Mark Everist

From Paris to St. Andrews: The Origins of W1

Recent research has suggested that W1 may have been copied in St. Andrews in the 1240s. Very little attempt has been made to understand why or how the virtuoso polyphony associated with the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris came to be cultivated so far from home. The article argues for a redating of the manuscript in the 1230s and therefore rejects the suggestion that the interest in polyphonic music was generated by Bishop David Bernham (in office from 1239-1253) and points to his predecessor, Guillaume Mauvoisin (1202-1238) as the agency by which Parisian music was transmitted from Paris to St. Andrews. Mauvoisins career is reconstructed with particular attention to his contacts with France and his exposure to the music of the so-called Notre-Dame school. It is concluded that a member of Mauvoisins familia, perhaps Mauvoisin himself, provided the driving force for the promotion of Parisian polyphony at St. Andrews as a result of the discovery of that repertory during travels in France in the first quarter of the thirteenth century.

The polyphonic rondeau c1300: repertory and context

Any explanation of the emerging polyphonic chanson in the years before 1330 must negotiate varied repertories and compositions. One of the central genres in such a study would be the polyphonic rondeau. It is characterised by a musico-poetic structure more or less analogous to the rondeau of the later fourteenth century, but also by three-part music – mostly syllabic, note-against-note – that is copied in score. Our view of these sorts of compositions is dominated by the works of Adam de la Halle, whose sixteen score-notated polyphonic settings of vernacular lyrics are preserved in a manuscript now in the Bibliotheque Nationale (F-Pn), MS fr. 25566

Music before 1600

Nowhere in musical analysis is the tension between the two theoretical positions of considering music in the context of its external circumstances or examining its internal substance so apparent as in the study of the medieval and early repertoire. This volume seeks to bridge the gap between the historical humanistic study of the periods music and the application of analytical techniques more often found in criticism of later music. The chapters investigate a range of musical styles as well as a fair cross section of the ways in which music composed before 1600 is currently being analyzed. The book brings together critics from two camps: historians who seek to explain the nature of medieval and Renaissance music by reference to contemporary contexts, and more abstractly minded analytical scholars. In his introduction Everist explores the possibility of fusing the two approaches. Introduction by Mark Everist 1 Medieval Lyric by Leo Treitler 2 An Early Thirteenth-Century Motet by Norman E. Smith 3 Guillaume de Machaut: De toutes flours by Sarah Fuller 4 The Lamento di Tristano by David Lidov 5 Guillaume Dufay: Alma redemptoris mater (II) by Saul Novack 6 Josquin des Prez: Salve regina (a 5) by Cristle Collins Judd 7 Orlande de Lassus: Si bona suscepimus by James Haar 8 Anthoine de Bertrand: Las! pour vous trop aymer by Jean-Michel Vaccaro 9 William Byrd: Mass for Five Voices by David Stern

‘Souspirant en terre estrainge’: the Polyphonic Rondeau from Adam de la Halle to Guillaume de Machaut

The appearance of a consistent repertory of polyphonic settings of single vernacular texts, governed by a coherent set of conventions and a shared understanding of compositional ambition, was one of the lasting achievements of the composers of the fourteenth century. Although fully formed products of this accomplishment did not emerge until the century’s fourth decade, the concept of the marriage of a single vernacular poem to the type of polyphonic music previously associated with the caudae of conducti, clausulae and polytextual motets had by then been a topic for exploration for at least fifty years. It is not too much to claim that the period from Adam de la Halle to Guillaume de Machaut saw a series of changes in the relationship between vernacular poetry and polyphony that had consequences for the history of music at least up to and probably beyond Le nuove musiche (1601). Footnotes This article is based on a paper presented to the Seminar on Medieval and Renaissance Music, All Souls College, Oxford, 30 October 2003. I am grateful to Margaret Bent for the invitation to contribute to the seminar and to the individuals who contributed to the discussion. In addition to those cited in the footnotes to the text, I would like to thank Margaret Bent, Lawrence Earp, James Grier, Elizabeth Eva Leach, David Maw and Yolanda Plumley, who read the article in draft and offered many useful suggestions.

Theatres of litigation: Stage music at the Théâtre de la Renaissance, 1838–1840

From 1807 to 1864, Parisian music drama was governed by a system of licences that controlled the repertory of its three main lyric theatres: the Opera (variously Academie Royale, Nationale and Imperiale de Musique), the Theâtre-Italien and the Opera-Comique. Between 1838 and 1840, the Theâtre de la Renaissance gained a licence to put on stage music, and quickly succeeded in establishing a reputation for energetic management, imaginative programming together with artistically and financially successful performances. It could do this only by exploiting what were effectively newly invented types of music drama: vaudeville avec airs nouveaux and opera de genre. The invented genres however brought the theatre into legal conflict with the Opera-Comique and Opera respectively, and opened up a domain of jurisprudence – associated with repertory rather than copyright – hitherto unsuspected.

