‘Carmina
gallica’, French songs... For a man of the twenty-first century, the
literal translation of the title sounds quite modern, but the poems and
the music presented on our programme all date from between the late
eleventh and early thirteenth centuries. Most of the pieces are secular,
but a number of paraliturgical pieces have also been included, their
presence being justified by the fact that secular and religious poetry
at that time were very closely related. All the pieces are in Latin and
are the work of clerics: love-songs, songs of lamentation or jubilation,
narrative poems, dance songs, sequences, conductus... All these poems,
written in a language now dead, show an unexpected vitality and
freshness. Singing them almost eight hundred years later is for us the
best way to feel and understand a twelfth century that is so very far
removed from our own...
For a long time many histories of music
have assured us that the secular song came into being around 1100 with
Guillaume IX, the first known troubadour, and from then on rapidly
experienced great success. The birth of the song in the vernacular — in
this case, Occitan, the langue d'oc — was of major importance in
our artistic history. But we must beware of oversimplification, which
could lead us to overlook other factors that are just as crucial: for
example, the surprising amount of secular Latin poetry that was written
at the time of the earliest troubadours, and maybe even before. Before
1115 (i.e. during the lifetime of Guillaume IX) Heloise told Abelard
that young people all over France hummed his Latin love-songs (alas, all
lost).
As French historians, particularly over the past few
decades, have brilliantly shown, the period known as the Middle Ages
(contrary to the uniformity one might suppose from the term) was one of
great diversity and change. In all fields: not only economical,
political and social, but also cultural and artistic. In a range of
works, the French historian Georges Duby has played an important part in
shedding new light on the mentalities and sensibilities that prevailed
during different moments within the Middle Ages. Thus even within the
twelfth century, from which nearly all of the music presented on this
recording dates, there was a series of great changes. The poems of
Baudri de Bourgueil and Hildebert de Lavardin, the earliest pieces on
our programme with the anonymous song Jam dulcis amica, date from
a very specific period, during which the feudal system was at its
height (Dominique Barthélémy calls it ‘le paroxysme de la féodalité’).
From the beginning of the eleventh century, the king and the great
noblemen, at the same time as the pope and the bishops, saw their power
and authority considerably weakened. The minor nobility in the
provinces, often newly established, claimed new rights (the right to
build a castle, for example), introduced new practices in their favour,
and took the law into their own hands. The feudal system took hold all
over Western Europe, and throughout the eleventh century the nobility
amassed great wealth through the very high levies they imposed on the
farming world, which was then technically and demographically going
through a period of great progress. The high point of this feudal
movement, which was often violent and disorderly, came in the years
1070-1130. This period coincided exactly with the Gregorian Reform,
which the Church began to enforce at that time, although its major
effects — clear separation between the clergy and the laity, strict
supervision of private life by the Church (which nevertheless lost much
of its temporal power to the nobility), the crusading spirit, and the
development of the ascetic movement — were not really felt until during
the course of the twelfth century. Paradoxically, it was during that
same chaotic period that the world experienced ‘a new springtime’, as
Georges Duby calls it (‘un nouveau printemps du monde’), which grew and
‘flourished on the old Latin stock’. Indeed, Romanesque art gradually
developed in the monasteries of some of the French provinces far removed
from central power, monasteries which rapidly increased both in number
and influence. That time saw the triumph of Cluny and its amazing sway.
In those same abbeys, poetic and musical creation found new directions
in the form of tropes, polyphony, and liturgical dramas.
In a
world that appears to have been emerging from the dark ages, very few
people knew how to read and write. The artistic movements concerned only
a small elite at the greatest courts and within the episcopal or
monastic schools, where children of the nobility came for instruction.
At the end of the eleventh century, in the clerical milieux of the
cathedrals of the Loire Valley and neighbouring regions (Angers, Tours,
Rennes, Poitiers, Chartres), Latin poetry flourished. A number of
clerics, priests, and even bishops exchanged abundant correspondence and
wrote secular love-poems. This school of poetry very clearly prefigured
the birth not only of vernacular poetry, but also of courtly society.
In
the course of the twelfth century, the wind did indeed change.
Noblemen, kings and bishops managed to re-establish their power, using
the same methods as their vassals in the eleventh century: accumulation
of wealth through levies, strengthening of the feudal pyramid,
formalising of personal assets and inheritance, and so on. Royal Gothic
art was thus able to establish itself, under the impetus, first of all,
of Suger at Saint-Denis. The movement no longer came from the abbeys,
but from the cathedrals. Towns and their guilds also became more
powerful, soon representing the only strong opposition force to the
nobility. Art was secularised and urbanised and lyric poetry saw the
appearance of the first songs written in the vernacular, followed by
their unstoppable success.
