MUSLIVE Performance Workshop One 'Foundations' (February, 2024): 3. Methodology and sample of research questions; draft 'song CVs'

This is the third of three items relating to the first MUSLIVE Performance Workshop, hosted in the Music Department at King’s College London, February 19-21^st, 2024, culminating in a recording session on February 22^nd, 2024. The theme of the workshop was ‘Foundations’.

This contains a sample of the research materials and methodology underpinning the first MUSLIVE performance workshop, hosted at KCL in February 2024. The materials were designed by Emma Dillon (PI MUSLIVE) based on her research into trouvère song.

This folder includes a sample of the instructions and questionnaires for the song teams for the Performance Workshop, intended to help all develop a foundational practice while also focusing attention on research questions pertaining to the practice of making and performing trouvère songs. It also includes a sample of a song ‘CVs’ provided for each song to the scholars involved in the workshop, each containing detailed information about the sources, attribution, versification and thematic content of individual songs. The Song CVs were developed by Emma Dillon prior to the start of MUSLIVEs and refined and tested during the months leading up to the workshop. They also form the prototype of categories of the project’s song database, also in development during this phase of work. These materials were pre-circulated to members of the workshop.

Additional items that were pre-circulated but not included here were:

*spoken recordings prepared for the singers of song texts, by Emma Dillon, Sean Curran, Mary Franklin-Brown and Yolanda Plumley.

*’Top Tips’ summary sheet and guidelines for pronunciation provided with assistance from Don Greig and Yolanda Plumley, based on an approach by the Orlando Consort designed for them by Samuel Rosenberg; guidelines on pronunciation from the introduction to Samuel Rosenberg, Margaret Switten and Gérard le Vot (eds.), Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères (1990).

*documents with an introduction to the project, repertory and the challenges and possibilities of a practice-led approach, created for the singers and song teams by Emma Dillon

*for some songs, additional modern editions were provided, including more detailed critical commentaries; and copies of Hans Tischler’s comparative editions of trouvère melodies.

Emma Dillon, July 2024