learning french by singing in 14th-century england...early 15th-century music manuscript modena,...

IT seems to have gone unnoticed that the completepoetic text of the anonymous rondeau Tres doulz

regart, uniquely copied with musical notation in theearly 15th-century music manuscript Modena,Biblioteca Estense Ms.�.M.5.24 (ModA), is con-tained in a late 14th-century dialogue-based treatisedesigned to improve the French of English readers.The treatise, which specifically describes Tres dousregart as being sung,1 can be found in no fewer thanfive manuscripts of English provenance from thelater 14th and early 15th centuries. This article givesan overview of the treatise, an account of the song,and attempts to draw out some of the issues ofprovenance raised by this discovery.

Manières de langage and the French of ‘Stratfordatte Bow’

In England of the later 14th and early 15th centuries,when English was in the ascendant, French was stillregularly used—especially in written form—by aninfluential section of society. As a form of writtenand spoken communication, French was in commonuse among royalty and the nobility, was usefulfor international diplomacy, trade, husbandry(manaungerie), and was the standard written lan-guage of the law. Chaucer famously describes thePrioress as speaking French ‘ful faire and fetisly [ele-gantly], / After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, / ForFrenssh of Paris was to hire unknowe.’2 Her lan-guage skills are part of a collection of habits thatmark her as a religious who is, arguably inappropri-ately, aping courtly manners. Most modern readerssee further mockery implied by the fact that shespeaks London’s supposedly less authentic French,which for Chaucer was an imperfect form of a trueParisian French original. While this view can beshown to agree with that of some late medieval writers,3

William Rothwell has argued that acceptingChaucer’s denigration of Anglo-French at face valuewill lead us to neglect basic questions about the sta-tus of French in England in the later 14th century.4

Underlying Chaucer’s gentle satire of the Prioress’spretensions, he argues, is the fact that French was aliving, useful and local language in the Englishcapital.5 The situation is undoubtedly complex, andRothwell’s work has not yet been fully and widelyabsorbed into other scholars’ work.6 It seems likelythat the linguistic situation has been subject to laterscholars’ own language-based historiographicalagendas in the 19th and 20th centuries, but muchwork remains to be done on these issues, both his-torical and historiographical. The generalizationsthat follow must therefore be taken as provisional.

It seems that while not all people working withinthe upper strata of English society were French-English bilingual by virtue of birth, many acquiredFrench colloquially in the course of everydaybusiness—a group which included not just busi-nessmen and nobles but also women who ranhouseholds.7 As French came to be used increasinglyin written records, it became necessary for individu-als to perfect grammatically through book-learningwhat they had initially acquired more casually.8

In this way Anglo-French acquired a pedagogy allof its own. During the later Middle Ages Englishscholars thoroughly conversant with Latin grammarcompiled French grammars, orthographies andword-lists for the French of England.9 These ‘acade-mic’ texts were joined at the end of the 14th centuryby texts that consisted largely of lifelike dialogues inFrench: at the market, on the road, at the hotel,and so on. These Manières de langage—ways ofcommunicating— were usually copied into manu-scripts alongside the more traditional material

Elizabeth Eva Leach

Learning French by singing in 14th-century England

253Early Music, Vol. , No. © The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.doi:10.1093/em/cah069, available online at www.em.oupjournals.org

254 early music may 2005

(grammar, morphological treatises, instructions onwriting, and so on) and were designed to supple-ment such writing-focused study with more oralpractice. In this regard they are similar to the class-room texts of England today, which typically focuson using French as a modern language of principallyoral communication.10

The Manières de langage seem to have been fairlypopular texts. In 1995, as part of the Anglo-NormanTexts series, Andres M. Kristol edited three differentManières, from 1396, 1399 and 1415 respectively,which are contained in a total of ten contemporarymanuscript sources (many transmitting two differ-ent Manières).11 Neither the Manières themselves northe manuscripts in which they are copied haveany ostensibly musical content. Their existence hasthus passed unnoticed by musicologists. Yet theManières’ newer emphasis on the oral ‘performance’of a learned language seems to have led to the use ofsongs in that language as part of the pedagogicalpackage. Just as singing had been a fundamentalpart of second language (or ‘father tongue’) literacyearlier in the Middle Ages, when boys in choirschools learned ‘cantus et grammatica’ (i.e. Latin),singing also seems to have been part of the pedagogyof the increasing written vernacular ‘father tongue’in late 14th-century England.12

The Manière of 1396

The earliest of the three Manières edited by Kristoldates from 1396 and is preserved in five manuscriptsources.13 All five sources include the text of the ron-deau Tres doulz regart in the context of the Manière’sfourth section. The treatise’s manuscript sources andtheir sigla, taken from Kristol’s edition, are as follows:

A VersionsLH London, British Library, Ms. Harley 3988,

f.1r–26rOA Oxford, All Souls College, Ms. 182, new

(pencil) foliation ff.311r–322r (older ff.305r–316r)B VersionsCD Cambridge, University Library, Ms. Dd 12.23,

ff.67v–87rLA London, British Library, Ms. Add. 1776,

ff.106r–111vPN Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms. nouv. acq.

lat. 699, ff.114r–128v

The sectional subdivisions that I shall use here inreferring to the Manière text also correspond tothose made editorially by Kristol (detailed intable 1).14 I have also consulted several manuscriptcopies of the treatise directly, which are all copied asunbroken prose, without section divisions, markersfor direct speech, or poetic lineation.15 Quite prop-erly Kristol’s edition makes a modern presentationaldistinction between dialogue, prose and lyric poetry;it was his more visually striking modern presenta-tion of the lyrics that drew my attention to thetreatise’s inclusion of the Modena rondeau.

The treatise opens with a prayer to the Trinity(section 1). Section 2 resembles more formal kindsof language material in being a list of nouns, in thiscase giving the parts of the human body. Section 3sees the first instance of dialogue between the pro-tagonist of the Manière, le seignour, and his valetJakyn, whom he instructs in the purchase of a longlist of household items, ‘lez chocez necessaries ahomme’, a phrase that gives the same sense as themodern English legal term ‘necessaries’.16

Section 4—the longest section and the one thatshows the most variation between the two differentmanuscript traditions of the treatise—has Janyn sad-dle up his master’s horse Morel, and set out on a jour-ney.17 This is where the dialogue format typical of theManières truly gets going. Having made the necessarypreparations for the journey (4.1) and had a final meal(4.2), le seignour finally sets off. In the third subsec-tion (4.3) he asks for directions, the time, and a roughestimate of how far it is to his destination. The desti-nation he desires is given variously as Paris, Orleansand London in the five sources; using French en routeto London would perhaps have been more realisticthan it might now appear.18

Kristol divides the five manuscript copies of thisManière into A and B versions.19 Three of the principaldifferences between A and B are in the fourth section(see table 1). In subsection 4.2, the B versions have along enumeration of birds, lacking in the A versions.When the protagonist arrives at the hotel in subsec-tion 4.6 his valet buys poultry in the A versions, fishin the B versions. The third difference involves thelast part of section 4, in which the gentleman in theB versions narrates a comic fabliau about a husbandwho is cuckolded by his servant, then beaten by him

early music may 2005 255

Table 1 The Manière of 1396

Section Version A Version B

1. Introduction; prayer to the Trinity LH OA CD PN LA2. The human body LH OA CD PN LA3. How to speak of human necessaries LH OA CD PN LA4. Journeying far from one’s own home

