Re: [earlym-l] Re: I need information about "early music"...
John Briggs
>
> I agree with Professor Howell, though _my_ arbitrary break between
> "medieval" and "renaissance" music comes at about 1500.
Which annoys art historians, for whom the Renaissance ends in about 1520.
John Briggs
Todd Michel McComb
John Briggs <john.b...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>Which annoys art historians, for whom the Renaissance ends in about
>1520.
I personally find it convenient to put the era marker at the Petrucci
prints. In US schools, though, it's more common to follow Tinctoris'
remarks and go with around 1420, as John did. That's actually the
line the FAQ uses for repertory sorting, too, although it's ultimately
unimportant.
Todd McComb
mcc...@medieval.org
John Howell
>On Monday, October 3, 2005, at 01:14 PM, John Howell wrote:
Actually I didn't; this is all Timothy's.
>
>I agree with Professor Howell, though _my_ arbitrary break between
Well, of course any break point between
historical periods is going to be arbitrary, but
I base my choice on the music itself and the
changes is style that are obvious. In 1400,
motets tended to have more than one text,
imitation based on canon, a cantus firmus that
stays in a single voice, and an isorhythmic
organization of that tenor. In 1500 motets
tended overwhelmingly to have a single text,
imitation that pervaded all voices, a cantus
firmus that is imitated in all voices (in other
words, equal voices), and isorhythm is no longer
found. Something happened during that century
that resulted in a profound change in style.
In 1400, chansons still tended to follow the
formes fixes of poetry dating back to the 12th
century Trobadors and Trouvéres. The tenor was
considered the melody (although Machaut had
already experimented with the cantilena style
with the melody in the highest voice and the
other voices clearly accompaniment). Forms like
the caccia utilized strict canon. By 1500, the
formes fixes were pretty well done with, the
cantilena style was universally used except in
the Germanic kingdoms, where Tenorlied still
prevailed (and would for another century), and
pervading imitation had largely replaced canon
(although manipulation of canon, double canon,
and triple canon was a hallmark of Josquin's
generation and of his own music).
I place the breakpoint in the 1430s based, as
much as anything, on DuFay's music, but it's
still arbitrary. His motets--mostly composed for
formal occasions like the dedication of Santa
Maria del Fiore in Firenza--were
backward-looking, isorhythmic, and polytextual
(although his gift for melody is quite clear in
their upper voices). His chansons were
forward-looking, using pervading imitation and
focusing on wonderful, very singable melodic
lines and harmonies informed by his knowledge of
the English composers like Dunstable and their
use of fa-burden. Musicians in 1500 lived in a
very different musical world than those in 1400,
and the styles they were using continued to
develop for another 80-120 years.
>I would
>also include the Gregorian chant of the low middle ages as "early
>music", though in the surviving manuscripts (so far as I know) this is
>almost entirely vocal music. But we frankly misunderstand those historical
>periods if we fail to appreciate the importance of vocal music in almost
>all of them.
Well of course chant is "early music"! It could
hardly be otherwise, although it is well to
remember that it has never gone out of use and
that later polyphonic developments added to it
and often utilized it as inspiration, but never
replaced it. It is also the earliest music that
used a notation that we can, at least in part,
figure out. Roughly the first thousand years of
the music of the Christian Church is lost to us
because of that notation problem.
And it's quite safe to say that ALL chant, and
ALL music of the church is entirely (and not
"almost" entirely) vocal music. This should come
as no surprise, since the texts always came
first, and the musical settings later. The first
notated instrumental music is from the 13th
century, but I seriously doubt that
instrumentalists didn't exist before then. They
simply played traditional music or improvised
accompaniments, and probably both. The dozen or
so examples of musical notation from BCE are all,
withoug exception, associated with texts and
therefore with vocal music.
>I would also point out some practical points. In all ages the minstrel
>has to please his audience.
Not only the menestral, but the aristocratic
poet-composer and the jongleur as well. I put it
to my music history classes like this: Music has
had two historic uses in our culture (and in most
cultures), enhancement of ritual and
entertainment. In sacred music your "audience"
is supposed to be God and nobody else, but it
doesn't hurt if your music also pleases your
bishop or pope!
>How "early music" is received by
>modern listeners is a separate matter from
>scholarly classification of past musical
>eras, but it is a feature of our own musical era.
