Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300-1377)

[JCBuckley]

As best as I can tell, when Schmelzer refers to the "diagram" I think he is referring to the notated score in the Machaut collections.  As far as the rest that Schmelzer alleges about the mass, I think he is constructing a narrative built on little real evidence in order to take liberties with the music.

I did wonder if 'diagram' might just be a slightly obscurantist synonym for the notated score - but Schmelzer seems to be suggesting that 'diagrammatic, operative performance' is something different from conventional performance practice. Wouldn't all performances, however conventional, be based on the notated score?

[San Antone]

I did wonder if 'diagram' might just be a slightly obscurantist synonym for the notated score - but Schmelzer seems to be suggesting that 'diagrammatic, operative performance' is something different from conventional performance practice. Wouldn't all performances, however conventional, be based on the notated score?

Yes.  That is all we have.  The rest of his speculation is just that, speculation based on little other than his own reading into some assumptions that are not supported by the historical evidence that is available.

[Mandryka]

If I remember correctly he uses the word diagram to emphasise the way Machaut's  score underdetermines what  a performance will sound like, that he expected the performers to respond imaginatively by adding ornamentation, modulating to make the cross references expressive etc. The term diagram has a precedent I think. I can't check this because I don't have access to the booklet any more.

Most, possibly all, scores underdetermine performance to some extent, it's a matter of degree, and a matter of how much the openness was closed off by conventions and performance traditions, rather than left to the individual performers. I don't think anyone's saying that the Machaut mass is as diagrammatic, open, as an unmeasured prelude by D'Anglebert or a graphic score by Cage.

Don't forget that Machaut was the first to leave a mass intending that it would be performed after he was no longer around, no longer able to intervene. He didn't, as far as I know, go out of his way to close off the possibilities for creative interpretation like French baroque composers did with their annotated ornaments and directions about organ registrations, so we can reasonably assume that he envisaged it. It's part of the concept of the mass.

[JCBuckley]

Thank you both

[prémont]

A very informative and interesting discussion.
Thank you from me too.

[San Antone]

If I remember correctly he uses the word diagram to emphasise the way Machaut's  score underdetermines what  a performance will sound like, that he expected the performers to respond imaginatively by adding ornamentation, modulating to make the cross references expressive etc. The term diagram has a precedent I think. I can't check this because I don't have access to the booklet any more.

Machaut's score is no more "underdetermined" than any notation from the middle ages.  We know how to interpret chant notation and other scores from this period from existing treatises.  Schmelzer is being melodramatic, IMO.

Most, possibly all, scores underdetermine performance to some extent, it's a matter of degree, and a matter of how much the openness was closed off by conventions and performance traditions, rather than left to the individual performers. I don't think anyone's saying that the Machaut mass is as diagrammatic, open, as an unmeasured prelude by D'Anglebert or a graphic score by Cage.

We have quite a bit of information for where and how "musica ficta" would be applied.  Generally these were connecting notes between difficult intervals and sharped or flatted leading tones which would fall outside the mode when the accidental was applied but were necessary to avoid difficult cadences.  Again, Schmelzer is creating a mythology about what is implied from Machaut's notation.

Don't forget that Machaut was the first to leave a mass intending that it would be performed after he was no longer around, no longer able to intervene. He didn't, as far as I know, go out of his way to close off the possibilities for creative interpretation like French baroque composers did with their annotated ornaments and directions about organ registrations, so we can reasonably assume that he envisaged it. It's part of the concept of the mass.

You are making the same assumption Schmelzer has done, and attributing to Machaut the romantic notion that he was giveing permission to future generations to perform his mass with modern practices.  However, there is no evidence that Machaut had anything remotely like what you describe in mind concerning his mass.

All we have is a transcription from a plaque that does not mention an endowment created by Machaut.  The plaque states in the second section that "On behalf of these men [i.e. Guillaume and Jean Machaut] we, with pious devotion to their memory, have collected for their executors a fund of 300 of the florins called francs, for the purchase of rents for the increase of the revenues for the aforementioned mass and for the sustenance of those present and attending upon it with their skills." 

As should be clear, this money was collected by others (not left by Machaut) for the purpose (stated in the first section) of a "memorial of these men is as according to legal disposition - for the souls of them and of their friends a prayer for the dead shall be recited on the Saturday by the priest who is about to celebrate devoutly that mass at the altar by the Roella which is required to be sung."

