I haven't talked too systematically about the pre-Bach repertoire, but there's a lot of it. I'm re-reading Taruksin's Oxford History of Western Music so I'm reacquainting myself with some music I have nearly forgotten about. Such as the 13th century motet, for example. The development of mensural notation enabled composers to write more complex rhythmic patterns. The motet started out as just a bit of church music in which the melismas, those long melodic decorations, were fitted with texts. Originally all this came from the Notre Dame repertoire dating back centuries. But the new texts were often secular ones modeled after the trouvère poems. In fact, as the motet developed, they often used two different texts for the upper parts such as in the rondeau-motet J'ai les maus d'amours/que ferai/IN SECULUM from the Montpelier manuscript. That odd way of naming the motet is simply the beginning of all three texts.
A lot of ensembles extend the durations of pieces by first playing them on instruments, then with voices and then with repeats. This is just the basic version. Very brief! But as a matter of fact it is rather a tour de force. There are not only three different texts, two in French and one in Latin, but all three of the melodies are from different sources so the composer has fitted them all into one harmonic texture. Better listen again! Here is the beginning of the score:
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The measure of just how popular or important the 13th century motet was is that Taruskin devotes an entire chapter to it. Also in the Montpelier codex are some pieces attributed to Petrus de Cruce that seems to represent the peak of the style. Here is Aucun/Lonc tans/ANNUNTIANTES. The tenor again comes from a Notre Dame organum. Sorry, Blogger won't embed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_vEpTFox5c
Here is the beginning of the score in the original manuscript:
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We just don't get illuminated capitals in scores these days!
And finally, as promised, those fresh strawberries. This is a motet that might have been sung at a feast or banquet in Paris as indicated by the two upper texts which begin:
Duplum: Morning and night in Paris, there is good bread to be found, good, clear wine, food, meat and fish...
Triplum: The talk is of threshing and winnowing, of digging and ploughing, Such pastimes are not at all to my liking.
Tenor: Fresh strawberries! Ripe blackberries!
In this performance the tenor is sung alone, then with the duplum and finally with all three parts together. Again, Blogger won't embed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNXsZgH56TM
2 comments:
Three texts, each sung to a melody from a different source, combined "into one harmonic texture." Of course that is polyphony, though seemingly not crafted as counterpoint melodies upon a given cantus firmus. So if we aren't yet in a time when music was set in a key according to rules of tonal harmony, it still seems like the simultaneous horizontal (melodic and rhythmic) and vertical (chordal or harmonic) dimensions of the music are being explored and mapped (notated), essential raw materials for later systemization into modern music conventions and theory.
(Tapped into my phone single-fingeredly from the cab of a large lull, 1500 pounds of solar panels held high for guys on the giant canopies to unload. And yet, I have Taruskin vol 2 right here, a little muddy and bent but still working to transform my boring job today into a reading seminar. You can imagine how well I fit in here...)
Will, that brings back a significant memory for me. I was nineteen I think and I had a job planting trees in northern Vancouver Island. So far north, in fact, that there were no buildings and only local logging roads. We slept on a boat. And there I was reading A Hundred Years of Philosophy by John Passmore.
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