Great lakes medieval faire bagpipe band12/30/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() On the left column is an anonymous dança, a poetic form that was sung to instruments or an instrument, usually the vielle, while dancing. However, this is not the whole story, as there is a remaining mystery: why did troubadour music continue to be written in non-mensural (non-rhythmic) notation after rhythmic notation was available? There is a startling example in the 13 th century manuscript, BnF MS fr. (As with all pictures, click to see larger in a new window.) An anonymous dança on the left, “Tant es gay es avinentz”, in mensural notation and the same melody on the right, third stave down, “Ben volgra que.m vengues meres” by troubadour Blacasset, written in non-mensural notation. These ideas suppose that lack of rhythm in written troubadour music was a choice with a method behind it, but in that sense there was no choice to be made: in the music notation the scribes of troubadour music used, there was no method for writing rhythm. All these theories have something in common: they cannot be supported by evidence from any historical source. Into the historical silence, theorists have given their ideas: every note is of equal value or the music is isosyllabic, meaning every syllable is of equal value, with the result that a melisma – a syllable sung over several notes – is quickened or the notes are in natural spoken rhythm or the songs are in modal metre or the music is unmeasured and sung to a rhythm of the performer’s discretion. This has led to heated debates among modern musicologists about how troubadour music is to be sung. Still, for some reason, scribes of troubadour music notated in the non-mensural fashion that was current during troubadours’ lifetimes. Troubadour songs were written down, on the whole, long after the composers had died, in an era of mensural notation. ![]() Fully mensural music arrived by degrees in the 13 th century and was collated into a comprehensive system by Franco of Cologne, who revolutionised written notation to the point where what is to be sung could be read directly from the page, formalised in his highly influential Ars Cantus Mensurabilis ( The Art of Mensurable Music), 1250–1280. Whether or not this can be applied to music outside of the Notre Dame circle is a question of great contention, and it doesn’t necessarily help us with music not laid out in Leonin’s fashion. The underlying pulse was read from the way notes were grouped together on the page. Leonin was a member of the Notre Dame school of polyphony, composers at or around the Parisian cathedral of that name from 1160 to around 1250, and he established six underlying pulses or rhythmic modes to indicate note values in a given piece of music. Medieval notation was without rhythm until Leonin. Modern singers of troubadour material have a fundamental problem: their songs were written down without rhythm. Their influence upon medieval song is difficult to exaggerate, and their work is explored is in the first and second articles of the series about the 13 th century Iberian Cantigas de Santa Ma ria. The troubadours were the lyric poets and songwriters of Occitania, what is now southern France. Non-mensural music, free rhythm, and its implications This article features a video of Martin Carthy singing a traditional English song on the basis that his free style, with the voice leading and guitar following, each verse phrased differently, so free that it is mensurally unwritable, may have something important to tell us about the historical performance of troubadour songs. This third and last article discusses a wide variety of questions of style: the performance of the non-mensural (non-rhythmic) notation of the troubadours the role of the voice and instruments ornamentation questions of intelligibility, language and sung translations musical preludes and postludes and the effect of the various functions of music on the way it is performed. The first article discussed historical instrument combinations and the second how to create polyphonic accompaniments for music written monophonically. The most fundamental question of all in playing early music today is: how can the music be played to reflect historical practice? This is the third of three articles on this topic for medieval music, aiming to be practical guides with plenty of musical examples and illustrations, and a bibliography for those who wish to delve further. ![]()
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