medieval.org
Stradivarius Dulcimer STR 33398
1992
Organum - Clausula - Motetus
1. [3:38]
Alleluya Pascha nostrum · PEROTINUS MAGNUS (circa 1200)
Gaudeat devotio / Nostrum · Codex Pluteus 29, 1 Firenze
2. Beatis nos / Benedicamus Domino [2:27] Codex Pluteus 29, 1 Firenze
3. Domino fidelium / Domino [2:02] Codex Wolfenbüttel 1
Mottetti con doppio testo | Motets with double text
4. O Maria virgo / O Maria maris stella / Veritatem [1:50] Codex La Clayette
5. Clamans in deserto / Quant vient en mai / Johanne [1:56] Codex Pluteus 29, 1 Firenze
6. Virgo virginum / Quant voi remirant / Hec dies [2:32] Codex Bamberg
7. Mellis stilla / Par une matinee / Alleluya [2:08] Codex Montpellier
8. Crux, forma penitencie / Au douz mois de mai / Sustinere [2:42] Codex La Clayette
Mottetti strumentali | Instrumental motets
9. A la clarte / Et illumina [1:14] Codex Wolfenbüttel 1
10. Clamans in deserto / Johanne [1:07] Codex Pluteus 29, 1 Firenze
11. On doit / La biaute / In seculum [1:17] Codex La Clayette
12. Amours mi font / En may / Flos flius eius [1:10] Codex La Clayette
Mottetti francesi con doppio testo | French motets with double text
13. Ma loiaus pensee / In seculum [3:12] Chansonnier de Noailles
14. Pucelete bele / Je languis / Domino [2:09] Codex Montpellier
15. L'autrier m'esbatoie / Demenant grant joie / Manere [1:31] Codex La Clayette
16. Trop souvent me duel / Brunete / In seculum [1:28] Codex Montpellier
17. Hare, hare, hye / Balaam ! Goudalier / Balaam [1:42] Codex Wolfenbüttel 2
18. On parole / A Paris / Frese nouvele [1:44] Codex Montpellier
19. Hoquetus [1:37] Codex Montpellier
20. Je n'amerai autre que cele / In seculum [1:18] Codex Montpellier
Mottetti con triplo testo | Motets with triple text
21. C'est quadruble / Vos n'i dormirez / Biau cuers / Fiat [2:34] Codex La Clayette
22. Ave, deitatis / Cele ma tolu / Lonc tens / Et sperabit [3:08] Codex La Clayette
23. De la virge Katerine / Quant froidure / Agmina milicie / Agmina [3:37] Codex La Clayette
24. El mois d'avril / O Maria / O quam sancta / Et gaudebit [2:05] Codex La Clayette
Clausula Mors e mottetto con triplo testo | Clausula Mors and motet with triple text
25. Alleluia Christus resurgens [3:18] Codex Pluteus 29, 1 Firenze
26. Mors a primi patris / Mors, que stimulo / Mors morsu / Mors [1:29] Codex La Clayette
Dominique Visse — controtenore | countertenor
Edmund Brownless — tenore | tenor
Eric Mentzel — tenore | tenor
Cohn Mason — baritono | bariton
CLEMENCIC CONSORT
René Clemencic — tintinabulum
Marco Ambrosini — ghironda | hurdy-gurdy
Igor Pomykalo — viella | vielle
Esmail Vasseghi — psaltery and percussion | psaltery and percussion
RENÉ CLEMENCIC
direttore | conductor
Registrazione | Recording: Tonstudio Benkö in Strohgasse, Wien, 25-26 / II / 1992
Direzione artistica | Recording supervision: René Clemencic
Assistente di produzione | Production supervision: René Clemencic
Tecnico del suono e montaggi digitali | Recording engineer and digital editing: Thomas Benkö
Traduzioni:
Del tedesco: Roberto Menin
Dall'antico francese: Françoise Bohr
Dal latino: Dott. Daniele Sabaino
In inglese: Kevin O'Neill
Fotografia di | Photo by: Peter Schremek, Wien
The present programme constitutes a rendezvous with one of Western
culture's most fascinating and interesting musical genres, the motet:
popular mainly in Paris in the period circa 1200 to 1290. These
compositions, in which the text is expressed in many languages seems to
predominate, represent in their richest variants amongst the highest -
and in many cases never to be reattained - moments in musical
polyphonic. In our musical culture the idea of polyvocality (the
simultaneous presence of several voices allowing the maximum diversity
in each) has never since been realized with such coherence and purity.
