Capítulo I. Marco conceptual
1.2. La interculturalidad
1.2.1. Del pluralismo a la interculturalidad
A
very different approach to polyphony marks the astonishingly original “Sumer Is Icumen In,” the one piece of music from this whole period that is still sung regularly by student choirs and others. This piece is a canon or round, like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and “Frère Jacques,” but the melody is much longer. It survives in one manuscript, with no author’s name. Its words, a bu-colic celebration of the arrival of summer, form one of the earliest lyric poems in English — Middle English, that is, a much earlier stage of today’s English.Here is a free translation of it:
Summer is a-coming in, Cow after calf makes moo;
Loudly sing cuckoo! Bullock stamps and deer champs,
Groweth seed, bloometh the meadow, Merry sing cuckoo!
And springs the wood anew; Cuckoo, cuckoo,
Sing cuckoo! Well singest thou, cuckoo,
Ewe bleateth after lamb, Be never still, cuckoo!
Four voices sing the tune; for good measure two more voices below them repeat “sing cuckoo” over and over again. The manuscript calls them the pes, Latin for foot. Our recording starts with the pes and goes on to add the main melody sung by one voice, then, in staggered fashion, by two, then by four.
Written sometime after 1250 in the major mode, not one of the medieval ones, the song packs an infectious swing that sounds like fi ve (or eight) centuries later.
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GUILLAUME DE MACHAUT (c. 1300–1377)
Chanson, “Dame, de qui toute ma joie vient”M
achaut left us numerous examples of secular polyphony, that is, polyphony independent from the church. He composed many motets using isorhythmic techniques. And, though he was still close enough to the trouvères to write beautiful monophonic songs, he also adapted their old tradi-tion of chivalric love songs to complex, ars nova polyphony. These songs, or chansons (shahn-sohn), had no trace in them of Gregorian chant.“Dame, de qui toute ma joie vient,” a chanson with four voices, is an excellent example of non-imitative polyphony, the characteristic texture of Machaut’s music. The top line was clearly intended to be sung, but the other three might have been meant for either vocal or instrumental performance; if he had a preference, Machaut didn’t tell us. On our recording, all four parts are sung. The words are parceled out slowly, with long melismas on many syllables, a feature that looks back to the style of organum.
Because of this melismatic style, the song is much longer than Bernart’s
“La dousa votz.” Each stanza takes about two minutes in our performance, and only the fi rst is included here. Still, the form of “Dame, de qui toute ma joie vient” is identical to that of Bernart’s song. Each stanza falls into an a aⴕ b arrangement; this was one of several standardized song forms Machaut adapted from the trouvères. Given the length of Machaut’s song, a letter now
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We are moving through history very rapidly. After 1300 the technical develop-ment of polyphony reached new heights of sophistication. Composers and music theorists of the time began to speak of an ars nova, a “new art” or “new tech-nique.” The motet continued to develop as an important genre, incorporating ars nova ingredients; but the organum of the Notre Dame composers, now many years old, was regarded as “ancient art,” ars antiqua.
Some historians have compared the fourteenth century with the twentieth, for it was a time of the breakup of traditions — an age of anxiety, corruption, and worse. Bubonic plague, the “Black Death,” carried away an estimated 75 million people, at a time when the papacy had been thrown out of Rome and two rival popes claimed the allegiance of European Christendom.
Polyphonic music grew increasingly secular, intricate, and even convo-luted, as did the painting, architecture, and poetry of the time. Motets refl ected such intricacy in a structural technique they employed called isorhythm. Here rhythmic patterns many notes long were repeated over and over — isorhythm means equal rhythm — but with different pitches each time. This went along with other schematic and numerical procedures, meant for the mind rather than the ear. Mathematics was also making great strides in this period.
The leading composers, Philippe de Vitry (1291–1361) and Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300 –1377), were both churchmen — Vitry ended his life as a bishop — but they were political churchmen serving the courts of France and Luxembourg. Machaut was also the greatest French poet of his time, admired (and imitated) by his younger English contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer.
Of instrument of strings in accord
Heard I so play a ravishing sweetness
That God, that Maker is of all, and Lord,
Ne heard never better, as I guess.
Geoffrey Chaucer, 1375
Guillaume de Machaut,
“Dame, de qui toute ma joie vient”
0:00 a Dame, de qui toute ma joie vient Lady, source of all my joy,
Je ne vous puis trop amer et chierir I can never love or cherish you too much, 0:35 aⴕ N’assés loer, si com il apartient Or praise you as much as you deserve,
Servir, doubter, honourer n’obeïr. Or serve, respect, honor, and obey you.
1:19 b Car le gracious espoi, For the gracious hope,
Douce dame, que j’ay de vous vëoir, Sweet lady, I have of seeing you, Me fait cent fois plus de bien et de Gives me a hundred times more joy and
joie boon
Qu’en cent mille ans desservir ne Than I could deserve in a hundred
porroie. thousand years.
L I S T E N
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stands for a whole section rather than a melodic phrase or two. Each section comes to a clear stop on a strong cadence. The three sections are signaled in the Listen box that follows.
The most general impression of this song is of a lively and fl owing set of intertwining melodies. The words — hard to follow because of the abun-dant melismas — seem to be little more than an excuse for the complex poly-phony. Certainly the music does not show any obvious attempt to refl ect the meaning or emotion of the poem. We will see in Chapter 7 that, by the time of the Renaissance, this rather neutral relation of music and words would change.
Scenes of medieval music making. These and the minia tures on pages 47 and 54 are from Songs of the Virgin Mary, written (or perhaps compiled) by King Alphonso X of Spain,
“The Wise” (1252–1284), renowed for his support of learning and the arts.
Study the Flashcards and Quizzes for Chapter 6 at bedfordstmartins.com/listen