Borrowing or quoting from the trouvère repertory has long been acknowledged as part of the craft of the composers of the thirteenth-century motet. Single strophes from a few trouvère chansons can be found as complete motet voices; partial strophes frame newly composed text and music in motets-entés, and many textual themes and motifs, melodic motifs and refrains can be traced to trouvère sources. Whilst this practice of borrowing can be identified because of the common texts and melodies, or texts or melodies alone, it is difficult to say to what extent other compositional practices, not dependent upon direct quotation, might have found their source and inspiration in the trouvère repertory. An examination of the monophonic chanson Bien me sui aperceuz, and the three-voice motet Se valours / Bien me sui apercheus / Hie factus est, reveals a web of interrelationships between the chanson and the motet which appears far more subtle than the practice of direct borrowing briefly mentioned above. The cryptic clues to these concealed relationships between the chanson and the motet can be found in their texts, whilst the solution is revealed in their melodies.

The concept of individual authorship, let alone authorial style, is not one that medievalists are accustomed to dealing with, particularly in the realm of monophonic music. Within this field, however, troubadour and trouvère songs provide a peculiar and almost unique challenge because many of the songs are by identified and identifiable composers. However, between the lives of those composers and the written records of their composition there is a gap which can be almost as long as 200 years. We do not know who compiled the manuscripts, nor do we know why they were produced; but what is plain is that the lines of transmission from composer to written record were neither clear nor simple, given the number and scope of the variants from one manuscript to the next. The relationship between the manuscripts is complex, and stemmatics has not proved particularly useful in determining the variant closest to the composer’s ‘original’. In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that the authentic voice of the composer is not a common subject for discussion. Like other monophonic repertories, the songs of the troubadours and trouvères tend to be analysed as a corpus, and rightly so. If analysis is to encompass the entire legacy of songs, it needs systematic tools of the kind and quality available to other repertories. However, effective tools for the melodic analysis of troubadour and trouvère song are few, for reasons which I have discussed elsewhere.

This discussion is ‘after Hiley’: it consists of my reflections, after reading his splendid book, Western Plainchant, concerning what I need and do not need to do, what I want and do not want to do, in pursuing studies in Gregorian chant. Even though my discussion is of some very general issues, it does not offer a programme; on the contrary, it can be taken as a critique of most programmes and systems. None the less, I hope it may suggest to others some positive and fruitful ways of proceeding.