Download PDF | Christopher Page - Voices and instruments of the Middle Ages_ instrumental practice and songs in France, 1100-1300-University of California Press (1986).
336 Pages
In the history of early music one of the most pressing yet contentious questions concerns instrumental practice in the performance of medieval song, especially the lyrics of the troubadours and trouveres. Christopher Page has done more than anyone in carrying out research in this field. He has explored the vast amount of literary and other evidence and is able to place our understanding of these instruments and their music on a new footing. After examining the place of instruments in the genre-system of medieval song, he discusses stringing and tuning. He describes the instruments and considers pitch, playing-techniques and repertoire. Dr Page’s book throws important new light on his subject and will appeal to listeners and performers, as well as to those interested in the literature and history of the Middle Ages.
Preface
We must all find our own doorway into the past. For some it is the study of what can be seen in paintings or read in poems. For me the best entry has always been through what is heard in music. The performance of old music is perhaps our strangest way of confronting the past, for in order to do it we must collaborate with the dead; when we hear a performance of a medieval song we are hearing an echo of voices which, as if by some miracle, have not been silenced despite the passage of seven or eight hundred years. This book is an attempt to move a little closer to the source of that echo.
Of all medieval music, the monophonic songs of the troubadours and trouvéres seem to have a special fascination for modern listeners—the twelfth-century troubadour lyrics, for example, constitute the earliest repertory of Western vernacular song in existence and lie at the centre of the Occidental tradition of love-lyric. Yet for all their musical and poetic interest, these songs sound very faintly now under the wind of seven or eight centuries and little can be said with certainty about how they were performed. Despite an enormous amount of scholarly effort, the question of their rhythm will remain a matter of controversy until the great day when musicologists will have the opportunity to consult the troubadours in person.’ Nothing will ever be known for sure about the way in which medieval singers paced and phrased them, about the vocal timbres which they cultivated or their use of dynamic shading.
The past is nothing without its mystery, and these enigmas will probably ensure that troubadour and trouvere songs will retain their fascination for ever. Yet there is one area of performance practice where I believe the mist needs to be cleared a little: the question of instrumental participation in the delivery of these songs. In recent years performers and instrument-makers have done a great deal to lift medieval instruments from the frozen silence of church sculptures and from manuscript borders; many reproductions have been made and some skilled performers have emerged. Now that the initial burst of activity in this area has passed, along with the 1960s and 1970s when it reached a peak, the time has come for a dispassionate assessment of where musical instruments belong in the surviving repertories of music.
This book is an attempt to take a step in that direction. In writing it I have been helped by many friends and colleagues, amongst whom it is a pleasure to mention David Fallows and Stephen Haynes (both of whom read parts of the book in draft and made many valuable suggestions), Ann Lewis (who spotted many errors and helped me to clarify numerous arguments), Mark Everist, Lewis Jones, Edward Wilson (the best critic any author could wish), Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, John Caldwell, Jeremy Montagu, Eph and Djilda Segerman, and Ronald Woodley. It is impossible to express what my wife, Régine, has contributed to this book. May it help towards a better understanding of the medieval music of her country.
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