It's often said that roots of Baroque are found at the end of the 16th century, and consist in the appearance of free and expressive melodies over a B.C.
OTH melodies did exist much earlier (troubadours, etc), and I hardly believe they totally disappeared in the meantime. 15th and 16th is mainly known as a Franco-Flemish period, but I haven't read much about other traditions in these times. Is it because we don't know much about more popular music? Or is it because this music was also completely Franco-Flemish-isized ? :-) Sometimes I think that Franco-Flemish school was just a magnificent exception, and that simple melodies did not "appear" at the end of the sixteenth century! (a bass is a bass, and melodies over a bass did exist before B.C, which is only a *notation* after all).
i didn't know the 15/16th cent. was referred to as a "franco-flemish period" but i couldn't agree with you more. i'm afraid there are two culprits to this disappearing act: the church and the concept of "folk" music.
i don't imagine there is anyway to prove this but i've always had the feeling that the church - in italy, at any rate - borrowed many of the devils tunes for the early, mainly anonymous hymns.
when i first became interested in early music i read that music during the medieval period was more or less the same for everyone but that with the advent of the renaissance and the growth of cities, its emphasis became urban and "country" music was simply ignored.
i find it hard to believe that a group of countrymen at a festival or out in the fields at harvest time performed no music whatsoever, preferring to wait till some fop from the castle deigned to come down and perform for them.
i would also guess that musically speaking, the country music repertoire would have been more rhythmic than melodic - work songs, etc - and centered mainly on agricultural matters ... or drinking, cheating hearts, how hard mama' tried, errant youth and folsom prison ...
>i didn't know the 15/16th cent. was referred to as a "franco-flemish
>period" but i couldn't agree with you more. i'm afraid there are two
>culprits to this disappearing act: the church and the concept of
>"folk" music.
I seem to have missed an ongoing thread here. Sorry. The fact is that beginning in the early 15th century, for reasons I have never really read a clear explanation of, musicians trained in the northern choir schools (think modern Belgium, Flanders, at that time the northern tier of the Duchy of Burgundy) were recognized by other musicians and by the folks who were in positions to hire musicians as the best in Europe. They were in great demand for several generations, worked all over Europe, and achieved positions in which they could, in turn, train the next generations of native-born musicians. (Note that I say 'musicians' and not 'composers.' If one was a musician, one was first and foremost a performing musician, and more than likely a singer of great skill.) These were the "franco-flemish" musicians who shaped renaissance musical style by trying and developing new musical ideas. Some served the court of Burgundy, some the French court, quite a few the courts and churches in the Northern Italian city-states, while Isaac landed in the Germanic kingdoms and Willaert at St. Mark's in Venice, where he was instrumental in establishing the Venetian school of composition and performance. His immediate successor there was Cipriano de Rore, another northerner, but the masters who followed were in general native Italians.
>i don't imagine there is anyway to prove this but i've always had the
>feeling that the church - in italy, at any rate - borrowed many of the
>devils tunes for the early, mainly anonymous hymns.
It sort of depends on what you picture as "early," and whether you truly mean "hymns" (newly composed settings of non-liturgical poetry) or more simply "chant" (which included both liturgical and non-liturgical text settings). But in any case I'm in the dark about what you think 'disappeared' or what borrowed tunes might have to do with it. "L'homme armé" didn't disappear from the secular repertoire when church musicians started using it in their church music!
>when i first became interested in early music i read that music during
>the medieval period was more or less the same for everyone but that
>with the advent of the renaissance and the growth of cities, its
>emphasis became urban and "country" music was simply ignored.
I'm curious where you read this. For much of the medieval period--which has been defined differently by different scholars, with AD 600 being one benchmark (during the reign of Pope Gregory I)--we have no trace of the music either inside or outside the church, because there was no available notation and it was passed on as traditional, newly improvised, or learned by rote in the choir schools. The earliest readable notation was developed in the church, of course, because virtually the only education available was within the church. Once that notation was available (Guido invented it in the early 11th century, but that does NOT mean that it was instantly adopted all over Europe!), it could be and was used by trained scribes to write down the secular music of the upper class Trobadors, Trouvéres and Minnesänger, but this can hardly be considered 'folk' music or 'country' music. No one in the "country" would have had access to those scribes, and more than likely their music continued to be fairly simple and traditional.