"That mass" is the Lady Mass which had been sung at this location in Reims since 1341 (36 years prior to Machaut's death) and prior to when most musicologists date the composition of La Messe.  One can speculate that Machaut's mass might have been "that mass", but there is more reason to believe that the mass that was routinely sung would have been the one performed.

As I said, Schmelzer is creating a mythology based upon the assumption that Machaut left an endowment for the mass to be performed after his death.  He might have in his will, but we don't have his will.  The only surviving documentation refers to money collected by others to fund a memorial for Machaut and his brother for a prayer to be recited prior to the regular Saturday mass which as I said had been performed at the altar near the Roella since 1341.

One can speculate that Machaut may have composed La Messe for ulterior motives since his sacred output is slim and most of his other works were secular court poetry.  But because of the lack of evidence, what Schmelzer reads into what we do have related to Machaut's Messe and his entire enterprise amounts to a castle built on sand.

[Mandryka]

Machaut's score is no more "underdetermined" than any notation from the middle ages.  We know how to interpret chant notation and other scores from this period from existing treatises.

SNIP

We have quite a bit of information for where and how "musica ficta" would be applied. 

SNIP

You are making the same assumption Schmelzer has done, and attributing to Machaut the romantic notion that he was giveing permission to future generations to perform his mass with modern practices. 

I don't think either Schmelzer or Pérès are interested in performing it in a "modern" way. On the contrary,  they want to  make  Machaut sound meaningful and alive. And to do so they've used chant techniques, from a tradition of chant which goes back to the 14th century. I'm not sure, but my guess is that Corsican chanters use imaginative expression. If I remember right, both Pérès or Schmelzer are less optimistic than you about how useful the historical record is on things like how ficta was actually used in the 13th century. Neither much use for telling how the music was sung then (though it may tell us some things about how it was not sung), nor much use for guiding us about how to make the music real now.

It's interesting to focus on why they both chose to use Corsican singers rather than singers skilled in techniques from mainland Fracnce. Maybe the mainland chant tradition had become calcified over time, or maybe it had become "modernised" and imbued with ideas which are just inappropriate for performing Machaut's music.  I don't know.

Anyway, the Corsican singers make the performances  physical, and I think that's a really interesting and exciting approach to doing early music now.

PS As I'm typing this I'm listening to Clemencic play Binchois, or rather music he attributes to Binchois, and it strikes me that he too wants to make performance visceral, physical and expressive.

[San Antone]

I don't think either Schmelzer or Pérès are interested in performing it in a "modern" way. On the contrary,  they want to  make  Machaut sound meaningful and alive. And to do so they've used chant techniques, from a tradition of chant which goes back to the 14th century. I'm not sure, but my guess is that Corsican chanters use imaginative expression. If I remember right, both Pérès or Schmelzer are less optimistic than you about how useful the historical record is on things like how ficta was actually used in the 13th century. Neither much use for telling how the music was sung then (though it may tell us some things about how it was not sung), nor much use for guiding us about how to make the music real now.

You substitute "meaningful", "alive" and "real" for my word "modern" - funny.  I did not see anything in Schmelzer's notes about the use of Corsican singers, and chant techniques going back to the 14th century.  There was plenty in there about Nachleben (fundamental afterlife of repertories) and Pathosformel (organization of affects and animation); euchrony (no definition given). 

He writes,

"One only has to read any mainstream musicological article on medieval performers' techniques or on the medieival use of notation.  Rarely addressed are the many unwritten aspects of a musical manuscript such as musical ficta, 'unprecise' text placement, or the use of ornamentation.  So the question remains, how do we interpret these unwritten aspects of the repertories: is an absence a deliberate, intentional absence"  Could this absence point to a parallel, implied system of rhetorical and operative tools limiting the musical notation to a diagrammatic writing which has to be put in action, into an affective exegesis during performance?  We do not need any more detailed studies of the ingredients and the pigments, but a general theory that lets them operate together inside the musical performance."

