This book offers a selective survey of accidentals in late medieval chansons. It emphasizes interpretation of how the accidentals function, not only at the level of local detail but also as part of an overall design. The chanson tradition from Gace Brulé through Guillaume Du Fay hardly needs an advocate today; it has long been a central area of research, and the musicloving public responds to it with more and more enthusiasm, year after year. But what is needed for this tradition is sustained critical attention. There are probably many reasons why late medieval music has not inspired a tradition of analysis and interpretation comparable to that which we take for granted with more recent music. The leading obstacle may be conceptual difficulties surrounding the control of pitch relations. This is the general problem to which the present study responds in a particular way: how inflections are used by the composer as an expressive tool. A trace of support for this approach comes from the defense of chromatic writing “for the sake of beauty” (causa pulchritudinis), first encountered at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Anonymous 2 implies that the “beautiful use” of accidentals occurs mainly in chansons. This book follows his lead by attempting to trace and interpret a tradition of using accidentals for expressive purpose in lyric song.

The foundation for my work has been a study of manuscript evidence for accidentals during the period c. 1275–1475. Thousands of chansons from this period survive. I have examined most of them, through microfilm copies (a handicap, but a necessary one) of the surviving sources and, when they exist, through modern editions.