490 Notes, March 2008 systems and are transmitted in numerous musical sources: Byzantine, Latin, and Slavonic. The approach to this material is quite innovative; Floros insists on thorough study of the neume repertories based on an interdisciplinary and comparative method- ology. The theory of neumes is considered not simply as a paleographical discipline, but as a theory of musical figures and their musical meaning, a statement, which is proved in the course of the entire book. Problems from the field of history, theory and palaeography of music, liturgy, linguis- tics, theology, archeology, and cultural an- thropology are sharply outlined. The sys- tematization and classification of the neumatic notations are based on a series of objective criteria. It is always the musical text and the historical evidence that con- trol the research and conclusions. The au- thor shows that the connections between early Byzantine church music and the mu- sic of the Western church are much closer than one had assumed. Thus new perspec- tives on the study of medieval music be- tween East and West are opened. Byzantine, Slavonic, and Latin neume notations are presented in three major chapters. The development of the Byzan- tine notation, according to changes from the tenth to the nineteenth centuries, is di- vided into four stages that are confirmed in Byzantine, Bulgarian, Serbian, Walachian, and Moldavian sources. Floros’s classifica- tion of the stages of Paleobyzantine nota- tion was recognized as the standard classifi- cation in 1992 and this is among the greatest achievements of his research. The discussion of the Slavonic notation starts with the correct statement that the South Slavs (Bulgarians and Serbians) and the Eastern Slavs (Russians) took over the Byzantine liturgy as well as Greek liturgical texts translated into Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian) when they were Christianized in the ninth and tenth cen- turies. With the help of combined method- ologies, Floros defends his conception about deciphering Old Slavonic kondakar- ian notation, which was considered an enigma for a long time. In a broad comparative way the author discusses the Latin neumes as well. He is in- terested first of all in their relationships with the Byzantine neumes. Detailed com- parisons between corresponding Latin and Byzantine neumes led the author to the conclusion that the classification worked out for Latin neumes corresponds exten- sively with the typology of Paleobyzantine signs. As a whole, Rome, according to Floros, took over, with certain changes, chant notation from Byzantium. The author goes far beyond the title of the book; he gives an introduction not only to the theory of neumes, but also to the history of monodic music of Byzantine, Slavonic, and Latin churches and the nota- tions used by them. For the first time, the neumatic notations are investigated com- paratively in onomasiological, semeio- graphical, and semasiological aspects. The problems of the theory of neumes are dis- cussed on the basis of extremely rich mate- rial of comprehensive samples of manu- scripts, some of which are published for the first time in this volume. There is a lot we can derive from the in- sights of Floros’s research. And we have; in almost every publication on early medieval notation during the last thirty years schol- ars from different generations have made use of his methodology, systematizations, and classifications. The research of Floros has provoked new studies, initiated new ideas, and fascinated various specialists in medieval music to continue his work, which confirms that the fundamentals in the study of neumes have been well established by him. Svetlana Kujumdzieva Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Art Studies, Sofia Sung Birds: Music, Poetry, and Nature in the Later Middle Ages. By Elizabeth Eva Leach. Ithaca: Cornel University Press, 2007. [xiii, 345 p. ISBN-10 0801444908; ISBN-13 9780801444913. $55.] Illustrations, music examples, bibliographical references, index, appendices. In Sung Birds, Elizabeth Leach argues that rationality lay at the heart of many def- initions of music in the Middle Ages and, on this basis, sounds like the calls of birds were excluded as musical utterances. But Leach goes further, demonstrating that there existed in medieval musical culture,