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A Multiplicity of Voices: Music and Identity in the Middle Ages (Asnani & McIntyre)

  • Writer: mmapodcast1
    mmapodcast1
  • 6 hours ago
  • 6 min read

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Our understanding of music in medieval Europe reflects a bias that we might call a “bad data problem” (c.f. Labov 1972). Manuscripts containing song are often precious artifacts carefully preserved as relics of cultural heritage and identity, yet these manuscripts only bear witness to the musical, linguistic, and codicological practices of a narrow sliver of medieval society. Taking our sources at face value, we risk rendering invisible the musical voices of women, the languages of those who spoke regional dialects, or the songs sung outside universities, churches, and courts. 


Our episode unfolds as a conversation between two musicologists, Flannery and Saagar, wherein we look to cultural contexts beyond songbooks to spotlight the multiplicity of voices at play in medieval musical practices, with an emphasis on medieval theories of the voice. Saagar specializes in regional dialects of medieval French, and he examines how textual variants and “regionalisms” in thirteenth-century polyphonic song lyrics constitute a multilingual musical culture retrospectively sterilized by modern language reform. Flannery’s expertise lies in the relationship between music and identity in the early Middle Ages (c. 500-1200) through non-canonical sources, presenting an alternative to modern trends in medieval women’s music historiography which inevitably essentialize them as token composers in a male-dominated cultural landscape. Both of us see the issues inherent in relying on modern epistemologies of identity—which link ethnicity with nationhood, cultural practice, and linguistic usages—to analyze medieval cultural practices. We discuss our paths around these pitfalls in this podcast episode and analyze specific musical examples to demonstrate how songs, often metaphorized as “voices” of our identities, can tell a nuanced story about the distant past.Our understanding of music in medieval Europe reflects a bias that we might call a “bad data problem” (c.f. Labov 1972). Manuscripts containing song are often precious artifacts carefully preserved as relics of cultural heritage and identity, yet these manuscripts only bear witness to the musical, linguistic, and codicological practices of a narrow sliver of medieval society. Taking our sources at face value, we risk rendering invisible the musical voices of women, the languages of those who spoke regional dialects, or the songs sung outside universities, churches, and courts. 


Our episode unfolds as a conversation between two musicologists, Flannery and Saagar, wherein we look to cultural contexts beyond songbooks to spotlight the multiplicity of voices at play in medieval musical practices, with an emphasis on medieval theories of the voice. Saagar specializes in regional dialects of medieval French, and he examines how textual variants and “regionalisms” in thirteenth-century polyphonic song lyrics constitute a multilingual musical culture retrospectively sterilized by modern language reform. Flannery’s expertise lies in the relationship between music and identity in the early Middle Ages (c. 500-1200) through non-canonical sources, presenting an alternative to modern trends in medieval women’s music historiography which inevitably essentialize them as token composers in a male-dominated cultural landscape. Both of us see the issues inherent in relying on modern epistemologies of identity—which link ethnicity with nationhood, cultural practice, and linguistic usages—to analyze medieval cultural practices. We discuss our paths around these pitfalls in this podcast episode and analyze specific musical examples to demonstrate how songs, often metaphorized as “voices” of our identities, can tell a nuanced story about the distant past.


Flannery McIntyre is a Ph.D. candidate in Musicology and Medieval Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She has presented her work at the AMS-SMT Joint Annual Meeting, the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference (MedRen), the Leeds International Medieval Congress, and the Congress on Medieval Studies. Her research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Society for Music Theory, the American Musicological Society and the Medieval Academy of America. She holds an A.B. in Archaeology and the Ancient World, Medieval Cultures, and Music from Brown University, and a MPhil in Medieval Archaeology from the University of Cambridge, where she received a fellowship from the Cambridge Trust in partnership with Newnham College.


