Songs, scribes, and society

"A new kind of songbook emerged in the later fifteenth century: personalized, portable, and lavishly decorated. Five closely related chansonniers, copied in the Loire Valley region of central France, are the earliest surviving examples of this rare commodity. The Loire Valley Chansonniers preserve the music of such renowned composers as Guillaume Du Fay, Johannes Ockeghem, and Antoine Busnoys. But their importance as musical sources has over-shadowed the significance of these manuscripts as artifacts in their own right. Songs, Scribes, and Society focuses primarily on the chansonniers as physical objects, investigating the means by which they were produced and the broader culture in which they circulated. Jane Alden performs a codicological autopsy upon the manuscripts and reveals the hitherto unrecognized role of scribes in shaping the transmission and reception of the chanson repertory. Alden also challenges the long-held belief that the Loire Valley Chansonniers were intended for royal or noble patrons. Instead, she argues that a rising class of bureaucrats--notaries, secretaries, and other court officials--commissioned these exquisite objects. Active as writers and participants in poetry competitions, these individuals may even have written some of the chansons' texts. This book comes with an extensive companion Web site that includes color reproductions of the chansonniers themselves, bringing their unique integration of image, text, and music to a new generation of readers."-- Publisher description.