Michal, Denys, Thomas, Sean, Roman, and others - thanks a lot for the responses! so, it looks like there were manuscript versions of French Chansons preceding Attaignant but only just barely. What I'm trying to explore is the role that Attaignant and other printers of his generation might have had not just on the distribution but on the actual content of the music they published. In other words did they actively encourage Sermisy and others to make their music "easier to play" as compared to the preceding era of post- burgundian chansons (ockeghem, busnoys, etc) and in doing so inadvertently propel the transition from medieval to renaissance music forward...?
So, it would very interesting to see how those earlier manuscript versions might have differed from the Attaignant versions, and also how Amerbach's intabs (pre attaignant) differed from later lute intabs of the same music - which might help to determine what effect, if any, Attaignant and the printers might have had on the compositions. -Eric -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
