My whole reason for watching this lecture (thanks!) Centers around the point made at around 6:10... I am VERY interested to know if (& how extensive) there was (or was likely to be)a medieval tradition of improvised secular popular music. The church music is well documented. The music of the wealthy classes is fairly well documented. What i would like to have even a guess at, is what was the music like at a peasant wedding, at a fair, in the fields. Is what we know based on a few surviving snippets alone? How much can we deduce from surviving forms in the "more remote" parts of Europe (where there has, presumably, been slower cultural change and the retaining of archaic forms, as we find sometimes in linguistics) that might give at least a sense of the vernacular style, pace, timbre, etc.? Can you point me toward anyone who is doing this sort of research? I am looking for the broad, spreading roots beyond "Sumer is Icumen In".
That's an excellent question which I am not really that well prepared to answer, being more of a pianist (DMA) than a music historian (PhD). But my guess is that most of what you want to know is sadly unknowable, for the exactly the reasons that I state at 6' 10" (the lack of written-down notes). Absent this, there might be something to be deduced from the sources you described, but I think it would be mostly conjecture rather than deduction.
As a person who likes this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing I like. It might be nice if the camera was close up - the sound might be less echoing and it would give a more "intime" feeling to your lecture. The distance removes your audience.
I wonder if you have ever spent any serious time playing, singing, studying, analyzing, deeply pondering or questioning this music. I assume that your approach comes from a textbook or from another person who told you some ideas about what this music is based on other books they read. In reading the comments I see you are a pianist - an instrument of limited expressive quality as the notes are struck through intervention of mechanism instead of directly, but I bet you know what it is like to travel inside. While the Power point-of-view must certainly have existed for these beings who were using their time on earth just like we are, one can feel from deep experience of playing and singing this music that it is not about flattery, social climbing, winning, fame and fortune, at least not mainly. Nor are these thousands of songs to the Dame written to any particular woman most of the time - they seem in my and others' perception rather to be a meditation on the Feminine nature of the Creator - the one you serve like a slave even though She seems not to know you exist, but who has given you life. You might consider the route that trope has taken in the history of philosophy, theology and human experience in administering a description of these songs. The Love one has for Her is the same love that gets you out of bed in the morning, it is the wonder and joy you feel when seeing a perfect flower, that Fleur which is so often set to music in these songs. Medieval thought was metaphorical - consider the reason one would want to socially climb or to gain the ability to play an instrument, sing or write a song - it was to commune gracefully with the ever punishing, indescribable glory of being, and to develop tools and technologies that brought them in close contact with it. This music is a portal to a bodily experience of an elusive thought/sound/perception location that is generated by the act of being with sound while applying it to transcendental text and having a personal experience of doing so. It dissects that experience while also giving a recipe. In the case of polyphonic, polytextual music, it incapsulates a multifaceted philosophical object that can only be uncovered and experienced with hard work. The desire to make that, communicate that, be inside that kind of location is the reason for this music to have been created, not in order to flatter a noble or be trendy and talk about the Dame like other popular kids so you get some cash. American Capitalism was not yet a thing.
I've been teaching general music appreciation classes like this (and also music history courses for music majors) for 25 years. I am also a general history enthusiast, especially of the late Medieval/early Renaissance, so I think I am reasonably well qualified to talk about this era. I am not a PhD music historian, nor an early music specialist. As you note, I am a pianist, and the piano wasn't invented until c. 1700. Please understand that I am teaching a 100-level Intro to Music for first semester freshmen at broad-access State University. If I were to lecture in the purplish, florid flights of verbiage in which you indulge, I would leave my audience/students in the metaphysical dust. I have to keep things a little more down-to-earth. I am mindful of the transcendent quality of medieval art, the juxtaposition of sacred (Latin) and secular/profane (vernacular) texts in Medieval/Renaissance chansons, etc. But I also find it hard to believe that *all* of these Troubadours (and their later imitators) happened to be sincerely, madly in love with the Great Lady of the House. Some of them no doubt were, but for most, that was likely a pose--the style, the conventions, the expectations of the genre and society within which they worked.