Don't forget that the proximate reason for the growth in importance of cities as centers for trade was the pandemic Black Death that killed a third of the population of Europe, including too many of the ruling classes--already a tiny fraction of the population--to allow the older social system to survive. It's true that the best musicians and the largest musical establishments were maintained by the larger churches and the larger courts, and it was their move from country estates to urban centers that marks the beginning of what non-musical historians call the Early Modern era.
>i find it hard to believe that a group of countrymen at a festival or
>out in the fields at harvest time performed no music whatsoever,
>preferring to wait till some fop from the castle deigned to come down
>and perform for them.
You certainly have a rose-colored picture of country life!! (Sounds like you're thinking about the Charlie Daniels Band in "Back to the Future Part III"!) The land was worked by serfs, who were legally tied to the land and were virtually slaves. It was damned hard work, and their lives were often short and brutal. This is not a class of people who show up at a festival dressed as gentleman farmers!!!
>i would also guess that musically speaking, the country music >repertoire would have been more rhythmic than melodic - work songs, etc
>- and centered mainly on agricultural matters ... or drinking, cheating
>hearts, how hard mama' tried, errant youth and folsom prison ...
And I would guess that your romanticized picture of 'country music' goes no further back in history than the 'happy darkies picking cotton' in the 19th century U.S. of A. I realize that you have your tongue firmly in cheek, but somebody might actually take you seriously!!
John
-- John & Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:John.How...@vt.edu)
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
John Howell wrote: > You certainly have a rose-colored picture of > country life!! (Sounds like you're thinking > about the Charlie Daniels Band in "Back to the > Future Part III"!) The land was worked by serfs, > who were legally tied to the land and were > virtually slaves. It was damned hard work, and > their lives were often short and brutal. This is > not a class of people who show up at a festival > dressed as gentleman farmers!!! > And I would guess that your romanticized picture > of 'country music' goes no further back in > history than the 'happy darkies picking cotton' > in the 19th century U.S. of A. I realize that > you have your tongue firmly in cheek, but > somebody might actually take you seriously!!
john - thank you for providing the information preceding the above ... very interesting.
as to rosy, romanticized pictures of medieval country life i'd like to say i have none. i personally don't think it was as horrible as hollywood would have us believe but it couldn't have been, what you'd call ... great. i'm not going to stoop to your "happy darkies picking cotton" jibe.
as to gentlemen farmers too long at the fair - somewhere i read mention (just one: medieval dance site, i believe) of a fairly common occurrence in the middle ages where any number of people - i seem to remember the inference was a great many - would get together and dance in a frenzy, non-stop for days. desperation seems to have been the cause of it, so the commentator says, but who knows ... the tarantella is associated with it and in "a tale of two cities", dickens mentions this spontaneous dance phenomenon made by the poor people of paris - hardly gents mulling over a pig in a poke.
what did they dance to?
as to music - in the "serraggia" item i posted earlier on the list, describing a sardinian instrument made from pigs bladder, wooden plank and metal wire, someone mentioned a folk clarinet (kazoo) made from dried slug. i don't imagine these sorts of instruments ever saw the inside of a church but they would have been heard informally, outside.
the snatches of tunes and melodic lines carried away from church or those festive occasions where the hoi polloi might have heard trained musicians play, were probably mangled beyond recognition back at the hovel but i just can't imagine anyone living without music, no matter how rudimentary it might have been.
the underlining point is that a nonacademic, ill-informed, unsophisticated and rudimentary understanding of how music is played is probably more in keeping with how most people made early music. i appreciate that for an academic such as yourself this may be of no interest what-so-ever but i'd like to know if there is any indication of how medieval "folks" made music.
In article <mailman.90.1129735323.7573.early...@lists2.wu-wien.ac.at>, John Howell <John.How...@vt.edu> wrote:
>Note that I say 'musicians' and not 'composers.' If one >was a musician, one was first and foremost a performing musician, >and more than likely a singer of great skill.
This is one reason that the era of Obrecht is often considered decisive in shaping modern ideas of music, as Obrecht was apparently mainly a composer and (if even) a performer of no particular skill.
>we have no trace of the music either inside or outside the church, >because there was no available notation
Well, I don't know if you're being intentionally dismissive of the scholarly work to decipher the earlier notation, or don't know about it (despite semi-regular mentions here). The fact is, even modern standard notation doesn't tell you absolutely everything there is that could be told about a piece of sound. Your declaration of some notation as adequate and some not is rather arbitrary.
