The phrase ‘the language of music’, made famous by Deryck Cooke's book of that name, is much repeated in modern music criticism. Is it possible to use this phrase in a medieval context? In what ways is the relationship between music and language in the medieval period best described? The importance of this question is clear when one considers both how high a proportion of medieval music was texted, and conversely, the extent to which the performance of much medieval poetry (even narrative poetry) involved music. We are fortunate that this very large issue has received detailed attention in John Stevens's magisterial account of medieval monophony. My attempt here is to extend the argument into the area of polyphony, concentrating on the nature of compositional activity in thirteenthcentury France. This will include discussion of how far the compositional processes of music and poetry are comparable in this period, and indeed whether they are in any way collaborative. Do the two structural systems – languages, perhaps – of music and words have any effect on each other's system of meaning?

Guillaume de Machaut's autobiographical poem, Le Voir Dit, has been known to musicians mainly by reputation. In 1928 Friedrich Ludwig printed extracts from passages on music in the introduction to his edition of Machaut's complete musical works, in 1969 Sarah Jane Williams examined Machaut's remarks about manuscript production, and in a more general article, for the 1977 Machaut anniversary, she introduced Le Voir Dit to non-specialists. On the whole, however, musicians have been content to leave study of the complete text to scholars of Middle French. Their priorities are, of course, very different; much of the most influential writing on Le Voir Dit from the last twenty years has been concerned to show how the text might be read in a structuralist or post-structuralist manner, and has placed relatively little emphasis on more positivistic questions such as how the text was compiled or its relationship to the historical persons and events it mentions. Yet to anyone interested in the origins and function of this extraordinary document such issues seem fundamental; indeed, the historically minded reader might wonder how the text can be understood at all until such matters have been addressed.

The source to be discussed here is one of a collection of about 288 fragments of liturgical manuscripts. These form the section entitled Pergaminos musicales in the Archivo Histórico Provincial of Zamora in western Spain. Most of the fragments contain notated chant while a few give texts without music. Whilst studying the collection I found that one, Pergamino musical 184, contains polyphony. The significance of this new source probably lies principally in its relationship to the great polyphonic manuscript of Las Huelgas (Burgos, Monasterio de Las Huelgas) from late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century Spain. Pergamino musical 184 (hereafter referred to as Z 184) probably dates from between the middle of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth century, and therefore may pre-date Las Huelgas. The collection of Pergaminos musicales including Z 184 was recently taken from the binding of books of legal documents (protocolos) dating from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many more fragments of liturgical manuscripts are to be found still in the binding of books in the archive but an extensive search of these has yielded no further examples of polyphony

It has long been recognized that Johannes de Grocheio's De musicta is an outstanding source of information about Parisian musical practice c. 1300. However, the critical text of the treatise published by Rohloff in 1972 can be improved by returning to the manuscripts, and the pioneering English translation, by Albert Seay, can now be corrected in some important particulars. The purpose of this article is therefore to present a corrected text and a new (annotated) translation of Johannes de Grocheio's remarks about secular music, both monophonic and polyphonic, generally regarded as the most important part of his treatise.

Several writers, notably Dr Margaret Bent, have drawn attention to simple forms of notation that were occasionally used in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century English music in preference to ‘normal’ mensural notation. This study investigates the employment of these notations in plainsong-based cantus firmi that have, exclusively or predominantly, notes of a single value, and comments on the relationships between such notations and the more widely used notational systems of plainchant and polyphonic music.

Le Voir Dit is one of the most fascinating of the works left by the celebrated poet-composer Guillaume de Machaut (d. 1377), and at the same time, as John Stevens has said, ‘one of the most curious documents of the [fourteenth] century’. Through 9000 lines of narrative, sixty-two lyrics in all the main forms (nine of them set to music), and forty-six letters which include comments on the character of the songs and on the business of producing poetry, music and manuscripts, we seem to take a guided tour of Machaut's emotional and professional life over three years of his old age. For more than a century it has proved a rich source of revealing quotations, sustaining many varied arguments. The story it tells of Machaut's literary and emotional affair with a young girl, Peronne, has been read at times as autobiography, at times as fiction; and the incidental comments on composition, performance and copying have been interpreted in studies ranging far beyond Le Voir Dit as evidence of fourteenth-century professional practice. None the less, the constituent parts of the text as they survive in manuscripts from Machaut's circle are disordered, the poem lacks an adequate published edition, and even its music – in size, at least, the most manageable of its components – has yet to be considered as a whole.

Last year's instalment of ‘Liturgical Chant Bibliography’ was enthusiastically received by many, and I am grateful to all who sent me information about their new publications. I hope you will continue to do so; every publication likely to be of interest to chant scholars is eligible for inclusion.

The revival of the poetic art of the troubadours in eastern Spain from the latter part of the fourteenth century has been well documented. At this time, and through most of the fifteenth century, poet-courtiers at the royal courts of Aragon and Castile drew inspiration from the troubadours of the earlier centuries, many of whom had been active in the Spanish kingdoms. The historiographical tradition for this literary phenomenon begins with Gerónimo Zurita, the great chronicler of the Aragonese kings. In his Annies de la Corona de Aragón (1562–8), he discusses this renewed interest in the ‘Gay Science’ at the Aragonese royal court of Joan I (1387–96), and relates how letters came to prevail over arms at that time as the primary concern of the courtier:

Some of the most explicit statements in early Christian and medieval sources about the functions of visual images in churches are notable for their silence regarding the liturgical significance of wall decoration. There is talk of imagery of the Old and New Testaments instructing the laity so that they should know ‘the high deeds of the servants of God and may be prompted to imitate them’, or at least to remember them. Images might be said to ‘decorate with beauty the house of the Lord’, but it is difficult to find it stated anywhere that the monumental cycles that still arrest our gazes in many of the churches were executed to ‘illustrate’, or to ‘represent’, or to ‘dramatize’ the liturgy that was celebrated in those sacred edifices