Singing and playing

This time I am reading a nice article by Sylvia Huot, Voices and Instruments in Medieval French Secular Music.  As the title suggests, the article is partly a response to Chris Page (whose view can be crudely summarised as 'singing and playing didn't happen in period for troubadour song'). Huot's article contains many interesting points based on careful literary analysis.

As one example, she notes how the ambiguity of the (reasonably common) literary description of someone 'singing and playing' ("chanter et sonner") could be taken (and at least sometimes is by Page) to imply a temporal sequence - first they sang, then played - but could equally well be intended to mean simultaneous activities. She admits that many descriptions of nobles performing high-art songs describe purely vocal performance, but notes this could be as much a result of the literary context in which the descriptions occur - e.g., the protagonist of a romance is alone and complaining of their unsuccessful love affair.

Should we then conclude that it is poor performance practice to sing a troubadour song in front of an audience?

She also comes to this logical conclusion regarding vocal polyphony:

"...perhaps all descriptions of combined vocal and instrumental music refer to monody. Still, if a monophonic ballade or other chanson can be sung to fiddle or psaltery, must we assume that the combination of vocal and instrumental music would necessarily be dropped for a polyphonic piece of the same genre?"

It does indeed seem very odd to think that instrumentalists who were used to accompanying songs would for some reason never consider playing one part of a polyphonic piece while another part was sung.