4.1 Preparation for the voyage LH OA CD PN LA4.2 Final meal; meat, poultry LH OA CD PN LA

4.2.2 List of bird species – CD PN LA4.3 En route; how to ask directions, the time and distance LH OA CD PN LA4.4 a) Love song Tres doulz regart [rondeau] LH CD PN LA

b) Drinking song Hé, hé, la bone vinee OA –4.5 The servant at the hotel LH OA –4.6 a) At the market: poultry – CD PN LA

b) At the market: fish LH OA –4.7 a) Night at the hotel: courtship (includes recited lyrics) LH OA –

plus one song:i) Tres doulz regart [rondeau] OAii) Estrainez moy [rondeau] LH

b) Evening at the hotel: The tale of the cuckolded, beaten but contented – CD PN LA*husband

4.8 Breakfast; fish; departure LH OA –5. How to speak to labourers and workmen LH OA CD6. Another way of speaking to them: conversation between the baker LH OA CD

and his apprentice7. How to speak to merchants (conversation between draper and his LH OA CD

apprentice; market scene)8. Another way of speaking: getting clothes mended LH OA CD9. Another way of speaking: conversation between two equerries LH OA CD

10. Another way of speaking: different greetings; asking for news LH OA CD11. How to speak to a child LH OA CD12. How to answer a poor man begging LH OA CD13. How two friends at a hotel speak to each other – CD14. How victualers speak to one another – CD15. Another way of asking the time and the way – CD16. Another way of asking for a room at a hotel – CD17. Another way of speaking: requesting the services of a priest – CD18. How to ask the way to a knight’s house in a town or city LH OA CD PN19. When you meet people: different forms of greeting (depending – CD PN

on the time of day)20. Another way of speaking: speaking to the sick; the exemplum of Job. LH OA CD PN

[Includes spoken lyric quatrain]21. How to speak to a foreigner from a far off country LH OA CD PN22. How two tailors speak to each other – CD23. Another way in which two friends at a hotel speak to each other LH OA CD (part) PN24. The author’s letter to his patron LH OA –

Source: Based on the table on p.xxiii of Kristol’s Introduction.* This short section of the 1396 Manière B version is also in the manuscript Cambridge, Trinity College B 14.39/40 (Kristol’s

CT), which also contains the 1415 Manière de language.


and yet, through the typical fabliau logic warped bydisguise and mistaken identity, is convinced that hiswife is faithful and his servant loyal.20

In both versions of the Manière the textdescribes how, riding on his way to his destination, thegentleman begins to sing ‘the noblest and mostamorous song that there might be in all the world’(4.4).21 The text of the song given in four of the fivesources at this point is the rondeau Tres doulz regardamoureusement trait. A fifth source (LH) gives a drink-ing song, Hé, hé, la bonne vinee, although it includes therondeau Tres doulz regard later, in section 4.7, when theprotagonist is similarly described as ‘speaking orsinging most nobly in this way, the noblest and mostamorous song that there might be in all the world’.22

Thus all five copies of the treatise transmit the text ofthis rondeau with only minor variations, despite therebeing two principal versions of the treatise, and despitethe rondeau’s being placed at different points in thetext in different copies of the A version.

Before examining this rondeau in more detail it isworth mentioning the other poems in the treatise.Although the B versions include no further lyrics, thetwo A versions have a more dramatic depiction ofthe gentleman courting a ‘lady’ at the hotel, whichincludes, instead of the fabliau, spoken lyrics and asung rondeau. The second rondeau is given in theappendix to this article, and is probably the text of asong whose music no longer survives. The A versionof the Manière also supplies the gentleman with achoice of exemplary wooing poems, as he is describedas embracing and kissing the lady on her mouth. Thetwo poems (which are alternatives—the second one isintroduced with vel sic) are M’amie doulce et graciouse,a six-line verse rhyming aabccb, and Ma dame gentillede pourtraiture, a quatrain abab. The implicationfrom their introduction is that these are said ratherthan sung: ‘and then he says [il dit] to her nobly out ofgood and fervent love and as a means of arousing herlove, the words [les paroles] that follow’.23

‘The noblest and most amorous song . . . in theworld’Poetic text

Although none of the manuscripts of the Manièreincludes musical notation, musicologists already

know the song that is present in all five copies becauseit is also copied, notated in two parts, on the last twostaves of f.30v in ModA (see illus.1 and the trans-cription in ex.1).24 The newly identified manuscriptsources for the poetic text supply lines 5–6, missing inModA, as well as permitting other better textual read-ings to be made. A basic comparison of the Modenaand Manière versions is given in table 2. On the wholethe transmission here reflects similar levels of variantsin other multipally transmitted formes fixes from thisperiod. The two important articulations within eachline, the rhyme word and the word at the fourth-syllable caesura typically remain stable in transmis-sion, and the text before the caesura shows leastvariation. The most variation is typically displayed inplaces where the meaning is unaffected (line 11 ‘a moncuer’ in ModA, for ‘dedens moy’ in Manière).25

Where the meaning is affected, the variation concernspronouns (see below).

In line 1 the scribe of ModA, who is squeezing thispiece into a two-stave space at the foot of the folio,uses some abbreviation marks. These are expanded as‘amoureus en moy trait’ and ‘amoureus m’ont outret’in the editions of Willi Apel and Gordon Greene,respectively.26 As well as confirming that the first wordis, as Apel reads it, ‘Tres’ (Tre) and not (as Greene hasit) ‘Tes’, the Manière text confirms that the correctexpansion would be ‘amoureusement trait’.27

In line 2 the Manière texts have ‘fera’ rather than‘fet a’, the latter representing a Continental Frenchsubstitution (� ‘fait a mon cuer entrer’) for theAnglo-French construction ‘fera mon cuer entrer’, inwhich ‘entrer’ takes a direct object, much as it does inmodern English (‘will make enter my heart’).

The framing words—the incipit, caesural wordand rhyme—of line 3 are stable but the internalexpression differs slightly in the two traditions. TheManière text implies that ‘my own eyes may meetthee again’; ModA has the narrator as the subject ofthe verb—‘by my eyes I may meet thee’.28

The final line of the refrain (line 4) has thecausative ‘Que’ in the Manière text but ‘Tres’ inModA, causing the two a-rhyme lines also to startwith the same word. ModA also has the unaccented(and more Italianate?) oblique form of the secondperson singular personal pronoun ‘ti’; the Manièretext has the more usual accented form ‘toy’.


Ex.1 Anonymous, Trez doulz regard

The two lines that are missing in ModA are pre-sent in all copies of the Manière, even though none ofthe Manière texts lays them out as poetry, or cues anyof the rondeau’s repeats. Line 6 is two syllables toolong. If ‘veoir’ is (as usually) two syllables, the easiestway to achieve the correct syllable count is to cut twofrom after the caesura: ‘je ne me puisse saouler’becomes ‘ne me puis saouler’. If ‘veoir’ is monosyl-labic, either ‘je’ or the subjunctive ending ‘puisse’

may remain. And ‘puisse’ may be monosyllabic and‘saouler’ a two-syllable word. However, it is worthnoting that there are sufficient notes in the melismahere to take a rogue 12-syllable (Alexandrine) line (asin the editorial underlay given in ex.1).

The text of line 9 seems better in the Manièresources, which all have the pre-caesural text ‘Je t’aipour tant’, giving the line the sense of ‘I have there-fore thus depicted thee in my heart’. The ‘si’ is omitted


Illus.1 Anonymous, Tres dous regard (Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, �.m.5.24 (Lat. 568, olim IV.M.5)

(ModA), fol. 30v.


