Monthly Archives: November 2011

Mensural Notation

27 Sunday Nov 2011

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William-Adolphe Bouguereau

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (30 November 1825 – 19 August 1905)

Guido d’Arezzo (991/992 – (17 May?) 1050):  Micrologus

I did not finish my last blog.  Suddenly, I stumbled upon information that contradicted what I had learned.  I therefore stopped to investigate matters.  Fortunately, the information I had provided was accurate.

In other words, it is true that in his treatise, entitled the Micrologus, Guido

  • renamed or gave a second name to the C-D-E-F-G-A set (the hexachord);
  • and that he used the first syllable of each line of the Ut queant laxis, (presumably worded by Paul the Deacon (c. 720 – 13 April probably 799), or Paulus Diaconus.  The Ut queant laxis was a popular hymn to St. John.  Consequently, Guido d’Arezzo chose a mnemonic device.
  • As well, Guido placed the neumes on a four-line staff, to which a fifth line was added later.  Neumes could be placed on lines or in the spaces between (as well as above and under) the lines.

The Staff

The Keyboard

However, what he renamed were neumes (rectangles), the name given to notes in Gregorian chant.  Because Gregorian chant is monophonic (one voice), all Guido needed was the ut clef.  It could be moved from one line to another, and the line on which he placed the key was the ut or do.

‘ut’

Mensural Notation:  Ars cantus mensurabilis, c. 1280

With respect to mensural notation, one should mention Franco of Bologne‘s treatise Ars cantus mensurabilis (The art of measured chant).  His mensural notation is called Franconian notation.  Franco’s main contribution stems from shaping the notes themselves in a manner that indicated not only pitch, but also duration.

Printing

We know that before the invention of printing, colours were used to indicate duration.  In fact, the manner in which neumes were drawn was also useful and decorative, without the use of colour.  Some manuscripts, often named a codex, resembled books of Hours.  But printing did not preclude making neumes black or white.  Moreover shapes, the stem and quavers sufficed to demonstrate duration.  Schools emerged that did away with Guido’s rectangle or, as indicated in my last blog, composers started to use it to represent a rest.

Key signature 

This is a subject I will not discuss, except to say that

  • the do or ut can start on C or-D-E-F-G-A and later B set, and that;
  • by adding sharps or flats, we can make the ut (do)-ré-mi-fa-sol-la-si chain sound identical, but higher or lower.  If the melody starts on si or B, one needs a high voice, the soprano being the highest;
  • If the ut or do starts on C, there is no sharp (#); nor is there a flat (b).

For a depiction of the above, click on this link.

Dance and mensural notation

Mensural notation was also related to dances.  For instance, in a waltz, one slides into the first beat.  Therefore, the first beat may not always be perfectly equal to the second and thirds beats.  At one point in history, the Baroque era mainly, suites or partitas were dances: the sarabande, the minuet, the corrente, the bourrée, the polonaise, the allemande, etc. Earlier, people danced pavanes, galliardes, branles estampies, etc.

—ooo—

By linking mensural notation to the movements of a dance, rythm acquires a more meaningful and pleasurable dimension.  First, rhythm shapes the melody. Second, it touches the body.  If music has beats, the human heart beats.  Music also breathes.  So mensural notation cannot be too rigid.  We must also take tempo into account.  It seems we play music faster now than before, which might be explained because the disk or record may also dictate duration.  That should not be the case.  Tempo is part of the composition.  There is room for interpretation, but interpretation also has its limits.

Lumina Vocal Ensemble
Evan Sanders (descant), James Cowling (descant) and Kenneth Pope (treble)
University of Adelaide, March 2011
Medieval Tune c. 1300

Dancers

© Micheline Walker
26 November 2011
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Melodic Notation

26 Saturday Nov 2011

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Boëthius, c. 480 – 525

Guido d’Arezzo (991/992 – [17 May?] 1050): the Micrologus

In an earlier blog on Paul the Deacon’s Ut queant laxis, I indicated the origin of the do-ré-mi sequence.  The first initial of each line of the Ut queant laxis gave the name of the note or pitch.

