Christopher Page - The Owl and the Nightingale, First Edition

Published by Dent, London, in 1989. First edition, first printing, hardcover in dustjacket.

The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France 1100–1300 by Christopher Page examines the intellectual and musical culture of medieval France, tracing the relationship between vernacular poetry, troubadour and trouvère song, and the ideas of 12th- and 13th-century thinkers. Page is a leading British musicologist and founder of the early music ensemble Gothic Voices. The title alludes to the Middle English poem The Owl and the Nightingale (c. 1200), a debate poem that itself reflects the era's tensions between old and new musical aesthetics.

Condition: Fine in Near Fine dustjacket. Light toning to the text block; dustjacket sunned (colour-faded) at the spine.