The introduction presents the seven contributions on the arts of editing in the fourth volume of the Ars Edendi Lecture Series.

With the triumph of the codex, medieval literature became more deeply hermeneutic in character. A vast range of texts, in various languages and genres, were not only copied with the commentaries and glosses of ancient tradition, but also underwent continuous reworking and transformation. Indeed, the very act of transcribing texts into a manuscript was often an incentive to rewrite them. This practice resulted in a bewildering number of textual versions that lived alongside their originals, and sometimes displaced them, but were nevertheless fundamental to their transmission and interpretation, often resulting in complex textual layers.

Volume 2 publishes 32 plates from the manuscripts used in the edition. It then provides an overview of the entire Gloria repertory, listing all the manuscripts by place of provenance (coinciding with the order of collation) and detailing information on the place of insertion of each verse in the tropes and prosulas, including liturgical rubrics and melodies. French musicologist Marie Noël Colette contributes to this volume with musical transcriptions and annotations of a selection of troped Gloria chants. Indices and bibliography conclude the volume.

The present volume is an edition of medieval liturgical tropes to the most extensive chants of the Roman Mass, Gloria in excelsis Deo. Following the editions of tropes to the Agnus Dei and Sanctus by the same editor in the series Corpus Troporum, this is the third part dedicated to Ordinary tropes. It is based on 137 manuscripts dating from the ninth through the thirteenth centuries.

Volume 1 contains an introduction presenting the Gloria chant, its history and its interpretation by medieval commentators. Iversen presents the various compositional methods used by medieval compilers, who, combining ‘wandering’ verses, could vary the form of the troped chant in almost unlimited ways. The innovative aspect of this edition is to present for the reader as much material from this extensive poetic tradition while keeping faithful to the manuscript witnesses.

Thus the main part of the first volume contains the critical edition of 152 tropes and prosulas amounting to thousands of verses, in various ways and at various points inserted into the Gloria chanted in the medieval Mass.

Dans ce volume sont présentés des genres musicaux et poé- tiques qui reflètent la culture chrétienne du Haut Moyen Âge. Â la suite de la renaissance carolingienne ces chants ont été copiés et notés dans un grand nombre de manuscrits. C’est ainsi qu’ils nous sont parvenus et que nous possédons des témoignages inestimables de la création littéraire et musicale au sein de la liturgie au cours des siècles. Le répertoire grégorien est encore chanté de nos jours, non sans avoir subi quelques avatars. Les tropes et prosules, dont l’usage a été limité au Moyen Âge nous seraient inconnus si nous n’avions pas ces documents écrits. Ces textes ont pu être notés parce qu’ils appartenaient à une culture ecclésiastique, très peu de textes profanes ayant été notés avant 1200. Les sources, très nom- breuses en dépit des pertes occasionnées par diverses circonstances historiques, sont restées cachées et même souvent oubliées jusqu’à nos jours. Leur témoignage, quoique répondant à des règles de composition codifiées parce que réservées à une fonction détermi- née, est précieux. Cependant il ne faut pas oublier que cet usage liturgique ne représente qu’une toute petite partie des pratiques musicales médiévales, dont il ne peut pas en tout cas être tenu pour complètement étranger. C’est ce dont témoignent les quelques exemples de musique profane qui sont joints à ce volume. Comme il s’agit de littérature et de musique, ce livre est partagé entre deux auteurs, Marie-Noël Colette a écrit les chapitres 1, 2, 4, et 9, Gu- nilla Iversen les chapitres 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, et 12. 

In a number of interrelated case studies of earlier unexplored poetic and musical material dating from the ninth through the thirteenth centuries, the scholars explore and shed further light on changes in functions and forms in poetry, particularly in liturgical poetry, and in medieval interpretations of this poetry and music.

Although the earlier part of the twelfth century remains the focus of the book, this should not be taken as a clearly delimited period. Many of the phenomena dealt with had roots in earlier times and did by no means end with the 'high Middle Ages'.

In several articles, the poetical heritage of the Carolingian environment of the palace school of Charles the Bald is examined – a poetic before the poetics, the place and function of music in the liturgical context, to name but two subjects that are treated. With the twelfth century, the ideas developed during the preceding centuries finally took a more institutional shape; in the present book, we see this phenomenon represented in Peter Abelards hymnary for the Paraclete, ritual representations and liturgical drama, in commentaries to biblical poetry, such as the Glossa ordinaria to Lamentations. Finally, the interpretation and understanding of musical texts,  exemplified by the view on Boethius’ De Musica and the new literary genre represented by commentaries to Sequences  in the later middle ages give the volume a final touch and tie its end again to the beginning.