Oracy, literacy, and the music of Adam de la Halle: The evidence of the manuscript Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale f.fr.25566

Although an impressive number of scholars have embraced the use of an oral/literate model for explaining characteristics of musical traditions, this approach has also received substantial criticism. Both the oral/literate model itself, and its applicability to music, have been questioned in a broad range of venues. It is the contention of this author that, even after several decades of academic conflagration, a stubborn residue of utility remains. It seems difficult to deny that, over time, the use of a writing system could produce fundamental changes in styles of expression, which might then be observed in surviving artifacts. The music of the thirteenth-century Artesian trouvere Adam de la Halle in the manuscript Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale f.fr..25566 seems ideally suited as the subject for such a study. Adam himself was doubly educated, at once literate in the alphabet, musical notation and literate of the Latin educational system and orate in the vernacular poetic and musical traditions of his time. In his music, Adam bridged the gap between the vernacular and the Latin musical repertoires, writing both courtly lyrics and learned polyphony. The music in f.fr..25566, which contains a contemporary "Collected Edition" of Adam's works in both traditions, is the work of a single music scribe. The fortuitous collaboration of a single scribe with a single composer on a musical collection encompassing a cross-section of thirteenth-century styles and idioms make this repertoire uniquely appropriate to a comparison of musical oracy and literacy. Chapter 2 of this dissertation addresses the validity of the oral/literate model and its applicability to music. Chapter 3 places Adam within a cultural context, with particular emphasis on the schooling available to him. Chapter 4 deals with the manuscript tradition and the evidence of the physical artifact. Chapter 5 uses the perspective established by this examination of context to consider the interaction of the orate and the literate in Adam's music.