Also, I don't see what "American Capitalism" and "cash" have to do with it, since obviously neither America nor capitalism was really a thing yet, and it was an agrarian rather than a cash-based economy. However, the reasons one might flatter a person of higher status than oneself had been around for a very long time, even in the 11th century, and many of them continue to this day. The culture of chivalry and courtly love of the late medieval was indeed all about "flattery, social climbing, winning fame and fortune". This is why, once the printing press was invented, instruction guides such as The Book of the Courtier by Castiglione became so popular. These were the "How to succeed in business"-type books of their day. And just as how to succeed in business might sometimes have more to do with what you wear, how you present yourself, which meals and drinks you order when out with clients or colleagues, your golf game, etc., social advancement for those in proximity to power was all about how you dress, how you speak, being able to dance and sing well, compose poetry, etc. The idea is to mold yourself into the kind of person a powerful person would want to have around, in his entourage--without, of course, excelling at anything so much that you show him up. Just like, you want to be a good enough golfer to make your boss respect you and get satisfaction out of beating you, but not so good that you embarrass him. But nor do you want to make him feel like you're letting him win! It's a fine line to tread, and it's all about keeping oneself in proximity to power.
@@dr.curtinmusi1015 I stand by my original comment, and note that it does not at all conflict with anything you point out, but see that you still don't get what I am saying. I already agreed that the Power story that you are focused on exists and existed. My issue was that your focus on this aspect of the music's history leaves out the main reason it was written and is still performed, and that this reductive, materialist point of view ignores and sidelines the most interesting part of the history of the music's creation and does not inspire an interaction with it on a profound level, but rather piles it up as yet another object that we might note got someone a job or a plate of food. Consider this analogy: I want to be able to write poetry that gets written down to inspire future generations, and I want to be able to spend my time in contemplation of reality on a transcendental (poetic) level. I want to communicate the dimensions of existence that I have been able to ponder because the practice of embodying them makes my life worth living. In order to do this I need someone to pay for me. This someone may or may not be able to comprehend the locations I traverse and record in my art. So I cleverly scheme and play a societal game that results in me getting a commission, a bed to sleep in, a position in court, a papal appointment, etc. The position, the bed, the plate of food, the medal of honor, etc, afford me the luxury of making poetry. The space of making poetry, of interacting with reality in a transcendental fashion is the reason I live and the thing I would like future human beings to share with me - for me it contains God. That is exponentially more interesting, more soul-feeding, more awe-striking that saying "here are these cool poems I used to get some food and lodging, maybe if you write something that a rich person thinks is cool, you could get a bed to sleep in!". I find it sad that your experience with students is that they find your materialist framing more interesting. I have been working with students and professionals inside the world of music for 35 years, and have found the opposite is true. In the US one still has to play all kind of tricks, scratch all kinds of backs, master all that games that you describe, but this is merely the way you get to be able to interact with a complex, transcendental text that is coupled with a harmonic language that feeds your existence and inspires you and others to be alive.
