Charles Explorer logo
🇬🇧

Cantio, Lied or Chanson? The Strahov Codex as a 15th Century Song Treasury

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2013

Abstract

A large number of songs have been preserved in the Strahov Codex (ca. 1465/67–1470), an important collection of polyphony from the latter half of the fifteenth century. These songs were once generally regarded as cantiones in Latin or as instrumental compositions, but a detailed study of this repertoire shows that the manuscript is an important source of secular compositions, and especially of chansons.

Most of these songs have been preserved only in this manuscript. Questions remain as to when they were composed and how they found their way into a manuscript that originated in one of the Catholic regions of Bohemia.