Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer

Notes, Sept, 2002 by Leah Morrison

The author chooses texts and images which illustrate his point, but sometimes the reasons for his choices are unclear. He discusses the Prioress's Tale, for example, in relation to analogous contemporary legends, but doesn't mention the earlier version from Las cantigas de Santa Maria. This, perhaps, is one of the disadvantages to such an enormous undertaking: it is difficult not to leave stones unturned when sweeping across an entire continent. One unturned stone, which may be more like a boulder to those who worked with him, is the consistent misspelling of the late Claude Palisca's name.

Holsinger's audience is clearly those scholars familiar with the music and literature of the Middle Ages. He defines his methodology in an extensive introduction, which also serves to give readers a sample of what they are to expect from his investigations. He places his work not in the context of the new musicology--the now decades-old debate which he summarizes on page 3--but rather in the realm of interdisciplinary study, one familiar to the medieval musicologist. His epilogue calls for a "musicology of empathy," an effort to "invent new ways of merging and blending the music cultures of our time with the musical cultures of the dead" (p. 348). Unfortunately, by his generous citations of passages from Chaucer in discussions which rely on textual understanding, the author further limits his audience to students of literary criticism. For most historical and systematic musicologists, especially medievalists, reading Chaucer is usually sacrificed for reading knowledge of Latin, French, German, and Italian. Subsequently, there are two ways to deal with these passages: skip them, with the potential to miss many of the author's most interesting arguments, or keep a dictionary of Middle English at the ready.

Despite these problems, the book is interesting, intriguing, and provides a valuable model for new ways of approaching musical repertory. As the author reminds us, medievalists are generally disposed to interdisciplinary approaches, and the more widespread interest in these types of approaches that the book may spark can only be of positive significance to the larger discipline. It is certain to provoke controversy; during the relatively short time in which I prepared this review I encountered four widely divergent opinions of both the book itself and the author's methodology. This in itself is valuable, for only in dialogue and questioning can we approach the subject in the manner that Holsinger shows us pre-modern musicians did, and consequently work toward his goal of empathy.