Saagar Asnani is a Ph.D. candidate in Musicology and Medieval Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His research joins together the disparate fields of musicology and sociohistorical linguistics in an attempt to think historically about the multifarious relationships between music and language. Saagar has presented work at the MAA Centennial Meeting, the AMS-SMT Joint Annual Meeting, the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference (MedRen), and the Congress on Medieval Studies. While a visiting student at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, he co-organized the annual séminaire thématique for the Questes working group in Paris. His research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the American Musicological Society, the Medieval Academy of America, as well as the Townsend Center for the Humanities and Music Department at UC Berkeley. He holds a B.A. in Music, French and Francophone Studies, and Biology from the University of Pennsylvania, where he received the Clifton C. Cherpack prize in French and a M.A. in Musicology from UC Berkeley.


Further Resources

  • Fournival Quotes from: Fournival, Richard de. Le Bestiaire d’Amour et la Response du Bestiaire. Translated by Bianciotto, Gabriel. Paris: Champion Classiques, 2009.

  • Isidore Quotes from: Barney, Stephen A., W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof, eds. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

  • Boethius Quotes from: Boethius, Fundamentals of Music. Translated by Calvin M. Bower, edited by Claude V. Palisca. New Have: Yale University Press, 1989.

  • Grocheio Quotes from: Grocheio, Johannes de. Ars musice. Edited by Constant J. Mews, John N. Crossley, Catherine Jeffreys, Leigh McKinnon, and Carol J. Williams. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2011.

Selected Readings:

  • Bradley, Catherine. “Polyphony from and for Refrains in Dance-Song Motets” in Manuscripts, Music, Machaut: Essays in Honor of Lawrence Earp, ed. Benjamin Albritton, Jared Hartt, and Tamsyn Mahoney-Steel. Turnhout: Brepols, 2022, 413–39.

  • Bradley, Catherine, and Karen Desmond, eds. The Montpellier Codex: The Final Fascicle. Contents, Contexts, Chronologies. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018.

  • Dillon, Emma. The Sense of Sound: Musical Meaning in France, 1260-1330. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

  • Dronke, Peter. Women writers of the Middle Ages: A critical study of texts from Perpetua to Marguerite Porete. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

  • Kay, Sarah. Medieval Song from Aristotle to Opera. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022.

  • Leach, Elizabeth Eva, & Morton, Jonathan. Performing Desire: Knowledge, Self, and Other in Richard de Fournival’s “Bestiaire d’amours” Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2025.

  • Lucken, Christopher. Les portes de la mémoire : Richard de Fournival, le désir de savoir et l’Arriereban d’Amours. Paris : Droz, 2025.

  • Meyer, Paul. “Mélanges de littérature provençale.” Romania 1, no. 4 Paris, 1872: 401–419.

  • Page, Christopher. Discarding Images: Reflections on Music and Culture in Medieval France. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

  • Page, Christopher. The Christian West and Its Singers : The First Thousand Years. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.

  • Saltzstein, Jennifer. The Refrain and the Rise of the Vernacular in Medieval French Music and Poetry. Suffolk: DS Brewer, 2013.

  • Stuttard, Leah. "The Voice of Emotion: Constructing an Identity for the Comtessa de Dia in Performance." Female-Voice Song and Women’s Musical Agency in the Middle Ages, 2022.

  • Zingesser, Eliza. Stolen Song: How the Troubadours Became French. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020.


Interesting Manuscripts:


Links to full songs (YouTube):


Information about the poster image:

  • Taken from Gallica (Bibliothèque Nationale de France) manuscript viewer (open access, and free for educational use)

  • F-Pnm Fr. 12615 “Chansonnier de Noailles” | Folio 1r | Illumination (gold leaf) of trouvère: Thibaut de Champagne (Li rois de Navarre)  - Theobald I of Navarre

  • Red rubrication: Li rois de Navare fist ces chançons ci - liiii (‘The King of Navarre wrote these songs from here to 54’).

  • Following illumination is the song: Conme li vostres fuis amis (‘As I was your lover’)

  • First stanza notated under empty musical staff (no notated melody), and part of following stanza copied below staff.


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