55274-B.pdf

COURTLY SONGS OF THE LATER FIFTEENTH CENTURY

The Castle of Fair Welcome

GOTHIC VOICES with CHRISTOPHER WILSON lute

CHRISTOPHER PAGE medieval harp/director

Sir Gawayn will pass under the portcullis of this castle,

‘shimmering between the sheer oaks’, and then disappear

into the maze of a great household. On every side he will find

‘chambers with hearths where charcoal burns’ and courtyards

noisy with hurrying chaplains as candles are lit in the galleries.

This recording presents some of the music which could be

heard in some royal and noble households during the fifteenth

century. Most of the composers represented enjoyed the high-

est patronage available to a fifteenth-century musician. The

Englishman Robert Morton, whose rondeau Le souvenir de

vous me tue 1 is one of the most beguiling medieval songs,

was a chaplain in the employ of Philip the Good and Charles

the Bold, Dukes of Burgundy. (Charles was an accomplished

composer in his own right, to judge by Ma dame, trop vous

mesprenés bo ). Gilles de Binche, called Binchois, was also one

of Philip’s chaplains, and the outstanding composer of the

period, Guillaume Dufay, may also have had some connection

with the Burgundian court; otherwise his patrons included the

Malatesta family at Pesaro and later Duke Amadeus VIII of

Savoy.

Within a castle complex, songs and instrumental pieces like

those recorded here were often performed in the grande salle ,

or Great Hall, especially when the main daily meals of disner

and souper were elaborated for festivities at Christmas, Easter

and Pentecost. As the Hall filled with ‘such a great wealth of

knights and ladies that it was wondrous to behold’ there might

be young squires waiting to be dubbed or to be presented with

prizes for victory in the lists. These ceremonies were graced by

music—and sometimes by polyphonic songs to judge by a

revealing passage in the fifteenth-century romance of Cleriadus

et Meliadice where we find the hero performing a rondeau in a

French salle , ‘the best and finest ever built’, during the cele-

brations after a tournament.

The story is worth telling. Cleriadus, the son of the Count

of Asturias, has disguised himself in green and taken the title

of ‘Le chevalier vert’; installing himself in a place called ‘La

joyeuse maison’ he undertakes to joust with any knight who may

challenge him there during a period of thirty days. (Many

historical knights of the fifteenth century undertook a pas

d’armes of this kind, most notably the Burgundian hero Jacques

de Lalaing.) Cleriadus triumphs over all comers to ‘La joyeuse

maison’ and a feast is duly held where all the vanquished

knights wear a green livery which he presents to them. At one

point during the festivities Cleriadus sings a rondeau with words

by his lady-love, Meliadice, and polyphonic music by himself:

When the company had danced a long while to the minstrels

they began to dance to songs. So Cleriadus began to sing what

Meliadice had written. A squire from his retinue held the tenor

part for him and you may be sure that it was good to hear, for

[Cleriadus] sang better than anyone had ever heard before.

When he had finished he put a written copy of the song into

the hands of Meliadice.

Like an embroidered hanging, or a wooden dresser arrayed with

silver plate, a song like Guillaume Dufay’s Ne je ne dors 7 or

Robert Morton’s Plus j’ay le monde regardé bm would have

been an adornment to such a scene as this; the chivalrous

ambitions of a young squire could not be better expressed than

in these lines set by Morton:

Plus j’ay le monde regardé

Plus je voy mon premier chois :

Avoir le bruit et la nois

De los, de grace et de beaulté.

A Great Hall was usually a grandiose building which offered

musicians an opportunity to perform en publicque —a

The castle shimmered between the sheer oaks.

The wall in the water went wondrous deep

then reared up high on its way to the heavens.

