medieval notation – Early Music Muse

Polyphonic treasure in Lambeth Palace: three unique pieces from MS 457, c. 1200

Ian Pittaway Astripotens famulos (Kind ruler of the stars), citole, gittern, gymel, historically informed performance, Lambeth Palace Library MS 457, Mater dei (Mother of God), medieval notation, Miro genere (By a wondrous birth), Notre Dame school, polyphony, rhythmic modes 23rd November 202225th January 2023 5 Comments

Lambeth Palace Library, the national library and archive of the Church of England, has a collection of medieval and renaissance manuscripts which includes MS 457, a compilation of religious matters and, on one folio, four pieces of music from c. 1200, all unique to this source. Three are complete, and two have not been previously performed or recorded to my knowledge.

This article presents a video performance of the three complete and beautiful polyphonic pieces:

Miro genere (By a wondrous birth)
Astripotens famulos (Kind ruler of the stars)
Mater dei (Mother of God)

In the video, each piece is sung in two or three voices as in the manuscript, then played polyphonically on citole or gittern. The article then explains the principles of interpreting the medieval notation.

Jheronimus Bosch and the music of hell. Part 1/3: The modern myth of Bosch’s butt music

Ian Pittaway Bosch Hieronymous, Bosch Jheronimus, devil’s interval, farting, Garden of Earthly Delights (Bosch painting), iconography, medieval notation, music in art, Strichnotation, tritone 26th May 202117th September 2023 6 Comments

In recent years, a story about a detail in Jheronimus Bosch’s painting of 1495–1505, The Garden of Earthly Delights, has been repeatedly told: that a sinner on the hell panel of the triptych has real music painted on his bottom, only recently discovered. Periodically, articles and videos reappear on social media with a performance of the same attempt to make sense of it, created by Amelia Hamrick in 2014. Is this oft-repeated butt music credible?

To put Bosch’s painting in its historical context, a previous article, Performable music in medieval and renaissance art, examined the role of both faux music notation and playable music in medieval and renaissance art. This article explains why the paint on the sinner’s bottom does not represent real music, and why attempts to interpret the ‘music’ are based on erroneous assumptions and misunderstandings. A second article, available here, explains the rich symbolism of The Garden, including the meaning of musicians tortured by their own instruments, silenced by the demons of hell. A third and final article, available here, surveys the musical symbolism in all Bosch’s works, and asks why his depictions of music are always grotesque, associated with sin, punishment and hell.

Sumer is icumen in / Perspice Christicola: silencing the cuckoo

Ian Pittaway bonacon, bonnacon, farting, ground bass, Harley 978 manuscript, mediaeval, medieval, medieval notation, Perspice Christicola, pes, rota, Sumer is icumen in 7th June 20208th February 2024 4 Comments

Sumer is icumen in is the earliest surviving complete English secular song, sung in this article’s video with all six voices indicated in the manuscript, Harley 978, circa 1250. Sumer and another song, Perspice Christicola, are laid out on the page to the same melody. It seems an unlikely coupling: one about the sights and sounds of summer, with its singing cuckoo, growing seeds, bleating ewe and farting buck; the other a devotional song, with God sending Christ to destruction in order to free the captives of sin and crown them in heaven.

A later scribe returned to the page to add rhythm to the originally non-mensural (not indicating rhythm) notation and, in doing so, also changed the pitches of some notes. The changed notes are strategic, removing the musical cuckoo call, and this scribal interference suggests that the Middle English secular Sumer is icumen in and the Latin devotional Perspice Christicola made an uneasy pair. The version of Sumer recorded for this article restores the originally-written pitches, with the effect of reinstating the cascading cuckoo call, a central musical effect erased in the amended notes usually sung.

This is a revised version of an article originally published in February 2016.