The
mastery polyphony of J. S. Bach himself does not bear comparison,
because it was intended to attain different aims. No single voice of a
Bach fugue may, when detached from its musical context, stand alone. In
the medieval motet however, each voice is a unique closed world which,
when liberated from the polyphonic context, may exist alone as authentic
religious or secular monody. In the motet, in a certain sense, the
widely differing individual vocal identities often blend into a unity of
a superior order. As for the planets, the single voices trace out their
own orbits, without paying heed to the presence of and without
troubling the others: harmonic monads in a universal musical order. The
necessary fusion, the harmonic blending of the tones in two or more
vocal lines has no value in itself. The "harmony» that this generates is
useful chiefly in avoiding disturbing effects of dissonance, but is not
consciously intended to have its own harmonic value. No harmonic
causality unites the sounds; the motet is not the counterpoint, there is
no punctus contra punctus, but cantus contra cantum, song against song, from line to line. Motetus vero est cantus ex pluribus compositus
(The motet is a song composed of many songs; Johannes de Grocheio,
circa 1400). Pre-eminence is given to the melodic, fluid element, and
above all the sonority, to the field of the chords.
As within the
medieval tradition, the musical pieces, even those with markedly
profane or even hedonistic texts, are anchored within the spiritual
dimension, however without any reference, any re-ligio to the
transcendent. It is the tenor (from tenere = to hold), the relatively lower voice in values of slightly longer notes, and which produces a canto of a Gregorian type, that represents the conceptual foundation of the work: "primo debet tenorem ordinare vel componere et ei modum et mensuram dare" (It is necessary above all to give order to or compose the tenor and give it mode and measure) as Grocheio again affirms: "The
more important parts must be created first, because on these the others
are then modelled, as nature does in the creation of animals, giving
form firstly to the principal parts, or indeed the heart, the liver and
the brain, and on those then create the other parts. I speak of ordering
since in the motelli (sic) and in the organum the tenor is
derived from an odder song, composed in precedence, but then adjusted by
the artist according to the manner and the correct measure.". The
tenor is firstly ordered rhythmically and made to conform to one of the
six then known modes; which are comparable to an ancient prosodic
scansion in feet: 1st Modus = long/short; 2nd Modus = short/long; 3rd
Modus= long/short/short; 4th Modus = short/short/long; 5th Modus =
long/long; 6th Modus = short/short/short. But since the music of the
time knew in general only fundamental rhythms in triple time, since the
3, as the divine Trinity, was considered the only perfect number, the
long and the short are in the relationship 2 to 1, expressed in modern
terms, half notes and quarter notes.
So the 1st Modus = 𝅗𝅥♩; 2nd Modus = ♩𝅗𝅥; 3rd Modus = 𝅗𝅥♩♩;
4th Modus = ♩♩𝅗𝅥; 5th Modus = 𝅗𝅥𝅗𝅥, and 6th Modus = ♩♩♩. If, as in
the 3rd and 4th Modus, we have a succession of two shorts, these must
be integrated with a third foot in order to attain perfection, which
occurs by doubling the second short: 3rd Modus= 𝅗𝅥♩𝅗𝅥 and 4th
Modus= ♩𝅗𝅥𝅗𝅥. Associating the melody of the tenor
with a mode (usually the 5th ?, though often the 1st or the 2nd; the 4th
and the 5th ? are rarer and the 6th only exceptionally) produces a brief
rhythmic scheme which will then be repeated continually, with a
modification of the tonal heights (pitches) in relation to the melody.
One such isorhythmic schematic was to be later called talea. The melody on the tenor
may be executed once or several times. In such repeats the rhythmic
model may also be completely transformed. The literal repeats of melodic
complexes with different rhythmic values (different tonal lengths) are
defined as color. Above such a tenor scheme there are
now composed one, two or three voices which may also be drawn out on one
of the six modes. Their phrases may coincide and overlap amongst
themselves, or with the isorrythmic cells of the tenor, It is
important to again note that the choral fragment chosen for the tenor is
in melismatic style while the other voices de arranged syllabically in
such manner that to each note there corresponds a different syllable,
which leads to an incredible 'consumption' of text. In the brief passing
of barely a minute (the average duration of a motet) we can hear from
two to four pieces of text and different music, at times actually in two
languages, Latin and French. A content of information without
precedent, a kind of maximalist music, rather than minimalist!