  1. Ut queant laxis
  2. resonare fibris,
  3. Mira gestorum
  4. famuli tuorum,
  5. Solve polluti
  6. labii reatum,
  7. Sancte Iohannes (added later) 

Guido d’Arezzo’s contribution to musical notation was indeed a quantum leap.  As well, we can presume that Guido created the staff, then composed of four lines only.  One climbs up the scale by going from line to space.  Each is a note or pitch.

The Semitone

I would now like to indicate that Guido’s C-D-E-F-G-A set (an hexachord) also contained a semitone.  If one looks at a keyboard, one can see that there is no black note between mi and fa.  As I wrote yesterday, Carlo Gesualdo used semitones, which was extremely innovative.  If one goes from do to si playing every note, white and black, of the piano, one has played a chromatic scale.  Chrome means colour.  During the Romantic era, or beginning with Beethoven (the nineteenth century), music was more and more chromatic.

A Keyboard

Mensural Notation 

However, useful as it may be, the do–ré–mi–fa–sol–la-(si) chain provided no information regarding rhythm or duration.  Duration was still an oral tradition.  It was transmitted from teacher to student.

Colours shape, stem and quavers

As time passed, composers started to use colours to show duration.  They then used shapes: squares, diamonds, etc.  Soon the stem was introduced as were quavers, or croches.  Rests were also introduced to indicate a silence, or pause.  However, the bar lagged behind, but the time signature was in use.

Time Signature

Equivalent rests: pauses or silences

 

© Micheline Walker
26 November 2011
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Carlo Gesualdo: the tormented self

25 Friday Nov 2011

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Gesualdo di Venosa or Gesualdo da Venosa (March 8, 1566 – September 8, 1613) was a fine musician: a virtuoso lutenist and a composer.  However, he is an example of what I would call the tormented self.

The Murders

On October 16, 1590, Carlo murdered or had servants murder his wife, Donna Maria d’Avalos, the daughter of the Marquis of Pescara, and her lover, Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria.  He also murdered or had servants murder his second son because he suspected the little boy was the son of the Duke of Andria.  Moreover, to avoid revenge, he murdered or had servants murder his father-in-law, the Marquis of Pescara.

Gesualdo had married Donna Maria d’Avalos in 1586 and, although others knew about the affair, he did not.  When he was apprised of the relationship, he made believe he was going on a hunting trip, had keys made, and caught his unfaithful wife and her lover in the act.  The murders took place at the Palazzo San Severo in Naples.

As an aristocrat, Gesualdo was immune from prosecution, but, for his own protection, he nevertheless settled in Ferrara for a few years to escape vengeful relatives.  Moreover, in 1594, Carlo married Leonora d’Este, the niece of Duke Alfonso II.

The Human Condition

We have discussed “l’humaine condition,” or the duality of human beings.  Remember that Pascal thought humans were both grands and misérables.  We are mortals, which belittles us, but we know that we are mortals, which gives us nobility.  Each one of us is a “roseau pensant” (a thinking reed).  Michel de Montaigne (February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592) described humanity in similar fashion.  So did Descartes (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650).

However, although these writers spoke of humankind’s duality, that duality was not the juxtaposition in one individual of a good human being and a bad, or beastly, human being.

The Werewolf: lycanthropy

No, the concept of duality does not point to the kind of division that is the fate of fictional werewolves or the loup garou, humans by day, wolves by night.  However, Robert Louis Stevenson‘s (13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) The Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, first published in 1886, is a mostly human (as opposed to Beast Literature’s lycanthropy) version of a loup garou story.  Moreover, there is a mental disorder called clinical lycanthropy and all of us have heard of split personalities.

But what of Gesualdo…

As for Carlo Gesualdo, I do not see in him a split personality but I do see insane jealousy and uncontrolled anger: rage.  In other words, we may be looking at a non-fictional “tragic flaw” that has fascinated generations.  It does not seem possible that Gesualdo, an artist, would kill or order servants to kill on his behalf.

  • First, Gesualdo was Principe da Venosa, a prince, as well as a count, the Count of Conza.  Unspeakable crimes have been committed by aristocrats, but we tend to believe that, as aristocrats, these persons are or should be morally equal to their rank.  There was, however, a Marquis de Sade (2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814).  He was an aristocrat, but he was not immune to prosecution.
  • Second, the Principe de Venosa and count of Conza was a musician.  He was a virtuoso lutenist and an excellent composer.  It is difficult to reconcile musicianship and cruelty.