@@RR-sq8oc It's hard to read someone's mind/heart/motivations from a distance of 800 years. But if, around the year 1100 or so, you were maybe the second or third son of a semi-impoverished nobleman, or a cathedral school dropout, able to read and write and sing and play an instrument, but not do much else of a practical nature (farming, shoemaking, etc.) because you were not of that class, you might find a niche in this rigid society--and a way of keeping a roof over your head--by working as a troubadour/jongleur. The autobiographies ("vidas") many of them left behind often describe exactly this kind of thing. You may even go so far as to write songs praising the beauty of the lady of the house, claiming to be in love with her, because it is flattering and charming. No doubt, they had artistic motivations, but they had more practical ones as well. I guess I am assuming it as a "given" that artists create art for more than purely materialistic or worldy reasons. It doesn't necessarily need emphasizing or explaining. What *may* need explaining is why *these* particular artists, in this particular time/place created, the kind of work that they did. And I find it hard to believe that so many troubadours and jongleurs really, coincidentally, happened to be hopelessly in love with their Lordship's wife. It was an expected part of the style, an affect. Similarly--does any grownup believe that all of those pop songs about love from c. 1950 onward really reflect the true experience of the singer/songwriter? Surely some of them do, but mostly they are just conforming to a style, giving their teenage audience what it expects, because that's what has brought them success. What you are laying out seems to me a very Romanticized view of the self-conception of the artist, one that emerged around 200 years ago and has lingered to the present day. It is not by any means the only self-conception possible. At the risk of oversimplification, take two composers, Haydn and Beethoven. Hadyn was born into a time when about the best a composer could hope for was to serve on the staff of some powerful nobleman (or church) and provide him/it with a service, not that much different from the master gardener or head chef. He was a skilled craftsman, creating works of beauty meant to give pleasure. No doubt, Haydn appreciated the beauty and power of music better than anyone, but he didn't see himself as a man set apart, a heroic figure, one with some special channel to the transcendent mysteries of existence, etc. Until his semi-retirement in the 1790s, he spent the bulk of his career composing the type of works, in the type of style, his patron demanded--and he was happy to do so. I think he might be surprised that his works are still performed today (since old music wasn't generally re-played during his own lifetime). Move ahead just a generation or two, and you have Beethoven, Haydn's sometime student, who *did* see himself as a man apart, ennobled not by his birth but by his genius, unwilling to serve as some nobleman's servant; determined to channel the transcendent mysteries etc. In his late works, unafraid to be misunderstood and unappreciated, because they were written not for his own time but for future generations. Our modern-day conception of the artist is much more of the Beethoven mold than the Haydn mold. Both were great artists, but they didn't conceive of their jobs as artists in the same way. I think it is worthwhile to try to understand an artist (or any historical figure) as they saw themselves, rather than just put them into some bin in our own heads with the label "artist.".
@@dr.curtinmusi1015 I think our metaphors are perhaps not helping with communication here. My description of a poet getting a job, while not intending to describe the job of an "artist" was taken by you understandably as doing so. If I used the word artist, I can't find it - I am aware that this is not part of what a troubadour would ascribe to. Also, I don't think your description of the life of Haydn in the 1790s is much use to a discussion of life in the 1100s, so let's maybe return to the actual material and time. Again, I agree that troubadours were needing jobs and ingratiating themselves like we all do all the time. Again, I find this something I might leave out of the discussion of music and what it is really about, whereas you seem to believe it is what is really is about. 'No doubt they had artistic motivations, but they had practical ones as well' maybe illustrates what I was always trying to say. You choose to leave out what you are choosing to anachronistically call 'artistic' motivations - funny that you accuse me of this when it is you who does it, whereas I am pointing out the spiritual nature of music and music making as the center of what it is all about. Music of this period it seems to me is a catalyst for communication with the unseen world, and the addition of words makes it an even more complex tool. The ego of 'the artist' is not part of this moment, the hours of work that the poet musician had to do to get a rich person to feed him and pay for the writing down of the notes and text is not the center of why the music was made, it is rather this ineffable moment of transcendence. I personally do not believe that the Dame was a human being, not the Lady of the house, not a girlfriend, not a far away beloved, but rather a stand in for the God who does not need to notice you, but who you should acknowledge and praise as the source of all pleasure and all pain, enduring them equally in full subservient appreciation. Maybe use that metaphor to contemplate how a poor musician was using his voice to praise the hard work he had to go about to get the honor of singing/playing and eating in the world he inhabited.
Thank you. Hard to find this information on TH-cam and this is a great one.
You're very welcome!
This is so interesting and wonderful! I love how you give such a broad picture of the time along with the evolution of the music.
Thank you so much! Glad you like it.
