As a distinctive and attractive musical repertory, the hundred-odd English carols of the fifteenth century have always had a ready audience. But some of the key viewpoints about them date back to the late 1920s, when Richard L. Greene first defined the poetic form; and little has been published about them since the burst of activity around 1950, when a new manuscript was found and when John Stevens published his still definitive edition of all the music, both giving rise to substantial publications by major scholars in both music and literature. This book offers a new survey of the repertory with a firmer focus on the form and its history. Fresh examination of the manuscripts and of the styles of the music they contain leads to new proposals about their dates, origins and purposes. Placing them in the context of the massive growth of scholarly research on other fifteenth-century music over the past fifty years gives rise to several fresh angles on the music.

This second selection of essays by David Fallows draws the focus towards individual composers of the 'long' fifteenth century and what we can learn about their songs. In twenty-one essays on the secular works of composers from Ciconia and Oswald von Wolkenstein via Binchois, Ockeghem, Busnoys and Regis to Josquin, Henry VIII and Petrus Alamire, one repeated theme is how a consideration of the songs can help the way to a broader understanding of a composer's output. Since there are more song sources and more individual pieces now available for study, there are more handles for dating, for geographical location and for social alignment. Another theme concerns the various different ways in which particular songs have their impact on the next generations. Yet another concerns the authorshop of poems that were set to music by Binchois and Ciconia in particular. A group of essays on Josquin were parerga to the author's edition of his four-voice secular music for the New Josquin Edition (2005) and to his monograph on the composer (2009).

The essays in this volume are concerned with song repertories and performance practice in 15th-century Europe. The first group of studies arises from the author's long-term fascination with the widely dispersed traces of English song and , in particular, with the most successful song by any English composer, O rosa bella. This leads to a set of enquiries into the distribution and international currents of the song repertory in Italy and Spain. The essays in the final section, taken together, represent an extended discussion of the problems of performance, both of voice and instrument, what they performed and how.

Essays on important topics in early music. Christopher Page is one of the most influential and distinguished scholars and performers of medieval music. His first book, Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages (1987), marked the beginning of what might be called the"Page turn" in the study and performance of medieval music. His many subsequent publications, radio broadcasting (notably the series Spirit of the Age) and performances and recordings with his ensemble Gothic Voices changed the perception of and thinking about music from before about 1400 and forged new ways of communicating its essence to scholars as well as its subtle beauty to wider audiences. The essays presented here in his honour reflectthe broad range of subject-matter, from the earliest polyphony to the conductus and motet of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the troubadour and trouvère repertories, song and dance, church music, medieval music theory, improvisation techniques, historiography of medieval music, musical iconography, instrumental music, performance practice and performing, that has characterised Page's major contribution to our knowledge of music of the Middle Ages.

As a distinctive and attractive musical repertory, the hundred-odd English carols of the fifteenth century have always had a ready audience. But some of the key viewpoints about them date back to the late 1920s, when Richard L. Greene first defined the poetic form; and little has been published about them since the burst of activity around 1950, when a new manuscript was found and when John Stevens published his still definitive edition of all the music, both giving rise to substantial publications by major scholars in both music and literature. This book offers a new survey of the repertory with a firmer focus on the form and its history. Fresh examination of the manuscripts and of the styles of the music they contain leads to new proposals about their dates, origins and purposes. Placing them in the context of the massive growth of scholarly research on other fifteenth-century music over the past fifty years gives rise to several fresh angles on the music.

A comprehensive catalogue of the surviving polyphonic song repertory 1415-1480 in any European language. The catalogue will be an essential work of reference for anyone interested in the music of the 15th century.

This second selection of essays by David Fallows draws the focus towards individual composers of the 'long' fifteenth century and what we can learn about their songs. In twenty-one essays on the secular works of composers from Ciconia and Oswald von Wolkenstein via Binchois, Ockeghem, Busnoys and Regis to Josquin, Henry VIII and Petrus Alamire, one repeated theme is how a consideration of the songs can help the way to a broader understanding of a composer's output. Since there are more song sources and more individual pieces now available for study, there are more handles for dating, for geographical location and for social alignment. Another theme concerns the various different ways in which particular songs have their impact on the next generations. Yet another concerns the authorshop of poems that were set to music by Binchois and Ciconia in particular. A group of essays on Josquin were parerga to the author's edition of his four-voice secular music for the New Josquin Edition (2005) and to his monograph on the composer (2009).