Medieval dance

Some readers (those few of you) may have heard the BBC3 'Early Music Show' on Sunday, featuring 'Medieval Dance' (if not, you should be able to listen via that link, for the next month at least). Though it had some good points - not least a very valiant attempt by the guest dance expert Darren Royston to communicate dance via radio - and the inclusion of our very own recording of Rostibolli - it was a little frustrating as well, particularly in making no attempt at a distinction between 'medieval' and 'renaissance' dance.

For example it included everything from a completely made-up dance to the 13th century song 'Sumer is icumen in', via the 15th century Italian repertoire, to 16th century Arbeau branles, without really explaining the important differences. These include level of the evidence available for reconstruction (from 'make a guess from pictures', to 'choreographies but not explanations of the steps', to 'which foot to move where on each beat of the music'), but also big musical changes. In fact I have just noticed that the BBC website listing of the music played describes 'Dance de Cleves' and 'Washerwoman's Branle' as 'French 14th century' when they date from the late 15th and late 16th century respectively; and the 15th century Italian dances Rostibolli and Gelosia are also listed as '14th century'.

Given it is the 'Early Music' show it was also a pity there was no discussion of what is known about the instrumental ensembles that played for dancing. The programme included discussion of the Gresley manuscript which was nice, but then used as an example the dance 'Rawty' for which there is no actual music in the manuscript (the version played in the programme comes from the recent York Waits disk and was composed by them).

As so often seems to happen with early music, 'medieval' seemed to be shorthand for 'let's have some jolly fun' rather than seriously engaging with what is known about the repertoire.I somehow doubt they would accept such inaccuracies if making a programme about Baroque dance.

Playing for dancing

I've posted before about playing from memory (or 'by heart') and I think it applies more than ever to playing for dancing. The communication with your 'audience', if they are depending on you to support their movements, is absolutely crucial, and hardly possible if your eyes are glued to the music, and you have no idea how the movements and sections of the dance unfold.

I should admit, however, that often when playing I'm not always able to watch the dancing as closely as I would consider ideal, because as a dancer and dance teacher myself, it can be distracting - especially if the dancers are going wrong! Sometimes one needs just enough knowledge but not too much...

Dancing

So it has been a mad week with no time to blog, partly due to the 'day job' but also because we are preparing for a trip to Germany, to play for four days of 15th & 16th century dancing, in a medieval dance hall in a medieval village. Should be lots of fun, but needed a lot of preparation, not least getting mouth muscles strengthened up to be able to play shawm all day and late into the night.

It seems like a good prompt to post some thoughts and experiences about playing for dance. It is one of our favourite things to do, and is a great way to get experience in performing: you are not the centre of attention but it is greatly appreciated; mistakes don't get much noticed, as long as you keep going. The latter is actually fairly true even in concert settings, so it is good practice to be in a situation where stopping is not really an option and thus learn to fake it when things go a bit wrong.

But it is one of the situations where 'modern' expectations can be quite adrift from what they would have been in period. Many, if not most, historic dance groups learn and rehearse (and often perform) to recorded music. As a consequence, they tend to take their cues from quite specific instrumentation or ornamentation on the particular recording they use, to the extent that they find it difficult to dance with any other arrangement - which basically means, any live music, which is unlikely to reproduce a recording exactly, even if it is the same musicians who made the recording.

Of course, dancers in period would have had the opposite experience, having to learn and perform the dance with whatever musicians were available, and therefore experiencing substantial variety at all stages of rehearsal. Indeed, the 15th century dance masters make a point of saying that a good dancer should practice with different instruments, and not only should they not get confused in their steps, but they should be able through their style to express the different character of the music produced, e.g., by lute vs. pipe and tabor.

The new shawm sound

Thinking a bit more about my last post, another possible significant change to shawm playing technique that might date from about 1360 is the use of greater reed control and tonguing. It seems to be generally thought that shawms were (re-)introduced to Europe from the middle east where they were and are still played with reed fully inside the mouth (not in contact with the lips). Most current players agree that the 15th and 16th century shawm was played with lip control, although there is certainly still room for disagreement over how much. This could of course have been a development that came hand-in-hand with a change to the trumpet, each necessitating the adjustment in the other. It also seems the introduction of a larger shawm (or bombarde), played along with the soprano shawm occured around this time. So at least three possibilities for a very noticeable change.

The iconography of shawm players in this period seems to overwhelmingly show mouths that still rested on the pirouette rather than an 'oboe style' where the reed is held between the lips and the pirouette serves no function (or is absent). Unfortunately it is hard to tell from this to what extent, if at all,  they were using lip control - using the pirouette to support the mouth does allow the lips to control the reed enough to help with flexible intonation, tonguing and some dynamics. 'Oboe style' provides greater dynamical control, but with the result that some modern players seem to end up competing as to how just softly they can play these loud winds.

In trying to find some more scholarly backup for these changes in shawm playing style I came across this delightful rant from Jeremy Montagu:

There is no point in gripping the reed of a shawm between the lips as though it were an oboe or a bassoon; when one does so, the true shawm tone is lacking

His general point is that medieval instruments are not the same as renaissance and baroque ones:

Players must realize that if they use cornetts and sackbuts, crumhorns, rauschpfeife, gemshorns and viols, all of which date from the end of the 15th century at the earliest, and recorders, which are only a century at the most earlier, in 12th to 14th century music, they might just as well use oboes, clarinets and violins

Too many people are mixing them up, he suggests, due to unwillingness to put in the hard work to learn how to play the right instruments (or with the right technique):

...the moment that one plays before the public one has a responsibility to the public; either one says 'we are playing early music on fake instruments with fake techniques for our own enjoyment' or one does the job properly. It may mean making one's own instruments; it may mean persuading better craftsmen than oneself to make them well; it may mean a lot of work and a lot of practice, but at the moment the vast majority of early musicians are taking money under false pretences because they are not making authentic sounds.

This was written in 1975. It would be nice to think things had improved since then...

New music

I have referenced before the Limburg chronicle, as discussed in this article by Wegman. He notes that the chronicler, Wolfhagen, seems particularly excited some musical innovation in 1360:

Things changed also with regard to trumpet and shawm playing, and music progressed[lit. ascended], and had never been as good as it has now started to become. For he who was known, five or six years ago, as a good shawm player throughout the whole country  is not worth a fly now...

Wegman leaves it as something of a mystery as to what was the significant change that occurred. However in looking at the evidence for early trumpet and shawm ensemble, including a controversy I was previously unaware of, about the existence or otherwise of the slide trumpet as a precursor to the sackbutt/trombone, it seems very plausible that it was exactly the invention and spread of the slide trumpet that Wolfhagen experienced first in 1360. An article by Keith Polk notes that there is an explosion of town and household accounts recording payments to shawm and trumpet groups in Germany from about 1350 on, and specifically the term 'posaune' starts to be used in 1360 and (at least in later references) seems clearly distinguished from the standard signalling trumpet, as the instrument used to play along with shawms.

As an aside, my favourite account book reference mentioned in the article is a payment from town records in Hildesheim in 1427 "dem nigen basuner unde dem bumbarde te dranckgelde" - to the new (slide?) trumpet player and bombarde player for drink money.

As yet I don't know if anyone else has made this connection to Wolfhagen's innovation, but it seems plausible that a shawm player who previously had played in ensemble with a natural trumpet, but was now accompanied by a slide trumpet, would have a much greater flexibility in the music they could play, with a consequent noticeable jump in apparent virtuosity. There also seems to be evidence that one of the causes or consequences of this development was the ability to play instrumentally the latest Ars Nova chansons.