In fact, Gesualdo’s second marriage was not a happy marriage.  It appears he was an abusive husband, but despite her family’s entreaties, Eleanore would not divorce of husband.  She tried to help him, but some believe that she ended up murdering the murderer.  It all seems a mystery.

But the deeper mystery lies in Gesualdo’s ability to continue playing and composing music after the murders.  How could he write and play music after committing horrible crimes?  Music requires sensitivity, not to mention serenity.  So we will never know what happened to Gesualdo.  Again, it all seems a mystery.

Could it be, for instance, that his music reflects a tormented and guilt-ridden soul?  We will listen to some of his compositions.  His music is very ornamented and chromatic (he used semitones, the smallest space or interval between two notes).  As well, he composed complicated polyphonic works, using up to seven voices.

Gesualdo wrote six books of madrigals, some of which were settings of the poetry of Torquato Tasso (11 March 1544 – 25 April 1595), another tormented self.  He also wrote galliards (the gagliarda), a court dance, and sacred music:

  • Sacrarum cantionum liber primus (5 voix). Naples 1603;
  • Sacrarum cantionum liber primus (6, 7 voix). Naples 1603);
  • Responsoria et alia ad Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae spectantia (6 voix). Gesualdo 1611.

The Coat of Arms of Venosa

Coat of Arms of Venosa

* * *

November 25, 2011

The Squarcialupi Codex & Francesco Landini

24 Thursday Nov 2011

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Francesco Landini

The Squarcialupi Codex  (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Med. Pal. 87) is a compendium of pieces of music.  It was published in Florence in the Trecento, the fourtheenth-century or the dawn of Italian Renaissance.

Surprisingly, it contains 216 pieces of music.  I have extracted  the following information from Wikipedia, not a frivolous source.  On the contrary!

Included in the Codex‘s 216 pieces are 146 pieces by Francesco Landini, 37 by Bartolino da Padova, 36 by Niccolò da Perugia, 29 by Andrea da Firenze, 28 by Jacopo da Bologna, 17 by Lorenzo da Firenze, 16 by Gherardello da Firenze, 15 by Donato da Cascia, 12 pieces by Giovanni da Cascia, 6 by Vincenzo da Rimini.  There are sixteen blank parchment folios which may have contained pieces by Paolo da Firenze and Giovanni Mazzuoli.

The Codex is organized according to composers and includes a richly illuminated, in blue, gold, purple and red, portrait of each composer.  The illustration I have placed above our text is from Squarcialupi Codex, shows Francesco Landini, the most prolific among composers whose pieces constitute the Florentine Codex. The Squarcialupi Codex is also a testimonial to fraternity, the raison d’être of schools.

* * *

The Squarcialupi Codex is an important document because it supplies us, in one book, with an illustrated history of Italian songs before Franco-Flemish Adriaan Willaert (c. 1490 – 7 December 1562) travelled to Venice to found the Venetian School (1550 to around 1610).  The enlumineur is unknown.

San Marco, in Venice

The Fall of the Byzantine Empire:  the Italian “ars nova”

When the Bizantine Empire was replaced by the Ottoman Empire, in 1453, scholars first travelled to Italy carrying books and a fully-fledged culture, mainly Greek. Western Europe’s Renaissance had begun and San Marco’s dome would be of Byzantine inspiration.

The Renaissance: the Italian “ars nova“

It may be useful to use the works of Francesco Landini (c. 1325 or 1335 – September 2, 1397), as the turning-point between the early Renaissance music and the Venetian School, except that Landini’s style is abundantly ornamented as would be the case with later madrigals.

Francesco Landini was blind from childhood and worked as organist in at least two Florentine churches.  He played several instruments, and built one, the ‘syrena syrenarum.’  He is protrayed above holding his portative organ or organetto.

The organetto

We also owe Landini a cadence (end of a piece of music), the eponymic Landini cadence in which the sixth degree of the scale, the ‘la’ (the sub-mediant) is inserted between the leading-note (note sensible [sensitive] in French), the ‘si’, and the tonic (the ‘do’) = si-la-do.

