A passing...

For those who haven't heard, Constance Hieatt died on December 29, 2011.

I met Constance Hieatt once, at an ACTA conference on food in the Middle Ages -- an academic field she largely created, and in which she enjoyed near-godlike status, yet remained warm, approachable, and open-minded.

The field of historical cookery is unusual in the number of non-academics, and academics from other disciplines, who participate and contribute to it. (The names Terry Nutter and David Friedman spring to mind, but the reader can doubtless fill in others.) I think Hieatt and the other leading academics in the field realized thirty or forty years ago that their books were selling largely to people in the SCA and related organizations, and it would behoove them to treat amateurs and recreational medievalists with some respect -- at any rate, that was the effect, and I think Dr. Hieatt deserves much of the credit for this welcoming, open-minded atmosphere.

As the above-linked obituary points out, she remained active in historical-cookery research to the end: one book is due to be published next month, and another is still in the editing stage (to be completed by her sister). I look forward to them.

If you don't have anything to say, say it anyway

I was transcribing this incredible 5-part piece (in fact, the only known piece) by the 14th-century composer Philippe Royllart, and decided to see what was known about him. Hey, Google! Among the hits:

"Get Philippe Royllart setlists - view them, share them, discuss them with other Philippe Royllart fans for free on setlist.fm!"

Yahoo! Music tells me with chagrin:
"No videos found for this artist... No upcoming concerts found for this artist..."
but helpfully offers to "Play Philippe Royllart artist radio"

Meanwhile, last.fm offers to "Send Philippe Royllart ringtones to cell".

Guess I'll have to actually stand up and walk to the other side of the room to look at the Groves Dictionary....

OK, so maybe it's not really a 5-part piece. One manuscript has three parts and another has four, overlapping by two. Which makes five parts in all, but it's not clear that they were ever all supposed to be performed together.

And after hours of Finale-work, I've managed to compress the 7-page edition from CMM down to a much more practical... 7 pages! It wasn't a total waste, though, as I also took out the bar lines and the ties so it looks a little cleaner and more like medieval notation.