Catherine A. Bradley and Karen Desmond, eds, The Montpellier Codex: The Final Fascicle, Contents, Contexts, Chronologies, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2018), pp. 351, 2 colour + 17 b&w illust., £75. ISBN: 978-178327-272-3. The Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies, 8 (2019), @–@@ FHG 10.1484/J.JMMS.5.117990 One of the most important manuscript witnesses to polyphonic music in the Middle Ages resides in the library of Montpellier’s historic medical school. The so-called Montpellier codex (Bibliothèque interuniversitaire, Bibliothèque universitaire de médecine, H. 196, hereafter Mo) is modest in dimensions, but it contains the largest medieval motet collection in existence, and is packed with gorgeous gold-leaf illuminations, historiated initials, decorative borders, and exquisite music calligraphy. With these words describing the Montpellier Codex, the editors of this magnificent collective volume of essays, musicologists Catherine A. Bradley and Karen Desmond, introduce the specific and monographic study of fascicle 8 (hereafter Mo 8). It is a study which is intended to contribute and provide new data, findings and paths of reflection — as well as gather what already exists and is known — about the manuscript; and, also, to lead to a more complete understanding of the polyphony repertoires in the Middle Ages. In this sense, making our own a famous axiom that gives its title to a famous essay by Hans Urs von Balthasar, we could say that this study is a search for ‘the whole in the fragment’.1 In other words, in the wake of one of the most current trends in the humanities, 2 this is a clear example of trying to understand the nature of a complete reality, such as the motet, from and through the deep study of the microhistory and peculiarities of Mo 8 (fols 350r–397v) and its repertoire. While there is sufficient evidence to claim that the Mo manuscript, as a collection, was compiled in Paris sometime between the 1260s and 1280s, Mo 8 remains a case apart. This is because it is situated at the hinge between the compositional repertoires of the ars antiqua (thirteenth-century) and those of the ars nova (beginning c. 1320, with the appearance of the treatise Ars nova by Philippe de Vitry). Mo 8, the Mo’s final fascicle, occupies an authentic stylistic border space for medieval polyphony. Thus, among the 16 contributions of this study (plus the introduction of the editors), the balance in the assessment of characteristic features of the repertoire of the fascicle to one or the other side, ars antiqua or ars nova, fluctuates: some contributions emphasize aspects of a more traditional side, others highlight the audacity of the latent novelty. Precisely this simple aspect of where the emphasis is placed, hints at one of the main virtues of this monographic study: the multiplicity of approaches, as well as the diversity of conclusions. Everything must be understood as a succession of microhistories, each linked to the microhistory to which it belongs: the study of Mo 8 with respect to Mo; that of Mo to the study of the motet (as a compositional category); and finally, the microhistory of the motet with respect to the complex genre of the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century polyphony. Not 1 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Das Ganze Im Fragment. Aspekte der Geschichtstheologie (Köln: Benziger, 1963). 2 See, for example, Sigurður G. Magnússon and István Szíjártó, What is Microhistory?: Theory and Practice (London; New York: Routledge, 2013). 1 coincidentally, the study is organized into three large sections, the titles of which give the intentional pattern of the chapters they contain: I. The Material Object (chapters 1–7); II. Innovation and Tradition (chapters 8–12); and III. Analytical Case Studies (chapters 13–16). In this way, from different and complementary disciplines (such as musicology, palaeography, codicology, art history, exegesis), renowned specialists, most of them musicologists, all medievalists, 3 encourage reflection, with in common the desire to invite contrast and cross reference between chapters, as well as controversy and, naturally, discussion. It reflects, undoubtedly, the spirit and formidable scientific environment that led to the publication of this monograph, the ‘Montpellier 8’ conference, organized by Catherine A. Bradley, Karen Desmond, and Elizabeth Eva Leach at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, in March 2014.4 The book throughout contains is an abundance of musical examples, texts, and translations, analysis, tables, indexes and images (in black and white, except two in colour). In short, this is a complete and formidable collection of academic studies in English on a ‘fragment in which is the whole’ of the Montpellier Codex, an indispensable source for the understanding of medieval music. ARTURO TELLO RUIZ-PÉREZ Universidad Complutense de Madrid 3 In addition to editors Bradley and Desmond, the contributors to the volume are (in alphabetical order): Rebecca A. Baltzer, Edward Breen, Sean Curran, Rachel Davies, Margaret Dobby, Mark Everist, Anna Kathryn Grau, Solomon Guhl-Miller, Oliver Huck, Anne Ibos-Augé, Eva M. Maschke, David Maw, Dolores Pesce, Alison Stones, and Mary E. Wolinski. 4 A report of the conference can be found at Amy Williamson, ‘Montpellier in Oxford’, Early Music, 42.3 (2014), 502–03. 2