Many years ago, the Foundation for Iberian Music hosted a concert, symposium, and doctoral seminar on El Llibre Vermell of Montserrat, featuring guest speaker Maricarmen Gómez Muntané (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona). We are pleased to announce that Prof. Gómez Muntané has now published an edition of the Llibre Vermell. El Llibre Vermell: Cantos y danzas de fines del Medioevo  (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2017) is both a black and white facsimile edition and modern critical edition of the manuscript’s music. 

El Llibre Vermell is a 14th century devotional manuscript in Latin, Occitan, and Catalan and contains six folios of music—songs described in the manuscript as “chaste and pious” songs and dances for pilgrims to Montserrat. Montserrat is the home of the Black Madonna and was rumored in the Middle Ages to be the hiding place of the legendary Holy Grail. The abbey’s extensive libraries were destroyed in 1811 when Napoleon’s armies sacked it; El Llibre Vermell is one of the only books that survived.

Gómez Muntané’s edition is listed at only 16,90€, and it received a glowing review in Sonograma Magazine, which you can read here.