This study examines the relationship between sonnet form and musical form in Benjamin Britten's sonnet cycles with a view toward identifying the musico-poetic form how the musical form interprets the poetry. Several issues come to the fore: 1) articulation of the large-scale divisions of the poetic form in the music; 2) potential of the musical setting to make connections between lines of the text ; 3) potential of the musical setting to follow or imitate the thought processes of the poem; and 4) placement of the departure and return.

This study examines the thirteenth century Artesian trouvère Adam de la Halle in the manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale f.fr 25566 as it pertains to the oral/literate model for explaining characteristics of musical traditions. The fortuitous collaboration of a single scribe with a single composer on a musical collection encompassing a cross-section of thirteenth-century styles and idioms make this repertoire uniquely appropriate to a comparison of musical oracy and literacy.