Editors' Introduction

Three of the articles in this issue of Plainsong & Medieval Music were presented at a session devoted to medieval saints' offices sponsored by the Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society at the 1999 International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds. Two of the papers (Caldwell, Hiley) are devoted to English saints, while a third (Hankeln) surveys offices, monastic and secular, of the sainted royal patrons of the diocese of Bamberg, Henry and Kunigunde. Elizabeth Leach's article on the four-voice balades of Guillaume de Machaut brings together considerations of transmission, fourteenth-century contrapuntal theory, and performance practice.Beginning with this issue of Plainsong & Medieval Music every article will be preceded by a short abstract. Brief identifications of the authors, who will most likely be already known to readers in the relatively small field of medieval music research, will include their e-mail addresses.