Tab

le2

The

Man

ière

and

Mod

A t

exts

com

pare

d

Ano

n, L

a m

aniè

re d

e la

ngag

e de

Ano

n, T

redo

ulz

rega

rdT

rans

lati

onLH

, f.9

v; O

A, f

.306

v (3

12v)

I-M

Oe

5.24

(Mod

A),

f.30

v

a Tre

sdou

lz r

egar

t am

erou

sem

ent

trai

t 1

Tre

dou

lz r

egar

d A

mou

reu

sem

ontt

ret

Ver

y Sw

eet L

ook,

lovi

ngly

car

ried

,ta

nt

de d

oulc

eur

fera

mon

cu

er e

ntr

erb

2T

ant

de d

ouso

ur

fet

a m

oncu

eran

trer

.w

ill m

ake1

so m

uch

swee

tnes

s en

ter

my

hear

tqu

ant

les

mie

ns

yeu

lx t

e pe

ven

t ra

con

trer

c3

Qu

ant

de m

esoi

g ye

te

puis

an

cont

er

whe

n m

y ow

n ey

es c

an m

eet t

hee,

2

que

tou

t m

on s

ang

me

fuit

et

vers

toi

tra

it4

Tre

tou

t m

onsa

ng

me

fuit

etv

ers

ty t

ret.

that

all

my

bloo

d3fle

es m

e an

d dr

aws

tow

ards

thee

.

Et

tan

t m

e pl

aist

ton

gra

ciou

s at

rait

5[m

issi

ng]

An

d th

y n

oble

att

ract

iven

ess

so p

leas

es m

equ

e de

veo

ird

je n

e m

e pu

isse

sao

ule

re6

[mis

sin

g]th

at t

o se

e th

ee m

igh

t n

ot s

uff

ice

for

me,

[Tre

sdou

lz r

egar

t am

erou

sem

ent

trai

t7

[Tre

dou

lz r

egar

d A

mou

reu

sem

ontt

ret

[Ver

y Sw

eet L

ook,

lovi

ngly

car

ried

,ta

nt

de d

oulc

eur

fera

mon

cu

er e

ntr

er]

8T

ant

de d

ouso

ur

fet

a m

oncu

eran

trer

.]w

ill m

ake

so m

uch

swee

tnes

s en

ter

my

hear

t.]

Je t

ai p

our

tan

t si

fen

mon

cu

er p

ourt

rait

9Je

tepo

rte

anm

on c

uer

si p

our

tret

I h

ave

ther

efor

e de

pict

ed t

hee

in m

y h

eart

4

quau

tre

pan

see

ne

ten

pou

rroi

t ou

ster

10qu

atre

pan

ser

ne

le p

ourr

oyt

oute

r.so

th

at n

o [o

ther

] th

ough

t ca

n r

emov

e th

ee5

then

ce.

Et

tel p

lais

ir fa

it d

edan

s m

oy e

ntr

er11

E t

el p

lais

ir fa

ites

1m

on c

uer

an

trer

An

d su

ch p

leas

ure

it [

the

imag

e] m

akes

en

ter

wit

hin

me

que

iam

ais

iou

r tu

nen

ser

as r

etra

it12

Qu

e ia

mai

s io

ur

y n

a se

ra r

etre

t.th

at t

her

e w

ill n

ever

be

a da

y w

hen

th

ou s

hal

t be

wit

hdr

awn

.6

[Tre

sdou

lz r

egar

t am

erou

sem

ent

trai

t13

[Tre

dou

lz r

egar

d A

mou

reu

sem

ontt

ret

[Ver

y Sw

eet L

ook,

lovi

ngly

car

ried

,ta

nt

de d

oulc

eur

fera

mon

cu

er e

ntr

er14

Tan

t de

dou

sou

r fe

t a

mon

cuer

antr

er.

will

mak

e so

muc

h sw

eetn

ess

ente

r m

y he

art

quan

t le

s m

ien

s ye

ulx

te

peve

nt

raco

ntr

er15

Qu

ant

de m

esoi

g ye

te

puis

an

cont

erw

hen

my

own

eyes

can

mee

t the

e,qu

e to

ut

mon

san

g m

e fu

it e

t ve

rs t

oi t

rait

]16

Tre

tou

t m

onsa

ng

me

fuit

etv

ers

ty t

ret.

]th

at a

ll m

y bl

ood

flees

me

and

draw

s to

war

ds th

ee.]

Et

sic

fin

itu

r ca

ntu

s du

lcis

sim

usg

aLH

f.9v

Mar

gin

al n

ote

‘can

tus

pate

t’b

LAf.

109r

has

‘fer

a m

on c

uer

tou

t en

trer

’; K

rist

ol c

omm

ents

th

at it

is c

orru

pt b

ut

prin

ts ‘f

ra’ r

ath

er t

han

‘fer

a’ in

tex

t an

d n

otes

cC

Dh

as ‘p

oen

t y

acou

ntr

er’

dLA

‘qu

e de

vos

voe

r’; C

D‘q

ue

te v

eoir

’e

LA‘je

ne

me

puis

se m

y sa

sule

r’f

Kri

stol

’s n

otes

impl

y ‘s

i’ is

mis

sin

g in

CD

gR

ubr

ic o

nly

in L

H1

Mod

A: m

akes

(pre

sen

t te

nse

)2

Mod

A: w

hen

by m

y ey

es I

can

mee

t the

e3

Mod

A: t

hee.

Ind

eed

all m

y bl

ood

4M

odA

: I h

ave

carr

ied

thee

in m

y h

eart

th

us

depi

cted

5M

odA

: it

�th

e de

pict

ion

of t

he

lady

’s lo

ok6

Mod

A: w

hen

it s

hal

l be

wit

hdr

awn

from

th

ere.


in CD and is placed earlier in LH than in ModA.This line would be a syllable short in ModA, unless‘porte’ at the caesura is read as two syllables—‘porté’. If ‘te’ also represents a written Italian versionof aurally dictated ‘t’ai’, this would give a text mean-ing ‘I have carried thee in my heart thus depicted’.Here, it seems very much as if the ModA scribe iswriting down the sound of the French text so that itrepresents a phonological rather than grammaticalorthography.

Lines 10 and 12 have related differences in the objectof their verbs, in which the Manière text addresses theLook directly (in the second person singular), andModA uses the third person. Line 10 in ModA has thepronoun ‘le’ (it), referring to the image of the belovedin the speaker’s heart, whereas the Manière textaddresses ‘thee’ directly: ‘no other thought can takeit/thee away’. Line 12, which is stable before thecaesura and at the rhyme word, addresses his heart’simage of the lady’s Look directly in the Manière text(‘thou wilt never be withdrawn’), while the ModA ver-sion speaks less directly of the pleasure or depiction—‘it will never be withdrawn’.

The intimate second-person address in an amorousand noble song voiced by a male narrator is striking.Fin’amors typically inverts social hierarchy to give thelady mastery over the lover, and she is thus alwaysaddressed as ‘vous’, even when she addresses anaccepted male ami as ‘tu’. But here the lady is notbeing addressed directly, but rather metonymically bymeans of her ‘Very Sweet Look’, which is personifiedfor the purpose. Several similar lyrics from this periodhave male speakers using ‘tu’ to apostrophize aspectsof their situation as personifications, such as Fortune,Desire, Fair Welcome, Hope, Love, Envy, Loyalty,and so on. In a balade by Phillippus da Caserta, whichoccurs a few folios earlier in Modena, for example,the narrator complains, ‘Hé, dous rengart, tu m’asmis a la mort’ (‘Hey, Sweet Look, thou hast put me todeath’).29 It is likely that this usage nevertheless cre-ated additional amorous frisson: the clear object ofthe address once the metonym is extrapolated is thelady with whom a ‘tu’-level intimacy would be veryintimate indeed, yet the personification is namedonly at the beginning. And while in the musicalsetting this line is sung three times, the variants in theModA text for lines 10 and 12 reduce the amount of

second-person address (see above), perhaps indicat-ing that the ostensible intimacy nevertheless strucksomeone in the line of transmission as so inappropri-ate that they fell into using more neutral third-personreferences as a way of toning it down.

