Why do we sing? How does singing shape how we see ourselves and how we relate to one another? My talk takes up these universal questions in the context of a medieval song community.  It explores an early medieval French song tradition (trouvère songs) as a social practice, linked to specific people and social networks, spanning the Mediterranean, and to other forms of social activity. I share a case study of four early-generation trouvères, using new video recordings of their works, and shows how songs, charters and seals foster a sense of belonging to a community c. 1200. My talk also shares more about the UKRI-funded project, Musical Lives, which takes further the possibility of song-centred histories through interdisciplinary collaboration with scholars and performers. For more about the MUSLIVE project, see: https://muslive.kcl.ac.uk/

Speaker:

Professor Emma Dillon is Thurston Dart Professor of Music (Medieval Music and Cultures) at King’s College London, specialising in European musical culture from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. Emma is a recipient of a Leverhulme Trust Major Grant (2016-2019) and a British Academy Small Grant (2016-2017). Between 2023-2028 she is PI of Musical Lives: Towards an Historical Anthropology of French Song, 1100-1300 [MUSLIVE], awarded by the ERC Advanced Grant scheme and subsequently funded through the UKRI Horizon Guarantee. Author of Medieval Music-Making and the Roman de Fauvel (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and The Sense of Sound: Musical Meaning in France, 1260-1330 (Oxford University Press in 2012), Emma has been a Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, a Member and Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Studies (School of Historical Studies) in Princeton, a Visiting Scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and in 2021 was Visiting Professor at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. She is currently completing a book, Singing Knights: Living with Songs in the Age of French Romance, 1170-1220, exploring relationships between trouvère songs, medieval romance and documentary culture.