Helen Deeming is an Honorary Research Associate at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is the author of Songs in British Sources, c.1150–1300 (2013) and the editor, with Elizabeth Eva Leach, of Manuscripts and Medieval Song (2015) and A Cultural History of Western Music in the Middle Ages (Bloomsbury, forthcoming). Frieda van der Heijden specializes in medieval vernacular song and manuscript production. In her Ph.D. dissertation (2018) she demonstrates aspects of increasing commercialization in the production of (music) books in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Northern France. She taught musicology, music history, and medieval history courses at Royal Holloway, and Utrecht University.

• 1. Introduction and historical outline; 2. Monastic centres in the early middle ages; 3. Court and cloister in Aquitaine and Occitania; 4. City, cathedral, and university in Paris; 5. Courts and cities in northern France; 6. Scribes, scholars, and secretaries in fourteenth-century France; 7. England after the Norman conquest; 8. On the shores of the mediterranean: Italy, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula; 9. The German- and Dutch-speaking lands; 10. Medievalisms: modern encounters with medieval polyphony and song; Glossary; Bibliography; Discography; Index.

'This excellent new introduction will transform the appreciation of medieval song. Deeming and van der Heijden have written a brilliantly concise guide without compromising on meticulous scholarship and fascinating detail. Readers will find an engaging and historically grounded account of music making in the European Middle Ages, abundantly interspersed with freshly chosen examples expertly designed to be accessible and interactive.' Ardis Butterfield, Yale University