Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300-1377)

[prémont]

Clemencic uses one of my favourite instruments, a hurdy gurdy, and his singer has an air of authenticity, I don't know who it is but hopefully someone can tell me, because I want more of him. Honestly, as soon as he opens his mouth I'm in the Middle Ages - a strange mysterious and slightly dangerous world of extreme tough unsentimental passion. The world of Villon. He's a singer with blood and tripes.

René Zosso, I suppose (much used in Clemencic's recordings):

http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/cds/atn85289.htm

I think I own this, which I can upload for you, if you want:

https://www.amazon.fr/Florilege-Vielle-Roue-Rene-Zosso/dp/B0000007JS/ref=sr_1_8?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1539432187&sr=1-8&keywords=rene+zosso

[Mandryka]

It's true that in 1983, for his performance note for the recording The Mirror of Narcissus, Christopher Page mentions that there's some research which suggests that exclusively vocal performances were well known in late medieval France and that he wrote a paper in 1977 which "advocates" this method. I haven't read the paper, I'd like to if anyone can let me have it.

His position isn't that instruments weren't used -- which is clearly a much stronger idea than "exclusively vocal performances were well known"

He does sometimes use instruments -- harp or lute -- in Machaut. In the essay Page wrote for Lancaster and Valois (1991 I think) in the discussion of Riches d'amours he says

Machaut's ballades of this type are often superbly designed to display the best in a beautiful voice discreetly accompanied by another voice or (as here) by an instrument

I'd very much like to read Page, but his papers are hard to get hold of and the books are expensive. It's been a pleasure just looking over his essays for the booklets -- he's an articulate and persuasive scholar with interesting well considered ideas. (I've just found a cheap copy of his book called "The Owl and the Nightingale" -- hopefully it will arrive.)

[Mandryka]

René Zosso, I suppose (much used in Clemencic's recordings):

http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/cds/atn85289.htm

I think I own this, which I can upload for you, if you want:

https://www.amazon.fr/Florilege-Vielle-Roue-Rene-Zosso/dp/B0000007JS/ref=sr_1_8?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1539432187&sr=1-8&keywords=rene+zosso

Yes please! I can see he recorded for Savall as well as Clemencic.

[prémont]

It's true that in 1983, for his performance note for the recording The Mirror of Narcissus, Christopher Page mentions that there's some research which suggests that exclusively vocal performances were well known in late medieval France and that he wrote a paper in 1977 which "advocates" this method. I haven't read the paper, I'd like to if anyone can let me have it.

His position isn't that instruments weren't used -- which is clearly a much stronger idea than "exclusively vocal performances were well known"

He does sometimes use instruments -- harp or lute -- in Machaut. In the essay Page wrote for Lancaster and Valois (1991 I think) in the discussion of Riches d'amours he says

I'd very much like to read Page, but his papers are hard to get hold of and the books are expensive. It's been a pleasure just looking over his essays for the booklets -- he's an articulate and persuasive scholar with interesting well considered ideas. (I've just found a cheap copy of his book called "The Owl and the Nightingale" -- hopefully it will arrive.)

I think there is a general consensus, that instruments might be used for free preludes and interludes for monodic songs (this seems at least to have been general practice during the last 60 years -at least). But what I refer to are polyphonic songs, where Page (and David Fallows?) think, that a textless voice in a manuscript doesn't indicate that the part should be played by an instrument, but that all parts should be sung. Whether one decides to accommodate the words to the textless part or prefers to vocalise the part is left to the performers discretion.

[Mandryka]

I think there is a general consensus, that instruments might be used for free preludes and interludes for monodic songs (this seems at least to have been general practice during the last 60 years -at least). But what I refer to are polyphonic songs, where Page (and David Fallows?) think, that a textless voice in a manuscript doesn't indicate that the part should be played by an instrument, but that all parts should be sung. Whether one decides to accommodate the words to the textless part or prefers to vocalise the part is left to the performers discretion.