The English estampie: interpreting a medieval dance(?) tune

Ian Pittaway Ars cantus mensurabilis, citole, Douce Francis, English dance, estampida, estampie, Franco of Cologne, historically informed performance, istampitta, istanpitta, Jean de Grouchy, Johannes de Grocheio, Lambertus, Magister Lambertus, mediaeval, medieval, medieval notation, stampita, stantipes 18th February 201917th May 2023 13 Comments

One of the earliest surviving pieces of English instrumental music has survived with the 13^th–14^th century manuscript, Douce 139, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It is exciting in its musical drive and complexity, but interpretation has its problems. The scribe appears to have changed his mind partway through on several issues of notation, leaving us to make judgements about intention. The music is untitled, and is often named Estampie or English Dance in modern sources.

This article works through the puzzles in order to gain some performable answers. What is an estampie? Is the Douce 139 piece an estampie? How can the musical problems left by the scribe’s imperfect notation be reconciled? Drawing on music theorist, Johannes de Grocheio, writing in c. 1300, this article looks for solutions, with a video of one possible interpretation on citole.

Mirie it is while sumer ilast: decoding the earliest surviving secular song in English (revised and updated)

Ian Pittaway church modes, feudal system, harp, historically informed performance, mediaeval, medieval, medieval harp, medieval modes, medieval notation, Middle English, Miri it is, Mirie it is while sumer ilast, modes 25th August 201825th December 2022 28 Comments

Mirie it is while sumer ilast, dated to the first half of the 13^th century, is the earliest surviving secular song that is both English and in the English language, preserved only by the good luck of being written on a piece of paper kept with an unrelated book. We have the music and a single verse. This may be a fragment, but its wonderful melody and poignant lyric embody in microcosm the medieval struggle to get through the winter, nature’s most cruel and barren season.

This article examines the original manuscript, showing that the now-standard version of the song performed by early music revival players is not a true representation of the text and music, but the music itself poses many problems of interpretation. We begin with a translation of the Middle English words into modern English, continuing with a short survey of the social background and a step by step reconstruction of the music. Originally published in February 2016, this is a completely revised account, with a reworked rendering of the melody and a new performance video of Mirie, arranged for voice and medieval harp. Read more

Performing medieval music. Part 3/3: The medieval style

Ian Pittaway Alfonso X, Angelus ad virginem, Ar ne kuth ich sorghe non, Ars musicae, Cantigas de Santa María, carols, Carthy Martin, folk music, historically informed performance, Johannes de Grocheio, mediaeval, medieval, medieval notation, medieval singing styles, rhetoric, Summa musice, traditional music, troubadours 10th August 201828th December 2023 2 Comments

The most fundamental question of all in playing early music today is: how can the music be played to reflect historical practice? This is the third of three articles on this topic for medieval music, aiming to be practical guides with plenty of musical examples and illustrations, and a bibliography for those who wish to delve further.

The first article discussed historical instrument combinations and the second how to create polyphonic accompaniments for music written monophonically. This third and last article discusses a wide variety of questions of style: the performance of the non-mensural (non-rhythmic) notation of the troubadours; the role of the voice and instruments; ornamentation; questions of intelligibility, language and sung translations; musical preludes and postludes; and the effect of the various functions of music on the way it is performed.

This article features a video of Martin Carthy singing a traditional English song on the basis that his free style, with the voice leading and guitar following, each verse phrased differently, so free that it is mensurally unwritable, may have something important to tell us about the historical performance of troubadour songs.

The medieval portative organ: an interview with Cristina Alís Raurich

Ian Pittaway clavicembalum, clavicimbalum, clavicytherium, Guido of Arezzo, harpsichord, historically informed performance, mediaeval, medieval, Medieval Music Besalú, medieval notation, organ, organetto, organino, portative organ, positive organ, Raurich Cristina Alís, renaissance 9th June 201811th December 2023 5 Comments

Cristina Alís Raurich is a historical musician and researcher who specialises in keyboards of the middle ages and early renaissance: portative organ, positive organ, clavicimbalum, and clavicytherium. Not only is Cristina a musician of consummate skill, her love for her instruments and specialism is obvious and infectious: rarely have I seen anyone play and talk about music with such transparent joy. This I discovered when we met at Bolton Castle, Wensleydale, England, in 2017, where she gave a presentation on the history of the portative organ; performed in the duo, Sonus Hyspaniae, on portative organ and percussion, with Raúl Lacilla on musa (medieval bagpipe) and frestel (medieval Pan pipe); and kindly agreed to the following interview for Early Music Muse.

