Table Of ContentZOLTAN FALVY
MEDITERRANEAN CULTURE
AND
TROUBADOUR MUSIC
STUDIES IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN
MUSIC I
Edited by
Zoltan Falvy
ZOLTAN FALVY
MEDITERRANEAN CULTURE
AND TROUBADOUR MUSIC
AKADE.MIAI KIADO · BUDAPEST 1986
ZOLTAN FALVY
MEDITERRANEAN
CULTURE
AND
TROUBADOUR MUSIC
AKADEMIAI KIADO · BUDAPEST 1986'
TRANSLATED ~y MARIA STEINER
TRANSLATION REVISED BY BRIAN McLEAN
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Distributors for all remaining countries:
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ISBN 963 05 4062 2
© Akademiai Kiad6, Budapest 1986
Printed in Hungary
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 7
MEDITERRANEAN CULTURE AND TROUBADOUR MUSIC 10
Poetry and Poetic Forms 17
Aspects of Social History 19
THE SPANISH CENTRE OF SECULAR MONODY: THE COURT 30
OF ALFONSO THE WISE (TROUBADOURS, MOORS, JEWS AND
ARABS)
MEDIEVAL HERESIES AND THE TROUBADOURS 56
THE TROUBADOURS IN HUNGARY (HISTORICAL LINKS) 64
Hungarian Antecedents: The Social Position of Entertainers in 64
the Medieval Hungarian Court
The Biographical Evidence on Peire Vidal and Gaucelm Faidit 72
and Their Links with Hungary; The Travels in Hungary of
Aimeric de Peguilhan
THE MUSIC OF PETRE VIDAL AND GAUCELM FAIDIT 79
Methodological Problems: The Methods of Troubadour Song 79
Notation
Analyses of Vidal's Songs 83
Peire Vidal's Musical Style 121
Analyses of Faidit's Songs 127
Gaucelm Faidit's Musical Style 200
SUMMARY 209
BIBLIOGRAPHY 212
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BLANK PAGE
INTRODUCTION
Music played an equally important part in the development of the social
history of Europe as any other field of cultural history. As a component of social
history, the history of music helped mould the thinking of mankind in every age.
This book is about a period in the cultural history of Europe when music
fulfilled an important function, for secular monody, both with and without
instrumental accompaniment, featured in the life of every sector of non-clerical
society-peasantry, urban craftsmen, landowners, provincial princes, traders,
or noblemen of any rank in the ruling hierarchy from king to ordinary knight.
Secular monody had begun to develop in the 10th century. Even though there
were scarcely any real climaxes in its history before the end of the 13th century,
the colourful and variegated forms it assumed during the early centuries of its
development indicated that it had been born as an expression of new social
demands. Within its own terms, music responded in those centuries to poetic
trends which had been centuries in the ripening, by creating musical forms
analogous to it. These forms took shape in the Mediterranean basin and became
the formal bases for European music in the centuries to come. Music and poetry,
or text and melody, did not arise from one another: as society developed, they
mutually affected each other, although that mutuality was not an influence but
an identity of development, where one could serve as a pattern for the other, but
never as a compulsory model. For the developing medieval world, in which
human existence and the contours of human life were much sharper, this
alliance, dialectical unity and balance between music and poetry created a new
inventory of forms. One can say with Huizinga that the distance between
suffering and joy, misfortune and fortune, seems to be greater. In every
experience there throbbed an excessive and unconditional tension. There were
fewer 'soothing balms' for destitution and physical suffering. The dividing line
between sickness and health was much clearer and the cold and the gloom of
winter a more tangible peril. Conversely, the pleasures of rank and riches were
enjoyed more eagerly and this contrasted far more sharply with the plaintive
sufferings of the poor than today. Every fact of life was proudly or ruthlessly
displayed in public. Lepers swung their rattles as they walked in procession,
beggars moaned before the churches and displayed their deformities. Every class
in society, every order and rank, every occupation could be told by its dress.