Voicing the textless parts may make the text of the poem harder to hear, just because the voices are all rather close to each other. Maybe what this shows is that Machaut's audience were very literary, he could assume that they'd read the poem and thought about it before hearing the song

I've been listening to this motet à 3 - where you have three poems sung simultaneously

https://youtube.com/v/Lptkr6U34y0

The poems all treat of complementary ideas about love - prima facie the words matter, it's like a debate with a thesis, an antithesis and a synthesis. But I think it would be quite a challenge to understand them when they're all sung together like that. It's not like a trio in a Moazart opera because the voices are so close to each other. The audience must have all been expected to know the poems before the concerts.

Unless the words don't matter, and it's some sort of "pure" music, or indeed a subversive gesture designed to undermine a literary culture, to play with poems by turning them into sounds . . .

[JBS]

Listening to this new recording of Machaut songs by Orlando Consort, I couldn't stop myself from wondering how much of Machaut's music is based on a formulaic model-based approach, and is essentially good but mainstream craftsmanship.

The Orlando approach seems to invite me to engage with the music at arms length, most of what they do isn't particularly affective. Maybe for Machaut's audience, who not only had a more immediate grasp of the words, but also had more empathy for all the numerological or alchemical ideas probably contained in the poems and the music, this sort of abstract appreciation would be more satisfying. But for a modern audience a more emotionally demonstrative reinterpretation may be more communicative.

I don't mean what I say above to be a comment reflecting equally on all of the music on this disc, S'onques doloreusement and  Dame, comment qu'aimez for example is much more emotionally engaging and certainly does not give the impression of formulaic music.

I am listening to this for the first time.
The canonic use of voices does in fact work well for Lay de confort, but overall the voices only approach is a bit wearing. A full hour of it is too much. Just one or two tracks at a time, I suggest. Instruments are needed to vary the tonal palette.

But would Machaut's audience have heard this music in anything approaching this format? Probably more like a sing or two mixed in with pieces by other musicians, and breaking off when their ears started to tire. Maybe reciting other poetry with no music mixed in with music...
...just throwing out ideas in that last paragraph...

[Mandryka]

I am listening to this for the first time.
The canonic use of voices does in fact work well for Lay de confort, but overall the voices only approach is a bit wearing. A full hour of it is too much. Just one or two tracks at a time, I suggest. Instruments are needed to vary the tonal palette.

But would Machaut's audience have heard this music in anything approaching this format? Probably more like a sing or two mixed in with pieces by other musicians, and breaking off when their ears started to tire. Maybe reciting other poetry with no music mixed in with music...
...just throwing out ideas in that last paragraph...

It does feel that Machaut's music is very high brow and literary, and yes, I can imagine recitals of the poems before the songs or breaking them up. But I don't know. I do know that some scholars (possibly Christopher Page) believe that it was much more popular than we can imagine today, and not at all a proto- art subtilior.

The other thing I wonder is whether it would have been better for Orlando to have been more flexible about instruments, rather than have a strict no instrument policy. We've seen that Christopher Page was more flexible, and it looks to me that a vocal rendition of the untexted music, or the solo rendition of a lay,  is more an option than a stipulation, maybe not always the most desirable option. But I've not seen the research on this, not yet anyway.

If you're going to sing a long song without instruments, you'd better be good at the poetry. Peter Peers could have done it, or Karl Erb, or Jon Vickers!

It's well worth listening to Gothic Voices and the way they use vocalise, my impression is that they're more instrumental sounding, sometimes, if I listen on my second (not so good) hifi, I've thought that the vocalise was in fact some sort of instrument! Très bonne et belle in The Study of Love is a great example of this I think. You may prefer their style to Orlando's. I like both, especially when Orlando sing in an ethereal disembodied way.

The long monophonic songs are very challenging though for a modern audience. Marc Mauillon is experimenting with ways of embellishing the music with expression which may make them more sensual, his work is certainly worth hearing, as is Hilliard's recording of the motets for ECM, which in some ways makes me think of Bjorn Schmelzer. And I hope that one day Jill Feldman will bite off more Machaut, I'm sure she'd do something interesting. All we have for the moment is a CD called Trecento.

