As co-editors, we have found it enjoyable and stimulating to work with a community of scholars across the world and from a variety of disciplines in writing this book. Our warmest thanks go to the commissioning editor Kate Hammond, and to Brill, for their support and encouragement. We wish to acknowledge the time, expertise, and imagination of all the authors in this study. It has been a particular pleasure for us to publish a collection that includes contributions by scholars whose work has inspired our own, as well as by writers at various stages of their academic career. We hope it will encourage further work on the important subjects of female-voice song and womenâs musical agency.
We would like to thank the following bodies who have supported parts of this book. The research leading the essay by David Catalunya received funding from the European Research Council in the context of the project Music and Late Medieval European Court Cultures of the University of Oxford (European Union Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program, Grant no. 669190). The image in Anne Bagnall Yardleyâs essay is reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. Manuscript images in Gillian Gowerâs chapter, from Uppsala University Library (Uppsala Universitetsbiblioteket), are in the public domain, but we wish to acknowledge the University of Uppsala for making them available for reproduction.
Much of the book was written and edited during the challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020; we recognise the immense personal, financial, and institutional pressures experienced by authors during this time, and are grateful for their continued commitment to the project. We also benefitted from the particular ways in which libraries and archives made materials available to authors at a time when many were closed to the public. Lisa would like to offer thanks to the support of her family: Heidi, Gracie, and Brandon. Anna is grateful for the support of her family: Thomas, Charlotte, and Hugo.