Egidius waer bestu bleven
Egidius waer bestu bleven
The Gruuthuse Songs, Bruges c. 1380-1390
The Gruuthuse manuscript is made up of three sections which, initially,
must have existed separately. The first contains prayers in verse-form
and the third is a collection of poetry, but the second volume is the
songbook which, in its present state, contains 147 songs.
In 1462 the manuscript was bought by Loys van Gruuthuse, the son of Jan
van Gruuthuse to whom Jan van Hulst dedicated one of the poems in 1392.
We probably owe the preservation of the whole manuscript less to the
excellent literary quality of the poems and songs, which include some
masterpieces of Middle Dutch poetry, than to the fact that it contained
heraldic devices and notes which were of importance to the aristocratic
families who passed on these documents from generation to generation.
There are no names of authors, except in acrostics which reveal the
name of poet and actor Jan van Hulst in volumes 1 and 3, and also that
of the younger poet Jan Moritoen, in volumes 2 and 3. The latter also
wrote some of the prayers of the first volume. Stylistic and thematic
characteristics have convinced the Dutch scholar K. Heeroma – who has
written the only recent (1966!) work on the Gruuthuse manuscript – that
the whole of volume 2, all the songs, are the work of a single man, the
younger poet Jan Moritoen. The latter's own texts reveal that he was
not only a good singer and poet, but that he presumably also wrote the
music, apparently with effortless ease. Musically speaking, he was more
of an amateur, compared to, for example, Guillaume de Machaut who also
wrote his own verse.
Jan Moritoen
Jan Moritoen, however, was primarily a poet and did not write learned
music. Even so, he composed some remarkable tunes which he wrote down
in stroke notation, an 'amateurish' system that leaves a lot
unspecified but which, to him and his companions, was probably
sufficient to freshen the memory.
Did Jan Moritoen sing his songs on his own, or with others? Did he do
so unaccompanied, or with one or more instruments? Was there a strong
element of improvisation, even polyphonic extemporization? None of
these questions have straightforward answers, but it was certainly not
unusual to improvise with one or more instruments. Van Hulst and
Moritoen frequented a circle of friends – a kind of precursor to the
later chambers of rhetoric – and together they recited poetry, sang
songs, made music, and also drank wine – to them the Virgin Mary was
the Patron Saint of jolly drinkers and true musicians: devotion need
not be tedious! In this kind of company and with this repertoire,
performing with or without instruments probably depended on who was
attending the meetings and which instruments were available.
In one of the poems of volume 3, Moritoen describes people singing some
of his songs, but when he joins in, all the others fall silent: he was
the best, and he knew it!
Marie
For his book on the Gruuthuse manuscript, K. Heeroma has used the poems
and the songs themselves to puzzle out Jan Moritoen's life during his
creative years. In the spirit of Huizinga's Weaning of the Middle Ages,
he has – given the lack of any concrete facts – used his imagination to
recreate the story of Jan Moritoen, and the result reads like a
medieval detective story. What is more, unless one wishes to be
censorious, his conclusions are on the whole also convincing.
Jan Moritoen is presumed to have written his songs between 1380 and
1390. The song Wi willen van den kerels zinghen must date from
c. 1380, as it is probably connected with uprisings against the Count
of Flanders, Louis van Male. The song derides the so-called 'kerels'
who are rude, uncultured and rebellious.
Around the same time, Jan Moritoen must have met Marie, for whom he was
to write courtly songs and poems for four years (Mijn hertze en can
verbliden niet – acrostic: MAIE; Melancolie – acrostic:
MARIE). Marie was certainly not unmoved by the advances of Moritoen who
liked to indulge in writing courtly songs for her, but for whom courtly
love was certainly not synonymous with Platonic love – something which
he makes quite clear in some of his rather uncourtly lyrics. Marie was
rather conservative, however, and did not appreciate Moritoen's
lifestyle. He was a poet for whom money was irrelevant (Het was een
rudder wael ghedaen), who liked to have a drink with his friends (Scinc
her den wijn; God gheve ons eenen bliden wert) and who enjoyed
staying up late at night – which often resulted in a bit of a hangover
the next morning (So wie bi nachte gherne vliecht). Eventually
Marie broke off their relationship to marry a more stable party, even
though Moritoen had declared himself ready to change his ways.
Uncourtly songs
After the break with Marie, the singer-poet stuck to his friends for a
while. With them he obviously also enjoyed singing uncourtly songs,
such as De vedele es van so zoeter aert, full of double
meanings and puns on playing the fiddle, drums and nakers. In Het
soude een scamel mersenier a market vendor sells pins and needles,
one of which fits beautifully in a pretty girl's pin-box. In Ic sag
een scuerduere open staen, the poet looks into a barn, where Sister
Lute and Brother Lollaert are not living up to the rules of
their religious orders – possibly an allusion to a monk, called Matheus
de Lollard, who in 1382 was posthumously condemned for heresy. An
amorous chaplain, the Capelaen van Hoedelem, is also the butt
of Moritoen's sharp pen and wit. Nevertheless, Jan Moritoen was by no
means an unbeliever or opposed to religion – after all he was also the
author of a good number of prayers (Wel op, elc zondich si bereit)
– but he liked to use sarcasm and irony to strike abuse and hypocrisy.