But Latin was still extremely
versatile in the twelfth century. Indeed, for the intellectual elite,
the authors and composers of our ‘carmina’, it was much more than a
language of religion. Latin, which was constantly studied and used
throughout the Middle Ages, was spoken daily in the twelfth century by
that elite, which worked, invented, created and thought in Latin, and
completely renewed the poetic systems inherited from Antiquity.
Naturally, the lyric poetry of that century of strong contrasts
reflected the changes and upheavals of the time. The metrical system,
the alternation of long and short syllables that had governed classical
poetry since the Greek bards, was gradually replaced during the Early
Middle Ages by the rhythmic system, based on stressed and unstressed
syllables, which was more in keeping with reality, i.e. the everyday
language, as it was spoken and heard.
49 Likewise, rhyme and
assonance, and alliteration, which were quite rare until the tenth
century, came into general use, thus becoming characteristic features of
medieval poetry, with the more and more frequent use of the refrain.
The generation that formalised these fundamental innovations — that of
Abelard — was strongly aware of being ‘modern’ as opposed to the
ancients (indeed, the word ‘modern’ was coined at that time to mean just
that!). But it also recognised its debt towards the ancients through
the famous maxim of Bernard de Chartres: ‘Nous sommes des nains juchés
sur les épaules de géants’ (We are dwarves perched on the shoulders of
giants’). Abelard's generation clearly influenced and inspired all the
poets who came later in the century, particularly those represented on
this recording, including Hilaire d'Orléans, who was a pupil of Abelard,
and Pierre de Blois, whose tutor, John of Salisbury, was another of
Abelard's pupils.
Many parallels may be drawn between Latin
poetry and the repertoire of the troubadours and trouvères. They
appeared simultaneously and constantly enriched one another. In their
different languages, the poets innovated and experimented with new
literary forms, while remaining within a traditional framework. In both
cases, the manuscripts that have come down to us form only a small part
of the vast original corpus. The authors shared the same social
background, intellectually very rich and with a thorough knowledge of
ancient literature: although several of the troubadours were of more
humble origin, most of them were perfectly familiar with the Latin
repertoire; furthermore, some of them were themselves clerics. Both the
poems in Latin and those in the vernacular were meant to be sung (and
that was true until the fourteenth century!). In both cases, most of the
music has been lost: in a society in which the emphasis was on orality,
poets began to write down their works, but non-religious music was
rarely written down (the tunes were generally known to all, or could be
reused for several texts, since the practice of ‘contrafactum’ was
already attested in the twelfth century). Finally, as Jacques Chailley
has so brilliantly demonstrated, the poetic themes are often common to
both repertoires, and the formal, structural, literary and musical
similarities are striking: in both cases, great artists were busy
renewing the relationship between text and music, even though that
remained within the framework of established tradition, inspired by Ovid
and the great classical texts.
There is however one feature that
distinguishes the Latin poets of the twelfth century from their
counterparts writing in the vernacular: the sheer delight they take in
the skilful interplay of words. Their poems are light and clever,
showing extraordinary mastery of the language, its rhythms and its
colours. Pierre de Blois and Philippe le Chancelier, two poets from the
end of the century, provide some brilliant examples of such writing. And
their range was much wider than that of their predecessors: from sacred
conductus to erotic song for the first, and from settings of the simple, austere admonitio (admonition) to the flamboyant, lyrical lai for the second.
One
of the main difficulties for us, as musicians of the twenty-first
century, was to find a style of interpretation that would be fitting for
a period so remote from our own and so rich in musical genres. Like the
historians, we find ourselves faced with a major stumbling block: the
lack of sources. The earliest corpus of works by music theorists dealing
with interpretation dates from the thirteenth century and is devoted to
singing at the Cathedral of Notre Dame round about 1200. As Georges
Duby demonstrates, the social and cultural environment was very
different a hundred years earlier. The little we know for certain about
performance practice and the cultural mood of the period kept us within
narrow limits when it came to making our choices: the singing was
essentially for one voice, as was the instrumental accompaniment, when
it existed. It was essentially a monodic art, calling for no extra
drone, vocal descant or counterpoint — techniques that are generally
overexploited in modem interpretations. The mood must be intimate, and
almost elitist: we must imagine a court, a poet reciting his verses
before just a few people who were likely to appreciate the refinements
of his compositions. These were works by clerics, written for clerics or
for members of the highest nobility.
