The repertory of versus that circulated in eleventh- and twelfth-century Aquitaine is preserved in nine versaria, which today form parts of four codices: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, fonds latin MSS 1139, 3549 and 3719, and London, British Library, Additional MS 36881. Through a comparison of versions of several pieces that occur in two or more versaria, the historical descent of those pieces to their surviving witnesses is discernible and may be depicted schematically in a stemma codicum. The stemma has two functions. First, readings introduced by individual scribes can be isolated. Some of these readings are errors and thus are eliminated from consideration in the establishment of the text; others, however, are variants and their study can reveal the musical personality of the scribes who introduced them. Second, a group of pieces sharing the same stemma may be identified within the versus repertory. It is proposed here that these pieces were widely circulated as a group in Aquitaine throughout the twelfth century and therefore constitute a central repertory.

Writing in 1027–28, Adémar de Chabannes states in his Chronicon that musicians at the court of Charlemagne knew and used musical notation. Authentic Carolingian sources of the eighth and ninth centuries provide striking corroboration of several elements in Adémar's narrative and so suggest that his version of events may be accurate. More important, however, are the parallels between Adémar and the Carolingian sources regarding the concern of the Frankish monarchs of the period for the quality of singing in the Frankish church, and particularly the adoption of the Roman style of performance. It was in this environment that the Frankish cantors may have developed musical notation, probably at Metz in the last decade of the eighth or first of the ninth century, to assist in the preservation and dissemination of Roman nuances of singing.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract