Abstract

This article is on the Ms 91 of Cortona Library, the famous 13thcentury Umbro-Tuscan manuscript known as the earliest existing example of a collection of melodies with vernacular Italian text. The aim of this article is, through historic, musico-analytical and textual considerations, to give some indications as to the origins, the modes transmission and of performance of such melodies. This task involves - according to the American musicologist Peter Jeffery - historic musicology, ethnomusicology, sociology and psychology. In line with these ideas, we have attempted to reconstruct the development of an orally-transmitted music, created at the moment of performance, probably born in the circle of a group of people who pass down the repertoire from generation to generation. And yet this is what still happens today in ethnic music.