I won't address the fact that we do know plenty about musica ficta and the rest of performance practices he mentions and just focus on this: Schmelzer is looking for a "theory" to replace the oral tradition we have lost.  He has landed on the theory (one endorsed by some scholars, disputed by others) about Machaut's wishes for the mass to be performed after his death.  He doesn't cite Corsian traditions as his license to add in ornamentation that Schmelzer has decided makes the music "real", or "meaningful" or "alive" - to use your words.  It is the so-called endowment left to subsidize the performance of the Messe which is what he bases his attempt at envoking "Nachleben" and "Pathosformel" into this performance.

He also writes:

"the only humble ... way to 'do' early music is still to say 'one doesn't know how it was done,' ... we must say we are desperately looking for a fantastic ur-performance ... . However, this absence is not a lack of knowledge ... but a system of notation and performance with a conditional openness, ... and the deliberate lack of elements in the notation is exactly the affirmation of this.  In this sense saying today that one 'doesn't know how it was done' is mere nonsense within this system."

He starts out saying the only humble approach is to acknowledge that we don't know how the music was done and then ends by writing that saying "we don't know" is mere nonsense.  Maybe this is where he implies that a Corsican chant tradition is what is known and being added in.  I don't know since he doesn't come out and say that.  But what do Corsican singers have to do with Machaut?

I have sent an email about all this to Elizabeth Eva Leach, someone who is one of a handful of musicologists who specializes on Machaut.  She is on sabbatical but might see the email after the holidays.  I hope to hear her thoughts, since she has worked with Schmelzer on other projects and has written about the history surrounding the Messe and the story of the subsidized performance, etc.

The bottom-line seems to me is if one enjoys Schmelzer's recording it doesn't matter what rationale he used; on the other hand, if one does not enjoy his performance, his rationale for taking liberties with the music looms larger and appears to be nonsense.

[Mandryka]

.  But what do Corsican singers have to do with Machaut?

My guess is that both Pérès and Schmelzer use them for thee reasons:

1.  to create a strange and and archaic ambience

2.  to tap into the creativity of performers whose singing embodies practices which go Machaut's time

3. to use singers who would be creative because they are coming to the music fresh

In Bernard Sherman's book "Inside Early Music" Pérès gives an example of the second point. He says that in the score to the Machaut mass you can see that one note is longer and another is shorter, but you can't say how much longer one note is from another. And that to get to understand it we have to project ourselves into how Machaut and his contemporaries thought about time, which is (he claims)  different from how we think about time in the west today. "Corsican polyphonic singers don't have a tempo with a beat, they just have the time of the chords and when the energy of the chords starts to defuse it changes."

[San Antone]

More insight into Schmelzer and Grandelavoix from their website:

Each new project begins with a concrete musical gesture, a repertoire or a work which envelops the complex layering of time and the operative aspects of practice. Schmelzer has developed with graindelavoix a kind of affective musicology in action: every performance is an evocation and activation of the virtual forces and affects working in the surviving traces that serve as the starting point. A score, a notation or an inscription is an indistinguishable part of a moving musical image that is never independent but functions as a 'dynamogram'. Graindelavoix tries to activate and embody the notation, an active reading in the medieval sense. The past is not a solid reality that we are separated from, instead it is a continuous set of underlays and counter-currents that undulate and live in our bodies: in ever changing times and geographical locations, new eruptions and collisions of time-tectonics occur. These symptoms form the base for the performers of graindelavoix to explore how to push the audience to the point of constructing its own memory of meanings.

My guess is that both Pérès and Schmelzer use them for thee reasons:

1.  to create a strange and and archaic ambience

2.  to tap into the creativity of performers whose singing embodies practices which go Machaut's time

3. to use singers who would be creative because they are coming to the music fresh

In Bernard Sherman's book "Inside Early Music" Pérès gives an example of the second point. He says that in the score to the Machaut mass you can see that one note is longer and another is shorter, but you can't say how much longer one note is from another. And that to get to understand it we have to project ourselves into how Machaut and his contemporaries thought about time, which is (he claims)  different from how we think about time in the west today. "Corsican polyphonic singers don't have a tempo with a beat, they just have the time of the chords and when the energy of the chords starts to defuse it changes."

I would advise caution regarding a reliance upon the Corsican tradition and its relevance to the music of Machaut, "The tradition of Corsican polyphonic singing had nearly become extinct until its revival (riaquistu) in the 1970s. It is now a central part of Corsican national identity, and is sometimes linked with political agitation for autonomy or independence."

