A survey of the use of the refrain in thirteenth and fourteenth-century French music and poetry, showing how it was skilfully deployed to assert the validity of the vernacular. The relationship between song quotation and the elevation of French as a literary language that could challenge the cultural authority of Latin is the focus of this book. It approaches this phenomenon through a close examination of the refrain, a short phrase of music and text quoted intertextually across thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century musical and poetic genres. The author draws on a wide range of case studies, from motets, trouvere song, plays, romance, vernacular translations, and proverb collections, to show that medieval composers quoted refrains as vernacular auctoritates; she argues that their appropriation of scholastic, Latinate writing techniques workedto authorize Old French music and poetry as media suitable for the transmission of knowledge. Beginning with an exploration of the quasi-scholastic usage of refrains in anonymous and less familiar clerical contexts, the book goeson to articulate a new framework for understanding the emergence of the first two named authors of vernacular polyphonic music, the cleric-trouveres Adam de la Halle and Guillaume de Machaut. It shows how, by blending their craftwith the writing practices of the universities, composers could use refrain quotation to assert their status as authors with a new self-consciousness, and to position works in the vernacular as worthy of study and interpretation. Jennifer Saltzstein is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Oklahoma.
Reviews
A major contribution to scholarship on thirteenth- and fourteenth-century French music and literature in many respects. * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIE *
[A] compelling study. * SPECULUM *
This book is as accessible to the non-specialist as it is valuable to the expert, carefully explaining any technical vocabulary and precisely clarifying terminological distinctions ... Saltzstein's detailed engagement with musical examples is particularly welcome ... Offers important new contexts in which to understand practices of refrain quotation ... will prove invaluable to musicologists as well as scholars of medieval French literature and culture. * EARLY MUSIC *
This fascinating and thought-provoking study sheds light on the intellectual and artistic contexts in which refrain quotation was practiced. * FRENCH STUDIES *
An admirable study, with much to say about the closely intertwined, highly experimental and extremely sophisticated medieval literary and musical cultures in which refrains were so liberally used ... this book is of great value for any performer of medieval music. * THE CONSORT *
Absorbing and informative ... vital reading for everyone working on medieval motets, songs or poetry ... The overall achievement of this volume is great. * PLAINSONG AND MEDIEVAL MUSIC COLLECTIONS THE BRITISH LIBRARY *



Book Information
ISBN 9781843843498
Author Jennifer Saltzstein
Format Hardback
Page Count 208
Imprint D.S. Brewer
Publisher Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Weight(grams) 450g