My whole reason for watching this lecture (thanks!) Centers around the point made at around 6:10...
I am VERY interested to know if (& how extensive) there was (or was likely to be)a medieval tradition of improvised secular popular music.
The church music is well documented.
The music of the wealthy classes is fairly well documented.
What i would like to have even a guess at, is what was the music like at a peasant wedding, at a fair, in the fields.
Is what we know based on a few surviving snippets alone?
How much can we deduce from surviving forms in the "more remote" parts of Europe (where there has, presumably, been slower cultural change and the retaining of archaic forms, as we find sometimes in linguistics) that might give at least a sense of the vernacular style, pace, timbre, etc.?
Can you point me toward anyone who is doing this sort of research?
I am looking for the broad, spreading roots beyond "Sumer is Icumen In".
That's an excellent question which I am not really that well prepared to answer, being more of a pianist (DMA) than a music historian (PhD). But my guess is that most of what you want to know is sadly unknowable, for the exactly the reasons that I state at 6' 10" (the lack of written-down notes). Absent this, there might be something to be deduced from the sources you described, but I think it would be mostly conjecture rather than deduction.
This is great and helpful! Thank you.
Thank you! :)
As a person who likes this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing I like. It might be nice if the camera was close up - the sound might be less echoing and it would give a more "intime" feeling to your lecture. The distance removes your audience.
Thanks Carol! It is definitely low-tech ;)
@@dr.curtinmusi1015 But still very interesting!
I wonder if you have ever spent any serious time playing, singing, studying, analyzing, deeply pondering or questioning this music. I assume that your approach comes from a textbook or from another person who told you some ideas about what this music is based on other books they read. In reading the comments I see you are a pianist - an instrument of limited expressive quality as the notes are struck through intervention of mechanism instead of directly, but I bet you know what it is like to travel inside. While the Power point-of-view must certainly have existed for these beings who were using their time on earth just like we are, one can feel from deep experience of playing and singing this music that it is not about flattery, social climbing, winning, fame and fortune, at least not mainly. Nor are these thousands of songs to the Dame written to any particular woman most of the time - they seem in my and others' perception rather to be a meditation on the Feminine nature of the Creator - the one you serve like a slave even though She seems not to know you exist, but who has given you life. You might consider the route that trope has taken in the history of philosophy, theology and human experience in administering a description of these songs. The Love one has for Her is the same love that gets you out of bed in the morning, it is the wonder and joy you feel when seeing a perfect flower, that Fleur which is so often set to music in these songs. Medieval thought was metaphorical - consider the reason one would want to socially climb or to gain the ability to play an instrument, sing or write a song - it was to commune gracefully with the ever punishing, indescribable glory of being, and to develop tools and technologies that brought them in close contact with it. This music is a portal to a bodily experience of an elusive thought/sound/perception location that is generated by the act of being with sound while applying it to transcendental text and having a personal experience of doing so. It dissects that experience while also giving a recipe. In the case of polyphonic, polytextual music, it incapsulates a multifaceted philosophical object that can only be uncovered and experienced with hard work. The desire to make that, communicate that, be inside that kind of location is the reason for this music to have been created, not in order to flatter a noble or be trendy and talk about the Dame like other popular kids so you get some cash. American Capitalism was not yet a thing.
I've been teaching general music appreciation classes like this (and also music history courses for music majors) for 25 years. I am also a general history enthusiast, especially of the late Medieval/early Renaissance, so I think I am reasonably well qualified to talk about this era. I am not a PhD music historian, nor an early music specialist. As you note, I am a pianist, and the piano wasn't invented until c. 1700.
Please understand that I am teaching a 100-level Intro to Music for first semester freshmen at broad-access State University. If I were to lecture in the purplish, florid flights of verbiage in which you indulge, I would leave my audience/students in the metaphysical dust. I have to keep things a little more down-to-earth.
