Duly Noted

In his Etymologies, St Isidore said,  “Unless sounds are remembered by man, they perish, for they cannot be written down.”  He was right in his time, but it didn't take long for people to find a new way to write music. 
"Duly Noted" was an attempt to trace the uneven history of notating music in manuscripts, first with neumes, then with neumes on a staff, to square or diamond-shaped notes on a staff of four to seven lines. There were other methods used in handbooks that didn't quite make it to prime-time. Some of the manuscripts were smaller than a paperback, others were well over two feet tall. 
The best thing I found was the Exultet Roll, which was nothing less than 11th century PowerPoint!  Since this was an event that combined the Stellar University of Northshield with a Scribes and Heralds Symposium, I included lots of manuscripts with heraldry. I also recycled "Now I know my ABGs" -- a history of the alphabet.

Replay, Reuse, Recycle

The class on "Medieval Music You Already Know" inspired me to do a class on contrafacta in period. I'd done classes in "filk" - which is a more lighthearted word for the same thing. But this was about filk in period - from fourth century Arian adaptations of popular music, through troubadours borrowing church music for their love songs, to composers using folk tunes as the basis for polyphonic masses.

We looked at borrowings as many as four deep, as a twelfth-century "Ave Regina" chant may have been used for a twelfth century troubadour's love song, which was borrowed for a thirteenth-century pilgrim song, and a thirteenth century song in praise of gluttony.

Anyone who thinks of the middle ages as insular or restrictive might be surprised at the international trade in music. A tune that's still popular today can be found in Italian, Bohemian, Gallican, and German manuscripts of the tenth to fifteenth centuries.

Those who prize originality might be surprised to learn that troubadour instruction manuals prefer that older tunes be used for some types of song.

This was a study that was too much for an hour's class. It could easily fill a dissertation (actually, several of them). I recommend the Musical Borrowing Bibliography as a resource. Though many of its 1800+ citations cover modern music, there's plenty on medieval/renaissance works as well.

Shakespeare made fun of the contrafacting of Greensleeves by Mistress Ford's comment about Falstaff:, whose words, "do no more adhere and keep place together than the Hundredth Psalm to the tune of Green Sleeves." (Merry Wives of Windsor II.i.62) She may not approve, but contrafact was a way of life for musicians in period.

Medieval Music You Already Know

In preparation for Rokeclif hosting Bardic Madness, I led a class on period music. Many of the songs we sang during the wintertime celebrations have their roots in the middle ages. A few examples:

The tune used for "Good King Wenceslas" was published in a sixteenth-century collection with the words, "Tempus adest Floridum", a carol for spring. These words appear in Carmina Burana, a thirteenth-century collection.

The tune of Greensleeves was used in 1642 as a New Year's carol before it became "What Child is This?"

"Good Christian Folk Rejoice" was sung by a circle of dancing angels in the fourteenth century with the words, "In dulci Jubilo"

The "March of the Three Kings" that Bizet used in L'Arlesienne was a mid-thirteenth century crusaders' hymn.

"Of Parental Love Begotten" may have the oldest pedigree. Its tune is a plainsong melody found in manuscripts as early as the tenth century. The words, "Corde Natus ex Parentis", are from a poem by Prudentius, written in the fourth century.