>... music of the upper class Trobadors, Trouveres and Minnesanger, >but this can hardly be considered 'folk' music or 'country' music.
This is partly a problem with trying to enforce 20th (or 21st) century terms onto the situations of older eras. Calling aristocratic music as "folk" seems clearly wrong, but many of these people did live off on "country" estates. The aristocracy was scattered across the countryside, overseeing fiefs etc.
In article <1129738518.774771.13...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>,
bill <billkilpatr...@virgilio.it> wrote: >the underlining point is that a nonacademic, ill-informed, >unsophisticated and rudimentary understanding of how music is >played is probably more in keeping with how most people made early >music. i appreciate that for an academic such as yourself this >may be of no interest what-so-ever but i'd like to know if there >is any indication of how medieval "folks" made music.
There are scattered testimonials written by traveling literate people who described what they saw and heard.
In article <1129742084.089748.10...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
bill <billkilpatr...@virgilio.it> wrote: >really? know where can i see them?
I don't think things like that have been tabulated in any convenient way, but perhaps I am wrong. One of the most famous is, I believe, Anonymous IV discussing the type of polyphony heard in a remote portion of Britain.
I'm not sure how much of what you're saying is serious or whimsical, but you might profit from reading some social histories, such as _A History of Private Life_.
> It's often said that roots of Baroque are found at the end > of the 16th century, and consist in the appearance of > free and expressive melodies over a B.C.
> OTH melodies did exist much earlier (troubadours, etc), > and I hardly believe they totally disappeared in the meantime. > 15th and 16th is mainly known as a Franco-Flemish period, > but I haven't read much about other traditions in these times. > Is it because we don't know much about more popular > music? Or is it because this music was also completely > Franco-Flemish-isized ? :-) > Sometimes I think that Franco-Flemish school was just a > magnificent exception, and that simple melodies did not > "appear" at the end of the sixteenth century! > (a bass is a bass, and melodies over a bass did exist before B.C, > which is only a *notation* after all).
Well, whoever said melody disappeared during the 16th century? There are dance tunes, chansons, lieder that use pre-existent folk melodies, etc. And actually I find much early-Baroque music "un-melodic", in the sense of a clear periodic line. The expression of words becomes so important as to override phrase structure, in many cases.
Musicologists who want to reduce a period to a couple of catchphrases are just not doing a good job.
>john - thank you for providing the information preceding the above ...
>very interesting.
>as to rosy, romanticized pictures of medieval country life i'd like to
>say i have none. i personally don't think it was as horrible as
>hollywood would have us believe but it couldn't have been, what you'd
>call ... great.
No, slavery under any name, being owned by the Seigneur who had first dibs on any new bride he permitted to get married, no medicine, barbaric treatment of injuries, poor nutrition since the crops belonged lock, stock and barrel to the Seigneur--you're right, it isn't what Hollywood shows (or Monty Python, for that matter), it was no doubt much, much worse.
>as to gentlemen farmers too long at the fair - somewhere i read mention
>(just one: medieval dance site, i believe) of a fairly common
>occurrence in the middle ages where any number of people - i seem to
>remember the inference was a great many - would get together and dance
>in a frenzy, non-stop for days.
>what did they dance to?
Mass hysteria, like individual mental illness, doesn't require musical backup. It's in their heads, maybe from eating funny mushrooms or maybe from something contaminating the water. Or maybe just from religious frenzy. There are churches today that try for that same effect.
>the snatches of tunes and melodic lines carried away from church or
>those festive occasions where the hoi polloi might have heard trained
>musicians play, were probably mangled beyond recognition back at the
>hovel but i just can't imagine anyone living without music, no matter
>how rudimentary it might have been.
But part of my point is that it doesn't have to be so darned formalized and organized. Start with the basics. Crooning a lullaby to a fretful baby is natural human response, and you don't need formal training for that, or to remember what you may have heard in church last time your dirty bare feet were allowed through the doors. I don't believe they lived without music, either, but these were people totally devoid of formal education who couldn't read writing, let alone music. The only way we could get even a clue about their music would be if someone who WAS literate wrote about it, and it seems like nobody paid much attention or cared.
>i
>appreciate that for an academic such as yourself this may be of no
>interest what-so-ever but i'd like to know if there is any indication
>of how medieval "folks" made music.
On the contrary, I would LOVE to know the answers to the questions you're asking, because every jot and tittle of information we can find gives us a better handle on these time periods. There just isn't much, or at least not much that has been studied properly.