It's  all challenging in its way, that's why Machaut  seems to me to be perennially, essentially, avant garde!

[JBS]

I have some stuff by Gothic Voices, not sure atm whether any of it is Machaut. Ditto with Hilliard. Will be checking to see. Thank you for all tje suggestions.

[San Antone]

Happy to see the latest Orlando Consort's Machaut recording is getting some talk going.  I had posted about it in the Early Music Club but no one appeared to notice.

The Orlando's recordings are well worth investigating, not only because of their excellent (imo) performances, which are informed by first rate scholarship regarding the music and performance practice during Machaut's period - but also because of their dedication to recording his complete collection of works. 

A link between songs of the troubadours and Machaut's court song literature could be argued and adding an instrumental accompanist would not be out of the question.  I am pretty sure I've heard some of his music performed this way, and do not doubt that the music may have been done this way during his lifetime.

But the performances by the OC, a cappella, are very good as they are and I have the entire set that has been released so far and will continue buying them as they appear.

[Mandryka]

Is it true that Orlando Consort are the only ones to have recorded a vocal, or mainly vocal, or partly vocal, or slightly vocal performance of Hoquetus David?

Binkley - instruments
Kandel - instruments
Munrow - instruments
Bruggen - Instruments
Alba Musica Kayo - a short hallelujah introduction, and then instruments

[prémont]

Is it true that Orlando Consort are the only ones to have recorded a vocal, or mainly vocal, or partly vocal, or slightly vocal performance of Hoquetus David?

Maybe this, I don't know. But at least no instrumentalists are mentioned:

http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/cds/rgu1013.htm

[Mandryka]

Maybe this, I don't know. But at least no instrumentalists are mentioned:

http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/cds/rgu1013.htm

Ah yes, Sanantnio has it, I've never been able to find it for sale anywhere

Machaut : Messe le Nostre Dame
Vocal Ensemble Cappella | Tetsuro Hanai



This Japanese group performs a very good Messe.  Anyone who is familiar with the 2005 concert recording by Rebecca Stewart and Schola Machaut will hear a similarity in pacing and phrasing.

I want to spend some time with it so I can get a handle on the issues we've talked about concerning ficta, etc. but my initial impression is positive - although I think this is one where they sing the polyphonic movements without any intervening plainchant.

[Mandryka]

This may well be the first recording of Machaut's music, Lambert Murphy singing Douce dame jolie with a delightful Tudor accompaniment. You need to enable flash

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/628/

[Mandryka]

I think there is a general consensus, that instruments might be used for free preludes and interludes for monodic songs (this seems at least to have been general practice during the last 60 years -at least). But what I refer to are polyphonic songs, where Page (and David Fallows?) think, that a textless voice in a manuscript doesn't indicate that the part should be played by an instrument, but that all parts should be sung. Whether one decides to accommodate the words to the textless part or prefers to vocalise the part is left to the performers discretion.

It turns out that Page argued right from the start that the harp was a suitable instrument for accompaniment, apparently there was an Ars Subtilior composer who was a well know harpist who wrote about this. Anyway the thing I wanted to say is that I think you'll appreciate  Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's The Modern Invention of Medieval Music, which contains a very extended analysis of Gothic Voices's experiments, amongst many other interesting things.

The frustrating thing is not being able to get hold of Page's publications, I really must investigate whether there's a music library in London I can subscribe to. If anyone knows of one then please say.

[San Antone]

Voices with instruments for secular music go back to the time of the troubadours/trouveres, so very early on it was commonly done.  But regarding sacred music, only the organ was used (and that practice was rather late) and only used alternatim, not concurrently with the voices.  We have to wait until Monteverdi, when dramatic/operatic influences began to enter the church, for full instrumental accompaniment to be heard.

My own taste is to prefer early sacred music, i.e. 9th-16th century done with male voices and without instruments, and my interest wains the closer I get to the Baroque period.  But I enjoy secular music with a variety of instruments accompanying the voice(s).

[Mandryka]

Re sacred music and instruments, there's a recording of Dufay's Gloria ad modem tubae which Hilliard made which uses no instruments. It always makes me smile.