Such conditions are
obviously quite different from those one generally encounters in
concerts today. Furthermore, the musicians have to attempt to understand
the sensibilities of twelfth-century man, which were far removed from
our own. We discover, for example, that some beautiful melodies, very
similar in their serenity and fullness, can be used not only for fine
love-poems but also for amazingly fierce diatribes against the politics
of some important figure. How do we come to terms with this? And how are
we to interpret such intentions musically? Paul Rousset describes the
intense emotionalism, the extroversion, and the great inconstancy of men
of the Romanesque period. Material living conditions were terrible,
nature was hostile and unpredictable, and the cruelty of war took its
toll: it was a case of the survival of the strongest, who were often the
most violent. Moreover, the well-known violence of the knights echoed
the verbal violence of our poets. This ubiquitous violence coexisted
with a great sensitivity that was expressed unreservedly through tears.
Epic romances are full of such extrovert characters, easily touched by
physical beauty, capable of sudden switches from anger to tearful
desolation, and showing an immoderate taste for the marvellous, the
supernatural.
Research into ornamentation, i.e. finding the
necessary distance between the musical notation and the singer's
spontaneous rendering, also proves to be delicate (as it is for music of
the following centuries). A thorough knowledge of all related
repertoires, from before or after the twelfth century (notably Gregorian
music), is essential if we are to comprehend the musical language these
composers had at their disposal: typical modal formulas, cadences, etc.
The musician must then find the right balance between distance from the
written work, which was often non-existent in the twelfth century, and
respect for the sources which forms the basis of his work. Musicologists
underline the amazing stability of the oral tradition compared to the
uncertain ground of the written tradition (multiple variants,
misunderstanding, scribal errors, and so on). We have reduced the
musical instruments to a minimum: two medieval fiddles (vièles).
In northern France, especially after 1150, only the harp was suitable
for the accompaniment of these Latin songs, apart from the ever-present
fiddle. The lute family was excluded: it made its first timid appearance
in northern France in the thirteenth century. The instruments we use
are the result of extensive research on the part of instrument maker
Christian Rault, including a close examination of iconography and
statuary of the Romanesque period. There were clearly two different
types of medieval fiddle, based on harmonious mathematical proportions
and using various tunings that are found in many traditional music
repertoires throughout the world, as well as in the treatise written by
the Dominican Jerome of Moravia, who was the first musical theorist to
speak explicitly about the fiddle in the 1280s.
Finally, Diabolus
in Musica's approach to the reconstruction of early music always
involves great care with pronunciation. Research into the language seems
to us as vital as palaeographic examination of the manuscripts, if we
are to enjoy the full flavour — and power — of these poems. As
specialists in historical speech habits confirm (Gaston Zink, Eugène
Green), medieval clerics pronounced Latin using the phonetics they would
use for their vernacular mother tongue, while of course taking into
account the stress rules for medieval Latin. So this medieval Latin was
pronounced just like the French of northern France, the langue d'oïl,
which is described very precisely in many works on historical
phonetics, and its pronunciation evolved with the latter. On this
recording, the listener will therefore notice that we pronounce the
Latin not only with the nasalisations that are so typical of French, but
also with the French rather than the Italian ‘u’ sound, since that was
how it had been pronounced in northern France since Carolingian times.
It would have been a different matter if this music had been
specifically liturgical, for we know that papal envoys were often sent
to the French dioceses over the centuries with the responsibility of
ensuring that the orthodox (i.e. Italian) pronunciation was respected
(proof that it wasn't!). For our secular songs, in the courtly context
of this programme, ‘French’ pronunciation is necessary.
The songs:
PROMISSA MUNDO GAUDIA
by Hildebert de Lavardin is a poem full of symbolism about the Last
Judgement. The text, written in neo-classical Latin, nevertheless makes
use of the very musical process of the short two-word refrain, 'Die
ista' ('On this day'), forming a sort of litany.
The songs of Pierre de Blois:
this very great intellectual, one of the major figures of his century,
excelled in every aspect of literature, clerical or courtly, Latin or
vernacular. VITAM DUXI
is a discussion on the subject of love that one could imagine sung by a
trouvère at the court of Henry Plantagenet and his wife Eleanor.
