Performers

Abstract The chapter addresses evidence of performance, first as described in the fiction, with an extended discussion of Froissart’s Melyador, which has rarely been used in this context. The chapter considers the place of music in various other works of fiction, leading to a discussion and new transcription of the only song from either the fourteenth or fifteenth century precisely described in performance. Then the chapter moves to the documentary evidence: of boys performing this repertory; of women as frequent performers; of falsettists, as an attempt to refute recent suggestions that they did not exist in these years; of amateurs; of composers. The chapter also provides a detailed account of the use of songs in church.