Medieval Musics Abstractions and Melodies Jennifer Rycenga How

Medieval Musics Abstractions and Melodies Jennifer Rycenga

How We Hear It Now… • http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=x 7 wc 55 o. XWf 8

Music’s Dual Nature: Abstraction and Embodiment • • Music expresses mathematical relations sonically Music induces strong emotional reactions in human beings Music is intimately connected with courtship & love Music is intimately connected with death

Pythagorean Ratios • Pythagoras experimented with the sounds that resulted from subdividing an open string. • The result produced a set of ratios that produce the eight notes that make up the octave • Parallel discoveries were made in the art musics of China, India, Persia, and West Africa.

Music of the Spheres Medieval Drawing of Pythagoras determining musical ratios • Platonic Idealism suggests that we experience physically is a reflection of what exists in the realm of Ideas. Thus, human experiences of harmony, ratios and musical intervals represent a truth about the structure of the universe.

Music of the Spheres • This Platonic notion, reinforced by neo. Platonism, suggested that the regular motion of stars, planets, and other celestial bodies, created a music that was (as Prof. Hohmann so eloquently said) “unfortunately inaudible to human beings. ”

Music of the Spheres • Note that the hand of God tunes the world, and that the intervals of the scale are seen as divinely arranged. • Both the perfection of some intervals (octave, 5 th, and 4 th), and the imperfect tuning of other intervals, affirmed the Platonic insights.

Christianity and Music • Christian attitudes to music were shaped by the oppositional stance Christians had to pagans in the Roman Empire. • Pagan music, in particular instrumental music, was associated, in the minds of early Christians, with sloth, sexual excess, and decadence. • Christian music would have to focus the mind on truth, not address the body or the emotions. • Early Christian music focused on chant forms, which highlight words and textual meaning.

Christianity and Music • Christian theology lends itself easily to the cosmology known as Dualism • Dualism is experienced by us as theory of Good v. Evil; or, the plot of most popular movies • Dualism posits two opposite forces in the world, which are locked in a long struggle, from which one will emerge victorious and the other will be subdued or defeated.

Christianity, Dualism and Music • Concerning music, Christian dualism stressed that music’s abstract qualities were positive, but that music’s sensual appeal was seductively evil - and dat ebil had to stayz out! Music’s sensuality could only be used to enhance the text. • Christian ideas of, and regulations concerning, music, from the earliest days until the present (i. e. Christian rock), have explicitly placed words above music hierarchically.

Boethius (ca. 480 -525) • Boethius was a key philosopher in the Byzantine Empire, who helped preserve Greek wisdom in the emerging Christian world. • He was executed for political reasons in 525; while awaiting his death, he wrote the allegorial Consolation of Philosophy, a classic of Christian Platonism In the excerpt from Raphael’s “School of Athens” above, Pythagoras is writing about Music. The balding man behind him is Boethius; Averroes is behind him in a turban; Hypatia is the woman in the white robe

Boethius (ca. 480 -525) • His philosophic work combined Christianity and ancient philosophy • His treatise, On Music, divided music into three types: • Musica munda/universalis Harmony of the spheres • Musica humana - metaphoric harmony of the human body and spirit • Musica instrumentalis - human music, including the voice

Augustine on Music • Augustine (354 -430), a convert to Christianity, is one of the intellectual giants of Western thought. • He waged a constant personal battle over the temptations of the flesh • He included music’s sensual appeal among those temptations

From Augustine’s Confessions • The delights of the ear drew and held me much more powerfully, but thou (God) didst unbind and liberate me. In those melodies which thy words inspire when sung with a sweet and trained voice, I still find repose; yet not so as to cling to them, but always so as to be able to free myself as I wish. But it is because of the words which are their life that they gain entry into me and strive for a place of proper honor in my heart; and I can hardly assign them a fitting one. Sometimes, I seem to myself to give them more respect than is fitting, when I see that our minds are more devoutly and earnestly inflamed in piety by the holy words when they are sung than when they are not.

From Augustine’s Confessions • But the pleasures of my flesh - to which the mind ought never to be surrendered nor by them enervated - often beguile me while physical sense does not attend on reason, to follow her patiently, but having once gained entry to help the reason, it strives to run on before her and be her leader. Thus in these things I sin unknowingly, but I come to know it afterward. • Augustine’s dualism is apparent here. But he is too great of a thinker to simply assert what he knows to be in contradiction to reality.