The song presents the idea of recording the lady’sVery Sweet Look as an image of the beloved in thespeaker’s heart. In this the narrator projects a typi-cally medieval form of subjectivity in which the heartacts as a textualized ‘book of the self’, a book of picto-rial memories.30 Just seeing the beloved is not enough,says the narrator; the image must instead be paintedlike a physical portrait within the lover’s heart so thatthe lover can then carry it with him (pourtraire) whenhe is not within sight of her. This relies on the func-tioning of memory as understood in the later MiddleAges, in which sense data was collected as a series ofimages which could then be subjected to intellectualprocessing.31 The use of verbs built on the root traire,which derives from the Latin tractare—to drag, ordraw—intensifies the idea of the compelling natureof the Look’s sweetness. The Look draws in (attraire)the lover, which he then draws (pourtraire) within hisheart to carry (traire) it so that it cannot be with-drawn (retraire). As a sung attestation to the act ofrecording of the lady’s visual appearance in memorythis song is appropriate to its Manière context ofbeing sung out on the road during a journey (awayfrom sight of the lady).

It is worth noting that the missing couplet (lines5–6) supplied by the Manière treatise makes clear theessentially courtly doctrine of the poem. In stressingthat seeing the lady is no longer enough, the coupletexplains why the etching of the lady’s image in theheart—the active creation of memory—is necessaryto the lover’s happiness. This idea that a souvenir (amemory image) of the lady is better than that forwhich it is originally a surrogate (actual sight of her)is consonant with the similar 14th-century elevationof Hope in place of the merci of actual interactionwith the dame.32 The mental image (which, in thework of Machaut and contemporary poets, typicallynourishes Hope) becomes a sufficiency that replacesactual interaction with the lady as a means of conso-lation, thereby avoiding love’s potential for socialdisruption. That which is morally better is presentedas emotionally better too.


The rondeau as a song

The rondeau structure as sung consists of three musi-cal phrases (bars 1–6, 7–13 and 14–22), each of which issubdivided by an internal cadential articulation. Ex.1gives a version of the song based on that in ModA, butwith the text adjusted to take account of the Manièretext. The boxes marked a, b and c show the internalcadential articulations. Each of the first two poeticlines has its own musical phrase, which together com-prise the first section of the rondeau, the sectionheard most frequently within its repeating structure.The second musical section, heard only three timesbut representing the last phrase to be heard in a com-plete performance of the piece, is a single phrase,slightly longer than either of the phrases in the firstsection, again, subdivided at the mid-point but herehaving two poetic lines, one in each half.

The basically plagal melody of the song has arange from G to b �, with a final on d. In the openingphrase the note g starts as a perfect consonance,becomes a dissonance and returns to being a perfectconsonance at the resolution of the directedprogression in bar 4. The pattern of these four barsis repeated in the B section for the final phrase butwith the second part a 4th lower so that the finalcadence is to d, although the surface play of conso-nance and dissonance in the rhythmicized counter-point of the surface in bars 3 and 21 is similar.

All lines except the last have a melismatic tail afterthe rhyme word—a feature that links this piece tothe practice of early 15th-century composers, con-temporaries of Du Fay. All lines also have shortermelismas at their caesural words. The sweetness ofthe lady’s sweet Look at the start of the second line(bars 7–8) elicits repeated top b�—the limit of thecantus range—and an upward octave leap D–d inthe tenor—outlining the twin limits of its range.33

The sweetness is present in the sonority here too, animperfect consonance, which functions as the ante-penultimate for the unison cadence at the end of thetext line in bar 10. The penultimate is the similarlysweet imperfect sonority c �/e (bar 9). As the sweet-ness of the Look enters the lover’s heart, the soaringmelody of bar 9 descends to enter the sonic space ofthe ascending tenor, as if depicting unificationthrough the cadence to the unison d/d in bar 10.

Although in its contrapuntal surface deploymentthe line 1 cadence to g in bar 4 most closely resem-bles that of the final cadence, the final cadence is a4th lower, on d (line 4, bars 21–2). Cadences to d arealso present in both lines 2 and 3 as well: to d/d in bar10 for the end of the text of line 2; to D/d in bar 17 forthe end of the text of the second b-rhyme line, line 3,driven home by the unison d/d in bar 18 after an up-down melodic flourish in the cantus.

The abba rhyme-scheme of the poetry is reflectedin the tonal layout of the song setting in that thetwo b-rhymes have cadences to unison d/d (bars 10and 18). However, the first b-rhyme’s d/d cadence isfollowed by a melisma cadencing to E/e (bar 13). Inthis way the first b-rhyme line, line 2, negotiates itsdual function as the line that, in a performance ofthe complete rondeau, proceeds three times to thesecond section and twice returns to the opening. Inits cadence to d/d (bar 10) it presages the d/d (bar 18,allowing continuation to the second section), but inits final E/e (bar 13) it balances the E/e at the close ofthe melisma in the opening musical phrase (bar 6,allowing a return to the beginning). While tonallyflexible, melodically line 2 is arguably the ‘odd lineout’. The third line (opening the rondeau’s secondmusical section), is similar to the opening of the firstsection, with its repeated gs (bar 14). And the openingcontour from the gs of the final line, line 4 (bars18–20), is even closer to that in line 1. Moreover, themelisma at the middle of the third musical phrase,the end of line 3 (x1), seems a metrically telescopedversion of the contours from the end of bar 3 to thestart of bar 5 (x) a 5th higher but similarly descend-ing by triadic leaps to a unison. But instead of thefurther melisma that had followed this in line 1, thethird phrase proceeds to the fourth poetic line,which offers another melodic descent—ornamentedwith pitch and rhythmic subdivisions—from g, andanother, more final cadence to d.

It is possible to view the second half of each musi-cal phrase as progressively more successful attemptsto end. The first phrase just clocks straight into a reg-ular cadence to E/e (bar 6) from its unison sonorityin bar 5. The second phrase follows its unison sonorityd/d with a descent from g, which is only turned awayfrom a d cadence by the suspension in bar 12, again tocadence on E/e. Finally, the third phrase starts its


‘tail’ much like the second phrase had in bars 10(compare bars 10–11 with 18–19) but texts it (withline 4), decorates it with rhythmic subdivisions(semiminims), and recapitulates almost the full pitchrange to circle around a successful cadence to D/d.

The tenor has the range of an octave and movesalmost exclusively in slow note-values, markingonly two places with minim upbeats, both on thepitch-class D (D in bars 15–16, and d in bar 18). Thebalance, beauty and sheer ‘singability’ of the melodicline, the neat tonal structure and the rhythmic sim-plicity of the tenor make it credible that the Manièreprotagonist might be singing this particular melody,perhaps accompanied by his servant, Jakyn (or viceversa). The overall range of the two voices is anoctave and a 6th, and they are pitched about a 5thapart, making possible various combinations ofbass and tenor, two baritones, tenor and coun-tertenor, not to mention treble or soprano.34

Kristol draws attention to the way in which thetreatise is a written representation of orality, of spo-ken French. It seems likely that the treatise wouldhave served in the context of conversation practiceinvolving two individuals. If this is the case, it ispossible that a student using this treatise might havebeen taught the sung version of Tres doulz regart,despite the lack of music notation in the written copy,assuming that the teacher knew the song himself.Given that basic musical education was part of liter-acy, it can be assumed that both parties would haveknowledge of at least the pitches. If, as the lack ofnotation suggests, the song was learned orally, noknowledge of mensural notation would be required.In the context of being taught French through themedium of the Manière text, then, the melody for thepoem could be taught to the student by the master,who could then himself supply the tenor or vice versa.