These quotes from Peres and Schmelzer sound pretty squishy to me.  My feeling is that they hear this music in a certain way and want to perform this music according to their internal muse and are grasping at some explanation.  I say for them to just sing it as they wish and drop the pretense that they are onto some sort of authentic tradition.

I am listening to Diabolus in Musica's recording of the Messe as I type.  Very good, one of the best, IMO. 

[Ken B]

Schmelzer's approach seems to be, wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man grenzenlos theorisieren .

[Mandryka]

More insight into Schmelzer and Grandelavoix from their website:

I would advise caution regarding a reliance upon the Corsican tradition and its relevance to the music of Machaut, "The tradition of Corsican polyphonic singing had nearly become extinct until its revival (riaquistu) in the 1970s. It is now a central part of Corsican national identity, and is sometimes linked with political agitation for autonomy or independence."

These quotes from Peres and Schmelzer sound pretty squishy to me.  My feeling is that they hear this music in a certain way and want to perform this music according to their internal muse and are grasping at some explanation.  I say for them to just sing it as they wish and drop the pretense that they are onto some sort of authentic tradition.

I am listening to Diabolus in Musica's recording of the Messe as I type.  Very good, one of the best, IMO.

I wonder if that quote about it nearly becoming extinct is true, anyway there's a lot of leeway in the word "nearly" I have a recording by Pérès of traditional Causican chant, I'll see if I can find the booklet.

[San Antone]

Machaut and his contemporaries
Musica Nova

Listening to this recording I noticed that the first phrase of the mass contained accidentals which sounded unusual to me.  I pulled out my Leech-Wilkinson score and confirmed that Musica Nova raises the triplum's "g" to "g#" and changes entirely the "c" in the motetus to a "b" creating a E Major triad in second "measure" - none of which is indicated in the score.  Leech-Wilkinson goes into some detail explaining the situation concerning accidentals in Medieval music in general and in the Machaut mass in particular: some accidentals are indicated in the manuscript and others are added because of the surrounding polyphony (we assume the singers would also have done so because of their training).  Most performances adhere to a similar plan with only slight variations. 

No one alters the notes as was done by Musica Nova since according to Leech-Wilkinson none of the manuscripts include any accidentals in that section and the polyphony would not demand any alteration.  And to ignore the "c" and replace it with a "b" is very odd.

This information included with Musica Nova's recording offers a vague explanation:

"The very elaborate construction of the mass and its strange and subtle harmonies win the admiration of all. But do we really know what its true sound was? Though we cannot be quite sure, our research into the 14th-century theory of musica ficta, led by specialist Gérard Geay, has allowed us to come close, opening up an unheard sound world. In order to perform this music the singers worked from various 14th-century manuscript sources. They used the reading techniques of that era in an attempt to stay as close as possible to the phrasing and vocal movement that Machaut would have had in mind. "

I now want to seek out the rationale from Gérard Geay, whose name has come up in my previous reading.  Hopefully I can put my hands on his article, and that it is in English.  There appear to be other divergences from the norm throughout their performance.



The other issue I have been investigating is comparing how various recordings handle the repeats.  According to tradition and liturgical practice:

Kyrie I would have been repeated three times;
Kyrie II, twice;
Kyrie III once. 

So far, I have not found anyone who does that sequence.  Some repeat Kyrie I twice, and the rest just once; some include no repeats.  Some sing the chant prior to the start of the polyphony, some insert the chant between the first two repeated Kyrie.  As for Musica Nova, they insert an organ obligato between the Kyrie sections.

I haven't checked the two recordings yet that attempt to simulate a liturgical performance (Parrott and Peres) and they might include all three repeats.

[San Antone]

Machaut : Messe de Nostre Dame
Rebecca Stewart, Schola Machaut



My second listen to this live recording.  It would be very good if Stewart and her group could get this performance recorded under proper conditions.  Once one gets used to the sinewy/bellows inflected style of singing the music comes across in a spiritual and expressive manner.  Pace might be a little lax.

