This Workshop is organized around the preparation of the forthcoming book ‘Scriptor, Cantor & Notator: The Materiality of Sound in Chant Manuscripts’, to be published by Brepols in the series ‘Musicalia Antiquitatis & Medii Aevi’ (MUSAM). The three editors (Elsa De Luca, Jean-François Goudesenne, Ivan Moody) invited all the contributors to a virtual round table in order to discuss the ideas, contents, methodologies and manuscripts studied in the book. ‘Scriptor, Cantor & Notator: The Materiality of Sound in Chant Manuscripts’ aims to showcase the most recent advances and trends in studies of music palaeography and techniques of preparing modern editions of early music, with a primary focus on liturgical chant. The book of abstracts is an intermediary step towards the publication of ‘Scriptor, Cantor & Notator: The Materiality of Sound in Chant Manuscripts’ as it gathers a preliminary selection of research studies that explore the close relationship—and mutual influences—between learning, writing, and performing chant from the Middle Ages onwards, as understood from the manuscript and printed record. The object of this palaeographical and musical investigation is the tradition of Christian “plainchant” in Western Europe and the Byzantine world through the Middle Ages and beyond. By presenting several examples of palaeographical research applied to different kinds of mediaeval chant manuscripts, this collection aims to define some methodological parameters and broad research questions that encompass the peculiarity of the sources being studied, and to define more broadly the foundations of musical-palaeographical research as applied to mediaeval chant notations.

BOOK OF ABSTRACTS & PROGRAMME