Useful for looking at the evolution of music notation over time:
The Schoyen Collection

(there are three sections -- note the clickthroughs at the very bottom of each page)

I can't remember if I've linked this here before or not, but here it is (again?) anyway -- a beautiful 13th-century French manuscript songbook, full of interesting pieces by an array of trouvères: Recueil de chansons du XIIIe siècle, avec musique notéeI'm contemplating attempting to transcribe a song, mostly as an exercise in assessing exactly how ( Read more... )

Yes, really.

The 600-years-old butt song from hell

The Copenhagen and Loire Valley Chansonniers, important collections of French chansons, are now available in an open-access edition (both texts and music), complete with links to the digitized manuscripts. All kinds of interesting analysis and background here, in addition to sheet music and translated lyrics!

Singing to Another Tune: Contrafacture & Attribution in Troubadour Song -- interesting reading, with a nice list of cold hard factual examples of melodic/structural borrowings.

Mellon Chansonnier

The Odhecaton
(the home site for the two links above has lots of other good stuff, too)

Spanish Renaissance music

I like posting things here both because I can find them again easily, and because maybe some of you will print music out and come play with me someday. :)

I seem to be using this journal as a music link dump a lot more often than anything else these days -- apologies to those uninterested in such things!

I just found a neat site from Indiana University's Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature: A gathering of 14th-17th texts on music, plus principles of orthography. I'm particularly ( Read more... )

Texts, modern sheet music and original images, with annotations mostly in Spanish. I love these tunes, and one of these years I'll master "Mandad'ey comigo" in some form or another...

http://www.seagullsully.it/medievalsongs/arsmusica_opera.htmlRead more... )

Another dual-purpose "Share the music"/"I don't want to lose this link!" post... :)

Choral music files -- not all period, but some great stuff in here. momtoast, I see Spanish. :)