Great noblemen would never leave their homes without a retinue of armed
followers and servants; fear and envy beset them on all sides. Attention was
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drawn with songs and processions to executions and other forms of dispensing
justice, to trading, to weddings and to funerals.
If one draws the lines that intersect in the musical history of the 11th and 12th
centuries, the following picture emerges: before and around the time of the
Great Schism between Rome and Byzantium in 1054, the body of church music
was still comparatively unified, and in character the music of both fed on
Mediterranean musical sources'. Taking this into account; on the one hand there
is Gregorian in which (influenced by Near Eastern poetic forms) the sequence
and trope were born, from the appearance of Notker at the beginning of the l 0th
century to Adam of St. Victor at the end of the 12th. Monophonic church music
had developed into polyphony by the first half of the 12th century; the earliest
organ um was that of St. Martial of Limoges ( 1140), almost contemporary is the
Spanish Compostela type, where some scholars have already identified an
influence of folk-dance music, and finally there is the Parisian Notre Dame
period, whose great composer-conductors are known by name.
On the other hand, there is secular monody, whose first collections are of
Troubadour songs and Hispanic cantigas; the method of notation was still the
same as for Gregorian, but it is vital for an interpretation of secular music that
the presence of an instrumental culture should be recognized. During these
centuries the instrumental consort was undoubtedly of Near Eastern origin, and
the instruments must have influenced the musical genres they accompanied. Just
as church music became polyphonic through the organum, so secular music
became so through 'instrumental music', which in medieval practice mainly
meant dance music (the lai, virelai, rondeau and ballade), in which the musical
refrain form first appeared.
The scenes are the same for both: the south of France, which maintained a
relationship with the Mediterranean region, as in the Hispanic lands of the
Iberian Peninsula, which directly transmitted that relationship.
Let us anticipate a single example for the initiating effect of music in the
relationship of music and poetry: the case of melisma. From the 10th century
onwards, texts began to be written for the rich melodies so often found left
without words in medieval manuscripts. From these texts developed poetical
genres which represented something new and 'secular' in liturgical practice, for
example the sequences. Melisma itself is a Near Eastern phenomenon
transmitted by,theArabs. The earliest European manuscripts still preserved the
heritage of melodies lacking a text, but this music was also capable of spawning
new poetical forms which later became divorced from the original melody and
developed into independent musical and poetic forms. If these new forms were in
some ways analogous to Arabic and Hebrew metrical forms, these in turn were
not far removed from the whole realm of Mediterranean culture.
Our task is to examine the other side: secular monody. Even though it has
been preserved in the same notation as the relics of church music, and even
though many see an analysis ofinedieval music in its entirety as the natural point
of departure, since church and secular music form two sides of the same musical
coin, we shall make a different approach principal!y because the two had
different functions. The function of secular monody was to serve and entertain
8
the court and the people living at court, as well as the burgesses and some other
urban layers of society. Moreover we shall pick out two great music groups we
consider fundamental: the cantigas of Alfonso the Wise and the music of the
troubadours. We shall shed light on the latter through the musical styles of two
important figures, Gaucelm Faidit and Peire Vidal, whose activities we choose to
centre on also because both went to Hungary and one way or another lived for
some years with Hungarian court musicians. They thus became acquainted with
each other's music and each other's style of musical performance. From the
stylistic traits of these two the present treatment arrives at general conclusions
which are also valid for other troubadour musicians and even have a certain
relevance to the method of musical construction in 12th century Europe.
Although the material treated here does not allow a discussion of European folk
music, trends in melodic construction at that time must nonetheless have been
very close both to folk music and to art music.
The manner of playing music, that is, interpretation, cannot be adequately
examined in this book, but we firmly believe that the only way to justify any
theory concerning the Middle Ages is through living musical practice. In this
context a key role is played by instruments which may in the Middle Ages have
been used for art music, but today survive only in folk music, and whose method
of sounding has remained unchanged down the ages. An important starting
point for scholarship on this question is iconography, which along with
ethnomusicology has proved a reliable basis for all further reconstruction. Only
by following this path can the music that has survived in medieval notation be
turned once again into a living music-an aim this study wishes to further.
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