- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of Plates
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Musical Examples
- Notes on the Compact Disc
- Abbreviations
- CHAPTER I Medieval Improvisation
- CHAPTER 2 Written Music and Oral Music: Improvisation in Medieval Performance
- CHAPTER 3 The Vatican Organum Treatise and the Organum of Notre Dame of Paris: Perspectives on the Development of a Literate Music Culture in Europe
- CHAPTER 4 ‘Peripheral’ and ‘Central’
- CHAPTER 5 On the Structure of Alleluia Melisma: A Western Tendency in Western Chant(?)
- CHAPTER 6 Homer and Gregory: The Transmission of Epic Poetry and Plainchant
- CHAPTER 7 ‘Centonate’ Chant: <i>übles Flickwerk or e pluribus unus</i>?
- CHAPTER 8 Lingering Questions about ‘Oral Literature’
- CHAPTER 9 The Politics of Reception: Tailoring the Present as Fulfilment of a Desired Past
- CHAPTER 10 Oral, Written, and Literate Process in the Music of the Middle Ages
- CHAPTER 11 Observations on the Transmission of Some Aquitanian Tropes
- CHAPTER 12 History and the Ontology of the Musical Work
- CHAPTER 13 The Early History of Music Writing in the West
- CHAPTER 14 Reading and Singing: On the Genesis of Occidental Music Writing
- CHAPTER 15 Speaking of Jesus
- CHAPTER 16 Medieval Music and Language
- CHAPTER 17 The Marriage of Poetry and Music in Medieval Song
- Bibliography
- Index
Written Music and Oral Music: Improvisation in Medieval Performance
Written Music and Oral Music: Improvisation in Medieval Performance
- Chapter:
- (p.39) CHAPTER 2 Written Music and Oral Music: Improvisation in Medieval Performance
- Source:
- With Voice and Pen
- Author(s):
Leo Treitler
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This chapter focuses on the subjection of improvisation in medieval music practice. It argues that if ‘improvisation’ with its modern overtones is not properly medieval, if instead medieval music was produced through methods of composition that do not differentiate ‘written’ and ‘oral’music — or writing and oral process — which do not differentiate methods of composition or characteristics of the product, then we must also try out a different conception of music writing, as a contingent, not a constituent aspect of the music-making complex, an aspect with some autonomy, with its own aims, values, purposes, prestige, reciprocating with its own influence on music, not as something ancillary and merely utilitarian.
Keywords: medieval music making, performance, music writing
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of Plates
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Musical Examples
- Notes on the Compact Disc
- Abbreviations
- CHAPTER I Medieval Improvisation
- CHAPTER 2 Written Music and Oral Music: Improvisation in Medieval Performance
- CHAPTER 3 The Vatican Organum Treatise and the Organum of Notre Dame of Paris: Perspectives on the Development of a Literate Music Culture in Europe
- CHAPTER 4 ‘Peripheral’ and ‘Central’
- CHAPTER 5 On the Structure of Alleluia Melisma: A Western Tendency in Western Chant(?)
- CHAPTER 6 Homer and Gregory: The Transmission of Epic Poetry and Plainchant
- CHAPTER 7 ‘Centonate’ Chant: <i>übles Flickwerk or e pluribus unus</i>?
- CHAPTER 8 Lingering Questions about ‘Oral Literature’
- CHAPTER 9 The Politics of Reception: Tailoring the Present as Fulfilment of a Desired Past
- CHAPTER 10 Oral, Written, and Literate Process in the Music of the Middle Ages
- CHAPTER 11 Observations on the Transmission of Some Aquitanian Tropes
- CHAPTER 12 History and the Ontology of the Musical Work
- CHAPTER 13 The Early History of Music Writing in the West
- CHAPTER 14 Reading and Singing: On the Genesis of Occidental Music Writing
- CHAPTER 15 Speaking of Jesus
- CHAPTER 16 Medieval Music and Language
- CHAPTER 17 The Marriage of Poetry and Music in Medieval Song
- Bibliography
- Index