With voice and pen : coming to know medieval song and how it was made / Leo Treitler.

Medieval improvisation -- Written music and oral music : improvisation in medieval performance -- The Vatican organum treatise and the organum of Notre Dame of Paris : perspectives on the development of a literate music culture in Europe -- "Peripheral" and "central" -- On the structure of the Alleluia melisma : a Western tendency in Western chant? -- Homer and Gregory : the transmission of epic poetry and plainchant -- "Centonate" chant : Übles Flickwerk or e pluribus unus? -- Lingering questions about "oral literature" -- The politics of reception : tailoring the present as fulfilment of a desired past -- Oral, written, and literate process in the music of the Middle Ages -- Observations on the transmission of some Aquitanian tropes -- History and ontology of the musical work -- The early history of music writing in the West -- Reading and singing : on the genesis of Occidental musical writing -- Speaking of Jesus -- Medieval music and language -- The marriage of poetry and music in medieval song

Fully revised and updated, Treitler's seventeen essays trace the creation and spread of song (cantus), through oral tradition and writing, in the European Middle Ages. The author examines songs in particular and explores the chances for, and the obstacles to, our understanding of traditions that were alive a thousand years ago.