Franco-Flemish exception ?
Alain Naigeon
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).
--
Français *==> "Musique renaissance" <==* English
midi - facsimiles - ligatures - mensuration
http://anaigeon.free.fr | http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/anaigeon/
Alain Naigeon - anai...@free.fr - Strasbourg, France
bill
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 ...
regards - bill
John Howell
>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.
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.
"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.
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.
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 ...
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....@vt.edu)
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
bill
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.
- bill
Todd Michel McComb
John Howell <John....@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.
Todd McComb
mcc...@medieval.org
Todd Michel McComb
bill <billkil...@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.
Todd McComb
mcc...@medieval.org
bill
Todd Michel McComb wrote:
> There are scattered testimonials written by traveling literate
> people who described what they saw and heard.
really? know where can i see them?
ciao - bill
Todd Michel McComb
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_.
Todd McComb
mcc...@medieval.org
Jeffrey Quick
"Alain Naigeon" <anai...@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).
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 Howell
>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.
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.
>
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.
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.
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 Howell
>In article <mailman.90.112973...@lists2.wu-wien.ac.at>,
>John Howell <John....@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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
bill
http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-07/dancing-mania.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.
ciao - bill
Todd Michel McComb
John Howell <John....@vt.edu> wrote:
>You may be correct in this, and of course there's no question that
>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.
Todd McComb
mcc...@medieval.org
bill
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.
Tim
Judith Baltsar
>>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 ;-)
John Briggs
>
> 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.
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 Briggs
Alain Naigeon
mailman.90.112973...@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").
Alain Naigeon
o2tml1lt61iro6hij...@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 ! :-)
Alain Naigeon
mailman.92.112977...@lists2.wu-wien.ac.at...
> The map is not the
> territory, the blueprint is not the building, and the notation is not
> the music.
This would be a good signature ;-)
Alain Naigeon
dj8frl$btb$1...@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.
Alain Naigeon
jaq-BB4ABC.1...@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 ;-)
John Briggs
> "John Howell" <John....@vt.edu> a écrit dans le message news:
> mailman.92.112977...@lists2.wu-wien.ac.at...
>
>> The map is not the
>> territory, the blueprint is not the building, and the notation is not
>> the music.
>
> This would be a good signature ;-)
But dangerous as a guide to copyright law :-)
In the Hyperion appeal, their counsel tried (unsuccessfully) to draw a
distinction between music and the noise it makes :-)
--
John Briggs
John Briggs
> "Judith Baltsar" <judith....@gmx.de> a écrit dans le message news:
> o2tml1lt61iro6hij...@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 ! :-)
In Chicago, perhaps?
--
John Briggs
Sybrand Bakker
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.
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.
Alain Naigeon
2pi6m1tblg7j0eou4...@4ax.com...
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.