Kristol suggests three types of audience for theManières in general: merchants, who had need ofrelations with the Continent; clerics, who maintaineda tradition of writing in French until the 15th century;and lawyers, for whom French remained the legallanguage until well after this period.35 It is possible togain further insight into the general milieu withinwhich the treatise was used by considering the booksof which the Manière is part.36

The two copies of the A version both suggest thatclerics would have used the books of which the treatisewas a part. As it currently stands, OA is a composite oftwo manuscripts. In one of the original manuscriptsthe Manière text was copied first, followed by LeDonoit françois (a French grammar based onDonatus), a treatise on French language instructionfor children, a Latin-French vocabulary of parts ofspeech, French prose proverbs, a French dialoguecomparing love to a castle, French verse proverbs,Walter of Bibbesworth’s French textbook Le Tretiz, atreatise on orthography (in Latin), letters in French, atreatise on French verb conjugations, another Manière(1399) and letters patent of Jean de Montaigu, bishopof Chartres, giving safe conduct to Walter Skirlaw,bishop of Durham, and others to go to France in 1400to negotiate royal marriages.37 The manuscript waspartly made, and originally owned, by John Stevens, acanon of Exeter. Both A versions sign off with a letterto the dedicatee of the treatise (who is not identified byname). The Harley manuscript (LH) adds that it wascopied at Bury St Edmunds on the eve of Pentecost1396 (hence the dating of the treatise). The Manièretext in LH is followed by exemplary letters in French,which give forms for tackling every epistolary eventu-ality, from addressing the king, to a mother writing toher son at school. As well as giving correct forms ofaddress for various different addressees, this formu-lary covers the variety of subject positions for which aclerk in a noble household would be expected to draftletters. It was in effect a commercially availabletextbook by Thomas Sampson, a late 14th-centuryteacher of Oxford students who were training not forscholarship but as businessmen able to manageagricultural estates and the personal affairs of alandowner’s family.38

The manuscript context for the B copies is quitesimilar. The B version in LA copies the Manière intoa small octavo book—whose size probably indicatesa book for portable personal use—which would havebeen of general use to a clerk, similarly containingformulae for letters, and also for charters, as well as atreatise on French grammar. In addition, LA has anumber of more mathematical, quadrivium trea-tises: Alexander de Villa Dei’s treatise on the motionof the planets, a compotus manual for finding goldennumbers, and a treatise on algorithms. Perhaps this


book was a compendium of its owner’s learning,containing the texts he had himself studied for use asa personal reference book in the carrying out of hisduties, and/or as a teaching handbook. The B versionin CD, whose text Kristol uses as a base, occurs in thecontext of a quarto format manuscript whose othercontents are either treatises on French or treatises inFrench on legal issues (tenures, pleading, proce-dure). The physical state of this book and its contentsindicates that it saw much use by the Oxford masteror student who originally owned it.39

An English song?

This French-texted song appears with musicalnotation only in a 15th-century Italian manuscript.Without the evidence of the Manière treatise nothingabout it would seem to suggest that it might beEnglish. A French text might be thought to suggestthat it was a French song, even if it was clearly circu-lating in Italy—after all, the increasing presence inItalian sources of French-texted songs by francophonenortherners reflects the increasing employment of

foreign singer-composers in Italy at this period.40

Equally, however, French was one of the courtlanguages of Northern Italy at this period. Plenty ofItalian composers set French texts, including the onlycomposer suggested for this song—Matteo daPerugia, who set a number of French texts and isintimately connected with the compilation of themanuscript in which it appears. One of the twomodern editors of Tres doulz regart, Willi Apel,ascribes the song to Matteo da Perugia, on thegrounds that it is stylistically similar to other worksby him, and shows a mixed French-Italian notation,insofar as it uses semiminims (semiquavers in thetranscription). The song’s more recent editor,Gordon Greene, disagrees, thinking that it is toosimple in its rhythmic style to be by Matteo. Inpersonal communications, Anne Stone and PedroMemelsdorff offered independent opinions bothalso rejecting attribution to Matteo. Stone pointsout that the piece has been crammed, without anilluminated letter, into the foot of the folio, to fill upspace, possibly explaining its two-part status in a

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period where songs tend to have contratenors.41

Memelsdorff points out that ascriptions to Matteoin this particular gathering of the Modena manu-script tend to be explicit, which would support theidea that the lack of ascription to Matteo might herebe taken as an indication that it is not his.42

Is the musicological picture, especially with regardto provenance, altered by the appearance of this poemin five manuscripts of English provenance designed toimprove and perfect the Anglo-French of the English?No one has suggested that Tres doulz regart is of Englishprovenance, and yet this now seems a distinct possibil-ity. Various hypotheses may be constructed. From theManière text we glean only that by 1396 it was known,as a song, to a cleric of Bury St Edmunds. If theModena version is a different, later musical setting ofa text already known in England as a song, it wouldbe unique among texts from this period in havingreceived two different, closely contemporary settings.The two-stage transmission for the song in this case—a ‘de-musicalization’ of the text before it gets to Italyand an independent ‘re-musicalization’ of the textonce there—strikes me as over-elaborate, althoughclearly not impossible. It seems preferable to me toargue that if the song text is English, the music is quitelikely to be English too.

But is the poem English? If it is not, then therewould be another alternative: that the song is anon-English setting of a non-English text, whichbecomes popular in England before 1396. ModAtransmits other music that was written well beforethe manuscript’s compilation, including piecesfrom the 1350s. Evidence from the text is slight,though, on account of its being so short. Other thanequivocal orthographical features, the use of ‘entrer’with a direct object in line 2 is the only noticeablyAnglo-French trait (‘fera mon cuer entrer’).43

However, ModA uses a different tense of the verb sothere is room in the syllable count for a preposition(‘fait a mon cuer entrer’). It seems difficult to estab-lish priority for either of these versions, since eithercould be a rationalization of an aurally receivedversion of the other. Certainly in some of its manu-script copies the Manière text is earlier than theModA copy of the song, but ModA is perhaps just arelatively late copy. And although there are five

copies of the Manière, all including the same rondeau,their interdependence means that their multiplewitness is not necessarily more compelling formatters of provenance. The very fact that the song isused in a treatise designed to teach the language ofFrance might suggest that its author picked up therondeau on his travels. In a closing letter to the ded-icatee (found only in the two A versions, which,according to Kristol, are closest to the now-lost orig-inal) the author mentions that he has compiled thetreatise using the French he has understood andlearned while overseas.44

Stylistically, Apel at least implies that the modernstyle of the song fits with an early 15th-centurydating.45 If such a dating were correct it would meanthat that the melody known to the users of theManière is not the same as the early 15th-centurymelody transmitted in Modena. Such dating is basedon the features of the style that seem to augur that ofearly Du Fay (balance of line, line-end melismas andthe ‘feel’ of the tonality). At this point it is temptingto remember the somewhat later 15th-centuryaccount of Johannes Tinctoris, who recognised theEnglish, with Dunstaple at their head, as the fountand origin of the new art of Du Fay and Binchois. Ifthe poem is English, and the Modena setting is theone to which the Manière text refers (and these aretwo large but not insurmountable ‘if ’s), then is itpossible that the song is an early example of anEnglish song tradition now all but lost?

Conclusions

Even on the basis of the discovery presented here,definite priority cannot be established for either theItalian or the English circulation of this song. Norcan it be proved beyond any doubt that the samemelody was known in both places, although thisseems likely. Tres doulz regart could be an Italian orFrench song that circulated later as a song inEngland. Or it could be an Anglo-French song thatlater circulated in north Italy. Two broad pointsmay nonetheless be made: the first pertains to theportability of song, the second to the relative placesof music in modern and medieval culture.

Song is intrinsically portable. When a song islearned—and then, even more than now, memory


and singing were pedagogically linked—it can travelwith an individual person, and be transmitted fromperson to person without the need for notation. Inthe social spheres in which language learning wasimportant in 14th-century England, people travelledfrequently.46 Even though the English use Frenchwithin England, the later 14th century sees its useincreasingly focused on merchants, trade and diplo-macy. In these relatively élite contexts, polyphonic,measured music is also potentially available. Thus itmay not be purely hyperbole to assert that Tres doulzregart is ‘la plus gracieuse et la plus amoureuse chan-son . . . en le monde’, since many other westernEuropean songs would have been known to thesame audience.