Of course it is separate. Classification is
necessary in order to study and understand how
the composers (and performers) were thinking, and
to inform modern performers as to the
possibilities inherent in that music, but totally
unnecessary to the enjoyment of a modern
audience. That, of course, is true of all music
in every style and in every era.
>Another point to consider: The classification of past centuries as belonging
>to musical "periods" brings with it the risk of
>overstating the differences between
>one era's music and the next's.
Part of a musicologist's job is to understand
both similarities and differences, both
geographical and temporal, between and among
different musics. In music of the baroque era we
expect a basso continuo accompaniment, and so did
they, so much so that they had to specify if they
wanted a piece "ohne basse." That's a defining
characteristic of the baroque era, and it's
hardly overstating to call attention to that.
>And it is a fact of history that the people who lived
>in those times sometimes did just that, deriding
>the previous generation's music
>as old-fashioned and out-of-date.
Yes, they were just as fashion conscious as are
today's teenagers in their musical tastes, only
with radio, iPods and MTV the fashions today last
a much shorter time.
>Our perspective, though, allows us to
>see important connections and cases of continuity, such as the ongoing use of
>Gregorian Chant in monasteries through many centuries, or the ongoing use
>of some German Chorale melodies with medieval
>roots, such as "In Dulci Jubilo."
>Subtler examples might be found by someone who wishes to analyze the past's
>music at a high level of abstraction.
Well, I don't consider this particularly
abstract, but it's pretty obvious from examining
the music that the rhythmic modes developed at
Notre Dame in the late 12th century had very
strong influences on the motets being composed a
century later, with tenors using Franconian
notation still moving in 5th mode and tripla
often moving in 6th, all still in triple time.
And this influence continued on well through the
14th century, even after notation permitting
duple time was developed, and many of Machaut's
isorhythmic tenors are still obviously influenced
by 5th mode. It's obvious to me, at least, but
my colleague who teaches music history for music
majors teaches each time period in a vacuum and
his students never see the connection or the
continuous development.
Thanks for your thoughts, Tim, and please keep on
DOING music and bringing enjoyment to people
through 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....@vt.edu)
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
bill
from any formal notion of it - continued right up into the 20th cent..
alan lomax recorded some italian folk songs in the 1950's which he
believed dated from the early, medieval and renaissance periods.
in the new world as well - a very generous guy on the fretted friends
group over on yahoo sent me a collection of spanish folk songs from the
university of new mexico - several of which also have direct "early"
connections.
i think there's a few "living dinosaurs" amongst instruments as well -
the charango, for example.
- bill
John Briggs
> there's also the consideration that early music in the country - away
> from any formal notion of it - continued right up into the 20th cent..
> alan lomax recorded some italian folk songs in the 1950's which he
> believed dated from the early, medieval and renaissance periods.
He also once recorded a version of "The House of the Rising Sun" which he
thought represented the original form ("Rising Sun Blues") - but which is
now thought to have been learned from a gramophone record.
--
John Briggs
John Howell
>there's also the consideration that early music in the country - away
>from any formal notion of it - continued right up into the 20th cent..
>alan lomax recorded some italian folk songs in the 1950's which he
>believed dated from the early, medieval and renaissance periods.
is not necessarily what is true. This is a man who so thoroughly
misunderstands copyright law that he claims to own all the public
domain folksongs his father and he published, and wants to collect
royalties from teachers who use those songs. Not exactly an unbiased
scholarly approach.
John Briggs
> At 4:41 PM -0700 10/10/05, bill wrote:
>> there's also the consideration that early music in the country - away
>> from any formal notion of it - continued right up into the 20th
>> cent.. alan lomax recorded some italian folk songs in the 1950's
>> which he believed dated from the early, medieval and renaissance
>> periods.
>
> Knowing Lomax's flaky reputation, I have to say that what he believes
> is not necessarily what is true. This is a man who so thoroughly
> misunderstands copyright law that he claims to own all the public
> domain folksongs his father and he published, and wants to collect
> royalties from teachers who use those songs. Not exactly an unbiased
> scholarly approach.
Presumably not in person - he died in 2002.
