Minstrel vs. musician III

Konrad of Megenberg (c.1350) continues his discussion of music in the noble household (translation from this article):

One cultivates the beauties of music either for freedom of the spirit alone - and thus [the beauties of music] win praiseworthy masters and may be called gentlemanly and becoming - or for the sake of reward as the municipal minstrels exploit [the beauties of music] who are thus vulgar having cheap and lowly status... All ability exercised for gain is beggarly and of a maidservant's condition, because to practice it is to play the beggar. But the begging artist perverts precious arts, making a handmaid of the mistress and a slave of the freewoman.

It does seem a bit unfair of Konrad to say that anyone practicing or playing music out of the necessity or hope of making some money is thereby debasing the art. Although it is a recognised trope, going back to Aristotle, to divide "cultured amateurs from vulgar professionals" in the arts (Page, p.196); and is still seen as somewhat suspect today to practice any art with the intention of making money from it ("selling out").

Chris Page, in discussing this passage, emphasises that Konrad is making a distinction between 'musicians' [musicus] who are servant-entertainers [servi delectabilibus] in the household, and 'minstrels' [ioculatores] who practice music as their profession (and expect to be paid for it). Page suggests the former are amateurs, in the sense that they principally held some other role in the household (e.g. herald, messenger, groom of the chamber) and only incidentally provided music, perhaps being rewarded with a gift for 'practicing their minstrelsy' on some occasion, but not paid a regular wage for providing music per se.

As usual with these things, it is probably not such a sharp divide, with some of those attached to the household employed specifically as musicians but sometimes carrying out other duties (taking messages seems to be particularly common) and others employed in non-entertainer roles but able to perform music (or entertain in other ways) when requested. Perhaps it is notable in this context that Konrad does not appear to use the term menestrellus.

Banish the sober fiddles

Konrad of Megenberg observed in about 1350:

Indeed, in modern times the shawms and loud trumpets generally banish the sober fiddles from
the feasts, and the young girls dance eagerly to the loud noise, like hinds, shaking their buttocks womanishly and rudely.

(N.B., this translation and those that follow are based on the transcription and translation of the manuscript presented by Chris Page in this article).

Apart from conjuring up a fascinating image of what 14th century dance may have been like - very different from the image we get from actual dance manuals when they arrive in the 15th century - it is interesting confirmation of shawm+trumpet becoming the standard loud combination in this period. Moreover Konrad gives a more detailed insight into the categories of players of loud winds, which he calls the 'macrofistulus'. He describes four types. First:

The burduna player is the one who sounds a certain elephantine cry on the burduna or on the oliphant. [Burdunicen esc qui in burduna aut in barritona quodam barrito elephantino sonoral] 

I've been looking at a few beautiful carved oliphants recently (see picture), but essentially they are a hunting horn, likely to be used for signalling rather than music per se. However, a nice aside is to find out that Latin has a specific word, 'barritus', for 'the cry of an elephant'.







Second:

The musicen is the one who plays the  musa [pipe] which is also called bombina from its sound. For it buzzes with a great trumpet blast or din of sound, and on this account it differs from the oliphant. The large pipe in some instruments is joined with minor pipes, as in the case of organs, or with the tibia as in the bagpipe. 

The context here seems to be suggesting a single reed pipe, as in a bagpipe drone (although the drone also seems a possible intepretation of the 'burdana' above). The emphasis on volume seems a bit odd, as single reeds are usually substantially softer than double reeds.Also, their use as  a single instrument seems to be much more a 'folk' tradition (e.g. the hornpipe) than something to be found in the courtly scene that Konrad is discussing.

Third and fourth:

The tubicen is the one who makes music with the masculine tuba [trumpet] (it is called 'masculine' because of the moderate coarseness of its sound) . The tibicen is the one who makes music on the feminine tibia [shawm] (called 'feminine' from the thinness and harshness of its sound).

 He can't resist a misogynist dig:

The tuba and tibia do not differ save by the largeness and smallness of their respective sounds, just as the masculine voice—as with many things—is greater by nature than the female voice.

 But then he observes:

These two instruments sound well together according to due proportions in 4ths, 5ths and octaves just as the character of the melody requires.

