7th Congress Philology and Musicology
Layout in sung repertoires from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.

Representing the text-music relationship in manuscripts and printed works
Palermo, June 10-12, 2026

In the long period from the early Middle Ages to the Renaissance, different types of musical writing were developed in Western Europe and very varied solutions of textual and musical layout were invented which were in accordance with the typology of the manuscripts, the poetic-musical genre (mono- or polyphonic) and the technical competence of the scribes in the different sung repertoires.

Sometimes, staves or musical notation are not planned, but the virtual presence of music (or, more concretely, an extant tradition of written music) conditions certain aspects of the writing or layout of the verbal text. The collaboration between copyist of the text and music copyist may follow well-established models of layout, or it may generate problems that will affect the text and/or the melody and lead to specific and innovative solutions. Different types of layout or musical notation may be at the origin of melodic variants observed in the manuscript tradition of a sung text. In some cases, the relationship between the poetic text and the musical notation is unclear, or the text has no obvious relationship with the notation that surrounds it. Apart from codified layout models, there are partial and/or clumsy attempts at musical notation by the scribe of the verbal text that require interpretation.

The transition between the 15th and 16th centuries is particularly interesting, at the time when the layout models developed during the Middle Ages began to be transposed into the printed book.

The historical interpretation of the phenomenology of layout in sung repertoires in relation to their handwritten or printed traditions (organisation of space; material aspects of the copy; textual and musical signs used whose meaning is not always unequivocal; etc.) has not yet given rise to a tradition of specific studies because it calls upon multidisciplinary skills, between philology and musicology, between codicology and paleography.

We therefore invite single- or multi-voice contributions that address different areas of research concerning the layout and writing of poetic and musical texts, highlighting their reciprocal relationship. Here are some non-exhaustive topics:

• Presence/absence of musical notation in one or more sung texts, genres, or repertoires;

• Typology of musico-textual layout in a given repertoire;

• Problems/solutions of musical layout and/or notation in relation to the poetic text and its manuscript tradition;

• Localization/dating/characterization of manuscripts through musical notation or layout;

• Paleographical and/or musical layout issues related to the writing process (word segmentation, strophic scores, etc.) and the interpretation of the poetic text;

• Musico-textual layout in the transition from manuscript to print;

• Musico-textual layout in digital editions of manuscripts.

The conference proceedings will be published in a thematic issue of the journal Textus et Musica. With this in mind, papers must address musico-textual corpora, even if the focus of the study is music or text. 

Lunches will be provided. However, participants will be responsible for their own transportation and accommodation. A list of available accommodations will be posted on the conference website.

Call for Papers Opens: July 23, 2025

Submission Deadline: October 15, 2025

Notification of Results: November 15, 2025

Abstracts should be submitted to the adress textusetmusica@ml.univ-poitiers.fr

Organising Committee

Francesco Carapezza, Mauro Azzolini, Christelle Chaillou, Alessio Collura, Ilaria Grippaudo.

Scientific Committee

Isabelle Fabre, John Haines, Maria-Sofia Lannutti, Federico Saviotti, Anna Tedesco, Giovanni Varelli, Philippe Vendrix