Kenneth Gloag
Ashgate
Hardback
148
2008
This volume deals with the materials of chant from the point of view of transmission. The early history of chant is a history of orality, of transmission by mouth to ear, and scholars of medieval music have taken up the ideas and techniques of scholars of folklore, of oral transmission, of ethnomusicology, for the chant is, in fact, an ancient music transmitted for a time in oral culture. Ironically, the use of written documents is also vital for the study of chant, involving analysis of oral issues in the writing of music.