[San Antone]

Apropos the discussion of instruments use in church music during the Middle Ages -

machaut : la messe de nostre dame
rene clemencic | clemencic consort



From what I gather from listening to the recording, since I can't read the Japanese notes, Clemencic is trying to present the work within a realistic context of the day of the mass:

• first we hear peasant songs outside the church
  then organ alternating with communal singing of processional hymns
  then the mass interspersed with other appropriate chants (as well as some inappropriate instrument sections)

An unusual but interesting method of presenting the mass - but I would vastly have preferred that the instrumental playing between the sung mass sections have been organ-only and not included peasant dance music which is completely against what would have occurred in the 14th century.  It is an odd thing, since Clemencic seems to be aiming at a realistic impression of what would have happened during the period.

The actual performance of the mass is fairly straight forward and very well done.  But because of the many interruptions this performance of the mass is seriously compromised, imo.

[San Antone]

^^^^^^^For a casual early music listener, would that recording still be worth getting? Or is it rather more suited to those with a lot more knowledge of musical performances in the era.........

It's quite medieval sounding.

It's a sort of medievalism maybe, you know, let's make the old music sound exotic and colourful, a similar idea in Peres and Schmelzer but implemented differently. Anyway I think the book to read on this is by Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, but it's too expensive for me.

I find this general pattern really interesting. Orientalism and Medievalism, interpreting otherness in time and in space. Someone started a thread here about what you would study if you were to have a year of research. Well, I think this is a good contender.

I have the Leech-Wilkinson book on the mass, but bought it years ago when it wasn't that expensive.  His book is very good for analysis of the music, maybe too technical for a non-musician, but he only gives a short biographic overview and a paragraph or two on the whole endowment/memorial aspect.

BTW, I heard back from Elizabeth Eva Leach; she replied to my email last week.  She basically agreed with me that all the evidence surrounding Machaut's will, endowment, memorial concerning funding the performance of the mass after his death is circumstantial but is not "completely weak" however, she also says this "It might be that Machaut's Messe was the mass, but it might equally well be another (probably plainsong) mass."   She also cites a long paper by Roger Bowers (which I downloaded from JStor).

Bowers uses different logic than Anne Robertson who argues the strongest for the mass as memorial in her book, "Guillaume de Machaut and Reims," but still considers the mass was written for a unique purpose: maybe a memorial or maybe as a gift to the cathedral upon his retirement there.  It is interesting that Robertson uses a translation of the cathedral plaque which takes a few liberties with the Latin in order to strengthen her argument, whereas Bowers is more accurate acknowledging that the word "petitorium" is a legal term and hints at a legal proceeding and as a result of a less than satisfactory resolution at court for the Machaut estate, an endowment was collected by friends . 

This is different from how Robertson translates the word as a "personal petition" by the Machaut brothers, and which implies a much more overt gesture by Machaut about his intentions for performance of the mass. 

So, I think Schmelzer's entire hypothesis is founded on circumstantial evidence for which different conclusions can be drawn.  I would have preferred had he simply said "this is how I wish to perform the music because it brings the music alive to 21st century ears" and not gone into his psuedo-intellectual explanation about the afterlife of the work.

[San Antone]

I had been looking forward to hearing the performance of the Machaut mass included on this disk of Bohemian Christmas music:



Early Music New York, Frederick Renz, dir.

Frederick Renz has quite an early music resume:  studied harpsichord with Gustav Leonhardt in Holland as a Fulbright Scholar. He was keyboard soloist with the legendary New York Pro Musica Antiqua for six seasons and founded the Early Music Foundation when the former organization disbanded in 1974. 

Then there's this: the Early Music New York presents and records music of the 12th through the 18th centuries, including historical dramatic and dance works. Medieval and Renaissance repertoire is performed by a chamber ensemble of voices and instruments without conductor.

The polyphony of the mass is accompanied throughout by trombones.  This practice was prevalent in decades prior to the 1970s and fell out of practice once the historically informed movement matured.  It now sounds strange to my ears, but other than that the singing sounds good despite the overly reverberant acoustic.

[Mandryka]

So, I think Schmelzer's entire hypothesis is founded on circumstantial evidence for which different conclusions can be drawn.  I would have preferred had he simply said "this is how I wish to perform the music because it brings the music alive to 21st century ears"

Pérès too?

[Mandryka]

It's a sort of medievalism maybe, you know, let's make the old music sound exotic and colourful, a similar idea in Peres and Schmelzer but implemented differently. Anyway I think the book to read on this is by Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, but it's too expensive for me.

I find this general pattern really interesting. Orientalism and Medievalism, interpreting otherness in time and in space. Someone started a thread here about what you would study if you were to have a year of research. Well, I think this is a good contender.


