Abstract

The so-called ‘Gruuthuse’ manuscript (Den Haag, Royal Library 79 K 10 ; facsimile at http://www.kb.nl/bladerboeken/het-gruuthuse-handschrift) recently (2007) changed ownership, entering the public domain. The convolute has long been known to scholars of Middle Dutch – and also to musicologists – as one of the principal sources of poetry and music from late medieval Bruges but practically remained inaccessible, severely hampering research. Its unexpected notational style (so-called “stroke notation”) further contributes to the marginalization of the repertory. The change in ownership and the resulting easy access to the source now invite new research into this unique manuscript and its contents. The superb quality and the complex intertextualities that characterize both texts and music of the manuscript are becoming ever more evident as scholars are gradually delving deeper into the repertory, gradually opening up a window on an entire layer of musico-poetic life in Bruges and, by extension, the Low Countries that otherwise would remain almost completely hidden from view.

In my paper, I shall give an overview of the manuscript’s history and contents, followed by two case studies examining two aesthetic extremes of the ‘Gruuthuse’ poet-musicians: supreme complexity, on one hand, and “popularisant” simplicity, on the other. Both, I submit, are highly artificial poses struck by the Bruges poet-musicians for the purpose of constructing their own (civic) identities.