PART 2: Video Intro

"Something old
Something new
Something borrowed
Something blue"

That’s the old prescription for a successful wedding, and it has never really gone out of style. For some reason, no matter how much we update and revise the institution of marriage, when it comes to tying the knot, people still look for the comfort of that old formula.

In an odd sort of way, that formula was pretty close to the formula used in the middle ages for a successful composition! When it came time to create a new piece, composers often married an old hymn tune to a new melody, or wedded old sacred tunes with new secular words. And since there were no copyright laws in existence, everyone freely borrowed from everyone else—melodies, rhythms, words, or even a whole piece.  As far as the blue part goes--I might be stretching it, but--the lyrics of medieval music usually mined the same sad theme of the chivalric knight pining after his lady with unrequited love!

If you would indulge me this marriage metaphor just a wee bit further,  I'd like to show you an example of that peculiar medieval union of old, new, borrowed and blue.  Here is a work for three parts, all sung simultaneously, each of which has its own set of words.  In the highest part, the original melody had words of religious devotion--however, that same melody later was given new words of a more risque character.

Similarly, the middle part was originally a paean to the Virgin Mary, but turned into some advice for recapturing the excitement of love, to wit, "Let him pretend that he has no grief in his heart, and he will be able to enjoy and regain the sweetness of it."

The lowest part --in both the old version and the newer--had only one word-- "nostrum" --but was based on a tune and words which presumably would have been recognized by listeners as coming from the phrase, "Alleluia, Christ, our paschal lamb, is sacrificed."

Old melodies, new words, borrowed tunes, melancholy moods... if ever opposites attracted, it was this odd mixture in medieval compositions.  To give you an idea about what a piece like this would sound like, here's an excerpt from L'autre jour/Au tens pascour/In seculum, which is built on the same model.  (All pieces like this had the first few words of each part in the title--hence the peculiar format of the name above.)

L'autre jour/Au tens pascour/In seculum

I mentioned above that music was freely borrowed in the middle ages. In that kind of climate you can easily imagine how a piece could adapted in all sorts of ways by various interpreters. For example, it wasn't customary for the composer of a piece to specify what tempo he wanted a performer to take, or what instrumentation he wanted to use.  Here's an example of how one piece of music—the famous and popular tune Douce Dame Jolie—could be interpreted in a variety of ways.

Do you have a preference for one version over the other? Why? Would you like to share your thoughts?  It’s striking how creative each of these performances was, each and all very successful in their own individual way. The first version was energetic and vibrant and gave a very invigorating interpretation of the song. The second version used different instrumentation (meaning that it used a different set of instruments). It started quietly with what sounded like an improvised introduction on an oud (a kind of lute) and a rebec (an ancestor of the violin.) 

The last performance was done by Emma Kirkby, a singer who specializes in singing early music (meaning Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque). She has devoted herself to studying the Performance Practice of this music, meaning the way this music originally sounded. You may be wondering how this applies to singers—the voice is not an instrument that has changed since medieval times. But actually, the way that the voice is used has indeed changed. Today’s singers use quite a bit more "vibrato" as compared with old singers.You probably noticed that Kirkby sings with a "straight" sound, rather than using "vibrato." If you listened very carefully you may also have noticed that she sang the song a whole-tone lower, and that she changed some of the notes in the melody (lowering leading tones). This latter point was her interpretation of how the old notation (which is very ambiguous and which in any case would have allowed for several alternatives) should be interpreted. Kirkby has even made a study of old pronunciation- and perhaps you noticed how different her French was from that of the other performances.

The last word on HIP!  Performance Practice--also called Historically Informed Practice, or HIP for short--is a large field in music study which tries to recreate as closely as possible the performing conventions of the day. So, for instance, performers will try to use antique instruments (or replicas of antiques) to capture the very same sound that existed when a piece was written, and they will try to study exactly how that instrument was played, how the notation was read, and how the music was interpreted in its own time.

I should emphasize that all three of these performances were done by people who specialize in this early repertoire. They are all extremely knowledgeable performers. And yet you can see the variety of interpretations they brought to this one humble tune--the kind of variety that would have been found in the middle ages. The point to remember here is that neither instrumentation or tempo were specified in the middle ages—a convention which continued more or less through the baroque era.