I have the Leech-Wilkinson book on the mass, but bought it years ago when it wasn't that expensive.  His book is very good for analysis of the music, maybe too technical for a non-musician, but he only gives a short biographic overview and a paragraph or two on the whole endowment/memorial aspect.

BTW, I heard back from Elizabeth Eva Leach; she replied to my email last week.  She basically agreed with me that all the evidence surrounding Machaut's will, endowment, memorial concerning funding the performance of the mass after his death is circumstantial but is not "completely weak" however, she also says this "It might be that Machaut's Messe was the mass, but it might equally well be another (probably plainsong) mass."   She also cites a long paper by Roger Bowers (which I downloaded from JStor).

Bowers uses different logic than Anne Robertson who argues the strongest for the mass as memorial in her book, "Guillaume de Machaut and Reims," but still considers the mass was written for a unique purpose: maybe a memorial or maybe as a gift to the cathedral upon his retirement there.  It is interesting that Robertson uses a translation of the cathedral plaque which takes a few liberties with the Latin in order to strengthen her argument, whereas Bowers is more accurate acknowledging that the word "petitorium" is a legal term and hints at a legal proceeding and as a result of a less than satisfactory resolution at court for the Machaut estate, an endowment was collected by friends . 

This is different from how Robertson translates the word as a "personal petition" by the Machaut brothers, and which implies a much more overt gesture by Machaut about his intentions for performance of the mass. 

So, I think Schmelzer's entire hypothesis is founded on circumstantial evidence for which different conclusions can be drawn.  I would have preferred had he simply said "this is how I wish to perform the music because it brings the music alive to 21st century ears" and not gone into his psuedo-intellectual explanation about the afterlife of the work.

Thanks for sharing your correspondence with Elizabeth Eva Leach, I've heard of Roger Bowers, somehow I have it in my head that he set some policies for EMI, effectively rejecting Clemencic's approach to instruments. I could be confusing him with someone else though.

[San Antone]

Pérès too?

Pérès does not hypothesize anything about the endowment/memorial, in fact, he almost alludes to a different reason for the mass's composition: "Thus, in  a last act of humanity in the twilight of his life, the canon of the cathedral of Reims [i.e. Machaut], for whom all creation was impossible without love, would have wished to render a final tribute to faith by composing two masterpieces [La Voir Dit and La Messe], the one devoted to the love of a woman, the other to the mother of God, the 'Grande Dame' who causes us to be reborn in heaven."

Lawrence Earp in his mandatory Machaut resource, "Guillaume de Machaut: A Guide to Research," although he doesn't come out and say it, he supports this rationale for the mass's composition since it was also composed during the same period as the three late motets: as a prayer of devotion and gratitude to the Lady Mary for the survival of Reims against the siege that had occurred during 1359-1360.  He cites the composition of the three motets Christi I Veni (M21), Tu qui gregem I Flange (M22), and Felix virgo I Inviolata (M23) all exhibit a similar style and were probably written at the same time (1358-1360):

"When the conditions of the Second Treaty of London were rejected by the French in May 1359, it was clear that King John would remain a captive and that the war would be resumed.  The dauphin Charles wrote to the city officials of Reims on July 1359 warning them that the English would attack.  After much delay the English reached the newly completed city walls in mid-November or early December.  The ramparts proved impenetrable, and the siege was lifted around 11 January 1360.  Felix virgo I Inviolata (M23), a prayer to the Virgin for peace, is less clearly topical, although it can be associated with M21-22 on stylistic grounds."

As can the mass. 

All very interesting and even more information which calls into question Schlmezer's reliance on the idea of Machaut's intention that the work would have an afterlife other than as a continuing devotional prayer to the Virgin as well as something to help his soul's passage through the afterlife, via the short memorial prayer for the dead the endowment refers to.

Pérès gives more weight to his use of Syriac and Byzantine chant singers whose singing traditions of adding ornaments to the music might offer insights into interpreting the notation, which Pérès refers to like this, "What is noted down on the page is not the end result but the point of departure of this process of knowledge [an understanding of musical grammar in what was called the art of modulation: 'the ostentation of the mode, meaning, in a broad sense, of the measure.'] which assumes substance by means of a direct relationship with the sound."