Amor
ey
Medieval secular
music
12-15th Century
The second CD of Ensemble Musica
Historica offers a selection of medieval monophonic secular
music. The genre might seem distant in time and space, it has developed
in courts of kings and lords, and at marketplaces of small cities and
villages - with the help of several famous poets and unknown musicians.
Since the profane songs and dances had been forbidden and persecuted by
the church, very few written sources have remained. These were often
created 100-150 years after the author died. The music was mainly
written in the way of sacred music books of the Gregorian melodies and
it doesn't give any information about the improvisation of the
accompanying instrument or the slight differences of the verses. This
lack of information forces the performer of our age to add more ideas
to the written music.
The musician can gain help from the traditional Middle- and
Southeastern-European folk music and the music of the Middle East. The
Islamic music, approaching Europe through the Iberian Peninsula and
Byzantium, had a productive influence on Europe. A great number of
instruments, and the bow itself were brought to us by Arabic people. We
have also something to learn from the Balkan folk music, this
monophonic music accompanied with bourdon or just a few chords. The
Hungarian traditional vocal music can provide a basic for the
performance of the troubadour songs, since it's basically focusing on
the text in spite of main embellishments. Another help for us is the
early music movement itself: its pioneers have made the language of
early music understandable again, without restricting the individual
ideas.
The vocal works on the album are mostly the relics of the court poetry.
Their common source is the lyric poetry of the troubadours (written in
Provençal) that has united different ideologies as well as styles of
music and literature. It has developed in Provance (South France) at
the end of the 11th century. The author of Calenda maia
(#3), Raimbaut de Vaqueiras is said to have learned
this melody from two fiddlers on the road. The work though is not a
dance tune, it is much more a troubled confession of a true lover who
cannot be consoled by the flowers and the birds in May, because he is
waiting for his lady's message and dreading the revenge of her jealous
husband. Vaqueiras' contemporary, Jaufrč Rudel is
remembered as the "poet of distant love". The noble troubadour wrote
his song — at the bank of a stream in springtime with the nightingale
singing above — to his lady who appears in the distant sky as if
"painted by sweet desires" (#7). Bernart de Ventadorn
mostly sang about the joyful moments passing so quickly; in this song
here he is praising the noble lady for whom he would gladly endure any
suffering (#14). A similar poem was written by Peire Vidal
(#18), the famous eccentric who might have also been to Hungary. He is
drawing his own portrait with boastful and self-ironical words: "he is
yearning for restlessness like the monk for tranquility and is unable
to stay at one place".
Two dance songs by Neidhart von Reuenthal from the
13th century represent the German court poetry (Minnesänger) on this
recording. The Bavarian knight spent most of his life in Styria. At the
beginning of his winter song (#10) he describes the desolate, lifeless
landscape, in the other work he is conversing with a golden bird as a
metaphor of the beloved one (#11). Both poems are followed by Styrian
dance music. His contemporary, Martím Codax is a
simple minstrel writing in gallego language. In his first song the girl
is asking the sea if it has seen her lover, in the second one the boy
is enchanted by the sight of a girl dancing in front of the church in
Vigo (#16). This style doesn't originate in the troubadour poetry but
rather in their common source, the springtime love songs. The famous
Provençal example for this genre (#1) is about making fun of deceived
husbands at the spring festivities, the "April queen election".
The instrumental music of this age raise even more questions, since the
rhythmic forms keep the principles of the polyphony, but we can not be
sure at all how it was played at a May feast on the countryside. The
structural principle of the dance tunes from the few remaining source
seems to be almost uniform: longer or shorter opening motives are
followed by refrain-like, returning closing parts (estampida
structure). This can be observed in the case of 13th century French
court music (#4-5, 9b, 12), and of Italian pieces from the beginning of
14th century (#6, 17, 19-20). Il
Lamento di Tristano (#8), being woven of slow and dance motifs,
shows the laments and the moments of joy of Tristan, who wanders away from
his lover — taking as model 'the Shepherd seeking his sheep',
well-known in folklore...
Czech dances from the age of King Sigismund (#15) have a slightly different structures. Dutch melodies of the Prague
Codex (#13) were originally tenor lines of polyphonic works with
fashionable, ornamented top lines in the era of ars nova — but thus "accelerated" they also sound adequate.
Our selection has two aims: on one hand we would like to give these
works public in Hungary, most of which were until now only recorded by
performers abroad. On the other hand the audience of Western countries
can also find our experiments interesting: in performing the medieval
works we exploited the means, instruments, the use of melody and text
of Eastern European folk music (#2, 5, 18, 20). So not only we play
these pieces, but they 'play us', 21th century, Eastern European
people.
Rumen István Csörsz
(Translated by Zsófia Tövisházi)