John
-- John & Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:John.How...@vt.edu)
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
At 9:17 AM -0700 10/19/05, Todd Michel McComb wrote:
>In article <mailman.90.1129735323.7573.early...@lists2.wu-wien.ac.at>,
>John Howell <John.How...@vt.edu> wrote:
>>Note that I say 'musicians' and not 'composers.' If one
>>was a musician, one was first and foremost a performing musician,
>>and more than likely a singer of great skill.
>This is one reason that the era of Obrecht is often considered
>decisive in shaping modern ideas of music, as Obrecht was apparently
>mainly a composer and (if even) a performer of no particular skill.
Hi, Todd. You are much more knowledgeable than I, and I rely on you to keep me honest! You may be correct in this, and of course there's no question that he was greatly revered as a composer, but the article in New Grove I suggests not that he was not a performer but rather that he was considered unreliable and did not take good care of the choirboys entrusted to his care and training. (A job that a poor performer would probably not have been given in the first place.)
>>we have no trace of the music either inside or outside the church,
>>because there was no available notation
>Well, I don't know if you're being intentionally dismissive of the
>scholarly work to decipher the earlier notation, or don't know about
>it (despite semi-regular mentions here).
I'm familiar with the Musica Enchiriadis notation, with neumatic notation both unheightened and heightened, and with Guido's innovations. I'm familiar with the score notation in the organum and conductus manuscripts. Are you telling me that a notation for Old Roman Chant has been discovered? Or that the ability to transcribe unheightened neumes (which clearly seem to have been intended as a mnemonic for monks who had spent years as boys learning the chants by ear) has taken a giant step forward? I'd love to hear that's true.
>The fact is, even modern
>standard notation doesn't tell you absolutely everything there is
>that could be told about a piece of sound.
Of course not, nor did I suggest that it did. The map is not the territory, the blueprint is not the building, and the notation is not the music.
>Your declaration of
>some notation as adequate and some not is rather arbitrary.
I prefer to think that it is quite objective. If we can transcribe any given notation WITHOUT using later manuscripts that might contain the same music in a later, readable notation, then that notation is adequate. (For US! Obviously it served their needs at the time.) Is it not true that the manuscripts of Mozarabic chant can still not be transcribed? If it is, then they are NOT adequate for our use, even though, again, they served their uses adequately. Franconian notation is a piece of cake to sightread, but not so Machaut's ars nova notation. But they can both be transcribed.
Thanks for the critique. I appreciate it.
John
-- John & Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:John.How...@vt.edu)
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
holds a wealth of information about medieval dance mania - with a notable item concerning the tarantella and how dancers performing it - or afflicted with it - could die if music was not provided quickly (!!)
in answer to tim's posting, i suppose it's possible that they - mostly women, the article concludes - were all freaking out with the effects of LSD6 but i suspect that the people there - ravers, actually - simply thought of it as a day or two off and a jolly good wheeze.
i love the idea of "rude husbandmen and artificers" cramping the style of "liveried," court musicians - three men singers probably comprised a trio of chordaphone, wind and rhythm.
great stuffe! i, for one, find this extremely interesting.
In article <mailman.92.1129778525.7573.early...@lists2.wu-wien.ac.at>, John Howell <John.How...@vt.edu> wrote:
>You may be correct in this, and of course there's no question that >he [Obrecht] was greatly revered as a composer, but the article in >New Grove I suggests not that he was not a performer but rather >that he was considered unreliable and did not take good care of >the choirboys entrusted to his care and training.
New Grove II has much more interesting comments on this point. Rob Wegman has written some good things about the way Obrecht pioneered some of the concepts that people in modern times associate with "being a composer."
>Are you telling me that a notation for Old Roman Chant has been >discovered?
Right, yes, Marcel Peres has put this together. There is very little of it, though.
>Or that the ability to transcribe unheightened neumes (which clearly >seem to have been intended as a mnemonic for monks who had spent >years as boys learning the chants by ear) has taken a giant step >forward?
Yes, Wulf Arlt has completely solved this problem, as far as I can tell. The issue with the unheightened neumes is that they indicate interval relationships, so you have to keep track of where you are, and realize each note incrementally. This makes them inconvenient, but far from impossible.
>I prefer to think that it is quite objective. If we can transcribe >any given notation WITHOUT using later manuscripts that might >contain the same music in a later, readable notation, then that >notation is adequate.