There's a medieval manuscript in Göttingen which contains a mass with parts to be sung and parts to be spoken by a priest. When it was recorded they wanted to preserve a sense of dialogue between singer and priest, but they thought that having a priest speaking may not be attractive, so they replaced the spoken parts with some instrumental music. It's really addictive recording, I can't get enough of it!

More generally you have untexted passages in sacred music like in that Dufay Gloria, and you have to do something with them, what are the choices? Instruments, alter the phrasing and try and fit some words to them,  get a singer to do some melismas on a vowel, cut the words completely and play the lot on an organ or some sort of consort . . .

[San Antone]

Re sacred music and instruments, there's a recording of Dufay's Gloria ad modem tubae which Hilliard made which uses no instruments. It always makes me smile.

There's a medieval manuscript in Göttingen which contains a mass with parts to be sung and parts to be spoken by a priest. When it was recorded they wanted to preserve a sense of dialogue between singer and priest, but they thought that having a priest speaking may not be attractive, so they replaced the spoken parts with some instrumental music. It's really addictive recording, I can't get enough of it!

More generally you have untexted passages in sacred music like in that Dufay Gloria, and you have to do something with them, what are the choices? Instruments, alter the phrasing and try and fit some words to them,  get a singer to do some melismas on a vowel, cut the words completely and play the lot on an organ or some sort of consort . . .

Of course we can enjoy a performance of Medieval (or earlier) music done by any combination of voices and instruments, or instruments alone.  My preference follows my taste and I do not enjoy Machaut or Dufay sung without instruments by a male group because I think it is correct but because that is how I like to hear this music done.  However, I think the scholarly community is agreed that prior to the 17th century instruments other than organ were not used in the church.  Palestrina's Mantuan masses are a good example of how the organ was used, alternatim.

I see nothing in Dufay's "Gloria ad modem tubae" that cannot be sung, and it is an example of hocket which was common during the time.  Hocketing was so common that it was criticized (to the point of trying to prohibit it) in the early 14th century:

"A Cistercian statute of 1320 requires that plainchant be sung in the traditional way, the modern
way "with syncopations of notes and also hockets having been forbidden in our chant simply
because such things smack more of looseness than of devotion" ("sincopationibus notarum et
etiam hoquetis interdictis in cantu nostro simpliciter quia talia magis dissolutionem quam
devotionem sapiant" [Canivez 3:349]).

Throughout the fourteenth century hocketing was used in almost all the polyphonic genres. In
motets and mass movements it often highlighted the repetitive structure of isorhythm and
ornamented melismatic passages, such as concluding Amens." (Wolinski)

The Gloria in Machaut's mass also has similar short sections where the voices carry on with a short musical phrase for the lower voices between verses.  Neither of these have what I would describe a melisma.  Now, you do have melismatic singing in earlier periods of organum and conductus.  But again none of these examples have music which cannot be sung or is even hard for a singer to execute.

Is Daniel Leech-Wilkinson really trying to prove that instruments were used in sacred music during Dufay's or Machaut's time with the example of Dufay's Gloria ad modem tubae?

[Mandryka]

Is Daniel Wilkinson-Leech really trying to prove that instruments were used in sacred music during Dufay's or Machaut's time with the example of Dufay's Gloria ad modem tubae?

As far as I can see he doesn't mention it, the reason I said it makes me smile is that it reminds me of when I was at school, and we had to sing "Ding dong merrily on high . . . "

However, I think the scholarly community is agreed that prior to the 17th century instruments other than organ were not used in the church.

That's interesting, I didn't know that. Not even bells in chants to get the boys off on the right note!

[San Antone]

As far as I can see he doesn't mention it, the reason I said it makes me smile is that it reminds me of when I was at school, and we had to sing "Ding dong merrily on high . . . "

I botched his name, I meant Daniel Leech-Wilkinson.   

[San Antone]

Well, it is a controversial subject and I am sure there are some who make the opposite argument, although my sense is that most early period musicologists would agree with my statement.