Landini wrote twelve madrigals and may have written sacred music, but the compostions we know are secular. Most are ballate in two or three voices and are included in the Squarcialupi Codex.

The ballata finds its origins in the songs of trouvères, the virelay, in particular. However, Florentine chronicler Filippo Villani (b. 1235) describes Landini as a true Florentine.  Yet, Landini’s compostions display “madrigalism,” which is an abundance of ornamentations, including roulades.  As well, his compositions demonstrate northern influences.  According to the Encyclopædia Britannica

he [Landini] was crowned with a laurel wreath as the winner of a poetical contest at Venice in 1364. In Il Paradiso degli Alberti del 1389, Giovanni da Prato described Landini as playing his songs so sweetly “that no one had ever heard such beautiful harmonies, and their hearts almost burst from their bosoms.”[i]

In the Encyclopædia Britannica, we also read that “in addition to his 140 settings of ballate (91 for two voices, 49 for three), his surviving compositions include 12 [mentioned above] madrigals a virelay, and a caccia.”

It would appear, however, that they are early madrigals.  So let us keep away from possible Procrustean Beds.  Landini may be an example of this or that, but Landini is also Landini, a brave man who not only coped with blindness, but used hearing to everyone’s benefit.

No wonder he was a close friend of the great Petrarch (July 20, 1304 – July 19, 1374), whose sonnets are an homage to Laura de Noves (1310–1348), the wife of Hugues de Sade.  Petrarch caught a gimpse of her and started to write about her.

Laura de Noves

There always remains that unknown dimension that characterizes creativity, that seminal idea one dares to pursue…

(click to hear Ecco la primavera; Squarcialupi Codex)

____________________

[1] “Francesco Landini.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 24 Nov. 2011. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/329369/Francesco-Landini>.

 November 24, 2011

Do-ré-mi: the Chanson and the Madrigal

23 Wednesday Nov 2011

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Raphael.angel.2

Angel with Lute by Raphael

Raphael (6 April or 28 March 1483 – 6 April 1520) High Renaissance

Earlier in history, singing monks had their Ut queant laxis to remember the “Do-Re-Mi.” But, a thousand years later our reference is Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s The Sound of Music‘ s (1959) “Do-Ré-Mi,” sung by Julie Andrews.

The Sound of Music

—ooo—

The history of musical notation is fascinating, but intricate.  As we saw in telling the story of fables and fairy tales, one often has to go back to an oral tradition, as did Guido d’Arezzo (991/992 – (17 May?) 1050).  When Guido chose the first syllables of the Ut queant laxis to exemplify and simplify his C-D-E-F-G-A set (a hexachord=6), he displayed ingenuity and vision.

—ooo—

Before Guido, reading music was well-nigh impossible.  So, he was very much a pioneer.  Our current notation system was not fully developed until the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras.  Even then, composers did not always provide vertical lines to separate “measures.”

Yet, music could be just as beautiful then as it can be today, except that there were extremes.  The chansons of the trouvères were simple and drew much of their beauty from their simplicity.  The little madrigal we used to illustrate the work of Franco-Flemish composer Adriaan Willaert, O quando a quando havea, is wonderfully uncomplicated.  Adriaan Willaert (c. 1490 – October 13, 1562) is the most celebrated Franco-Flemish musician, that one musician who founded the Venetian School.

But there came a point when composers so ornamented melodies that it resembled Rococo art and architecture.  The Madrigal developed into “madrigalism” or too ornate a piece of music.  The phenomenon was an extreme form of word-painting (setting a text to music).

In an earlier blog, on the idea of “absolute music,” I noted that music had long been considered too powerful a language.  As a result, words were used to restrain music, but there have been instances when words were also abused and a song much too decorated.

Given that I am a little tired today, allow me to provide you with a video that illustrates the polyphonic (many voices) madrigal.  My example is a famous madrigal by Claudio Monteverdi’s, 15 May 1567 (baptized) – 29 November 1643, entitled Cruda Amarilli (Cruel Amarilli). 