Musical pieces may be carried in places that seemfairly unusual to a modern reader, in books whosecontents are more obviously legal and/or concernedwith language skills, husbandry and management.Visually, none of these manuscripts presents thislyric as a poem, let alone as a song. Music’s penetra-tion into culture, learning and pedagogy in the 14thcentury is much deeper than the constraints ofthe modern university’s disciplinary boundariesallow. Separate from these disciplinary constraints(although they also contributed to their establishment)are the nationalist agendas that animated the schol-arship of origins and provenance from the 19th-cen-tury inception of many of the humanities asuniversity subjects. Like philology, musicology wasalso dominated by the 19th century’s state-buildingagendas. For musicologie, French as a language wasso closely bound up with France as a modernnation-state that attempts to find a 14th-century tra-dition of secular songs in England have usuallyfallen back on the circulation of second-handFrench songs in England, even to the extent of posit-ing hypothetical contrafacta.47 But cultural connec-tions between England and France in this period aretypically fluid and complex.48 The presence ofEnglish and French-texted songs in the same manu-script sources, notably GB-Cu Add. and GB-Ob, seems indicative of a native multilingual tradi-tion. Richard Rastall has long suggested that thepieces in these two English songbooks are probablylate-14th rather than early-15th century and offer key

evidence of the mélange of English-language andFrench-language song in England during the 14thcentury.49 David Fallows has already noted that theevidence for a tradition of rondeaux in 15th-centuryEngland attests to its stylistic inseparability from therondeaux tradition in France, warning thatContinental sources may provide the only evidencefor such English traditions. This song perhaps hintsthat the same claims can be extended back into the14th century.50

Medievalists are well aware that the boundaries ofEurope’s modern nation-states do not define theboundaries of linguistic areas, either now or then,but this has not necessarily helped musicologicalscholarship concerned with French languagematerials in late-medieval England to flourish.51

Even while fighting the French in Gascony duringthe Hundred Years War, communication with theEnglish troops was in French or Latin. In 1324 Hughthe Despenser, Edward II’s chief minister writesfrom England that with the help of God ‘nous con-querroms des Franceis quanqu’il ont occupez dunostre . . . a grant honour du roi et d’entre vous etde tout nostre langue’. As William Rothwell notes,‘nostre langue’ meaning ‘the people of our tongue’,can signify only the English troops.52 The ideas ofnationhood are thus much more to do with owingservice to a particular lord, more class-based andboth more local and more ‘international’. Far fromthe nation-states that saw the birth of modern uni-versity humanities disciplines, musical culture in thelater Middle Ages traverses diverse ‘composite’dominions in a ‘Europe of regions’.53

And it is not just on the basis of the inconclusive-ness of the evidence that I—a post-colonialEnglishwoman—am chary of claiming Tres doulzregart as an English song. Such a claim would gosome way to redressing the perceived lack of Englishsongs from the 14th century just because we lackcourtly songs with English language texts that areclearly that early. It may also support an earlier dat-ing of those we do possess. But to the Italians whocompiled the Modena codex the language of thisrondeau signals not that it is from France per se, butinstead that it is a European high art song, an inter-national object of court culture, whose lingua francawas various kinds of French.

Elizabeth Eva Leach lectures in music at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has publishedwidely on the songs of Guillaume de Machaut, and has recently edited a collection of analytical essaysentitled Machaut’s music: new interpretations (Boydell, ). She is interested in medieval songs,singers and philosophical concepts of voice, and has just completed a book on music and birdsong inthe later Middle Ages. Her next project is a study of audition and musical memory before [email protected]


The A version of the Maniere 1396 text in OA transmitsanother, unique rondeau in section 4.7: Estrainez moy decuer joious. Kristol presents the B version from CD in themain text of his edition and gives the version in the Harleymanuscript (LH) as an Appendix to exemplify the A ver-sion of section 4. The unique rondeau is thus found inKristol’s notes on p. 89, because the LH version is the onlymanuscript that does not use Tres doulz regart in section4.4 (on the road)— substituting instead a drinking song—and using Tres doulz regart in section 4.7. By contrast theA version of the text in OA—like all the B versions of thetext—uses Tres doulz regart in section 4.4. It thus needsanother song for section 4.7 (wooing). Like Tres doulzregart, Estrainez moy is a 16-line rondeau rhymingABBAabABabbaABBA, although its lines each have eightrather than ten syllables. Although this song is not knownfrom any notated copy, the repetitions of this rondeauform are, as not in any source for Tres doulz regart, cuedby the refrain incipit text, Estrainez moy etc. Like all copies

of all the lyrics, the manuscripts present the song in proselayout, undifferentiated from the surrounding prose (theeditorial lineation in Kristol’s version, p.89, is incorrect).Estrainez moy is a New Year’s gift poem, a type thatbecame very popular in songs of the 15th century, the mostfamous one being the opening heart-shaped gift by BaudeCordier, Belle bonne sage, now bound into the front of theChantilly codex (Ch). Two other songs from ModA areexamples of this kind: the rondeau La grant beaute de vousma souverayne (36r) and the virelai Sans mal penser et sansfolour (f.25v). Other examples from the 14th centuryinclude the rondeau Sans jamais faire partement from theLeiden songbook and a song from Chantilly proper, thevirelai A mon pooir (f.15r, Ch no. 7). The phrase ‘ce jour del’an’ is also present in three rondeaux and a balade fromthe Visconti chansonnier GB-Lbl add. 15224, as well as inDu Fay pieces later. Work that would elucidate the specificrole of music remains to be done on New Year’s gift cere-monies in England, France and Italy in this period.

Appendix 1 The second rondeau in OA

1 Estrainez moy de cuer joious Give me a gift from a joyful heart2 Ma belle certaine souveraine, My beautiful, sure, sovereign lady3 Mon bien m’amour ma plaisance mondaine, My good, my love, my worldly pleasure4 Car en moy n’a revel ne jeuxa For there is no merriment in me.

5 En cest jour de l’an gracious In this noble New Year’s Day6 Pour allegier ma tresgrief paine, To lighten my most grievous pain7 Estrainez moy [de cuer joyous Give me a gift from a joyful heart8 Ma belle certaine souveraine]b My beautiful, sure, sovereign lady.

9 Et ce la doulceur de voz yeulx And if the sweetness of your eyes10 Ne consente, que j’aic l’estraine, Does not consent to my having the gift11 De vostre amour j’averai la mort soudaine, Of your love, I shall have sudden death12 Adonques seront finez mes jours. For thus my days shall be ended.

13 Estreinez moy [de cuer joious Give me a gift from a joyful heart14 Ma belle certaine souveraine, My beautiful, sure, sovereign lady15 Mon bien m’amour ma plaisance mondaine, My good, my love, my worldly pleasure16 Car en moy n’a revel ne jeux].d For there is no merriment in me.

a The MS has ‘ris ne vis’ (laughter nor life), which makessense but is a syllable short and does not complete the a-rhyme—eus. This emendation is suggested on the basis ofthese terms paired in other 14th-century poems (e.g.Machaut’s B4 and M16).

b MS marks ‘etc.’ to indicate the repetition.c MS has ‘je ai’; punctum after ‘consente’ may indicate that itis only two syllables, in which case the elision is not necessary.d MS marks ‘etc.’ to indicate the repetition.


I would like to thank MargaretBent, Ardis Butterfield and DavidFallows for their comments on an earlierdraft of this article. I would also like tothank Pedro Memelsdorff and AnneStone for answering e-mail queries aboutthis piece in its musical context.