Egidius and Mergriete
Amongst Moritoen's friends was also a certain Egidius to whose
girl-friend Mergriete he was soon introduced. The poet found in her his
new ideal and started writing a whole series of poems and songs for her
– something which she as well as Egidius allowed him to continue. They
had a kind of courtly three-cornered relationship which lasted until
Egidius's untimely death. On that sad occasion Jan Moritoen wrote his
best-known elegy, Egidius waer bestu bleven, a masterpiece of
Middle Dutch literature. On his deathbed Egidius had asked his friend
to take care of Mergriete, but she suffered a spiritual crisis and
finally decided to enter a religious order, much to the despair of Jan
Moritoen. He found the farewell hard to take, and often went to the
convent's walls to listen to her voice – which he compared to that of
the lark – which was now singing only to praise the Lord (Alouette,
voghel clein).
In 1390 Jan Moritoen is presumed to have gathered all his songs from
the Marie and Mergriete periods, with a few others added, to make them
into the songbook which has come down to us in a scriptorium copy of c.
1395.
Music in Bruges
A choice from 147 songs is obviously personal, but we have tried to
include all the different genres such as chansons, ballads and
rondeaux, intermingled with some instrumental versions. One of these
comes from the manuscript itself (Ach, zich voor dich), one is
from the contemporary Hulthem Manuscript (Dits een rondeel) and Comes
Flandriae, flos victoris is a ceremonial motet of 1381 which was
composed (by Petrus Vinderhout?) for the collegiate church of St
Donatian in Bruges, to celebrate a victory by Louis van Male, Count of
Flanders. The text repeatedly mentions the cymbala, referring
to the ringing of the church bells, but the bells' typical repetitive
patterns are also included in the music itself.
Bruges was certainly not a musically isolated city during the 14th
century. It subsidised the schools of minstrelsy, for example. These
were held in Lent every year, in several towns, and were attended by
large gatherings of minstrels from many different countries to exchange
new music and ideas.
Louis van Male, the Count of Flanders, owned an extensive manuscript
with works by Machaut, who was obviously not unknown in Bruges. During
the last quarter of the 14th c. there was an awareness in the city of
the latest evolutions in music, and there are several references to
polyphonic practice in the collegiate churches which played an
important part in musical life. After 1384, with the arrival of the
Burgundian, there were also occasional exchanges of musical personnel
between the collegiate churches of Bruges and the Burgundian Court
Chapel.
Another instrumental work illustrating Bruges polyphony is the ballad Ach
Vlaendere which reveals a very modern, supple and tuneful melody
and was written by Thomas Fabri who was appointed succentor at St
Donatian's in 1412.
By that time Jan Moritoen had become a 'dishmaster' of the parish of St
Giles. In 1414 and 1415 he travelled to Ghent as official
representative of the city of Bruges, where he had become an alderman
and councillor – his wild years were obviously over! His name, which
suggests a foreign origin, appears for the last time in the city
archives of 1416-17. No works dating from after 1395 have come to us,
and we can presume that he stopped writing after that date – in other
words, he stopped at the height of his creative powers.
Stroke notation
The songs of the Gruuthuse manuscript – all of them monodic – were
written down in the so-called stroke notation, a rare system
which is only found in about a dozen other 15th c. manuscripts of
disparate origin. A point which all these have clearly in common is
that they did not originate in eminent professional musical
environments, but were written by musical amateurs who were
'illiterate' in mensural notation, and therefore resorted to a
simplified system.
The notes are represented by vertical strokes, mostly on a five- or
six-line staff. Each stroke stands for one time unit, and if a note has
to last twice or three times as long, this is marked by repeating the
same stroke two or three times, so only uncomplicated rhythms can be
given this way. There are no bar-lines and some of the songs seem to
have been conceived in a fairly free metre, while others have a
comparatively obvious regular cadence. Sometimes there is a choice
between duple or triple time, and both are used in, for example, Ic
sach een scuerduere open staen. In some of the songs there is not
one stroke per syllable, but one stroke per arsis (two syllables), as
in Het was een scamel mersenier and Het was een rudder wael
ghedaen. Accidentals and clefs are equally absent, but on the whole
the tenor-clef seems to offer the best solution.
A much bigger problem still is the text placement, since texts and
music were written down separately, and the music notation does not
give any phrasing indications. At most a vertical line across the staff
marks the division between stanzas and refrain, while a double line
usually indicates a repeat or an ouvert/clos. Most of the time there is
nothing more than an uninterrupted series of strokes and it is up to
the singer or the user of the manuscript to work out where a phrase
ends and where a new one begins, where an important musical caesura
corresponds to an important break in the text, where a repeat can be
introduced if there are not enough notes – or where melismata or a
textual repeat are appropriate when there are too many notes.
A further inconvenience is caused by the fact that the music notation,
which often runs the full width of a page, has become incomplete as a
result of cutting the pages for rebinding the manuscript, so that
sometimes a number of notes at the beginning or end of a melody have to
be reconstructed.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that three songs are in mensural
notation, including Mijn hertze een can verbliden niet and Ach,
zich voor dich, while Wel op elc zondich si bereit was
provided with clef and bar-lines, alternating between duple and triple
time.
Paul Rans and Piet Stryckers