oa On the Production and Reading of the Leuven Chansonnier

This article places the Leuven Chansonnier within the context of the group of the socalled Loire Valley chansonniers, paying specific attention to its materiality and making: its size; its writing space as determined by its size, and how content was then deployed within this space; production methods such as preparation and ruling; and the ways in which the book was made both ‘beautiful’ and ‘useful’ through notation and mise-enpage. While the Leuven Chansonnier is clearly not an object that had vocal performance from the page as its principal purpose, its makers nevertheless observed the notational and layout conventions typical for music books designed for singers more closely than the makers of the other Loire Valley chansonniers. This raises intriguing questions about usage, ownership, and musical literacy in polyphonic sources from the period more generally.