The #1 hit in Germany (in 1350)

If yesterday's post did not whet your appetite to read the referenced article by Wegman, perhaps this will. He suggests that the tradition of musicians travelling once a year to the minstrel's schools (particularly given the purpose of this journey, in at least some accounts, is to learn new songs), could be behind the regular reports by a Limburg chronicler in the second half of the 14th century that such-and-such a song had suddenly become popular in a particular year:

"Item, around... [1350] ...one sang a new song in the German lands, which was played on shawms and trumpets everywhere, and made everyone joyful: Wysset wer den synen y vurkoys . . . ."

That is, perhaps the date of the new song was memorable because it was each year at Easter that the musicians would return from the minstrel school with something new - in the same way we now tend to associate the 'Christmas #1' with its year and vice versa. 

Also notable is that it seems these 'songs' were equally well known and propagated in instrumental arrangements, for loud bands. 

 

 

 

 

Travelling minstrels

I've argued that minstrels did not 'wander' but that does not mean they did not travel. One documented reason for travelling was to attend a 'minstrel school'. This article by Rob C. Wegman provides an excellent summary (as well as an extensive appendix of the documentary evidence) of these events which seemed to take place at least every other year, from the 1310s to the 1440s, in France or the Low Countries, during Lent. Musicians seem to have come from far and wide: Froissart describes the 1366 event in Brussels as attracting musicians from Denmark, Navarra, Aragon, Lancaster, Bavaria, and Brunswick.

Sadly, the evidence is very scant and it is hard to know what actually happened on these occasions. But relevant to my running theme, the main form the evidence takes seems to consist of notes in account books saying that the minstrels in question are being released from their usual duties, or even sponsored, to travel to the school. This is hardly the travel of 'itinerants' or  'outsiders'.


  

Well paid minstrels

Another little glimpse into medieval minstrels in Germany comes from the 'Chronicle of Hainaut', describing a feast given by the Emperor Frederic I in 1184, when his sons were knighted: "in their honour many presents were given by them and by all the princes and many nobles to knights, prisoners and crusaders as well as to ioculatores and ioculatrices [i.e., male and female minstrels]... horses, precious clothes, gold and silver".

As well as providing additional evidence of female minstrels, it shows a good standard of payment!

Medieval minstrel(s) in Germany

One reason the posting has become a little sporadic is that I am currently in Germany. So I thought I should perhaps look for some information about the medieval minstrel in Germany - what do we know about their status, for example? A chapter by Maria Dobozy in the book "The stranger in medieval society" looks interesting, but seems to assume from the outset that minstrels were wandering. Within the first paragraph she argues: minstrels are itinerant; this leads to them having only temporary social ties; and hence outsider status. But what is the evidence for this?

Dobozy quotes German law code that "Hired fighters and their children, minstrels [spellude] and all those illegitimate born...are without rights" but notes this does not mean they have no legal protection, rather that they cannot serve as witnesses or similar in a court of law. She links this to the idea that they lack social ties, hence no-one knows them well enough to trust them in this kind of legal capacity. But a minstrel who serves a regular patron, or who joins a guild to protect their business within one town, does not seem likely to have had 'pariah status'.

Even those who did perhaps find themselves performing quite often in different places seem more likely to have established a regular 'round' of the towns or castles, where they would soon be known, and hopefully welcomed back. I'm basing this judgement partly on modern experience. Nearly all musicians trying to make a living know that they do better to establish regular gigs where they are sure of a welcome than to 'wander' hopefully to somewhere they are completely unknown. I doubt the experience of the medieval musician was so different.

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.

Costume vs. clothing

I suppose one reason that I find it hard to understand the anti-period costume view for 'serious' period music performances is that I personally feel quite at home in medieval costume, to the extent I'd rather call it medieval clothing.

After all, one has to wear something in a performance, and wearing something completely everyday - e.g. scruffy trousers and pullover -  does not seem right. But then if I am going to wear something 'good' (if not necessarily evening dress) or something studiedly 'neutral' (such as the all black that is favoured by many current classical musicians as the alternative to evening dress), I will be wearing something that is deliberately making some statement to the audience. 

So why not make that statement consistent with the music I am about to present?

Unfortunately, the reality is, that if I want to make the statement 'I am a serious medieval musician', then in the current climate it is almost obligatory that I don't wear medieval clothing.

Performing in costume

This may need more than one post to discuss, but it is clear that 'serious' performers of medieval music rather look down on anyone who plays in costume. For example in the essay by Benjamin Bagby that I have discussed before, he starts out by characterising the expectations of a modern concert audience in terms of atmosphere, duration, programme notes, etc., as potentially problematic, because it influences performances in ways that have nothing to do with the medieval. I agree that performances can indeed be over-tailored to avoid any risk of audience confusion or alienation, to the detriment of authenticity. But he goes on:

 "This fear of alienation is a slippery slope descending towards the ridiculous, as any ensemble which has tried dressing up in pointy shoes and pretending to be ‘medieval’ can attest."