From Augustine’s Confessions • On the other hand, when I avoid very earnestly this kind of deception, I err out of too great austerity. Sometimes I go to the point of wishing that all the melodies of the pleasant songs to which David’s Psalter is adapted should be banished both from my ears and from those of the Church itself. In this mood, the safer way seemed to me the one I remember was once related to me concerning Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who required the readers of the psalm to use so slight an inflection of the voice that it was more like speaking than singing.

From Augustine’s Confessions • However, when I call to mind the tears I shed at the songs of thy Church at the outset of my recovered faith, and how even now I am moved, not by the singing but by what is sung (when they are sung with a clear and skillfully modulated voice), I then come to acknowledge the great utility of this custom. Thus I vacillate between dangerous pleasure and healthful exercise. I am inclined-though I pronounce no irrevocable opinion on the subject--to approve of the use of singing in the church, so that by the delights of the ear the weaker minds may be stimulated to a devotional mood.

From Augustine’s Confessions • Yet when it happens that I am more moved by the singing than by what is sung, I confess myself to have sinned wickedly, and then I would rather not have heard the singing. See now what a condition I am in! Weep with me, and weep for me, those of you who can so control your inward feelings that good results always come forth. As for you who do not act this way at all, such things do not concern you. But do thou, O Lord, my God, give ear; look and see, and have mercy upon me; and heal me--thou, in whose sight I am become an enigma to myself; this itself is my weakness.

What did I just say? , asks Augustine • My dear Augustine, says Prof. R. , you’ve done it again, just like I said with your two great books: The Confessions describes the spiritual search, while The City of God prohibits such searching. • Here, my dear Augustine, you said you were “ inclined…to approve of the use of singing in the church, so that by the delights of the ear the weaker minds may be stimulated to a devotional mood. ” • Yet you also admitted that music’s lure can tempt you: when you are “more moved by the singing than by what is sung” you become “an enigma” to yourself, and “have sinned wickedly. ” • Remember, dear students, these contradictions - of authority, of joy and sin, of pleasures of the flesh being both licit and illicit - thanks to Augustine underpin all Christian-tinctured culture after him.

Charlemagne (742 -814) & Centralized Control • Inclusion of music as one of the Liberal Arts • Standardization of liturgy • Standardization of musical parts of the liturgy • Asserts and sustains supremacy of chant traditions for liturgy

The Catholic Mass • Some parts of the Mass are the same every day: these are called The Ordinary • Other parts of the Mass change each day depending on the season, the event, or the saint being celebrated. These parts are called The Proper • Although it took many centuries after Charlemagne, musical settings of the Mass revolve around the Ordinary, not the Proper

The Ordinary • Six standard prayers form the ordinary 1. Kyrie 2. Gloria 3. Credo 4. Sanctus/Benedictus 5. Agnus Dei 6. Et Missa Est • Most musical settings of the Mass include 1 -5 • The Kyrie, in Greek, is a remnant of a Christological battle…from the losing side! • The Credo is the Nicean Creed, developed for Constantine to promote Christian unity

Music is one of the Seven Liberal Arts

Music is shown with her Lyre, Cithara (harp) and Organum

Music is part of the quadrivium along with arithmetic, geometry, & astronomy

Monophony and Polyphony • One line of unison melody without accompaniment or harmonization • Gregorian chant is a form of monophony • Two or more melodic lines; these can include accompaniment or harmonization • Each voice usually has rhythmic independence • The Notre Dame Mass of Machaut is an example of polyphony

Homophony and Polyphony • Multiple voices form harmonization (chords), but move in rhythmic unity. • Two or more melodic lines which maintain rhythmic independence • This rhythmic independence creates what is called “counterpoint” - a distinctive feature of Western melodic and harmonic structures

Chants and Chanting • Chanting is a form of textual recitation that contains musical contours • Chanting is an important mnemonic device. • There are multiple chant traditions in Christianity • Chant traditions exist in many other religions, including Qur’anic recitation, Vedic chant in Hinduism, & Buddhist chanting of sutra-s. • Chanting is a monophonic musical form, with one single melodic line and no harmonization.