It seems clear then that the shawm and trumpet combination were playing some form of polyphony, and it becomes interesting then to speculate how the limited notes available on the natural trumpet might have worked in such a context. There also seems to be a close association of this combination with the drum (more so than for later loud wind bands). For example, Konrad notes (admittedly for a different performance context):

Wherefore these three concordant instruments [shawm, trumpet and drum] are most fit to be set and often employed in the first attack of battle to terrify the enemy and encourage allies.

Noisy feasts

I mentioned a few posts ago that trumpets and drums at feasts seemed to be commonly referred to in the medieval period, and just recently saw this lovely ivory from a 14th century Italian chest, with three trumpeters and a nakers player entertaining some feasting nobles.

However it does make me wonder what they played. Obviously the instruments are suitable for fanfares at key moments, such as entrances of important people, serving of food, and so on. But did they play more extended pieces as general entertainment? Did they provide 'background music' in the sense of relatively continuous performance that was not the main focus of attention? It is hard to imagine trumpets being suitable for this, partly due to being tiring to play at length, and also for volume, but then why not at a noisy feast? Did they play for dancing - are these the 'minstrels' described in the French romances who played as the nobles danced after feasting, and then stopped (tired out!) while the nobles continued to sing and dance?

And does the picture above actually show two trumpets and a shawm (the shorter instrument on the left, which now I look again, seems to be being held in a different way)? Could literary descriptions of 'trumpets' at feasts potentially refer to such mixed ensembles?

Sacred music for the loud band

I've just got back from a concert at the Juilliard School in New York, by their newly-formed loud band. Apart from the problem that it wasn't at all loud (all pieces were performed by mixed shawms and dulcians, with the shawms played oboe style to balance with the dulcians; which to my mind is a complete waste of shawms) one interesting point was made about repertoire. This was a mention of the fact that the Philidor manuscript, a collection of reed instrument music from the late 17th century, includes a 'Symphonie du Misereres' which is from a (16th century) mass of Orlando de Lassus. Some solid justification then, that vocal sacred music was recycled by instrumentalists, including loud bands.

Perhaps still a stretch to justify our shawm and bagpipe versions of (13th century) Notre Dame polyphony, however.

Nakers

Including a comment on an earlier post about drums, I have had a recent coincidence  of references drums and trumpets at medieval events. As mentioned in that comment, Gawayne and the Green Knight describes trumpets, nakers and pipes at a feast. Then I saw a small exhibition at the Met in New York (my present location) about 'bazm & razm' ('feast & fight' in Persian medieval kingship) which noted particularly the frequent conjunction of trumpets and naqqara in illustrations of hunting and battle. And then ran across the book by Frank D'Accone 'The civic muse', about music in Sienna in the middle ages and renaissance, which describes frequent reference in the 14th century town council accounts to trumpets and nakers, e.g.

A decree from 11 August 1379 mentions eight tenured musicians and says that henceforth the six trumpeters, the shawm player and the drummer [often specified as the nakers player] were each to have two new uniforms every year but they would not receive a salary for the months in which clothing was issued.

Chaucer's harpist

In Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, there is this description of a harpist (Book II lines 1030-1036):

For though the beste harpour upon lyve 
Wolde on the beste souned Ioly harpe
That ever was, with alle his fingres fyve,
Touche ay o streng, or ay o werbul harpe,
Were his nayles poynted never so sharpe,
It shulde maken every wight to dulle,
To here his glee, and of his strokes fulle.

The context is Troilus being advised not to be too repetitive in writing a love letter: touching always one string or always harping the same tune would dull the listeners' wits. no matter how good the harp or harpist.

But the details are interesting. Using "all fingers five" is almost never done in any current style of harp playing (the only exception I have encountered is damping with the little finger in one of the Robert ap Huw motifs). Was it more common in the 14th century, or is Chaucer just not a very close observer of harp players? This could explain confusion over four vs. five fingers, but the "nayles pointed" is unlikely to be pure invention. Pointed nails are needed for nail plucking technique, which these days particularly associated with the wire-strung clarsach, but sometimes used on gut or other strings. Was nail technique more standard then, or could Chaucer in England have seen the Irish/Scottish clarsach played enough to have that impression of how the 'best harper' would play?