The knight saw chalk-white chimneys enough

On the tiles of the towers …

Anonymous: Sir Gawayn and the Green Knight

A FTER COURTEOUS WORDS with the porter at the gate

conception of musical performance which can be traced as early

as the fourteenth century in France. A large, open space with

a wooden roof and tiled floor, it was usually embellished with

hangings or tapestries; yet a substantial amount of wall-space

might remain uncovered and even when the Hall was full of

courtiers it probably provided singers with a spacious and

resonant acoustic. The same may be said for instrumentalists,

especially players of the lute and harp, often combined in the

fifteenth century (see tracks 3 , 5 , bl and bn ). To judge by

contemporary pictures these instruments were sometimes used

in the Hall with the musicians standing at floor-level or raised

up aloft in a small gallery.

There were other musical venues within the castle—

the lord’s chamber, for example (see page 4). This was a place

where the magnate could retire with his immediate entourage

for ‘games of draughts, chess and a great wealth of other

entertainments’, including music. (For complete privacy he

could remove still further to his garde robe , the petite

chambrette , and by the fifteenth century we hear of royal

persons using this place for playing the harp in solitude.) In the

Great Chamber, however, the lord was surrounded by members

of his retinue who were expected not only to keep him company

but also to entertain him. Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy, for

example, had sixteen escuiers who were required to

sleep near the duke’s chamber as a guard for his person. And

when the duke has laboured all day at his duties and given

audience to everyone, he retires to his chamber, and the

squires go with him to keep him company. Some should sing,

some should read romances and other arresting things, some

should speak of love and arms and help the prince pass his

time in gracious diversions. (Olivier de la Marche: L’Estat de

la Maison du Duc Charles de Bourgoingne, dit le Hardy , in

H Beaune and J D’Arbaumont, eds., Mémoires d’Olivier de la

Marche , 4 vols., Société de l’Histoire de France , iv, p.16)

It was in the chamber that songs like those recorded here took

their rightful place in chivalric culture. During the course of an

evening in the chamber an escuier might hear songs by Morton

or Dufay one moment and passages from romances or ancient

histories of Tristan or Julius Caesar the next. Then the con-

versation might turn to a nice point of tournament protocol. Like

blazons painted on a herald’s roll, these things passed before

the escuier as he sat in the chamber and each one was

enveloped in the same aura of excellence. In these noble and

royal milieux the tone and technique of anything written in

French, whether for entertainment or for edification, was much

the same, and it did not matter if the work in hand were a

romance of King Arthur, a treatise on tourneying, or a love-song

in rondeau form. All had the ceremonial quality of an official

proclamation, the formality of a diplomatic letter and the

hyperbole of a scrupulous speech by an ambassador newly

arrived at court. The formal and grandiloquent tone of these

poems, together with the degree of craftsmanship which the

author had brought to his chosen poetic form, usually mattered

more than what the words of the poem actually said. Indeed

most of the poems recorded here have no more ‘meaning’ to

them than the leafy sprays and branches painted in the margins

of fifteenth-century manuscripts. Like those gilded flourishes,

an amorous rondeau fills a space in a gracious and conventional

way. Now and then, however, we encounter a poem whose

ambitions go much further: Christine de Pisan’s lament for the

death of her husband— Dueil angoisseux 6 —is one of the

most moving of all medieval poems.

In musical terms the most striking difference between these

later fifteenth-century songs and those by composers active in

the early 1400s lies in the harmony. Most medieval polyphonic

songs consist of a top part (the cantus) supported by an

indispensable lower part (the tenor) and one or two optional

parts (the contratenors). During the period 1350 –1450 the

contratenor usually lay in the same range as the tenor, but the

half-century from 1450 to 1500 saw the contratenor sink in

pitch until it became a contratenor bassus, lying substantially

below the tenor. (In the opening passage of Morton’s Que

pourroit plus 4 , for example, six adjacent movements of

the tenor and contratenor produce parallel tenths—quite

impossible in terms of fourteenth-century styles.) The contra-

tenor bassus may also be heard in Morton’s other songs

recorded here, in Vincenet’s La pena sin ser sabida 9 and in

Regis’s Puisque ma damme / Je m’en voy 2 . The contratenor

bassus had much to offer: it permitted wider chordal spacings

than had previously been possible and thus placed new sound-

colours at the disposal of musicians. In fourteenth-century

music a major or minor triad will usually be in close distribution;

wider spacings arise only as occasional and transitory effects.