Transcribe to what, though? There are always matters of degree. The music you admitted as adequate has uncertainties of rhythm, ficta, absolute pitch, tuning, etc. That was part of my point.
Anyway, the capitalized WITHOUT is overkill. What was done, say with the unheightened neumes, is devise a method to read them, and then verify that method against later manuscripts about which we were more confident. Once this all fits together, we develop overall confidence in the ideas.
>Is it not true that the manuscripts of Mozarabic chant can still >not be transcribed?
It is not true. There have been many performances at this point. The Andalusi music is also performed extensively and with confidence.
for some reason, tim's contribution to the thread never saw print here. the email copy i received had "rec.music.early" in the cc address box. i hope he won't mind if i paste it in:
On Wednesday, October 19, 2005, at 09:24 PM, John Howell wrote:
At 9:15 AM -0700 10/19/05, bill wrote:
(just one: medieval dance site, i believe) of a fairly common occurrence in the middle ages where any number of people - i seem to remember the inference was a great many - would get together and dance in a frenzy, non-stop for days.
what did they dance to?
Mass hysteria, like individual mental illness, doesn't require musical backup. It's in their heads, maybe from eating funny mushrooms or maybe from something contaminating the water. Or maybe just from religious frenzy. There are churches today that try for that same effect.
This may refer to cases of ergotism. In parts of Northern Europe, the north Atlantic, and North America after about A.D. 1100 the climate "deteriorated" in the sense that it became cooler and wetter on the average, and more variable from year to year. This made some crops more vulnerable to ergot, which contaminated the bread made from the affected grain, which people ate...you get the picture.
the snatches of tunes and melodic lines carried away from church or those festive occasions where the hoi polloi might have heard trained musicians play, were probably mangled beyond recognition back at the hovel but i just can't imagine anyone living without music, no matter how rudimentary it might have been.
But part of my point is that it doesn't have to be so darned formalized and organized. Start with the basics. Crooning a lullaby to a fretful baby is natural human response, and you don't need formal training for that, or to remember what you may have heard in church last time your dirty bare feet were allowed through the doors. I don't believe they lived without music, either, but these were people totally devoid of formal education who couldn't read writing, let alone music. The only way we could get even a clue about their music would be if someone who WAS literate wrote about it, and it seems like nobody paid much attention or cared.
i appreciate that for an academic such as yourself this may be of no interest what-so-ever but i'd like to know if there is any indication of how medieval "folks" made music.
On the contrary, I would LOVE to know the answers to the questions you're asking, because every jot and tittle of information we can find gives us a better handle on these time periods. There just isn't much, or at least not much that has been studied properly.
Sometimes we can learn a little. A proclamation issued by king Henry 6 of England notes that "many rude husbandmen and artificers of England, feigning to be minstrels and some of them wearing the king's livery and so feigning to be the king's minstrels, collect in certain parts of the realm great exactions of money of the king's lieges by virtue of their livery and art, and though they be unskilled therein and user divers arts on working days and receive sufficient money thence, they fare from place to place on festivals and take the profits, wherefrom the king's minstrels and others, skilled in the art and using no other labors or mysteries, should live". (June 17, 1449. Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry VI vol V, London, 1909, p. 262). A proclamation using similar wording was issued 20 years later in the time of Edward IV: Rymer, Foedera, vol 5 pt. 1, p. 169.
There are three issues here. One is a matter of "livery infringement", in which people not entitled to do so are dressing in "the king's livery". Another issue is quality control. The "rude husbandmen and artificers", the letter says, are "unskilled" in minstrelsy. But then the letter contradicts itself when it goes on to imply (this is the third issue) that the "rude husbandmen and artificers" are good enough musicians to "take the profits" from the official minstrels. We can conclude that
1) "rude husbandmen and artificers" were sometimes in a position to be able to learn to sing and play instruments.
2) the songs and tunes that the "rude husbandmen and artificers" were in a position to learn were appealing enough to the audience that patronized the official minstrels to make these husbandmen and artificers into serious economic competitors. This suggests, in turn, that there was no thick wall of separation between music that appealed to aristocrats and gentry and music that appealed to commoners.