Further inventions

Another (in)famous case of 'discovery' of early music from Scotland hidden in the architecture is the 'Rosslyn Motet', based on stone carvings in Rosslyn chapel. As for the Stirling heads, a irregularly repeating pattern was taken to indicate music, this time by a claimed analogy to 'Chladni' vibration patterns. This was used as the basis of a 'reconstruction' widely hailed in the media as a rediscovery of a 15th century piece of music.

I can recommend reading the debunks posted here and here.

Note I have no problem with any musician or composer taking any route they like from the inspiration of some existing medieval art and architecture to the development of a new musical piece or performance. But the general (or even the musically educated) public's understanding of medieval music is fuzzy enough, without muddying the waters with these kinds of inflated claims of 'discovery'.

Musical reconstructions

It is likely that one reason behind the somewhat uncritical embrace of claims for medieval origins for some 'traditional' Scottish songs is that there is not much else available. There are no surviving sources for secular song; and only a handful of manuscript sources for religious music, which tend to largely overlap in content and/or style with sources for church music in other countries. Good evidence that Scotland was not a backwater but rather participated in a Europe-wide musical culture; but not so helpful if trying to programme a concert of 'medieval Scottish music'.

Another consequence seems to be the fad for 'discovering' early music from Scotland that has been preserved in some less obvious form than musical notation. A recent example that attracted substantial attention was the 'Music of the Stirling Heads' (a reasonably clear, if uncritical, summary of the 'discovery' is given by harpist Bill Taylor here). An apparently arbitrary pattern of O, I, II marks around the edge of a ceiling roundel carved in 1540 has been interpreted as equivalent to the binary sequences (0s and 1s) found in the Robert ap Huw manuscript of harp music , where they represent patterns of musical tension and resolution in the compositions it contains. So at best this is the barest outline of music, on the basis of which anything like a 'reconstruction' of a tune, let alone an instrumental arrangement (or a dance!) is wild speculation.

But far more likely, I think, just a bit of random decoration.

To learn his craft

A nice little bit of late evidence that musicians were paid by their patrons to travel to study music. Purser quotes the 1474 household accounts for James III of Scotland:

Item, gevin at the kingis command the third of September to John Broun, lutare, at his passage our sey [over sea] to lere [learn] his craft - five pounds

and shortly after

a barrell of salmond that was send to a lutare to Bruges, at the kingis command 

Why "Hey, tutti taitie" (the tune to "Scots wha hae") Doesn't Sound Medieval

I've actually found a news article from 1913 which, from my limited understanding of French, looks like a fairly thorough debunk of the 'Chateau de Blois' evidence for an early origin of the tune. But as with so many things, it seems the legend is more powerful. Meanwhile Chris offers this commentary based on the tune itself:

As Cait has mentioned there is a curiously widespread notion that "Hey,tutti taitie" (the tune used by Robert Burns for his song "Scots wha hae") is a medieval melody, played at Bannockburn in 1314 and/or by the Scots at the Siege of Orleans in 1429. To most people who see the clear differences (see 'Pre-Early Music') between medieval music (roughly up to 15th C) and Renaissance and later music  this notion is obviously tosh - the melody in no way sounds medieval and seems post-Renaissance (at a guess 18th C). But how can we say that?

I am not a Comparative Musicologist but I have played an awful lot of medieval music. So here is my view of why the tune (at least as found in most editions of Burns' songs, e.g., here) doesn't sound medieval.

1. The rather clear feel of harmony. In each set of two bars the melody concentrates on notes of a triad. It is very rare to see such a rigid structure throughout a medieval melody, though it occasionally happens for short section - but no more than two or three 'bars'.
2. The repeated notes, that occur in many of the two-bar phrases, are rare in medieval melodies, which usually have much more melodic movement.
3. The insistantly dotted rhythm [note from Cait: Emmerson even tries to use this to argue we have here evidence for early origins of the strathspey!]. This is not at all common in medieval music; it is common in the Baroque. It is vaguely possible that the rhythm has been applied later to a melody that originally had a 6/8 sort of rhythm  but it doesn't sound that way.
4. The importance of the sixth in the mid-part of the melody (e.g. bars 5-6 and 9-10). Medieval music rarely has the 6th degree in a structural position.
5. The repeated note of the final before the stress (the 'f' at the end of bars 7 & 15). Medieval music usually resolves on the stress, not before.
6. The awful predictability. It has the four-square blockiness of Renaissance and later music.