I should admit a bias here as someone extremely fond of the medieval pointy shoe (and so much more comfortable than the modern high heel that a female performer might otherwise be expected to wear!). But why does he think it so obviously ridiculous and pandering to the audience to dress as they did in the middle ages when performing medieval music? Why, indeed, isn't this 'odd' clothing potentially seen as more alienating  to an audience, more risky, than standard concert dress?

There are at least two issues here, I think. One is that the medieval costume is seen as all part of the 'drums and fun' attitude, which prevents the music from being taken seriously. The other, as hinted at in the quote, is that by wearing a costume, the performer is 'pretending' to be someone they are not, some character from the middle ages; rather than being themselves, playing music from the middle ages. I don't think either is a good reason to suggest the practice is inherently ridiculous.

Down or up?

One of the messages that comes across clearly from reading Berger's book on memory and medieval music is that musical instruction in the middle ages (at least for church music, for which instruction manuals survive) was heavily dependent on memorising many mnay examples of 'standard' forms, or musical formulas. In a natural relationship, the music itself can be recognised as often consisting in the re-usage and re-composition of these forms, rather than 'original' composition as we might conceive of it now.

A flip-side to this is that certain alternative 'forms', although they might seem equally conceivable and reasonably interchangeable to the modern musician, were simply not part of the vocabulary.

For example, many medieval tunes end with a sub-final to final progression (e.g. if in D-dorian, ending with F-E-D-C-D). But many instruments, particularly drone instruments such as the hurdy-gurdy, have a tuning set up such that their lowest note is the final, making this progression impossible. Modern players then tend to substitute the tone above the final, e.g. F-E-D-E-D. But this is not an ornament found in medieval music (to our knowledge), and probably would have stood out like a sore thumb to musicians at the time. Much less obviously wrong would be to play, for example, F-E-E-E-D, as a simplified form of the melody, particularly if other instruments or singers are simultaneously providing the correct progression.

Probably the best way to absorb such 'principles' is just to play lots of the (correct) melodies, so that the forms become second nature.

Medieval sophistry

Regular readers may have detected that though I often disagree with his conclusions, I find it is always illuminating to read Christopher Page, particularly for the wealth of sources he introduces. In The Owl and the Nightingale, he looks at how a famous dictum of St Jerome that "giving money to entertainers [histrionibus, which can mean minstrels] is like sacrificing to devils", often quoted as an illustration of the complete outsider status of the medieval minstrel, gets gradually softened by 12th and 13th century writers.

William of Auxerre notes that as minstrels are still men (in the image of god), and it is right to give alms to men, then it can be permissible to give alms to minstrels, that is, St Jerome's ban cannot logically be held to be absolute. Peter the Chanter says that 'some people' argue that giving money that allows someone to become a minstrel is sacrificing to demons but not if the man is already a minstrel (a rather fine distinction?)  "providing he does not give to provide any wantoness". He first appears to disagree with this view by saying that if the money is given because the man is a minstrel, it is giving to demons; but then later allows that those artisans who should be tolerated by the church include "players of musical instruments...necessary so that boredom and depression can be relieved by them, and so that devotion, and not wantonness, may be inspired by them".

However still beyond the pale are those 'histriones' who "contort and distort their bodies with shameless jumps or shameless gestures" or who flatter their current audience and say shameful things about those absent (although one writer prevaricates that it might be permissable to give money to a minstrel to stop him from saying bad things about you to others). Thomas Chobham makes finer distinctions amongst these actors, flatterers and two kinds of musical instrument players, the first who "go to public drinking houses and wanton gatherings" and incite lust, and should be shunned as St Jerome suggests, and the acceptable musicians who "sing the deeds of princes and the lives of saints" thus providing comfort to the troubled.

Problems in recovering a musical style

In an earlier post I mentioned the common assumption that, as medieval instrumental music was primarily an oral tradition, and little written notation survives, therefore most of the repertoire and performance style is simply unknown. In that post, I was moderately optimistic that we might still be able to make educated guesses to get somewhere close. However, at other times I am not so sure.

In particular I have been thinking about comparable situations where an oral musical tradition exists; has then been notated using a convention not invented for this style; and then others have 'learnt' the music from the notation without having heard the original.

Specifically I am thinking of Bulgarian music, which is quite popular for UK folk musicians to dabble in, probably because of the interesting rhythms which present an interesting challenge (and a welcome relief from dum-de-dum). But many of them seem to learn it from the page without (noticeable) effort to listen to or imitate original recordings. And if you are familiar with the original, it is clear that these 'reconstructions' are often missing all essentials of the style, so much so that it is obviously not 'Bulgarian'. For example, a Bulgarian '7/8' is not just '7/8', and it makes all the difference to the flow of the tune. Also, despite heroic efforts by some annotators, the ornamentation really cannot be captured, but is again key to an authentic sound. The problem can be increased if the music is also being played on different instruments: fiddle instead of gadulka, tin whistle instead of kaval, etc. In addition to different timbres, these will naturally lend themselves to different ways of ornamenting.