But it is fundamental to the technique of a composer like Robert

Morton that triads are often widened to a tenth superimposed

upon a fifth (d–a–f´) or, in a way that combines wide spacing

with narrow, to a twelfth over a third (d–f–a´), this last being

one of the most delicate and characteristic colours of later

fifteenth-century song.

They drop the drawbridge and do him great honour;

courteously kneeling on the cold ground to greet him.

Gowned in fine garments he goes forth to the Hall

where a great fire is fiercely aflame on the Hearth.

Let us follow Sir Gawayn.

A ROYAL HALL

from Jean de Wavrin,

Chronique d’Angleterre , volume 1

(Vienna Nationalbibliothek,

MS 2534,f.17). Flemish, c 1470

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1 Le souvenir de vous me tue

The memory of you kills me,

Mon seul bien, quant je ne vous voy.

my only love, when I cannot see you.

Car je vous jure sur ma foy,

For I swear to you by my faith,

Sans vous ma liesse est perdue.

without you my joy is gone.

Quant vous estes hors de ma vue,

When you are out of my sight

Seule demeure despourveue,

I remain alone and bereft,

D’ame nul confort ne recoy,

my soul receives no comfort,

Et si seuffre sans faire effroy,

and thus I suffer without complaint

Jusques a vostre revenue.

until you return

2 Puisque ma dame ne puis voir

Since I may not see my lady

Et se ne puis aultre amer qu’elle,

and yet cannot love anyone but her,

Annoy et dueil me fault avoir.

I am bound to feel sorrow and grief.

Je m’en voy et mon cueur demeure;

I go away, but my heart stays behind;

Je chante et fay larmes de l’euil ;

I sing, but tears stream from my eyes;

Je m’esbas et si n’ay que dueil;

I make merry, yet I have nothing but grief;

Je ris, et mon euil pleure .

I laugh, but my eyes weep.

4 Que pourroit plus faire une dame,

What more could a lady do

Que de mettre son los, sa fame,

than to put her fame and her reputation

Es mains d’ung loial serviteur.

in the hands of a loyal servant,

En habandonant corps et cueur

abandoning body and soul

Pour le guerdonner sans diffame?

to reward him without reproach?

S’elle le cherist plus qu’aultre ame,

If she cherishes him more than any other soul,

Pour sa fortune et pour son eur.

to his great fortune and happiness.

Loial et secret et sans blasme,

loyal, discreet and without blame,

Pugny doibt estre a la rigueur,

he deserves to be rigorously punished,

Puis qu’elle luy fait tant d’honneur

since she does him such honour

De l’amer trop plus que son ame.

as to love him far more than her own soul.

6 Dueil angoisseux , rage desmesurée,

Anguished grief, immoderate fury,

Grief desespoir, plein de forsennement,

grievous despair, full of madness,

Langour sanz fin et vie maleürée

endless languor and a life of misfortune,

Pleine de plour, d’angoisse et de tourment,

full of tears, anguish and torment,

Cuer doloreux qui vit obscurement,

doleful heart, living in darkness,

Tenebreux corps sur le point de partir

wraithlike body on the point of death,

Ay, sanz cesser, continuellement;

are mine continually without cease;

Et si ne puis ne garir ne morir.

and thus I can neither be cured nor die.

Fierté, durté de joye separée,

Harsh disdain, bereft of joy,

Triste penser, parfont gemissement,

sad thoughts, deep sighs,

Angoisse grant en las cuer enserrée,

great anguish locked in a weary heart,

Courroux amer porté couvertement,

bitter distress endured in secret,

Je me plains et dis a par moy,

I lament and say to myself:

Ne d’elle ouïr quelque nouvelle,

or hear any news of her,

Et qu’en ce monde le reclame

and claims him as hers in this world,

Se pareillement il ne l’ame,

If he does not love her equally,

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