1 Although the verbs chanter (‘tosing’) and dire (‘to say, to speak’)were often used interchangeably inthe Middle Ages to signal performancealoud, whether or not this wasintoned musically, the Manière israther careful in distinguishingbetween its use of these two verbs;see below.

2 General prologue, lines 124–6.

3 The implication that the French ofFrance is more authentic is implied insome versions of the Prologue (1) tothe Manière . After asserting thatthe treatise is designed to teach itsreader to speak and write sweet French(douce francés), the A-versions of thetext (Kristol’s OA and LH) add ‘selonl’usage et la coustume de France’(‘according to the usage and custom ofFrance’); PN more specifically notesthat it is ‘selon lusage et la manere deParis et Aurilians’ (‘according to theusage and manner of Paris andOrleans’). See Manières de langage(, , ), ed. A. M. Kristol,Anglo-Norman Texts, liii (London,1995), p.3 and notes on p.81.

4 W. Rothwell, ‘Stratford Atte Boweand Paris’, Modern language review,lxxx (1985), p.39. See also W. Rothwell,‘The missing link in English etymology:Anglo-French’, Medium Aevum, lx(1991), pp.173–96; W. Rothwell, ‘Henryof Lancaster and Geoffrey Chaucer:Anglo-French and Middle English infourteenth-century England’, Modernlanguage review, xcix/2 (2004),pp.313–47; W. Rothwell, ‘The teachingand learning of French in latermedieval England’, Zeitschrift fürfranzösiche Sprache und Literatur,cxi (2001), pp.1–18, and W. Rothwell,‘The “Faus franceis d’angleterre”: laterAnglo-Norman’, Anglo-Normananniversary essays, ed. I. Short(London, 1993), pp.309–26. See toothe essays in the recent collectionMultilingualism in later medievalBritain, ed. D. A. Trotter(Cambridge, 2000).

5 See Rothwell, ‘Stratford Atte Boweand Paris’: ‘a long line of insularwriters have little to be ashamed of intheir handling of the essential core ofthe language, its syntax andvocabulary, even if their French wasrecognizably non-Parisian. There is nosuggestion that the living French ofEngland was unable to express withcomplete adequacy any of the ideas,objects, and shades of meaningrequired by the civilization it served.’(p.43) ‘At the same time as all overnorthern France writers who had inmind a readership extending beyondthe purely local were gradually makingtheir language conform increasingly tothe francien norm, across the Channelthe dialect that was the cause of suchmerriment became from the early yearsof the thirteenth century the chiefadministrative language of thepowerful kingdom of England, used foran ever wider range of works.’ (p.46).

6 See, however, the pertinentcomments in A. Butterfield, ‘Frenchculture and the Ricardian court’, Essayson Ricardian literature in honour ofJ. A. Burrow, ed. A. J. Minnis,C. C. Morse and T. Turville-Petre(Oxford, 1997), pp.82–120.

7 Walter of Bibbesworth’s Tretiz iswritten specifically for a lady involvedin ‘managery’ (domestic or agriculturaladministration or economy). Althoughthis is a late 13th-century workdesigned to give grammaticalknowledge of written French tosomeone who has already acquired acolloquial knowledge, the use ofspoken French was still very muchcurrent among the gentry into the 15thcentury. See Rothwell, ‘The “Fausfranceis d’angleterre” ’, p.314, andWalter de Bibbesworth: Le Tretiz, ed.W. Rothwell (London, 1990).

8 See M. T. Clanchy, From memory towritten record: England, –(Oxford, 2/1993), chap.6; I. Short, ‘Onbilingualism in Anglo-NormanEngland’, Romance philology, xxxiii(1980), pp.467–79.

9 See Rothwell, ‘Henry of Lancasterand Geoffrey Chaucer’, pp.323–5.

10 Since 1988, when the GCSE replacedthe former ‘O’ Level as the standardqualification at age 16 in England andWales, the educationalist mantra has


centred much more squarely on theidea of ‘getting the message across’orally in modern languages, with aconcomitant sidelining of grammarand literature as off-puttingly difficult.

11 Manières de langage, ed. Kristol.

12 For Latin sung poetry in anthologymanuscripts used pedagogically, seeThe Cambridge Songs (Carminacantabrigiensia), ed. J. M. Ziolkowski(Tempe, 1998), pp.xxiii–xxx.

13 Previously published by Meyer(1870) and Gessler (1934); see Manièresde langage, ed. Kristol, pp.xx–xxi.

14 Based on the table in Manières delangage, ed. Kristol, p.xxiii.

15 LH and CD use red ink tomark more important capitals aswell as marginal notes, althoughthe basic appearance is still oneof unbroken prose. This isprobably how the inset lyricshave escaped musicological notice.I have seen the four sources heldin British libraries, though notPN; however, nothing leads me tobelieve that it would be laid outdifferently.

16 On the treatise’s striking use of anuanced range of social registers,see T. Bonin and J. Wilburn,‘Teaching French conversation: alesson from the fourteenth century’,The French review, li/2 (Dec 1977),pp.188–96.

17 David Fallows pointed out(personal communication 19 Aug2004) that a morel is a dark-brownhorse (a chestnut), a term still in use.Here it is used (in a manner again stillcurrent) as an actual name, presumablyfor just such a dark-brown horse.

18 See Clanchy, From memory towritten record, chap.6.

19 The two different versions ofthe treatise were noted already inJ. Gessler, ‘La manière de langage quienseigne à bien parler et écrirefrançois’, Leuvensche bijdragen, xxv(1933), pp.101–34.

20 Kristol lists this as a story fromBoccaccio, Decameron (VII.7), but theDecameron story has an additional firstpart explaining how the servant, who isreally a poor nobleman, came to beserving the lady. The version given in

the Manière seems closer to the fabliauLa Borgoise d’Orliens, which is one ofBoccaccio’s possible analogues for thesecond part of Decameron VII.7. Forthe fabliau see Selected fabliaux, ed.B. J. Levy and C. E. Pickford (Hull,1978), pp.19–27. For the probablesources of Boccaccio’s story, see thereferences in Giovanni Boccaccio:Decameron, ed. V. Branca, 2 vols.(Turin, 1980), ii, p.839, n.1.

21 From CD: ‘la plus graciouce et laplus amerous chaunçon que poet estreen tout le monde’, Manières de langage,ed. Kristol, p.9. OA has only ‘Et puis lesignour se commence a chanter sur lechemin une tresamoureuse chanson enceste maniere’.

22 ‘le plus gracious et le plus amerouschanson qui peut estre en tout lemonde, en ce maniere disant ouautrement chantant tresgracieuse-ment’, Manières de langage, ed. Kristol,p.41 from LH. OA has ‘la plus’ in bothplaces; while non-standard in francien,‘le’ is acceptable in a number of Frenchdialect forms of this period. Because ithas already used Tres doulz regart in4.4, OA transmits another, uniquerondeau at this point, Estrainez moy decuer joious, given here in appendix 1.

23 ‘et puis il li dit gracieusement debon et fervent amour et par maniered’amourasser les paroles qu’ensuient’,Manières de langage, ed. Kristol, p.40,LH version.

24 David Fallows (personalcommunication 18 Aug 2004) recallsthat the Studio der frühen Musikused to play this piece quitefrequently in concerts in a purelyinstrumental version on organettoand vielle to get round the lack ofcomplete text. However, to myknowledge no commercially availablerecording exists. Now that the textmay be completed, perhaps thislovely little song will appear on disc,so that it might again be heard bythose travelling the English (andFrench) roads, even if Morel is now acar and Janyn the in-car stereo system.

25 Line 11 is stable before the caesuraand at the rhyme word. The ModAversion is a syllable too long and usesthe polite form of the second person(faites), not used elsewhere in thepoem.