Of course, as with medieval music, it might not be a particular concern of current musicians to be authentic, and they just want to use the tune for their own musical purposes. But my point here is that it is only because we can listen to the original that we know how far the performance has deviated. Barring the invention of a time machine, we can never know for the middle ages. Maybe there is an essential lilt to the first or second rhythmic mode that we are totally missing. Maybe there was a form of ornament (similar to the constant 'vibrato', which is not exactly that and comes in several varieties, in Bulgarian music) that was absolutely ubiquitous and obvious to the medieval instrumentalist, and the absence of which in our attempted authentic performances would have them shaking their heads.

I guess this is not going to stop us playing. At least one lesson we might take is that using instruments that are as close to correct as possible might avoid some pitfalls. But we are still very probably getting it wrong...

Who played bagpipes in the middle ages?

In an earlier post I discussed medieval women playing shawms - there are illustrations; but possibly they are only being shown in an allegorical context. I just found this nice illustration of a woman playing the bagpipes, in what looks like an everyday setting. Although it is worth noting that it is still an illustration from a romance, so could reflect a poetic conceit.

One does need to be careful. After all, there are also many illustrations of pigs playing the bagpipes. In fact there are probably many more illustrations of pig bagpipers than women bagpipers in period. Iconography is not a completely safe guide to the authentic!

Knowing by heart

A striking quote from Guido of Arezzo (written around 1030):

"Because it is very much different to know something by heart than to sing it from memory, since only the wise may do the former, but fools often do the latter.”

 Today we generally take 'knowing by heart' and 'singing/playing from memory' to be synonyms, but for Guido it was the difference between fully understanding the music, and simply acquiring the ability to reproduce it by enough rote repetition. Something I have experienced both sides of myself, and that is sometime echoed (if not quite so succinctly) in current advice to musicians.

How did the renaissance influence medieval music?

I have had a blog post with this title in mind for a while, intending to discuss how modern musicians (especially if classically trained 'early music' specialists) tend to come at medieval music from renaissance music, or even from baroque. Although some are very adept (or very conscientious) at swapping styles, others seem unaware of the baggage of theory and technique they are, anachronistically,  transferring backwards.

As it turns out, the title is also very appropriate to describe the argument in Berger's first chapter (see yesterday's post) about the musicology of Friedrich Ludwig. Ludwig was in many ways an ideal scholar, compiling, cataloguing and accurately transcribing vast amounts of medieval music, arguably the first to decipher modal rhythmic notation in early polyphony (at least  the first to provide a clear written account of it, although unfortunately guilty of then insisting all early monophonic song should comply). However, as Berger explains:

"Ludwig saw medieval polyphony as the first step on an evolutionary ladder leading up to the great master Palestrina. We read in [his] 1929 text: “In the Middle Ages the lead was taken nevertheless by representatives of the polyphonic ideal, which found its highest and purest embodiment in the pure vocal music of Palestrina.”

And this has direct consequences because it means the 'importance' of medieval pieces is judged relative to their detectable conformance to the Palestrina ideal, which includes:

"sacred text, the same in all parts, purely vocal texture, consonant counterpoint producing fully triadic vertical harmonies, slowly moving parts, imitation and canons, or at least independent voice leading in all parts. When any of these are present, the pieces become more important and better for Ludwig." 

Whether as a direct influence of Ludwig, or independently motivated, I think this "seeking for the Renaissance" in the medieval is still common.

Memory and malign influence

Just stumbled upon an interesting book, Medieval Music and the Art of Memory, by Anna Maria Busse Berger (as an aside, one motivation for starting this blog was to encourage myself to spend more time in reading and research; and as I read things they motivate me to blog, in what is hopefully a virtuous circle...). Though I've still only read the introduction, I think this book is likely to form the basis of several posts in future.

The introduction makes the interesting point that plenty of evidence suggests that Notre Dame polyphony was an oral tradition. In particular:

"no manuscript of polyphonic music ever appears in the lists of choirbooks or the inventories of the library, the treasury, the bishop's chapel or the chapterhouse of Notre Dame. In short, there is every reason to investigate the possibility that this repertory was orally transmitted and that memory played a role in its composition" (p.2)

But to link this back to some previous posts, Berger also interestingly argues that one reason her topic has received little consideration hitherto, and that instead "musicologists have been applying Beethovenian art concepts to Notre Dame polyphony" is due to the influence of the early musicologist Friedrich Ludwig, who seems to have been a classic case of a music scholar who loved Renaissance music (specifically Palestrina) and never really tried to understand 'pre-early' music on its own terms.

Quiet musician

Apologies for the short gap in blogging: real life was busy the last few days. In particular doing one of the kinds of performance I most enjoy - playing for dancing. I'll be trying to resume the daily schedule from tomorrow.