--
John Briggs
Todd Michel McComb
John Howell <John....@vt.edu> wrote:
>This is a man who so thoroughly misunderstands copyright law that
>he claims to own all the public domain folksongs his father and
>he published, and wants to collect royalties from teachers who use
>those songs.
Let's hope that our courts don't have similar misunderstandings.
There have been various, ominous rumblings of similar thoughts on
this issue out there. The core rallying cry of these sorts of
people being that no timer starts ticking until something is
*published*. (Under this theory, say, medieval music was never
*published*, at least not until recently.) Sickening stuff, but I
wish I could be confident that it won't eventually be law.
Todd McComb
mcc...@medieval.org
John Briggs
Well, under British (and presumably all European) copyright law he would
have copyright in his transcription - so you would have to pay royalties to
perform from that edition, but you would be free to make your own
transcription (from his field recording if published) and perform from that.
Lord Justice Mummery in the Hyperion appeal:
"Coming closer to this case, for instance, consider what was done by the 14
year old Mozart. After hearing Allegri's Miserere (a supposedly secret piece
of music in that the manuscripts had never been published) at a performance
in the Vatican he wrote it down. That seems to me to be the exact musical
equivalent of what is done by a shorthand writer with a speech – indeed it
involved even more skill for he wrote from memory whilst a shorthand writer
writes as the speaker talks. Of course Mozart "wrote no new music" but it
would be logically impossible to deny him copyright in his transcription of
the music but grant it to a shorthand writer for his transcription of the
spoken word."
--
John Briggs
Todd Michel McComb
John Briggs <john.b...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>Well, under British (and presumably all European) copyright law
>he would have copyright in his transcription - so you would have
>to pay royalties to perform from that edition, but you would be
>free to make your own transcription (from his field recording if
>published) and perform from that.
I think the Hyperion decision is reasonable, but I've heard much
nastier stuff than that. I guess there's no point in engaging in
speculation, though. I just wanted to note that while I certainly
agree with (other) John, not everyone does.
Todd McComb
mcc...@medieval.org
bill
where no one else thought to go aside, what do you think of the idea of
a continuum of early "folk" music passing right through the designated
musical periods to the mid-20th cent.? the naples tradition continues
but radio put paid to "folk" singing in italy. there must have been
research done on early roots in eastern europe, for example. didn't
bartok raid the folk cookie jar for "inspiration?"
i don't know, i just assumed it was more than a possiblity.
- bill
Todd Michel McComb
bill <billkil...@virgilio.it> wrote:
>what do you think of the idea of a continuum of early "folk" music
>passing right through the designated musical periods to the mid-20th
>cent.?
I think there's something to it, but at the same time, most people
aren't really as isolated as it seems. Caution is warranted with
something like this, but as I've discussed elsewhere, I do think
that this is one place to look when it comes to vocal technique,
and matters of that nature. You've specifically raised Southern
Italy, and I think that that's probably the most productive example,
also including the big Mediterranean islands.
When it comes to the topic of "folk" music per se, sometimes there
is a pretty hardcore anti-elitist backlash, suggesting that there
were various wide & unprovable divergences in the past. Personally,
I am rather unconvinced by this sort of distinction, because in
areas where we can get a gauge on the lower classes, admittedly a
statistical gauge, this kind of adversarial attitude toward culture
simply doesn't show (and I'm big on the Marxist and social histories,
believe me). That said, what we certainly did have in early centuries
was a wide regional variation, and some of those regions did not
have the same literary history. That's very different from the
sort of deliberate or adversarial divergence sometimes postulated.
Todd McComb
mcc...@medieval.org
Alain Naigeon
is said to have lasted a few dozen of years, while, for middle-
age, people speak of several centuries!
Is it because, at the time when these names were created,
not much was known about medieval years - therefore, no
relevant difference could be established inside this period
of time ?
--
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
Todd Michel McComb
Alain Naigeon <anai...@free.fr> wrote:
>I find strange that Renaissance - whatever its exact definition -
>is said to have lasted a few dozen of years, while, for middle-
>age, people speak of several centuries! Is it because, at the
>time when these names were created, not much was known about
>medieval years - therefore, no relevant difference could be
>established inside this period of time ?
Well, there are many ways to approach this question, not least of
which is that e.g. art historians sometimes talk of the Renaissance
as beginning with Giotto (in fact the dictionary I just consulted
calls him a Renaissance painter).
