I couldn't agree with you more, Anne. I, too, am baffled by contributors riding their own ponies, irrelevant to the original post, rather than engaging with what I posted. And, when I'm researching and performing, I don't care whether the general public have 'acquired the taste' for medieval music: I have, and those who have too, or are just curious about it, come and see me. Some of my audience might even consider themselves to be part of the general public. I don't suppose, when Martin Carthy is making an arrangement, or Bjork is writing a song, they're too concerned about whether the great mass of the mythically uniform general public will like it. Something much more profound is at work than appealing to the lowest common demoninator. If that's what we wanted, we'd be applying for Britain's Got Talent.

I share your understanding and concern about the sensibilites of medieval writers. Often, characters were pretty monochrome and stereotypical, to express a particular trait, which in some senses is just a style of writing, but can also be profoundly problematic when women, Jews, Moors, etc. are put in a negative straightjacket from which there is no escape. You may (or may not) be interested in an article here addressing that question in relation to the Cantigas, and the compromises I come to, which amounts to not singing some material at all, and singing others as is, unaltered, but knowingly and with the audience in on it, rather like Randy Newman songs where he is a character he has created for us to examine, sometimes to laugh at or excoriate rather than be on the side of, but always with enough humanity to understand why they think and act as they do. I wonder if doing something similar might be a way forward, using the discomfort in the audience created by the clash of cultures between past and present to your dramatic advantage?