Surprisingly it is found among the Latin conducti in the 'Magnus Liber' of the Notre Dame school (Florence manuscript)! SEVIT AURE SPIRITUS and SPOLIATUM FLORE,
which have contributed to the great renown of Pierre de Blois, are
almost erotic love-poems. Was his love fictitious, idealised? 'Flora',
the object of all the author's attentions, certainly appears to be a
human being made of flesh and blood... Pierre de Blois's love-poems
often include a joyful refrain. For this poet, love was a source of
happiness and enjoyment!
The rundelli:
clerical dances that were in favour in the late twelfth and early
thirteenth centuries in the north of France. They are found in the
Florence and Tours manuscripts. Evidence of profound and naïve faith,
they were performed by young clerics as amusement on the important feast
days. (Easter: PASSIONIS EMULI and MUNDI PRINCEPS; Christmas: LETO LETA CONCIO; celebration of a new bishop: O SEDES APOSTOLICA).
JAM DULCIS AMICA:
an anonymous love-song dating from the end of the eleventh century
(Jacques Chailley). It takes the form of a dialogue between two lovers,
but it lies on the edge of the secular and paraliturgical spheres: the
poetry is a sort of variation on the Song of Songs, inspired more by
Ovid than by courtly love, which was not yet in vogue at the time this
song was written!
The conducti of Philippe le Chancelier:
these songs are also taken from the Florence manuscript. Philippe
appears less light-hearted and more severe than Pierre de Blois, a fact
no doubt explained by his turbulent life, but his inventiveness is quite
striking. Philippe le Chancelier was a master of rhyme and literary
word play, a great poet and also an excellent composer and musician. His
qualities as a singer and player of the medieval fiddle (vièle)
were praised by the trouvère and cleric Henri d'Andeli. The pieces
presented here are excellent illustrations of Philippe's talents: a call
to order addressed to the Spirit, which must not allow itself to be
overrun by vanity (O MENS COGITA), a violent pamphlet against the baseness of the human condition and the weakness of the sinner (O LABILIS SORTIS),
a poem full of biblical references to the light Christianity brought to
the world, thus bringing to an end the 'old law' of Judaism (DUM MEDIUM).
GLORIA SI MUNDI: a planctus
by Baudri de Bourgueil on the death of Gui-Geoffroi, known as
Guillaume, eighth Duke of Aquitaine, father of the first troubadour,
which occurred in 1087 (William the Conqueror died the same year). The planctus,
a song of lamentation, was a very popular genre from the ninth century,
both in Latin and in the vernacular, and from the beginning musical
notation was provided. The planctus melodies seem to express very
unusual emotionalism, and we know the importance of the funeral rites
and ceremonies of feudal society, as of all so-called primitive
societies. The planctus is nevertheless more a song of
remembrance, a later tribute to the deceased, rather than music for the
funeral celebration itself.
SIC MEA FATA:
a love-song by Hilaire d'Orléans, for whom 'amor' rhymes so well with
'dolor'... The ambiguity of the text does not enable us to make out
whether the pleasure of loving outweighs the unhappiness of not being
loved, a theme that was very popular with contemporary troubadours.
Furthermore, this song is included in a manuscript from the south of
France (School of Saint-Martial of Limoges) containing many secular
Latin pieces, but also in the famous Carmina Burana manuscript, a
compilation offering a fine selection of lyric poems from the late
twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The anonymous conducti:
these pieces are taken from the famous 'Magnus Liber', now in Florence,
presenting the repertoire of the Notre Dame School of Paris as it was
in around 1200. The unique collection of monodic conducti
included in this manuscript gives us an incomparable view of late
twelfth-century Latin monody. None of the pieces bear a clear signature,
but many attributions are made possible by comparison with other
sources. The subjects, literary genres, and melodies show great
diversity and amazing scope, even though there are very few secular
love-songs in this manuscript written for the Cathedral of Notre Dame in
Paris.
O MARIA STELLA MARIS: a conductus
dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The Gothic period (from about 1140) saw
the extraordinary development of the Marian cult, accompanied by an
abundant production of literary and musical works. The last two lines
seem to be a refrain, but only one verse has come down to us.
TURMAS ARMENT: a conductus
referring to a tragic event in clerical history: the murder in 1192 of
the Cardinal and Bishop of Liège, Albert de Louvain, by the henchmen of
Henry VI, who wished to set a man of his own lineage in the episcopal
see. The music for this occasional piece is very elaborate, with rich
use of melisma.
