Miss Lottie Wells

My PhD focuses on the addition of neumes and the codicology of musical manuscripts. 

Throughout the tenth and eleventh centuries, neumes were added into the interlinear spaces, margins, flyleaves and other blank sections of pre-existing manuscripts, some centuries old at the time of the additions. These notations are rarely catalogued or studied in the detail they deserve. While some of these marginal notations may represent probationes pennae, this term can misrepresent the nature of such addenda, which I loosely classify as ‘reactionary’, ‘opportunistic’ and ‘depository’. My research combines musicological, palaeographical and codicological analysis to emphasise the value of this repository, paying particular attention to their role in different early medieval settings.