SInce every age has those who complain that things are going to hell in a handbasket, we can look at the complaint literature for a few clues, too. The complaints may be conventional, but it's at least plausible that the details are fitted to the contemporary situation. So we can read in the the 15th century _Dives et Pauper_, where in its discussion of the first commandment, one of the characters complains
"The peple thise dayys is wol indevout to God and to holy chirche...they ben loth to comyn in choly churche...Late they comyn and sone gon agen awey...They han lever gon to the taverne than to holy chirche, lever to heryn a tale or a song of Robyn Hood or of som rybaudy than to heryn messe or matynys on anything of Goddis servise or ony word of God."
In _The Castle of Perseverance_, one of the Macro Plays, the character Accidia boasts
Thyrti thousende that I wel knowe in my lyf lovely I lede that had lever syttyn at the ale three-mens songys to syngyn lowde thanne toward the chyrche for to crowde.
We know at least approximately who "Robyn Hood" is. We can easily guess at the content of some of the "rybaudry". We don't know exactly what "three-men's songs" were, but a good starting point for research into the question would be to guess that it was something that it took three men to sing, and work from there.
>>as to gentlemen farmers too long at the fair - somewhere i read mention >>(just one: medieval dance site, i believe) of a fairly common >>occurrence in the middle ages where any number of people - i seem to >>remember the inference was a great many - would get together and dance >>in a frenzy, non-stop for days.
>>what did they dance to?
>Mass hysteria, like individual mental illness, doesn't require >musical backup. It's in their heads, maybe from eating funny >mushrooms or maybe from something contaminating the water. Or maybe >just from religious frenzy. There are churches today that try for >that same effect.
What you both refer to may be ergotism, a poisoning by a fungus (Claviceps purpurea) that infects mainly rye. It starts with spasmic movements of the limbs, these may eventually blacken and rot away. In the middle ages (but even as late as the 19th century) contaminations of the bread where not uncommon and could kill whole villages.
Judith
PS: Some types of modern popular music seem to have similar effects, but damages are mostly in the brain ;-)
> No, slavery under any name, being owned by the Seigneur who had first
> dibs on any new bride he permitted to get married, no medicine,
> barbaric treatment of injuries, poor nutrition since the crops
> belonged lock, stock and barrel to the Seigneur--you're right, it
> isn't what Hollywood shows (or Monty Python, for that matter), it was
> no doubt much, much worse.
Could I perhaps refer you to:
The Lord's First Night : The Myth of the Droit de Cuissage
by Alain Boureau
University of Chicago Press
Published July 1998, 300 pages, paper
ISBN 0226067432
And there was one late medieval English village (I can't remember the name) where the villagers clubbed together and bought out the Lord of the Manor!
"John Howell" <John.How...@vt.edu> a écrit dans le message news: mailman.90.1129735323.7573.early...@lists2.wu-wien.ac.at... At 10:53 PM -0700 10/18/05, bill wrote:
> >i didn't know the 15/16th cent. was referred to as a "franco-flemish > >period" but i couldn't agree with you more. i'm afraid there are two > >culprits to this disappearing act: the church and the concept of > >"folk" music. > I seem to have missed an ongoing thread here. > Sorry. The fact is that beginning in the early > 15th century, for reasons I have never really > read a clear explanation of, musicians trained in > the northern choir schools (think modern Belgium, > Flanders, at that time the northern tier of the > Duchy of Burgundy) were recognized by other > musicians and by the folks who were in positions > to hire musicians as the best in Europe.
[...]
Thanks, John, for this contribution!
[...]
> Once that notation was > available (Guido invented it in the early 11th > century, but that does NOT mean that it was > instantly adopted all over Europe!), it could be > and was used by trained scribes to write down the > secular music of the upper class Trobadors, > Trouvéres and Minnesänger, but this can hardly be > considered 'folk' music or 'country' music. No > one in the "country" would have had access to > those scribes, and more than likely their music > continued to be fairly simple and traditional.
Indeed when playing "dance music" we have the tentation to call it "popular", a qualifier which, in most cases, can't be applied to these pieces for the reason you mentionned (reading music wasn't "popular").
"Judith Baltsar" <judith.balt...@gmx.de> a écrit dans le message news: o2tml1lt61iro6hijpqium0rlq7e2n7...@4ax.com...
> What you both refer to may be ergotism, a poisoning by a fungus > (Claviceps purpurea)[...] > PS: Some types of modern popular music seem to have similar effects, > but damages are mostly in the brain ;-)
"Claviceps purpurea", what a name for a new techno group ! :-)
"Todd Michel McComb" <mcc...@medieval.org> a écrit dans le message news: dj8frl$bt...@agricola.medieval.org...
