How slow for Danse de Cleves?

A dance from the Brussels manuscript that is widely known in current historic dance circles is Danse de Cleves (here's the second and third pages). Many different reconstructions of this dance exist, because it seems that not all the intended steps were recorded in the manuscript. In his new book Mullally (see my previous post) comes up with a rather unique solution - without interpolating additional steps - but is it plausible?

Danse de Cleves is one of the handful of dances in the Brussels manuscript to have more elaborate mensural music, which might seem like a good place to start in deciding how the simplified breve notation of the other dances should be interpreted. Note in the following that I do not think there is any dispute that, in general, 'breve' =  'step', i.e., a double (d), two singles (ss), desmarche (r), or branle (b), as these numbers match up for nearly all the dances.

It is fairly apparent that there is a pulse of 3 in the music of Danse de Cleves. I'll call a set of 3 minims (the unstemmed open notes in the manuscript notation,  resembling a modern semibreve) a 'bar' for the current discussion. The first repeated phrase in the music is then 8 bars long, then there is a 4 bar repeated phrase, and so on; the whole is 8+8+4+4+8+4+4+8+8=56. So this does not itself clarify if 2 or 4 bars should be taken to correspond to a breve or double step.

It is musically clear that if this tune is an example of diminuation of a sequence of breves (as suggested by Mullally p.23-24), that sequence must be moving every 2 bars. It is not possible to recover a plausible breve sequence from a 4-bar grouping of this tune. But conversely, if one did recover a sequence, it would be very atypical (rather more like a 'ground' than the sequences of breves found in the rest of the manuscript, perhaps one reason why modern audiences find the tune so accessible). So maybe this is not the best criteria.

Mullally says (p74) that "the vertical lines on the stave in the manuscript are an indication that, in transcription, there are four bars to each step". However, he does not comment here on the very striking arrangement of the text under the stave, in which the initial sequence of the dance (Rb ss ddd ss d^r, i.e., 8 steps) is carefully spread over the first 8+8 bars, and then at the strong musical change, the differing instructions for the man and woman (ssd + ssd) are squashed under the 4+4 bar phrases. There's even a little kink in the outline drawn from the stave around the text, to make the relation of text and music clear. It is hard to imagine stronger evidence that each 'ssd' takes 4 bars and not 8 bars, meaning each step (or breve) corresponds to 2x3 beats, not 4x3.

In fact this alignment has already been dismissed by Mullally, first on p15 "in the case of ... Danse de Cleves, the choreographical directions have sometimes been squeezed in wherever the scribe can find space" and then on p26 as "the steps are placed arbitrarily under the music".

So how does he (re-)arrange it (p52-53)? By taking each step to equal 4 bars, he stretches the initial 8 step sequence out to last 32 bars. The ssd+ssd he fits to bars 33-48, and then the final instructions, another ssd (perhaps ambiguous in the instructions if this should repeat, but which in any case appear in the manuscript to again be carefully aligned to the 4+4 musical theme, bars 33-40), he fits to bars 49-56.

Admittedly this has the advantage of not just making up something to fill in what appear to be missing steps under bars 25-32 and 42-56, which is the solution I have seen in all previous reconstructions (including my own). But it does seem the result would be either a very slow and boring dance, or a very frantic pace required by the musicians, or both.

Timing

So - apologies that time indeed got away from me and all went quiet for a while. But now I am inspired to post again by an issue about timing, or rather, tempo.

I've been reading the recent publication The Brussels Basse Danse Book, by Robert Mullally. It contains lots of interesting material about the background to this late 15th century manuscript, but I want to focus on one aspect regarding the interpretation of the music.

For the most part, the notation in the manuscript consists of a sequence of breves, one for each 'movement' (a double, a pair of singles, etc.) of the dance. I thought it was fairly widely accepted that each should be interpreted as a bar of 6/4, i.e., 2 groups of 3 beats. However Mullally argues that each should be 4 groups of 3 beats. This has a very substantial effect on feel of the dance, as it moves the double from being 'undulated' (in 6/4, stepping on 1,3,4) to being 'square' (in 12/4, stepping on each group of 3, to be effectively dancing in 4/4).

