After maintaining eight centuries of interest, it does not seem that troubadour and trouvère music will loosen its hold anytime soon on professional or dilettante imaginations. The survival of this music as both cultural lore and object of scholarship implies a certain durability in the future. At least for a few more years after this book is published, and hopefully many more to come, people will be singing, speaking and writing about the songs of the troubadours and trouvères. Theirs is an ongoing reception to which I will return at the end of this chapter. This continuing reception has evolved over eight centuries of persistent curiosity. So it seems appropriate, even important, to summarize the fluid shape of this reception which I have detailed over the last five chapters. It offers a lesson, at times even a model for the maintenance of other older repertoires, and equally a lesson in their ontology. A good deal of earlier music cannot boast such a consistent profile over time; indeed, the survival of much old music is hardly guaranteed.