I am mindful of the transcendent quality of medieval art, the juxtaposition of sacred (Latin) and secular/profane (vernacular) texts in Medieval/Renaissance chansons, etc. But I also find it hard to believe that *all* of these Troubadours (and their later imitators) happened to be sincerely, madly in love with the Great Lady of the House. Some of them no doubt were, but for most, that was likely a pose--the style, the conventions, the expectations of the genre and society within which they worked.
Also, I don't see what "American Capitalism" and "cash" have to do with it, since obviously neither America nor capitalism was really a thing yet, and it was an agrarian rather than a cash-based economy. However, the reasons one might flatter a person of higher status than oneself had been around for a very long time, even in the 11th century, and many of them continue to this day. The culture of chivalry and courtly love of the late medieval was indeed all about "flattery, social climbing, winning fame and fortune". This is why, once the printing press was invented, instruction guides such as The Book of the Courtier by Castiglione became so popular. These were the "How to succeed in business"-type books of their day. And just as how to succeed in business might sometimes have more to do with what you wear, how you present yourself, which meals and drinks you order when out with clients or colleagues, your golf game, etc., social advancement for those in proximity to power was all about how you dress, how you speak, being able to dance and sing well, compose poetry, etc. The idea is to mold yourself into the kind of person a powerful person would want to have around, in his entourage--without, of course, excelling at anything so much that you show him up. Just like, you want to be a good enough golfer to make your boss respect you and get satisfaction out of beating you, but not so good that you embarrass him. But nor do you want to make him feel like you're letting him win! It's a fine line to tread, and it's all about keeping oneself in proximity to power.
@@dr.curtinmusi1015 I stand by my original comment, and note that it does not at all conflict with anything you point out, but see that you still don't get what I am saying. I already agreed that the Power story that you are focused on exists and existed. My issue was that your focus on this aspect of the music's history leaves out the main reason it was written and is still performed, and that this reductive, materialist point of view ignores and sidelines the most interesting part of the history of the music's creation and does not inspire an interaction with it on a profound level, but rather piles it up as yet another object that we might note got someone a job or a plate of food. Consider this analogy: I want to be able to write poetry that gets written down to inspire future generations, and I want to be able to spend my time in contemplation of reality on a transcendental (poetic) level. I want to communicate the dimensions of existence that I have been able to ponder because the practice of embodying them makes my life worth living. In order to do this I need someone to pay for me. This someone may or may not be able to comprehend the locations I traverse and record in my art. So I cleverly scheme and play a societal game that results in me getting a commission, a bed to sleep in, a position in court, a papal appointment, etc. The position, the bed, the plate of food, the medal of honor, etc, afford me the luxury of making poetry. The space of making poetry, of interacting with reality in a transcendental fashion is the reason I live and the thing I would like future human beings to share with me - for me it contains God. That is exponentially more interesting, more soul-feeding, more awe-striking that saying "here are these cool poems I used to get some food and lodging, maybe if you write something that a rich person thinks is cool, you could get a bed to sleep in!". I find it sad that your experience with students is that they find your materialist framing more interesting. I have been working with students and professionals inside the world of music for 35 years, and have found the opposite is true. In the US one still has to play all kind of tricks, scratch all kinds of backs, master all that games that you describe, but this is merely the way you get to be able to interact with a complex, transcendental text that is coupled with a harmonic language that feeds your existence and inspires you and others to be alive.
@@RR-sq8oc It's hard to read someone's mind/heart/motivations from a distance of 800 years. But if, around the year 1100 or so, you were maybe the second or third son of a semi-impoverished nobleman, or a cathedral school dropout, able to read and write and sing and play an instrument, but not do much else of a practical nature (farming, shoemaking, etc.) because you were not of that class, you might find a niche in this rigid society--and a way of keeping a roof over your head--by working as a troubadour/jongleur. The autobiographies ("vidas") many of them left behind often describe exactly this kind of thing. You may even go so far as to write songs praising the beauty of the lady of the house, claiming to be in love with her, because it is flattering and charming. No doubt, they had artistic motivations, but they had more practical ones as well.
