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.

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...