Discovering Medieval Song: Latin Poetry and Music in the Conductus

The Conductus repertory is the body of monophonic and polyphonic non-liturgical Latin song that dominated European culture from the middle of the twelfth century to the beginning of the fourteenth. In this book, Mark Everist demonstrates how the poetry and music interact, explores how musical structures are created, and discusses the geographical and temporal reach of the genre, including its significance for performance today. The volume studies what medieval society thought of the Conductus, its function in medieval society - whether paraliturgical or in other contexts - and how it fitted into patristic and secular Latin cultures. The Conductus emerges as a genre of great poetic and musical sophistication that brought the skills of poets and musicians into alignment. This book provides an all-encompassing view of an important but unexplored repertory of medieval music, engaging with both poetry and music even-handedly to present new and up-to-date perspectives on the genre.

Early polyphony to circa 1200

Some surface aspects of musical art for the adornment of ecclesiastical songs have been outlined here. Here begin mellifluous songs of organum upon the sweetest praises of heaven. But in whatever way it is done . . . in producing diaphony the precentor must harmoniously sing in praise of the creator. As the above quotations suggest, early Western polyphony was broadly viewed as a way of elaborating and adorning monophonic chant, was heard as beautiful and sweet in sound, and was considered an appropriate means of religious praise. The close connection with religious worship is not surprising, given that the extant written record – both theoretical descriptions and musical notations – of polyphony stems from literate ecclesiastical and monastic spheres. But that record is decidedly incomplete and radically discontinuous. This is because early polyphony was ‘produced’ or ‘made’, not ‘composed’ in the present-day sense of ‘composition’: it was in the first instance sounded, not notated. Polyphony arose and continued as a performance practice, a way of elaborating a known monophonic melody with a second line that was produced according to accepted conventions. Polyphonic singing enhanced worship through amplification of monophonic song. The earliest treatise to describe the phenomenon, the Musica Enchiriadis from circa 850, treats it as a familiar extempore practice, one known under two names: diaphony and organum. These alternative terms (the latter characterized as ‘customary’), refer to different core facets of polyphony: diaphonia to the dual sounds produced between two voices, the sounding-apart of the pair; organum to the perfect consonances or symphoniae (fourth, fifth, octave) that controlled the relationship between voices.

Vernacular poetry and music

Prima lamusica, poi le parole : this assertion, the title of an opera by Antonio Salieri, wittily alludes to the conundrum faced by any poetic and musical collaboration. In the story of the opera the music is already written and the harassed poet is told he must write the verse to fit the music in just four days. It is not important, according to the musician, for the music to convey the meaning of the words. But of course this is a joke that works by inverting the usual expectations of any text–music relationship, especially in opera. One of the primary aims of this chapter will be to assess the character of this relationship in its earliest formation in the medieval period. Poetry and music come together in vernacular song to create some of the most subtly exquisite survivals of medieval music. The art of the troubadours in the twelfth century, closely followed by that of the trouveres in the thirteenth, persists in our time as one of the most vividly enduring images, not only of the medieval singer, but also of song tout court , and of the Middle Ages in general. Yet many questions remain about the character of this art. It seems not only paramount but impossible to decide which comes first, the poetry or the music. In communicating so strongly across the centuries, medieval song teases us with the question of what it is communicating and whether what we hear or perform as we re-create it bears any relation to what was heard or performed in the Middle Ages.

The Iberian peninsula

As with so many other aspects of Hispanic culture in the early Middle Ages, the musical life of the Iberian peninsula was distinct from that of other parts of Europe for many centuries. Though Christianity reached the peninsula as early as the third century, most of the country came under Muslim rule in 711, to be reconquered by Christians in a series of campaigns through the Middle Ages. Not only did this bring Arabic music into Europe, but the Muslims were also uniquely tolerant of the Jews, allowing a Judaeo-Spanish musical tradition to flourish, which has had wide influence elsewhere in later centuries. Until the eleventh century, the church in the Spanish kingdoms remained independent from the Roman rite and employed a separate liturgical structure, with its own musical tradition. The later Middle Ages saw much greater assimilation of musical traditions from the rest of Europe, but the peninsula also developed its own discrete musical genres, particularly in secular music making. Isidore of Seville and Old Spanish chant Though some evidence survives for music and dance from the Stone Age onwards, it will be as well to begin this survey after the Visigoths had established a kingdom centred on Toledo and extending across almost the whole of modern-day Spain, Portugal and the south of France, by the end of the sixth century. Isidore, Archbishop of Seville (ca559–636), is a figure of major importance in all branches of learning.

Review. Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Ed. by Dolores Pesce. pp. xi+ 380. (Oxford University Press, New York &Oxford, 1997, £60. ISBN 0-19-509709-2.)