	In the previous lecture I mentioned the prodigious musical skills of medieval musicians. Many admired composers were also very famous poets-- and they often set their own poetry to music. In 14th century France there were several poetic forms which were popular—perhaps you’ve studied them in a French literature course.
These poetic forms--called formes fixes-- had specific rhyme schemes, refrains, and shapes, which lent themselves well to musical setting.

One common formes fixes was the Virelai, as it was called in France--or as it was called in Italy, the Ballata.  It was roughly an AbbA form.  Here's a delightful example of it:

Ballata: Ecco la primavera, by Francesco Landini

Another common formes fixes was the Rondeau (not to be confused with the Rondo form which we studied at the beginning of this course!). The French Rondeau was shaped: ABaAabAB, where capitalized letters indicate lines of poetry which always returned with the same line of music (that is, a refrain). Here is an excerpt of one of my favorite Rondeaus.

Rondeau: Roz, Liz, Printemps, by Guillaume de Machaut

You might have noticed some pretty piquant harmonies here and there in this piece. Perhaps you would even call them dissonances. (If you didn’t notice anything unusual at any point listen to the piece again.) Those unusual sounds bring up an important point about how these pieces were constructed, and about the "rules" of composition in those days. These works were constructed in a linear fashion— line by line, part after part. Composers were not listening to these pieces harmonically, or vertically—that is, they were not listening for the convergence of the different parts at every moment. As long as all the parts matched up and sounded harmonious at the cadences they were satisfied that the rules of composition had been followed and that the piece was satisfactory. This is an important point because it reveals a very linear and contrapuntal way of thinking which it is a long way from the simplicity of monophonic composition. (Contrapuntal composition means that the piece is made up of separate, individual strands or lines, which work when taken together.)

It’s not hard to imagine that, after hundreds of years of monophonic music, the experience of counterpoint and all the possibilities it opened up would have been almost intoxicating. And composers in the middle ages were thrilled with counterpoint—they were like kids in a toy shop! The fascination with counterpoint led to a lot of experimentation, most of it on an extremely intellectual level. One result of this experimentation was a technique called isorhythm, which was often used in vocal pieces called motets. In isorhythmic motets the composer put the parts together by fashioning a string of pitches (called a color) and a set of rhythms (called a talea), which were recyled throughout the piece. Sounds like a simple enough system, until you realize that the color was not always of the same length as the talea so that these repeated patterns did not necessarily coincide! Here's an excerpt from a famous isorhythmic motet:

Guillaume de Machaut, Bone Pastor

It is miraculous that composers could fashion something that sounded musical from such an (overly-) intellectualized method. Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377) was probably one of the few composers in history who could manage such a feat. As the textbook points out, Machaut was one of those "all of the above" type people, a person of wide-ranging talents, being a musician, poet, priest, and court official!

Finally, I’d like to share with you one of my favorite medieval pieces, Tosto che l'alba. It is a caccia, which is the Italian term for a round. (A round is a composition like "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," or "Freres Jacques," in which one voice starts, followed by another voice in exact imitation). The caccia basically comes from the hunt, and the idea of "the pursued" and "the pursuer" is indeed reflected in the music.

The words are:  As soon as dawn of the fine day appears  The hunters awake: "Get up, get up! It’s time!"  Call the dogs: "Hey, hey, Viola!" "Hey, Primera!"  High on the mountain with good dogs in hand  And the pack quiet  And everyone in order on the field.  I see one of the best of the pack on the scent.  "On the alert!"  Everyone beat the brush on all sides!  "Ayo! Ayo! The young doe is coming to you!  Carbon has seized her and holds her in his mouth!"

This is just an excerpt of Tosto che l'alba-- the ending, to be exact. This is one piece which never fails to bring a smile to everyone’s face because it is genuinely funny. But you’re likely to find it even funnier if you listen for the round, because every time you hear a funny line you know that in just a few moments it will be imitated--like some kind of deranged echo--by the next voice! Enjoy!

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