The motet seems to have been born around 1200 thanks to the technique of the tropo,
or the sylabic adaptation of a text on original melismatic
compositions. This procedure had already been famous for some time in
monovocal music (sequentiae, tropi etc.). And it is actually in
the spirit of the time that this transmutation of the melismatic,
undulating character occurs, ecstatic in syllabic dimension, corporeal
and also conceptually more concrete, more logical. To this end at the
beginning there came the clausulae, or sections of organum, the primitive polyphonic form. This concerns those parts of the organum
in which the intoning lower voice, the liturgical tenor which normally
unfolds in longer rhythmic values, begins to move in a more agile and
rhythmic manner (5th modus). The upper voices, which usually proceed in a
more rapid and monorhythmic manner, above all in the 1st Modus, are now
in conformity with the syllabic scheme of a single text. In this way we
have the conductus. But we pass quickly beyond, to the
composition of the fully autonomous motet. The upper voices, now freely
created, differ rhythmically in the frequent overlapping of their
periods, though they also use different modes for each voice. The third
passage in the evolution of the motet is in the use of two or even three
different texts (double or triple motets). sometimes in two different
languages. The motet tries in this way to abandon the ecclesiastical
terrain in order to become the refined pastime of an intellectual
society with exacting tastes. In the voices on the French text there
began a hidden merging of every kind of quotation and allusion, both
textual and melodic. Often there is reference also in the sense of the choral quotation of the tenor (often it concerns a
single word, at times not even a whole one). Given that at the time the
secular and the religious elements were not so clearly distinct as
today, it could happen that secular or multilingual motets might have
been sung in the churches and convents by nuns and the religious, even
during divine service! In 1261, the archbishop of Rouen complained that
the nuns, during some religious celebrations, sang outdated songs and
burlesques such as motets etc. The theologians of the time continually
urged or ordered against the singing in church of excessively profane,
or even indecent motets. Such critique and prohibition, obviously, on
the other hand did no more than re-enforce the extreme diffusion of the
secular motet in the churches. In order to place a limit on this custom,
in the more famous motets the secular text was substituted with a
sacred one, the Latin was replaced by French, in some pieces the whole
text was actually suppressed or was newly transformed into melismatic clausulae.
From the historical point of view it has not yet been demonstrated
which of the two forms may have come first, the motet or the clausula.
But it was not only the cancellation of the text, in a sort of
retrograde evolution, that caused harm to a form such as the motet in
its profound association with its verbal content. In this way even the
voices might be lost (at times even the tenor), in other cases
they might even acquire new ones. Each creation was not immutable in
itself; it did not have a unique character, it was not unchangeable.
Everything had a fluid aspect, anything was possible. Each single voice
could be detached from its own context and stand alone, as simple
monody, almost a sort of solo song with only an accompaniment if the
tenor was realised instrumentally. But here we come to aspects linked
with the performance. As far as we know it seems that the predominant
interpretation was purely vocal and solistic. The absence in toto or in part of text in some voice, for example in the tenor,
does not represent as has now been demonstrated, any final proof of any
instrumental performance. The vocalisation of melodies without text was
certainly not invented by jazz. The homogeneous rhythm (the omoritmia)
constituted almost always the ideal. The so-called spezzato rhythm, a
philological construct from our century, never existed and produces also
terrible effects. The interpretation of the motets seems to have been
relatively free. The modes were dealt with in great freedom, certainly
not with academic-mathematical exactitude, it seems that even variations
of rhythm were acceptable. Our greatest authority in these details is a
certain Anonimus IV, an Englishman, who studied at the Sorbonne in
Paris in the XIIIth century and who in a treatise clearly describes the
musical performance practice. Detached from the priority given to the
purely vocal interpretation might turn to an instrumental performance of
the tenor, above all in secular motets, something further
demonstrated when the motet is transformed into a solo song with
accompaniment. Also a purely instrumental performance could have been in
some cases possible, given that many students and young clerics, the
principal interpreters of motets, would also have known how to play
instruments.
René Clemencic
