential essays has been revised to take account of recent developments, and is prefaced with a new introduction to highlight the historical issues. The accompanying CD contains performances of much of the music discussed.

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9780198166443

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Reviews

a notable work of scholarship ... future scholars and writers of standard texts and reference works will need to absorb and wrestle seriously with its lessons. The updated versions of the essays, with their rich introductory commentaries and complementary perspectives, will become the preferred entrance into Leo Treitler's substantial legacy of thought about medieval song. Sarah Fuller, Music and Letters Leo Treitler is simply one of the most interesting and influential American musicologists of his generation, and this astonishing collection of his essays is teeming with insights into some of the central problems of our contemporary musical world and its culture. BBC Music Magazine Treitler is a man who thinks nothing of ranging across a thousand years of music history to find an appropriate example or a comprehensive explanation ... a fascinating book. BBC Music Magazine The importance of Treitler's work for anyone wishing to study or to sing medieval music can hardly be over-estimated, not because he has provided answers to specific historical questions which will stand the test of time, but because of the impact of his imaginative writing on how we understand what survives of medieval music repertoires. Early Music ith voice and pen deserves to be recognised for its huge stimulus to further adventurous exploration of medieval song. Early Music

Author Information

Leo Treitler emigrated to the USA in 1938. He studied at the University of Chicago and Princeton University. He has held professorial appointments at the University of Chicago, Braudeis University, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and visiting appointments at the University of California at Berkeley, Yale University, Columbia University, New York University, Harvard University, the University of Basel and Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University in Frankfurt.

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