I guess I am assuming it as a "given" that artists create art for more than purely materialistic or worldy reasons. It doesn't necessarily need emphasizing or explaining. What *may* need explaining is why *these* particular artists, in this particular time/place created, the kind of work that they did. And I find it hard to believe that so many troubadours and jongleurs really, coincidentally, happened to be hopelessly in love with their Lordship's wife. It was an expected part of the style, an affect. Similarly--does any grownup believe that all of those pop songs about love from c. 1950 onward really reflect the true experience of the singer/songwriter? Surely some of them do, but mostly they are just conforming to a style, giving their teenage audience what it expects, because that's what has brought them success.
What you are laying out seems to me a very Romanticized view of the self-conception of the artist, one that emerged around 200 years ago and has lingered to the present day. It is not by any means the only self-conception possible. At the risk of oversimplification, take two composers, Haydn and Beethoven. Hadyn was born into a time when about the best a composer could hope for was to serve on the staff of some powerful nobleman (or church) and provide him/it with a service, not that much different from the master gardener or head chef. He was a skilled craftsman, creating works of beauty meant to give pleasure. No doubt, Haydn appreciated the beauty and power of music better than anyone, but he didn't see himself as a man set apart, a heroic figure, one with some special channel to the transcendent mysteries of existence, etc. Until his semi-retirement in the 1790s, he spent the bulk of his career composing the type of works, in the type of style, his patron demanded--and he was happy to do so. I think he might be surprised that his works are still performed today (since old music wasn't generally re-played during his own lifetime).
Move ahead just a generation or two, and you have Beethoven, Haydn's sometime student, who *did* see himself as a man apart, ennobled not by his birth but by his genius, unwilling to serve as some nobleman's servant; determined to channel the transcendent mysteries etc. In his late works, unafraid to be misunderstood and unappreciated, because they were written not for his own time but for future generations. Our modern-day conception of the artist is much more of the Beethoven mold than the Haydn mold. Both were great artists, but they didn't conceive of their jobs as artists in the same way.
I think it is worthwhile to try to understand an artist (or any historical figure) as they saw themselves, rather than just put them into some bin in our own heads with the label "artist.".
@@dr.curtinmusi1015 I think our metaphors are perhaps not helping with communication here. My description of a poet getting a job, while not intending to describe the job of an "artist" was taken by you understandably as doing so. If I used the word artist, I can't find it - I am aware that this is not part of what a troubadour would ascribe to. Also, I don't think your description of the life of Haydn in the 1790s is much use to a discussion of life in the 1100s, so let's maybe return to the actual material and time. Again, I agree that troubadours were needing jobs and ingratiating themselves like we all do all the time. Again, I find this something I might leave out of the discussion of music and what it is really about, whereas you seem to believe it is what is really is about. 'No doubt they had artistic motivations, but they had practical ones as well' maybe illustrates what I was always trying to say. You choose to leave out what you are choosing to anachronistically call 'artistic' motivations - funny that you accuse me of this when it is you who does it, whereas I am pointing out the spiritual nature of music and music making as the center of what it is all about. Music of this period it seems to me is a catalyst for communication with the unseen world, and the addition of words makes it an even more complex tool. The ego of 'the artist' is not part of this moment, the hours of work that the poet musician had to do to get a rich person to feed him and pay for the writing down of the notes and text is not the center of why the music was made, it is rather this ineffable moment of transcendence. I personally do not believe that the Dame was a human being, not the Lady of the house, not a girlfriend, not a far away beloved, but rather a stand in for the God who does not need to notice you, but who you should acknowledge and praise as the source of all pleasure and all pain, enduring them equally in full subservient appreciation. Maybe use that metaphor to contemplate how a poor musician was using his voice to praise the hard work he had to go about to get the honor of singing/playing and eating in the world he inhabited.
J