For most instances of the word 'Medieval' here you could substitute 'Modal' and use the argument to differentiate western 'Harmonic' music from non-Western 'Modal' music. But that is not a bad guide.

Scots wha?

So after yesterday's post I got interested in following up what evidence had been brought forward to support the claim that the tune of 'Scots wha hae', also known as 'Hey tutti taiti' dated back to the early 14th century (Bannockburn) or at least early 15th century (Jean d'Arc's entry into Orleans). For example we have no less a source than the official 'Education Scotland' website saying:

"But there is, we are told, a document in the French Château Royal de Blois that says the tune was played as a march by Joan of Arc's Scottish soldiers when she entered the city of Orleans on 29 April 1429"

Unfortunately they do not divulge who told them  - but more of this mysterious French connection later.

As far as I can see there are three main lines of evidence that get discussed. The first is based on the fact that Robert Burns himself averred:

" I have met the tradition universally over Scotland, and particularly about Stirling, in the neighbourhood of the scene, that this air was Robert the Bruce's March at the battle of Bannockburn, which was fought in 1314".

This seems to be sufficient for several authors (e.g. John Purser, perhaps following Stenhouse?) to note that a verse reported in Fabyan (1516) and Caxton (1415–1492) as a satirical song about the English from 1328 (the marriage of Robert the Bruce's son) fits the tune neatly, and therefore:

"there can scarcely be a doubt that it was adapted to this very air, which must,  of course, have been quite a common tune over all Scotland long before this period" [Stenhouse]

Stenhouse also seems to be the main source of the second theory, which is that the tune known in the 18th century as 'Hey tutti taiti' was in fact the same as  " Hey, now the Day daws", a song mentioned at least as early as the start of the 16th century in several sources, including by the Scots poet Dunbar. The actual basis for this association seems slim - Emmerson mentions that another 18th century song set to the same tune as 'Hey tutti tatti' was 'Bridekirks Hunting' which has a 'now the day dawns' line. On the other hand, the early 17th century Strachloch lute book contains a setting of  'The Day Dawes' which is a completely different tune.

The third argument is stated thus by Purser:

"We know from French records that the Scottish archers brought this tune to France and that it was heard when Joan of Arc entered Orleans..." (p.63)

And indeed it does seem the tune is known in France today as the 'Marche des Soldats de R. Bruce', and is played at the annual celebrations in Orleans of Jean of Arc's victory. So what are these mysterious 'French records'? Purser cites Leonce Chomel, who in 1911 published a piano score, as part of a series of 'Vieux Airs Militaires Francais', entitled  "MARCHE DES SOLDATS DE
ROBERT BRUCE + MARCHE QUI A ESTE JOUIEE POUR L'ENTREE TRIUMPHALE DE JEHANNE LA PUCELLE, A ORLEANS". I haven't been able to track down an actual copy, but it seems that Chomel claimed the march was "taken from a manuscript in the Archives of the Chateau Royal de Blois" (Purser). Chomel also seems to have been behind the performance of the march at a military event in 1910, for which the programme made the same claim for provenance (this is mentioned by Emmerson). But here the trail seems to go cold, apart from a few sceptical comments (both in 1910 and more recently) about Chomel's musical scholarship.

Traditional tunes

So I am back home in Scotland, and in trying to think of a suitable Scottish subject was reminded of the claim occasionally encountered that the song 'Scots Wha Hae' dates from the battle of Bannockburn (1314), suggesting it would be highly suitable for us to include in our repertoire.

In fact, it is reasonably well known that the words were written by Robert Burns in 1793, imagining the words of a rousing speech by Robert the Bruce before the battle. But you can find everywhere claim that the tune "according to tradition, was played by Bruce's army at the Battle of Bannockburn, and by the Franco-Scots army at the Siege of Orleans" (Wikipedia).

However, the tune is stylistically so different from anything surviving from the middle ages that this seems vanishingly improbable; indeed it seems most likely to date from not long before the earliest known versions which have Jacobite words (i.e., early 18th century). I've never quite understood why people sometimes seem to think that 'traditional' means there was no origin, or at least, that this designation is sufficient to justify including a tune (or some other traditional activity) in a medieval event.