The music in this chapter comes from a large area of what is now Southwest France, in which Occitan (or the langue d‘oc) was the principal vernacular language. From the network of courts and their noble rulers came the culture of the troubadours, poet-composers whose love songs in Occitan constitute the first large body of medieval vernacular literature to be written down. We explore the lives of a range of troubadours, considering the various positions they occupied in courtly society, and examine how the conventions and practicalities of courtly life informed the literary theme of ‘courtly love’ that they cultivated. The contemporary tradition of Latin song and polyphony from monasteries in the same area is then discussed. We look at the changes in Latin poetry that have been described as nova cantica (‘new song’), and the polyphonic techniques of Aquitanian composers. Lastly, the connections between these two traditions are charted, and a range of shared contexts, themes, and approaches are brought to light.

Chapter 2 explores the music produced in the monastic institutions of ninth- to eleventh-century Europe. Describing the context of the Carolingian Empire, and the renaissance of learning, literacy, and writing that it brought about, we look at some of the earliest examples of musical notation from this vast region of Europe. We examine the Latin songs, or versus, produced in monasteries, charting their wide range of themes and their possible functions in monastic life. Our earliest evidence of polyphonic singing in church comes from music theory texts dating from the ninth century onwards: we consider what these texts can tell us about the improvised practice of organum (or parallel organum) singing, and provide a practical exercise for readers to try improvising organum themselves. Further music theory texts from the tenth and eleventh centuries document the changing approaches to organum singing over the period, and finally we consider how music theory related to actual practice, by looking at the first surviving examples of practical polyphony from medieval Europe.