The prosae of Adam de Saint Victor: prosae,
or sequences, are rhythmic liturgical or paraliturgical poems. The
creative genius of the Middle Ages expressed itself with great
inventiveness in this genre. Paris was particularly active as a centre
for the composition of such pieces and the very recent but already
prestigious Abbey of Saint Victor, founded in 1108 by Guillaume de
Champeaux (by the middle of the century it already possessed one of the
largest libraries in Europe!) was highly reputed for its repertoire of
sequences and its own particular melodic traditions. Adam de Saint
Victor was undoubtedly one of the very great liturgical poets of the
Middle Ages. His poems are varied, flowing in style and very clear. The
symbolism he uses in his texts is obviously very similar to that of the
great intellectuals (Richard, Godefroy and Hugues de Saint Victor) who
ran the abbey school, which rapidly came to fame in the twelfth century.
We possess forty-five prosae by Adam; their very original melodies, using a wide range, remind us of the tunes used for the lais
(secular equivalents of the sequences). As with much Latin lyric poetry
of the twelfth century, the melody asserts its independence from the
text, and there is often a discrepancy between the musical stress and
the tonic accent in the language.
WHO's WHO:
Abelard:
born near Nantes around 1080, he died near Cluny in 1142, shortly after
being taken in by Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny. Abelard was one
of the greatest intellectuals of the whole of the medieval period. This
attractive, brilliant, and provocative man was a poet and theologian,
and a much-admired teacher. His multifarious talents quickly earned him
great fame all over Europe. His love affair with Heloise, his
intellectual (but nevertheless fierce) battles against St Bernard, but
also against most of the great minds of his time, his condemnation by
two Councils... are still famous to this day. His many love-songs,
apparently very popular, have unfortunately been lost. His literary and
intellectual influence was an enrichment to the whole of the twelfth
century.
Adam de Saint Victor:
we know very little about this poet, who was nevertheless very well
known in twelfth-century Paris. He was a high-ranking canon at the
Cathedral of Notre Dame until 1133, when he retired to the neighbouring
Abbey of Saint Victor, which he had long before made the beneficiary of
his income. That was no doubt the reason for the great tension that
existed between the cathedral and the monastery (which had nevertheless
been founded by a canon of Notre Dame). The quarrels came to a head with
the murder of the prior, Thomas de Saint Victor, who had been put in
charge of investigating the personal possessions of the archdeacons of
Notre Dame that same year (1133).
Baudri de Bourgueil:
born at Meung-sur-Loire in 1046; died in 1130 after being Prior of St
Pierre-de-Bourgueil and Archbishop of Dol in Brittany. He was one of the
pillars of the neo-classical Latin literary school that flourished in
the Loire Valley in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, but
his great fame was soon forgotten.
Hilaire d'Orléans
was an excellent Latin poet, close to the authors of some of the
Carmina Burana. He was Abelard's pupil at 'The Paraclete', originally
the great theologian's remote hermitage (near Troyes), which became a
school when pupils flocked to him, drawn by his renown.
Hildebert de Lavardin,
c1055—1133, Bishop of Le Mans, then Archbishop of Tours. He was noted
for his sermons, theological treatises, poems, and for an abundant and
very poetic correspondence with his ecclesiastical friends (including
Baudri de Bourgueil and Marbode de Rennes) in which he had no hesitation
in approaching the subject of secular love. Hildebert was a true
humanist, a lover of the beauties of this world and a great admirer of
Antiquity, a fact that was exceptional before 1100.
Philippe le Chancelier,
1165—1236, was a great man who led a tortured existence. As chancellor
of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, he was at the centre of a
violent quarrel between the bishopric and the emerging University of
Paris. All his life he fought against injustice, and he had no fear of
using his inventive and multifaceted literary talent for direct attacks
on the powerful men of this world. In Le Dit du Chancelier Philippe, the cleric Henri d'Andeli praised this 'minstrel of God' and his poems in the vernacular (unfortunately lost).
Pierre de Blois:
bom into an aristocratic family at Blois in 1135, this very great poet
died alone and destitute in 1212 after leading a very full life. He
studied at the universities of Tours, Paris and Bologna, was taught by
John of Salisbury, a pupil of Abelard, and was tutor in Palermo to the
future king of Sicily, William II, before joining the chancellery of the
most dazzling court in Europe, that of Henry II and Eleanor. This great
intellectual boasted of being capable, like Julius Caesar, of dictating
to four scribes simultaneously. His poems cover a wide variety of
genres: love-songs, erotic songs, occasional, moral or satirical pieces,
religious compositions, and debates. His œuvre is a perfect reflection of the aspirations, tensions and doubts of the twelfth century.
Antoine GUERBER
Translations: Mary Pardoe