> What was done, say > with the unheightened neumes, is devise a method to read them, and > then verify that method against later manuscripts about which we > were more confident. Once this all fits together, we develop > overall confidence in the ideas.
Interesting! I think meteorologists, for instance, can tune their mathematical models this way, by entering data for some time t1 in the past, and check whether it predicts the weather that had been observed at time t2.
"Jeffrey Quick" <j...@po.cwru.edu> a écrit dans le message news: jaq-BB4ABC.17353619102...@eeyore.ins.cwru.edu...
> Well, whoever said melody disappeared during the 16th century?
Well, I certainly didn't, my post was a question. What's more, what I was refering to was a weaker or implicit statement, roughly that at the end of the century we had a "revival of accompagnied melody".
> There are > dance tunes, chansons, lieder that use pre-existent folk melodies, etc.
Yes, but dances I know have a multiple voice texture, each voice having more or less the same importance. Admittedly this is not enough to define a Franco-Flemish style, but what I called melodic style means (to me) a clearly different writing of one or two voices and of a more or less vertical accompaniement.
> And actually I find much early-Baroque music "un-melodic", in the sense > of a clear periodic line. The expression of words becomes so important > as to override phrase structure, in many cases.
Well, this is a different question, since bad Franco-Flemish pieces certainly exist, too ;-)
>It's often said that roots of Baroque are found at the end >of the 16th century, and consist in the appearance of >free and expressive melodies over a B.C.
>OTH melodies did exist much earlier (troubadours, etc), >and I hardly believe they totally disappeared in the meantime. >15th and 16th is mainly known as a Franco-Flemish period, >but I haven't read much about other traditions in these times. >Is it because we don't know much about more popular >music? Or is it because this music was also completely >Franco-Flemish-isized ? :-) >Sometimes I think that Franco-Flemish school was just a >magnificent exception, and that simple melodies did not >"appear" at the end of the sixteenth century! >(a bass is a bass, and melodies over a bass did exist before B.C, > which is only a *notation* after all).
The Franco-Flemish music was primarily made at court and in cathedrals, so for formal occasions. It has never been the major style in any particular country, not even in Italy, where most Franco-Flemish composers where employed. There has always been an undercurrent of monophonic/chordal music (Refer to 'El Grillo', by 'Josquin d'Ascanio'). IMO, the most probable reason why not more of that music has been transmitted, is the musicians were illiterate. During the 16th century things begin to change in France, with the so-called Parisian chanson, as composed by Claudin de Sermisy. In his chansons the superius is the most important part, followed by the bass. The same trend occurred in part songs of English composers. At the same time choral music began to become more and more chordal (motets and masses of Orlando di Lasso). If you look at it this way, the advent of monody is only logical, as the inner voices are dispensable, and can be rendered by a chordal instrument.
> On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 13:43:00 +0200, "Alain Naigeon" <anaig...@free.fr> > wrote:
> >It's often said that roots of Baroque are found at the end > >of the 16th century, and consist in the appearance of > >free and expressive melodies over a B.C.
> >OTH melodies did exist much earlier (troubadours, etc), > >and I hardly believe they totally disappeared in the meantime. > >15th and 16th is mainly known as a Franco-Flemish period, > >but I haven't read much about other traditions in these times. > >Is it because we don't know much about more popular > >music? Or is it because this music was also completely > >Franco-Flemish-isized ? :-) > >Sometimes I think that Franco-Flemish school was just a > >magnificent exception, and that simple melodies did not > >"appear" at the end of the sixteenth century! > >(a bass is a bass, and melodies over a bass did exist before B.C, > > which is only a *notation* after all).
> The Franco-Flemish music was primarily made at court and in > cathedrals, so for formal occasions. It has never been the major style > in any particular country, not even in Italy, where most > Franco-Flemish composers where employed. > There has always been an undercurrent of monophonic/chordal music > (Refer to 'El Grillo', by 'Josquin d'Ascanio'). > IMO, the most probable reason why not more of that music has been > transmitted, is the musicians were illiterate.
[...]
Thanks Sybrand, for this contribution!
> [...]It has never been the major style > in any particular country, not even in Italy, [...]
Well, that's however the feeling I had got, but it might come from my reading of the books more than from their authors - I must admit that my fascination for this music has perhaps lead me to overestimate its proportion in the whole repertoire.
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