The bindings of a large number of manuscripts formerly held in the library of the Benedictine monastery of St Michelsberg in Bamberg preserve fragments of medieval chantbooks documenting a culture in which practical singing and music theory were closely intertwined. These remnants, the work of generations of scribes, reveal a sustained concern for correctness ranging from the use of pitch-clarifying neume notations, to the use of letters, to the recording of melodies along lines prescribed in theoretical works. The influence the music theorist Hermann of Reichenau on St Michelsberg's own theorist, Frutolf, raises two questions. First, what is the nature of the relationship between practical chant and music theory books at St Michelsberg? Second, how was Hermann's notation used at the monastery?

This article argues that the rhythmic meaning of the notation in the Cantigas de Santa Maria can be only understood by confronting it with different theoretical paradigms. Julián Ribera in 1922 defended an Arabic paradigm, to the exclusion of any other, but his access to Arabic historical writings was severely limited. Higinio Anglés in 1943 and most modern musicologists have since adopted French mensural theory, but recognised that it does not fit many songs. The author has demonstrated elsewhere that songs that do not fit the French paradigm often fit the Arabic one. The applicability of both paradigms, including their superimposition, is systematically compared here. After comparison of general concepts (ordo and period), of even-time composition (modes V–VI or conjunctive rhythm), of long–short opposition in ternary time (modes I–II or Ramal) and more complex patterns, the author provisionally concludes that very few patterns point unequivocally to French models, while in most cases (first and second mode and potential forms of the third mode) both French and Arabic paradigms could apply. In many other cases, encompassing both binary and ternary metre, the Arabic rhythmic paradigm is clearly either more fitting than the Parisian one, or the only one to apply.

An early fourteenth-century gradual produced for use in Avignon and today preserved in Rome at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore is a new source for understanding the musical and liturgical exchange between France and Italy in the fourteenth century. The present article will consider compositions written after the main body of the gradual, and found now in the initial fascicle and on the last three folios of the manuscript. These folios contain a hitherto unknown source for the Credo of Tournai as well as other works not recorded elsewhere; for example, a polyphonic Gloria, a polyphonic Credo, a troped Sanctus and a Credo in cantus fractus.

The newly reconstructed motet Beatius/Cum humanum is remarkable in several respects. It ranks among the longest of Ars Nova motets, and divides neatly into three parts of which the middle is an eighty-breve untexted hocket section. It also contains an extended quotation – textual as well as musical – from the Fauvel motet Firmissime/Adesto. The quoted material speaks of ‘Trinity and unity’, turning a spotlight onto the tripartite form of Beatius/Cum humanum. Firmissime/Adesto has occasioned comment because it is built up of duple (‘imperfect’) notes even though it praises the perfect Trinity. Beatius/Cum humanum can be read as participating in the same conversation. By shifting the salience of the number three from local rhythmical organisation to the global level of form, it serves as an example of how music can depict perfection ex imperfectis.

In the years before his death, Johannes Ciconia (1370?–1412) set to music several poems penned by the young Venetian humanist Leonardo Giustinian. One of the earliest of these settings is Con lagreme bagnandome el viso. This article proposes that both the poem and its setting by Ciconia operate within the emotional community of early humanists active at Padua in the decades around the year 1400. The public funeral oratory of one of the high-profile humanists active in this community in Padua, Pier Paolo Vergerio, reveals a renewed interest in ancient rhetoric that was instrumental in the development of new modes of self-expression within this emotional community. Different types of musical repetition in Ciconia's setting of Con lagreme serve as musical analogues to rhetorical figures of pathos witnessed in the orations of Vergerio.

The copyist of the manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canon. Misc. 213 was detailed and well versed in numerous notational styles, and as a result, examples of unusual notation in this manuscript have drawn a critical eye. Yet the unique transcription of Binchois's rondeau Mon seul et souverain desir, in which the copyist alternates between the two common note shapes for the semiminim in the cantus voice, has thus far gone unexplained. This notation has no rhythmic significance; as such, it appears to be a superficial anomaly. In this article, I lay out a rationale for a reading of the notation of the semiminims in this piece as potentially deliberate and meaningful. Over the course of compiling the manuscript, the copyist increasingly aligned semiminim shape with prolation: the full-black shape is used exclusively in minor prolation, whereas the void flagged shape becomes more frequently restricted to major prolation. Since the rondeau is in minor prolation, I suggest that the copyist might have used the void flagged figure in order to suggest a momentary shift into major prolation. In so doing, the copyist might have left to us a witness of a performance practice in which the mensural and rhythmic possibilities inherent in the built-in tension between and were explored.

Three continuing series of recordings are represented by new releases this year. The systematic coverage of Mass Propers in Graduale Novum begun by Johannes Berchmans Göschl continues with the participation of three other directors, including his pupil Stephan Zippe, mentioned last year. Alexander M. Schweitzer, who was Göschl's associate choir director earlier and has made several recordings with his Oslo ensemble, has grouped Masses for the Easter vigil, Easter day, Easter Monday, and the second and third Sundays of Easter (no. 1 in the following list). Göschl grouped the first five Sundays in Ordinary Time with the thirty-third Sunday (no. 2). Franz Karl Prassl directed his female ensemble in five Mass Propers of the Christmas season: Holy Family, Mary Mother of God, Second Sunday after Christmas, Baptism of the Lord and Presentation of the Lord (no. 3). All carry on the fine chant interpretations that represent these melodic restitutions to full advantage.

The Liturgical chant bibliography 24 retains the traditional format: (1) Editions and facsimile editions, (2) Books and reprints, (3) Congress reports, (4) Chant journals, (5) Colections of essays and dictionaries, (6) Articles in periodicals and Festschriften. Additions to the bibliographies of previous years (mostly reviews) are listed directly after this introduction. This year's bibliography opens with five Cantus planus databases and indexes, which were introduced in a detailed review published in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, 67 (2014), 267–85 (24001).