The online resource Gallica is adding stuff all the time — it’s hard to keep up. This post is about their coverage of some of the main medieval monophonic song books.[NB: now updated to include sources outside Gallica!]
I’m teaching medieval monophonic song to undergraduates at the moment and I always ask them to critique modern editions in the light of the complex source situation, especially for the troubadour and trouvère repertoire. They report finding Gallica quite hard to navigate, so I’ve designed this blogpost for them so that they can at least be directed to some of the troubadour and trouvère sources.
I found information and updates on Gallica’s holdings from various posts on Dominique Gatté’s social network site for medieval musicology. It’s really worth joining — despite its URL, it’s not just for chant! They send a lot of emails, but you can opt to have them aggregated into a daily digest (recommended).
The links below are to a few of the troubadour and trouvère chansonniers with melodies (and without) that are on Gallica (as well as some from other libraries; manuscripts of vernacular song repertoires from other linguistic traditions, can be found via a recent blogpage on Gatté’s site; for German repertoire, see my post here).
NB: The sigla are particular to troubadour OR trouvère sources; so troubadour C is not the same as trouvère C; and some single physical sources do double duty, so trouvère M is troubadour W!
Trouvère sigla
Trouvère A (F-AS 567).
Trouvère B (CH-BEb 231). This was originally part of the same MS as Trouvère L (see below).
Trouvère C (CH-BEb 389). Laid out with staves for musical notation, but no notes entered.
Trouvère D (D-F Ms. lat. fol. 7). A single folio survives from what was clearly a larger codex.
Trouvère F (GB-Lbl Egerton 274; also =motet manuscript LoB).
Trouvère H (I-MOe R 4, 4; also =Troubadour D). [no musical notation]
Trouvère I (GB-Ob Douce 308; also =motet MS D). See the blog post on this source here.
Trouvère K (F-Pa 5198; the “Arsenal chansonnier”)
Trouvère L (F-Pn fr. 765). This was originally part of the same MS as Trouvère B (see above).
Trouvère M “du roi” (F-Pn fr. 844 = troubadour W; also known as motet MS R). DIAMM description.
Trouvère O “Cangé” (F-Pn fr. 846) (18thC copy of this source in F-Pn fr. 12610)
Trouvère S (F-Pn fr. 12581) [no musical notation] A full description of the contents is here.
Trouvère T “Noailles” (F-Pn fr. 12615; also known as motet MS N)
Trouvère U “Saint-Germain-des-Prés” (F-Pn fr. 20050; =Troubadour MS X)
Trouvère W (F-Pn fr. 25566); Adam de la Halle manuscript; DIAMM description
Trouvère X “Clairambault” (F-Pn n. a. fr. 1050)
Trouvère a (I-Rvat reg. lat. 1490).
Trouvère b (I-Rvat reg. lat. 1522). [no musical notation]
Trouvère c (CH-BEb A.95). Contains 18 jeux-partis, some incomplete because of damage to the source. [no musical notation].
Trouvère d (GB-Ccc, MS 450). Three songs on pp. 264–5 (=fols 133v–134r). No music notation.
Trouvère f (F-MO H236).
Trouvère g (F-Pn, fr. 1593).
Trouvère j (F-Pn n.a.fr. 21667). This source comprises two folios of a fragment of a songbook with musical notation.
Trouvère k (F-Pn fr. 12786) [no musical notation, but space for staves]
Trouvère l (F-Pn fr. 22495) [only two songs and no musical notation]
Trouvère n (F-Pn lat.11724) [one song and no musical notation]
Trouvère m (F-Pn lat. 11412) One song, with text underlaid to staves and musical notes entered into the first system (fol. 103v).
Trouvère o (GB-Lbl Harley 1717) [one song with musical notation]
Trouvère za (Zagreb, Metropolitan Library, MR 92) [no musical notation]. Not online in the usual way, but links to black-and-white images of the MS accompany the text transcriptions here.
Trouvère alpha (E-E S.1.3). This has notated songs as part of Matfre Ermengaud’s Breviari d’Amour. 14thC.
Troubadour sigla
A full listing of Occitan sources by Courtney Joseph Wells can be found here.
Troubadour B (F-Pn fr.1592) [no musical notation]
Troubadour C (F-Pn fr.856) [no musical notation]
Troubadour D (I-MOe R 4, 4; also =TrouvH) [no musical notation]
Troubadour G (I-Ma R 71 sup. (S.P.4)). This MS has musical notation; some additional information is here.
Troubadour I (F-Pn fr.854) [no musical notation]; 2nd half of 14thC, 858 songs with razos.
Troubadour K (F-Pn fr.12473) [no musical notation]
Troubadour M (F-Pn 12474) [no musical notation]
Troubadour N (US-NYpm 819) [no musical notation]: some illuminations available here; catalogue entry here.
Troubadour P (I-Fl Plut 41.42) [no musical notation]
Troubadour U (I-Fl Plut 41.43) [no musical notation]
Troubadour V (F-Pn fr. 1553) [no musical notation]
Troubadour W (F-Pn fr.844 = trouvère M”du roi”)
Troubadour X (F-Pn fr. 20050; = trouvère U “Saint-Germain-des-Prés”)
Troubadour Z (E-Bbc 146) [no musical notation]. Also known as MS Sg. See Wiki page.
For a more complete list, see this pdf of a now defunct page by Rob Wegman, kindly supplied by Justin Eiler here.
Elizabeth Eva Leach 
Unfortunately, it seems that Rob Wegman’s page has been moved or removed from the website. I do have that information stored, and can forward it to you if you like.
Yes, please! Is it information as a page or as a set of HTML code?
I have it saved as an HTML page, but can get it to you in whatever format you prefer–HTML, straight text, DOC or RTF format, or whatever your preference.
If you could supply as pdf, I could then put in a link to it on the page where I mention it. Wonder why Rob took it down…