26 French secular compositions of thefourteenth century, ed. W. Apel, CorpusMensurabilis Musicae, liii/3 (AmericanInstitute of Musicology, 1972), no.281;French secular music: rondeaux andmiscellaneous pieces, ed. G. K. Greene,Polyphonic Music of the FourteenthCentury, xxii (Monaco, 1989), no.75.Samuel N. Rosenberg edits Apel’s texts,Terence Scully those of Greene.

27 This correction reveals a closesimilarity between the opening line andthat of the fourth balade inserted intothe poem L’Espinette amoureuse byJean Froissart, ‘Dun douls regartamoureusement tret’: Jean Froissart: ananthology of narrative and lyric poetry,ed. K. M. Figg and R. B. Palmer(New York, 2001), p.240, lines 3538–61.Froissart’s links with England are wellknown and his works circulated therein manuscript, but he travelled widelythroughout Continental Europe,especially after Queen Philippa’s deathin 1369.

28 CD’s variant for this line with thepronoun ‘y’ implies that the third-person plural form of the verb‘poent/pevent’ is monosyllabic (as itbecomes regularly in 15th-centuryFrench; in 14th-century French it isusually two syllables in poetry). CDshares its otherwise unique use ofacountrer (rather than the racontrer ofthe other sources) with ModA.

29 The balade De ma dolour, of whichthis is line 2.1, is on f.26v of ModA, andis also in Ch. The intimate form ofaddress is also used by a male speakerto address his own heart, or body, adog or bird, other men (in an advisoryrole, usually about largesse), or whenaddressing castigation or praise to arival (for example, Philippe de Vitry onJean de le Mote, de le Mote on Vitryand Jean Campion, EustacheDeschamps on Geoffrey Chaucer). It isalso used when a song addresses itssinger (Si com si gist, Andray soulet andthe explanatory rondeau of La harpe demelodie). In the fabliau which formssubsection 4.7 in the B version, whenthe wife’s lover beats the husband whois disguised as his own wife, he abusesher verbally as ‘tu’ and calls her‘putaigne’. See Manières de langage, ed.Kristol, p.15.


30 For an exploration of this image,see E. Jager, The book of the heart(Chicago, 2000).

31 See R. W. Southern, RobertGrosseteste: the growth of an Englishmind in medieval Europe (Oxford, 1986;2/1992), pp.40–43. More broadly, seeM. Carruthers, The book of memory: astudy of memory in medieval culture(Cambridge, 1991), M. Carruthers, Thecraft of thought: meditation, rhetoric,and the making of images, –,(Cambridge, 1998), and thereproduction of a 14th-century mapof the brain in L. Bolzoni, The galleryof memory: literary and iconographicmodels in the age of the printingpress, trans. J. Parzen (Toronto,2001), p.135.

32 The classic analysis of this facet ofrefined loving is found in D. Kelly,Medieval imagination: rhetoric and thepoetry of courtly love (Madison, 1978).More recently, see also the argument inS. Huot, ‘Guillaume de Machaut andthe consolation of poetry’, Modernphilology, c (2002), pp.1–10.

33 The sweetness is present in thecaesural words, all of which end withthe same ‘r’ that ends the b-rhyme, thelast actually being an internal rhyme‘penser’.

34 Given the precedent of Walter ofBibbesworth’s Tretiz (which iscontained in OA), a female studentmay be envisaged. As OA also containstreatises designed for teaching children,flexibility of use may be imagined.

35 See the comments on the wordestoppel in Rothwell, ‘The “Fausfranceis d’angleterre” ’, p.313. Moregenerally, see P. Brand, ‘The languagesof the law in later medieval England’,Multilingualism in later medievalBritain, ed. D. A. Trotter (Cambridge,2000).

36 Kristol suggests that the twoversions of the text were designed forslightly different audiences: the Aversion an earlier text for use by anindividual reader, the B text for use inteaching a larger public in which theclosing dedication to the patron nolonger has a place. Manières de langage,ed. Kristol, pp.xxi–xxii.

37 Information from A. G. Watson, Adescriptive catalogue of the medievalmanuscripts of All Souls College,Oxford (Oxford, 1997), pp.210–14.

38 Thomas Sampson was a marriedteacher of the skills necessary to clerksin a noble household (such as letterwriting), whose name appears as aresident of Oxford on a subsidy roll inthe 1380s. See H. G. Richardson,‘Business training in medieval Oxford’,American historical review, xlvi/2 (1941).Richardson claims that the book LHbelonged to a royal clerk who addedthe signet letters and privy seal letters,as well as a letter from Charles VI toRichard.

39 Probably originally one ‘Mershfeld’,at Oxford. See J. H. Baker and J. S.Ringrose, Catalogue of English legalmanuscripts in Cambridge UniversityLibrary (Woodbridge, 1996), pp.126–8.Given that students often later becamemasters, it seems difficult to draw adistinction between a student’stextbook and a master’s handbook inthis case.

40 See D. Fallows, ‘French as a courtlylanguage in fifteenth-century Italy: themusical evidence’, Renaissance studies,iii/4 (1989), pp.429–41.

41 The song occurs below theanonymous balade Amour doi je, whichis also found in the Reina Manuscript(Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms. fr.), f.59r.

42 E-mail correspondence 10 May 2004(Memelsdorff) and 11 May 2004(Stone). Both also point out that thepresence of semiminims—a scribal-notational feature—seems slenderevidence for making compositionalascriptions, and is anyway hardlyexceptional. This song bears no relationto the music of a 15th-century Italiansong by Johannes Martini with the sameincipit text. The full text of the Martinisong has not been located, however.

43 Manières de langage, ed. Kristol, p.83.

44 ‘Mon treshonuree et tresgentil sire,ore Dieux en soit regraciez, j’ayachevee cest traitis au reverence etinstance de vous, et a mon escient je

l’ai traitee et compilee sicomme j’ayentendu et apris es parties dela le mer’,Manières de langage, ed. Kristol, p.45.

45 He cites it as typifying the modernstyle, which he sees as represented byMatteo, whose known dates of activityinclude the date of the compilation ofModA. French secular music of the latefourteenth century, ed. W. Apel(Cambridge, MA, 1950), p.14.

46 A transmission route from Oxfordto north Italy can be imagined viaAvignon, especially considering theAvignon repertory contained in ModA(Philippus da Caserta’s balade forautipope Clement VII Par les bons is onthe facing recto from Tres doulz regart).

47 See N. Wilkins, Chaucer songs,Chaucer Studies, iv (Woodbridge,1980). See also N. Wilkins, Music in theage of Chaucer, Chaucer Studies, i(Cambridge, 2/1995), pp.106–10.

48 See A. Wathey, ‘The Peace of1360–1369 and Anglo-French musicalrelations’, Early music history, ix (1989),pp.129–74.

49 See R. Rastall, Two fifteenth-centurysong books (Aberystwyth, 1990).

50 D. Fallows, ‘English songrepertories of the mid-fifteenthcentury’, Proceedings of the RoyalMusical Association, ciii (1976–7), p.73;D. Fallows, ‘Words and music in twoEnglish songs of the mid-15th century:Charles d’Orléans and John Lydgate’,Early music, v (1977), p.42.

51 In making a list of Anglo-Normansongs for an earlier period, JohnStevens commented as recently as 1994that the repertory was partlyunpublished and entirely unstudied.See J. Stevens, ‘Alphabetical check-listof Anglo-Norman Songs, c.1150–c.1350’,Plainsong and medieval music, iii/1(1994), esp. p.2.

52 Rothwell, ‘The “Faus franceisd’angleterre” ’, p.309.

53 Concerning the historiographicalshift in this regard, see thecomments in Malcolm Vale’sintroduction to the reissue of R.Vaughan, Philip the Bold: the formationof the Burgundian state (Woodbridge,1962, 2002), p.xxvi.

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