The manuscript itself is confusing because it says the tempo is 'major perfect' - which implies a main subdivision of the breve into 3, which does not fit either of the above schemes. Mullally first discusses this (p24) as implying 6/4, then argues for his 12/4 interpretation, naming this as 'major imperfect'. He then goes on, in his transcription, to inaccurately render (or intentionally 'fix'?) the relevant words in the text (p34) as 'maier imparfait' (I've just checked a facsimile, and it is definitely 'maier parfait' in the original).

There are some arguments for the 4x3 interpretation. For example this is very clearly the basse danse tempo given by Arbeau (writing around 1580, when the dance had gone out of fashion). Arena, writing in 1528 (although not actually providing music) says that each 'longa' is made up of four semibreves, where a longa clearly corresponds to a double. Arena also stresses several times that each 'movement' has 4 beats, e.g., a simple takes 2 beats.

The main counterarguments come from the relationship to the Italian bassa danza, which is almost as clear (from the match of music notation to instructions) in indicating a tempo of 6/4. As this is contemporary, and the Burgundian and Italian sources even borrow some dances from each other, it seems like good evidence. Not everyone agrees - I found that the (rather dated) 'World History of the Dance' (Sachs, 1937) contains an argument that "the basse dance is at all times and in all countries in even time". Mullaly does not discuss this anomaly, or clarify if he agrees with Sachs for the Italian bassa danza, despite elsewhere (e.g. p20) talking about a close relationship between the genres.

Other internal evidence comes from the small number of dances in Brussels that actually have mensural notation - e.g. Danse de Cleves - which I will discuss in a future post.

Canons of Rhetoric

Rhetoric was part of the 'standard' education in the middle ages - although whether the 'standard' medieval minstrel would have received such an education is not so clear (maybe material for another post in future). Nevertheless, the ideas would have been in the air, and perhaps familiar in some way to all those associated, even intermittently, with noble courts, universities and the ecclesiastical.

The classical canons of rhetoric, from Aristotle and Cicero, are:

• Invention
• Arrangement
• Style
• Memory
• Delivery

Although rhetoric is technically about how to make speeches, to persuade an audience of some particular case, or in more general terms, about communication of ideas, it seems clear this is also a useful categorisation, or set of guidelines, for a musician to consider when approaching performance. Indeed, poetry and song were not such distinct categories in the middle ages, so the musical was more closely linked to the verbal.

Note that 'invention' here does not necessarily correspond to  'composition' in the sense of coming up with something completely new, but is more about how to select your material, or vary it. Similarly 'arrangement' is both about the most effective order of presentation, but also ways to make an effect through alteration of the order. But over the next few posts I'll try to go through each 'canon' to give examples of the ideas they encompassed in classical and medieval thought, and how these might apply to instrumental music performance in particular.

As always with these posts, this will be mostly a matter of setting myself a task to research an idea, and passing along what I find out in terms that I hope some other contemporary 'medieval musicians' might find useful...

More soon

Between work and travel, I haven't found time to update this blog as often as intended. So this is just a note to say there will be more soon! As writing on this blog is mostly a way to get myself to think and read more about medieval music, and in writing, to organise my thoughts, I won't be giving it up yet. But it would be nice to know if anyone is reading and finds particular topics of interest.

Otherwise, I am intending to follow up some the ideas about the application of  'rhetoric' to instrumental arrangement and performance of medieval tunes. There are many scholarly studies of the connection of rhetoric and music, and it is clear that canons of rhetoric were an important part of medieval learning and thought. But I want to take a more practical approach - are there rhetorical techniques and devices regarding construction and presentation of persuasive verbal arguments that can be directly used to improve the 'persuasiveness' of a musical performance?

Drones and polyphony

My last post discussed a little the idea of adding a drone to a monophonic piece as an effective way to enhance an instrumental performance. It illustrates a more general idea - if you are going to borrow from the vocal repertoire (and as a medieval instrumentalist, you are going to quickly run out of repertoire unless you do) then it is useful, perhaps essential, to think beyond just playing the notes in the vocal score on your instrument. Rather, you need to investigate what your instrument can bring to this tune. Many good musicians do this instinctively but it is useful (especially for those of us who aren't 'instinctive' musicians) to think about it consciously as well.

I should thank a workshop with the fantastic lutenist Crawford Young for making this point explicit (and Chris for reminding me of it). Young complained of students presenting him with a 'note perfect' instrumental rendition of an Ars Nova motet - his comment was "what is the point?". An instrumental version of a vocal piece should not just be a pale reflection of what would be better sung, presenting the notes without the words. It should use the song as the starting point for something else.