However, the most basic answer, as I see it, is that the Renaissance
is considered almost more an *event* than a period. It's the
awakening of modernism, or the reawakening of antiquity (as it was
seen then), depending on your slant. As an "event" with specific
properties, we can also say that it happened at different times in
different fields.
Beyond that, much of the time period that accomplished what we call
Baroque music is still in what historians typically call the "early
modern" period, and so contiguous with the Renaissance in that
sense.
One thing I think of as making the "Renaissance" an interesting
concept in music is that it leads people to pick out particular
stylistic changes as of critical importance. We see John do this
earlier in the thread, and not to pick on him, but he's doing it
within a very specific view of music and priorities. It's an
interesting little litmus test, when the fact of the matter is that
an experienced ear can identify music of the 1400s & 1500s by decade.
Todd McComb
mcc...@medieval.org
John Howell
>putting poor old alan lomax and his unwieldly recording equipment going
>where no one else thought to go aside, what do you think of the idea of
>a continuum of early "folk" music passing right through the designated
>musical periods to the mid-20th cent.? the naples tradition continues
>but radio put paid to "folk" singing in italy. there must have been
>research done on early roots in eastern europe, for example. didn't
>bartok raid the folk cookie jar for "inspiration?"
"inspiration." They went out into the field and transcribed (or
recorded??) folk music they were afraid would be lost otherwise.
That they did take inspiration from it is unquestionable--probably
Bartok moreso than Kodaly. They represent the first generation of
ethnomusicologists, long before the term was coined.
And the Lomaxes were working on a W.P.A. project during the
depression, a project headed up by Charles Seeger, with Ruth Crawford
Seeger taking responsibility for the transcriptions into notation
(never finished, as far as I know). As a government project, all the
recordings and transcriptions were public domain from day one, and
they are still available in the Library of Congress Folk Archives for
anyone's use.
Sybrand Bakker
wrote:
Bartok definitely did, and Kodaly too.
In the Netherlands Ate Doornbosch has been travelling the country for
decades to record the songs of elderly people, in order to save those
songs for eternity. His radio broadcast was called 'Onder de groene
linde', and it was quite customary one could trace back a song to the
16th century. His material is kept in the Dutch Folksong archive in
the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam.
Alain Naigeon
dih6tq$1qg0$1...@agricola.medieval.org...
> In article <434c1951$0$21303$626a...@news.free.fr>,
> Alain Naigeon <anai...@free.fr> wrote:
> >I find strange that Renaissance - whatever its exact definition -
> >is said to have lasted a few dozen of years, while, for middle-
> >age, people speak of several centuries! Is it because, at the
> >time when these names were created, not much was known about
> >medieval years - therefore, no relevant difference could be
> >established inside this period of time ?
>
> Well, there are many ways to approach this question, not least of
> which is that e.g. art historians sometimes talk of the Renaissance
> as beginning with Giotto (in fact the dictionary I just consulted
> calls him a Renaissance painter).
>
> However, the most basic answer, as I see it, is that the Renaissance
> is considered almost more an *event* than a period.
A very interesting point of view indeed! I've just had a look at my
dictionary, Giotto was dead in 1337 - that's really early, but I don't
know about painting well enough to have an opinion.
> It's the
> awakening of modernism, or the reawakening of antiquity (as it was
> seen then), depending on your slant. As an "event" with specific
> properties, we can also say that it happened at different times in
> different fields.
>
> Beyond that, much of the time period that accomplished what we call
> Baroque music is still in what historians typically call the "early
> modern" period, and so contiguous with the Renaissance in that
> sense.
I'm very happy with this fact, since I can't consider Monteverdi, for
example, as 100% baroque, his music still has renaissance flavors IMHO
(I even think so about Schütz - and in case of an objection I'd answer
that he studied with Gabrieli, after, all).
>
> One thing I think of as making the "Renaissance" an interesting
> concept in music is that it leads people to pick out particular
> stylistic changes as of critical importance. We see John do this
> earlier in the thread, and not to pick on him, but he's doing it
> within a very specific view of music and priorities. It's an
> interesting little litmus test, when the fact of the matter is that
> an experienced ear can identify music of the 1400s & 1500s by decade.
This will make me ask two questions, but they will be better asked
in different threads.
Thanks!