Chanting is a Form of Heightened Speech • Chanting of a text demands a higher level of attention to that text, on the part of both listeners and singers. • Chanting of a text slows delivery of text content; this allows time for reflection and internalization of text.

Gregorian Chant • Gregorian chant is the predominant chant form in Western Christianity. • Traditionally attributed to St. Pope Gregory the Great, this attribution is now widely doubted by scholars • The Gregorian Chant repertoire develops from 8 th to 13 th centuries • First major world repertoire to be preserved through a consistent, reproducible form of notation.

Gregorian Chant • The Holy Spirit, as a Dove, inspires St. Gregory; note also the scribe taking it all down!

Dies Irae • Dies irae! dies illa Solvet saeclum in favilla Teste David cum Sibylla Day of wrath! O day of mourning! See fulfilled the prophets' warning, heaven and earth in ashes burning!

Dies Irae • Settings of this poem became quite common during the 14 th century, due to ceaseless war and the Plague • This poem and its chant have become a stock representation of the Middle Ages; note, for instance, the 19 th century use by Berlioz in the Symphonie Fantastique

Hildegard von Bingen (1098 -1179) • German nun and abbess • One of the intellectual giants of her time, she was a mystic visionary, healer, visual artist, and composer. • She wrote her monophonic music for the nuns in her convent.

Hildegard von Bingen: Potent Representative of Those who are Hidden from History! • Hildegard’s fame in our own time makes her the crown jewel of feminist compensatory history. • Compensatory history is the search for members of previously marginalized groups, whose history has been ignored, erased, or devalued. • The textbooks I read in college, authored in the mid 1970 s, did not even mention her once! She is now perhaps the best-known medieval composer besides Machaut.

Hildegard: Symphony of Virgins • O sweetest lover, you sweetest embracer: help us to guard our virginity! We are born of dust, and alas, in Adam’s sin. It is very hard to refuse what tastes like the apple. Set us upright, savior Christ. We ardently long to follow you.

Anonymous IV • Students notes DO matter! Our knowledge of what scholars now call “The School of Notre Dame, ” is based on one manuscript, called Anonymous IV, that contains the class notes of an Englishman studying music in France! • The early music women’s vocal quartet, Anonymous Four, is named after both that manuscript, and the fact that so many women writers and musicians have been rendered anonymous by history. They were the performers on Hildegard’s composition.

Two Composers: Lèonin and Pérotin • Flourished in late 12 th and early 13 th centuries in Paris • Pérotin was a student of Lèonin • Lèonin introduced two-part organum • Pérotin expanded this to four voices

Lèonin and Pérotin • We will hear versions of Viderunt omnes by Lèonin and Pérotin (from Christmas 1198) • Viderunt omnes fines terrae salutare Del nostri: Jubilate Deo omnis terra. V. Notum fecit Dominus salutare suum: ante conspectum gentium revelavit justitiam suam. • All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Sing joyfully to God, all the earth. The Lord hath made known his salvation: he hath revealed his justice in the sight of the Gentiles.

Musical Notation • A page from Pérotin’s Allelluia Nativitas

Phillipe de Vitry (1291 -1360) • Leading composer of the Ars Nova • A Bishop, and political advisor to French kings • primary form: motet • a 14 th century ensemble

Guillaume de Machaut (1300 -1377) • Famed composer and poet • First composer to write all the parts of the Mass, in the Mass of Notre Dame • Organized his own works • Seen here as Nature presents Machaut with her three children: Sense, Music, and Rhetoric

Guillaume de Machaut • Worked as courtier for John of Luxemburg, who was killed at Crécy. • Then worked as canon at Cathedral of Rheims. • Despite being clergy, he carried on a true example of courtly love with a young female fan (early groupie? ) named Perrone.

Why is Machaut forgotten? • Machaut is the musical equivalent of Giotto • Last person to fulfill the ancient idea/ideal that poetry and music were inseparable • Wrote both sacred and secular, music and poetry • Nowadays… http: //news. bbc. co. uk/hi/english/static/events/mill ennium/apr/winner. stm

Sanctus • Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth; pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua • Holy, Lord God of Hosts; Heaven and earth are full of Your glory. • Hosanna in excelsis • Hosanna in the highest.