This study explores the creation and subsequent history of the manuscript Chantilly, Musée Condé 564 (the “Chantilly codex,” hereinafter Ch), the central source for modern musicological understanding of late fourteenth-century music. Armed with new codicological information and informed by a thorough re-examination of scholarship on this source, I then discuss the musical style and cultural significance of a group of ballades transmitted by this source.
Chapter One narrates the discovery of this manuscript in the nineteenth century, and, based on archival documents from the Musée Condé, demonstrates how the historical and personal interests of its last private owner shaped and colored all later perception of its music.