Gone to Dreamwidth, like so many of you! Find me there under the same username -- although I continue to be more active on FB and G+ than anywhere else, so hit me up if you need/want that info.

Hello all!

I'm just dropping a quick post here to prevent LJ from deciding I don't exist any more. I'm still popping in occasionally to read, and am grateful for those of you still making use of this excellent format!

... more than a year since my last entry?!? Oy.

I am still alive -- and still reading here, although that only sporadically. There's a lot of music and SCA and school/activities/camp for the mini-monkey and stuff going on, and every time I think about sitting down to write a catch-up post things just get away from me, like they do. :P

Anyway, hello stalwart LJers! Thanks for not deserting the ship.

Useful for looking at the evolution of music notation over time:
The Schoyen Collection

(there are three sections -- note the clickthroughs at the very bottom of each page)

Tags: manuscripts, medieval music

"Dear Lady of my thoughts, dear Lady Cunard, time turns all things into analogues and symbols, and in the course of the years I have come to think of you as an evening fountain under embosoming trees. The fountain murmurs, sings, exults; it welcomes every coming minute; and when the dusk deepens in the garden and the gallants enfold their ladies in scarves and veils and the rout disperses, the fountain sings alone the sorrows of the water-lilies to the moon."

- George Moore's dedication from Ulick and Soracha

Tags: quotations

I can't remember if I've linked this here before or not, but here it is (again?) anyway -- a beautiful 13th-century French manuscript songbook, full of interesting pieces by an array of trouvères: Recueil de chansons du XIIIe siècle, avec musique notée

I'm contemplating attempting to transcribe a song, mostly as an exercise in assessing exactly how much I don't know about medieval French... :P

Tags: french, manuscripts, medieval music

The gray felt daylong dusk of winter skies,
The golden, noontide braveries of midsummer,
Odors of harvest apples, the cursive lines
Of one known hand, pressed clover leaves between
The India paper leaves of Second Kings,
A voice, the expectation of a voice,
Quavers of light and semibreves of joy
Confirm the only magic of the world
Here where we fall transposingly in love.

Anthony Hecht, "A Love for Four Voices: Homage to Franz Joseph Haydn" (Hermia's coda)

Tags: music, poetry, quotations

Yes, really.

The 600-years-old butt song from hell

Tags: medieval music

The Copenhagen and Loire Valley Chansonniers, important collections of French chansons, are now available in an open-access edition (both texts and music), complete with links to the digitized manuscripts. All kinds of interesting analysis and background here, in addition to sheet music and translated lyrics!

Tags: medieval music

Singing to Another Tune: Contrafacture & Attribution in Troubadour Song -- interesting reading, with a nice list of cold hard factual examples of melodic/structural borrowings.

Tags: medieval music