Songs are always interesting objects to study, because they involve text (often with a very particular structure), music (also with special features), and context (often quite elaborate). For this reason, most studies of songs restrict themselves to repertoires within a single cultural area—often a language area—and also within a certain historical period. The book under review here still adheres to a chronological demarcation, the early modern period, but it transgresses linguistic and cultural borders by including essays about song repertoires in the Low Countries, France, the German-speaking areas, the British Isles, and Scandinavia. And it is indeed surprising to see how many of the phenomena that one knows very well from the study of songs in one’s own culture and history also happen to be of importance in the song cultures of other areas.

Identity, Intertextuality, and Performance contains fourteen essays by authors from seven countries. The essays discuss a great variety of subjects within the field of song culture: congregational singing, sacred songs of various denominations, songs found in alba amicorum and other manuscript sources, songs with a political or nationalist message, and so on. Some essays have to do with songs in private spaces, others with songs performed in public environments. The order of the essays is by area: first there are studies on sacred songs; then on secular songs of a private character, including love songs; and then songs for public occasions, including ballads and political songs. Most contributions deal with song repertoires from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century; two concentrate on the period from around 1800; one deals with early nineteenth-century songs, stretching the early modern period until 1848 in doing so. The title brings the expectation that these songs and their singing are approached with particular emphasis on identity, intertextuality, and performance, and this is indeed the case. These three key concepts, however, stand in different relations with songs or song repertoires: intertextuality is a property directly related to the textual content of a song (and of the music, if musical notes are also considered to be text); performance is an act in which both the song and the singer participate; identity is a property of the singer in the first place. Unfortunately, the introductory chapter of the volume does not sort out the intricacies of these concepts, nor does it note their quite different standings. In vain one looks for a basic discussion of them, but even definitions are lacking. The concepts are simply taken for granted and illustrated by examples that are not always appropriate. Identity, for example, is connected with groups, whereas in the essays that follow the introduction it appears time and again that songs also play a very important role in the formation of individual identities. And if local songbooks are connected with local identities, at least a qualification is necessary: if many people who claim a certain local identity are nevertheless unaware of the existence of a particular local songbook, the songbook belongs to a subclass of that local identity at best. In the introduction, intertextuality is mostly confined to contrafact, therefore leaving aside many other interesting types of intertextuality and also the possibility of musical intertextuality.

The extent to which the individual essays pay tribute to the three key concepts varies greatly. Intertextuality is discussed in a few essays only, and performance in a few more. Identity, on the other hand, is discussed in all contributions; in some, the word occurs so often that it gets irritating. Despite this criticism, however, one can say that the individual contributions are of high quality, well written, and on interesting topics with a lot of detail. The book is carefully edited and nicely produced. Most often song texts are cited in translation in the main text, with the original text in a footnote. There are many illustrations, some of them in full color. As a final remark, there are, regrettably, no indexes, neither of personal names nor of titles or subjects. Despite these few critical remarks on secondary matters, the book is worthy to be read or purchased as a very useful introduction to the wonderland of song and song culture in the early modern period.