Cristina performs internationally solo and with medieval music groups Magister Petrus, La Douce Semblance, Le Souvenir, Carmina Harmonica, Sonus Hyspaniae and Hamelin Consort; and gives courses and master classes on medieval music and medieval keyboards around Europe. She is assistant director and faculty member of Medieval Music Besalú, the international course on medieval music performance in Besalú, Catalonia, a teacher at the Centre International de Musiques Médiévales de Montpellier, France, and currently a doctoral student at the University of Würzburg, Germany.

In this interview, Cristina discusses how she discovered medieval keyboards; her research into the portative organ and her commissioning of the only 13^th century reconstruction; its playing techniques within the framework of medieval musical styles; its performance context in the middle ages; and performance presentation to a modern audience.

This article includes three videos of Cristina playing: table organ, clavicytherium, and portative organ.

Kalenda maya, the troubadours, and the lessons of traditional music

Ian Pittaway ars antiqua, estampie, folk music, historically informed performance, Jean de Grouchy, Johannes de Grocheio, Kalenda maya, medieval, medieval notation, Notre Dame school, O'Neill's Music of Ireland, Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, rhythmic modes, Souvent souspire mon cuer, traditional music, troubadours, trouvères 10th August 201713th February 2024 4 Comments

BnFms854f.75vRaimbautdeVaqueiras — Raimbaut de Vaqueiras as depicted
in a 14^th century French manuscript
(Bibliothèque nationale de France ms. 854, folio 75v).

Kalenda maya is a 12^th century song by troubadour, Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, one of the Occitanian (later southern French) poets and singers who developed the musical tradition of fin’amor, refined or perfect love. Via Roman fertility festivals and Irish fiddle tunes, this article discusses the poetic content of the song and the problems of interpreting the musical notation of Kalenda maya, penned when written music was still developing in medieval Europe. Can there be a definitive version when there are textual variants of the same song or melody? How credible are renditions of Kalenda maya that impose a musical rhythm not present on the original page?

Raimbaut de Vaqueiras based the melody of Kalenda maya on an estampie he heard at court in Italy. Using principles written in 1300, I attempted to reverse engineer the sung estampie back into the tune it originally was. The reasons this proved impossible tell us something important about medieval music and the continuance of the spirit in which it was played.

We begin with a video of two interpretations of the melody played on gittern.

Bird on a briar: interpreting medieval notation, with a HIP harp arrangement

Ian Pittaway bird on a briar, bourdon, bryd one brere, Chaucer Geoffrey, early instruments, early music, Gothic harp, harp, historically informed performance, Lambertus, Langland William, Magister Lambertus, mediaeval, medieval, medieval notation, rhythmic modes, square notation, troubadours, trouvères 27th July 201517th May 2023 7 Comments

The aim of this article is to arrive at a performable and historically justifiable arrangement of the problematic song, bryd one brere, c. 1290–1320. This is the oldest surviving secular love song in the English language with a complete lyric and so it is early music gold-dust, but it does have some severe holes: it is for two voices, but one voice is missing; and some of the roughly-written notation is difficult to decipher. What follows is not the only possible musical solution; but on this journey I’ll take you through the process step by step, so you can decide for yourself if you’re convinced. I’ll also delve a little into the background of the song, arguing that it is clearly influenced by the troubadour and trouvère tradition of fin’amor – refined or perfect love. The article starts with a video performance on voice and medieval harp.