Singing is a dangerous enterprise; singers are often tempted to focus their efforts on peripheral issues. It is best for performers to have a clear idea of priorities. For me, the potency of the word, the strength of the poetic gesture, and the act of storytelling are what is central to singing medieval music. These seem much more important goals than that of simply attaining a beautiful sound (however one chooses to define that notion). The combination of word with poetic gesture and sound makes for an interesting dialogue—a complex series of dance steps into which the public is ultimately invited to participate. Medieval storytelling lives in a space of freedom won from two kinds of bondage: that of seeking either beauty or entertainment for its own sake. Some of this freedom resides in the wide variety of medieval narrative forms, a repertoire which includes the reverie, pastourelle, alba, chanson d’ami, chanson de croisade, chanson de toile, chanson de mal-mariée. All of these offer excellent opportunities for performers.

I have also been interested in taking less traveled roads—namely performing narrative texts without music, especially in French, my mother tongue. It seems clear that these purely narrative texts were in fact performed, or contés. Gautier de Coincy himself tells us at the beginning of his Miracles de Nostre Dame [Miracles of Our Lady]: “Translater voel en rime et metre / que cil et celes qui la letre / n’entendent pas puissent entendre” [I want to translate into verse so that men and women who do not know how to read can apprehend].

Without entering further into the scholarship that justifies modern perform ances, I would like to present a number of issues and reflections arising from my work on medieval song narrative. I draw from my own experience as a performer and editor with references most particularly to the following works: two by Gautier de Coincy from his Miracles de Nostre Dame (the Leocadia story and Dou Cierge qui descendi au jongleour [The Candle Sent Down to the Minstrel]), and the well-traveled production of Tristan et Iseult. Other remarks derive from my performances of Marie de France's Guigemar, various fables, a Provençal Passion play, Philippe de Thaon's poetry, Le Roman de Fauvel [The Romance of Fauvel], and several of the narrative Cantigas de Santa Maria by Alfonso X el Sabio.