Medieval Music-drama: The Fleury Playbook in Context

2018 will mark the 800th anniversary of the consecration of the Abbey of St Beno (R)t-sur-Loire - or Fleury Abbey - the previous home and namesake of the Fleury Playbook, a collection of 10 medieval music-dramas that has long held been a source of fascination, and not a little perplexity, for scholars in a variety of disciplines: history, music history, literary studies, art history in particular. The Fleury Playbook has been justly celebrated as the most comprehensive extant collection of medieval music-dramas, containing in a single manuscript examples of non-biblical miracle plays, and settings of the Nativity and Resurrection stories, together with accounts of the conversion of Paul and Mary Magdalene. In this the first full-length monograph on the Playbook, Wyndham Thomas places the collection in its historical, cultural and musical context. The first three chapters introduce and then explore the issues raised by the collection: following an introduction, chapter 2 is devoted to the history and traditions of the Abbey, making a persuasive argument for that institution as the original home of the collection, and perhaps the venue in which the plays were first performed. Chapter 3 discusses medieval saints' cults, placing the dramas, and particularly the four devoted to St Nicholas, in this context. The remaining chapters are devoted to a close musical and dramatic analysis of the 10 plays themselves.

Wyndham Thomas is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, and an authority on both medieval and contemporary music. He is the Series Editor of Ashgate’s Landmarks in Music since 1950, and the author of Robert Saxton: Caritas (2012), in that series. Among his other publications is the complete edition of the Fleury Playbook (Antico, 1998, 2001, 2004).