But to get back to drones. Clearly if a polyphonic vocal piece is played with at least one drone instrument (such as bagpipe, hurdy-gurdy or (arguably) medieval fiddle) on one of the parts, then a drone will be added to the polyphonic texture. A repertoire we often explore in such a way is the medieval conductus: technically, sacred music but not 'liturgical' in the sense that it is not an essential part of the mass. We have found many examples of two-part conductus that sound great in a two bagpipe performance. In taking this music as a jumping off point for an enjoyable instrumental performance, are we doing something inherently modern, or could this be defended as plausible historical practice?  

Adding a drone

I thought it might be interesting to look a little more into the use of drones in medieval music (that is, having a consistent sounding of the tonic or home note of the tune throughout the tune). It certainly seems to work well for a lot of tunes, and is a common feature of modal monophonic music in other cultures, but do we know if it was actually a feature of music in Europe in the middle ages?

For some instruments, a drone is more or less built in, with obvious examples being the hurdy-gurdy and bagpipe, although in fact early depictions of bagpipes do not always show a drone; and it is not always evident from descriptions and depictions of early hurdy-gurdies (synfonie or organistrum) that they necessarily included drone strings.

As mentioned in my last post, fiddles with flat bridges lend themselves readily to addition of a drone. Plucked strings such as early lutes etc. can be effectively played with one of the open strings used intermittently to create a drone effect. On the harp, the easiest way to add something with the other hand to a monophonic piece is to pluck a drone, but there is a strong temptation to make it 'movable' (i.e. to go to adjacent notes as the tune moves) which is not strictly a drone.  

So far these are all single instruments producing drones to accompany themselves - would musicians playing together have sometimes done so with one simply playing a drone? I previously discussed the early 'wind band' which seemed to consist of two or more natural trumpets with a shawm - which would seem to point to something more or less drone-like (including the tonic, fifth and octave) in the accompaniment.

However, in terms of direct evidence of use of a drone as a standard way to enhance a monophonic tune, I haven't been able to find very much so far. In fact the only direct description  I have found comes from a text on training singers, the Summa musice (which has been variously dated from the 12th to 14th century). This says that two part music (dyaphonia) includes 'baslicam' and 'organicam'; in 'dyaphonia basilica' one musician holds one note as basis, the other starts on fifth or octave and makes ascending and descending passages, joining with the bass at the cadences ("agreeing in his pauses with the one who holds the foundation for him").

Droning on

One of the first groups to really grab my attention and engage my enthusiasm for medieval music was Sinfonye, with their core sound established by Stevie Wishart's fantastic fiddle and sinfonye playing. In particular, her fiddle style is strongly drone based, an approach that seems well justified by the existing evidence for relatively flat bridges and consonant open string tuning in early fiddles, as well as its general effectiveness for modal tunes. Every so often I have encountered people who really do not enjoy music with drones (they also dislike bagpipes, for example) but more often I find the average listener who knows little about early music finds the sound particularly exciting and enjoyable, often without really knowing why.

So I was very interested when I came across this passage from (yet another) article by Chris Page about the organistrum and symphonia:

How did the lettered musicians of the 13th  and 14th centuries regard drone accompaniments? Had they constructed a hierarchy of string-techniques that distinguished (a) constant drones from (b) proto-polyphonic forms blurring into (c) genuine plurilinear polyphony? If so, were they prejudiced-as most modern Western listeners are-in favour of plurilinear music?2 Can the supposed social fall of hurdy-gurdies be explained by a dependence upon drones?

As I find so often with Page, his impeccable research and beautifully phrased writing seems to have subtext about what is 'ideal'  medieval music (pure vocal polyphony), with everything else some kind of preparation or departure that should be taken less seriously. Why should we expect medieval musicians to put these different approaches in a hierarchy? And isn't the 'prejudice' one of the modern Western classical music listener (or choral scholar), rather than one common to all Western ears?

Frustratingly, however, I haven't been able to find that Page ever answered the questions posed in this introduction. The referenced article (Part 1) makes a good case that the origins of the instrument are most likely to be German, not Arabic as some have claimed; and a following article (Part 2) that 'organistrum' and 'symphonia' (and variant terms) were used fairly interchangeably, rather than the first being always the 2-person instrument as is often suggested. But I can't find trace of a Part 3.