But for sheer pleasure, let us also listen to Claudin de Sermisy‘s (c. 1490 – 13 October 1562) Tant que vivray (1527), a simple through-composed (durchkomponiert) love chanson in which a young man pledges to love his “lady” for as long as he lives.  The words are by famous French poet Clément Marot (1496–1497– 1544), a French Huguenot who was imprisoned because of his beliefs.

Claudin precedes Monteverdi.  Both, however, are representatives of Renaissance songs:  the chanson and the madrigal.

Tant que vivray en asge florissant
Je serviray d’amours le roy puissant
En fais en ditz en chansons et accords.
Par plusieurs fois m’a tenu languissant
Mais après deuil m’a fait réjouissant
Car j’ay l’amour de la belle au gent corps.
 
Son alliance, c’est ma fiance,
Son cœur est mien, le mien est sien,
Fy de tristesse, Vive liesse,
Puisqu’en amour a tant de bien.
 
Quand je la veulx servir et honorer
Quand par escripts veux son nom décorer
Quand je la veoy & visite souvent
Ses envieux n’en font que murmurer
Mais notre amour n’en scauroit moins durer
Autant ou plus en emporte le vent
 
Malgré envie, toute ma vie
Je l’aimeray et chanteray,
C’est la première, c’est la dernière
Que j’ay servie et serviray.
 
 
 raphael1 (1)Madonna of Sistine Chapel by Raphael (1513)
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
  
© Micheline Walker
23 November  2011
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Musical Notation: Ut Queant Laxis

22 Tuesday Nov 2011

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809585948

Ut Queant Laxis

I spoke of madrigals without first providing Guido d’Arezzo‘s (991/992 – (17 May?) 1050) source, the Ut queant laxis for the well-known ut (do), ré, mi, fa, sol, la, si (ti), as the notes are still named and used in certain national languages and in solfège.

  • Ut queant laxis
  • resonare fibris
  • Mira gestorum
  • famuli tuorum,
  • Solve polluti
  • labii reatum
  • Sancte Iohannes. s+i = si (ti, to distinguish it from ‘c’) 

Nor did I mention that the poem had been written, in Horatian Sapphics, by Paulus Diaconus, the eighth-century historian.  The Ut queant laxis was written for the feast of St. John the Baptist, celebrated on 24 June, near the Summer Solstice, the day of the shortest night (darkness).  The Saint-Jean-Baptiste is marked each year by a bonfire, les feux de la Saint-Jean, and, in Quebec, by displays of fireworks. The Saint-Jean-Baptiste is the official feast day of French-Canadians.

Guido had introduced a group of syllables C-D-E-F-G-A, the hexachord, a mnemonic device.  But Guido noticed that the first syllable of the six phrases of the Ut queant laxis, a latin-language hymn to Saint John, corresponded with his C-D-E-F-G-A set.  Musicians had had difficulty remembering the neumatic notation used in Gregorian chant.  In Gregorian chant the notes are called “neumes.”

So Guido’s immediate purpose was pedagogical.  The do-ré-mi chain was easy to memorize.  It was the familiar Ut queant laxis.  In this regard, Guido resembles Comenius who was also an advocate of simplification.

In short, the do-ré-mi chain is a cultural phenomenon and, therefore, possesses a degree of arbitrariness, which is not the case with the more logical A-B-C-D-E-F-G, starting on the middle C, or ‘do,’ a scale or key that does not have alterations (sharps and flats).  But it has remained useful.

As for the melody of the Ut queant laxis, it would appear it was the melody of Horace‘s “Ode to Phyllis.”

Here is an English translation: “So that your servant may, with loosened voices, resound the wonder of your deeds, clean the guilt four our strained lips, O Saint John!”

St. John the Baptist in Prison by Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino (Photo credit: Grassi Studio)

© Micheline Walker
22 November 2011
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From Bruges to the Venetian School of Music

21 Monday Nov 2011

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Titian (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576)

(click on picture to enlarge)

The Franco-Flemish Schools: art and music

During the Hundred Year’s War (1337 to 1453), the Dukes of Burgundy added to their “original fiefs” (the duchy and county of Burgundy, in East-central France) most of what are today Holland, Belgium, northeast France, Luxembourg and Lorraine.  In fact, “the dukes of Burgundy ruled over the whole as virtually independent sovereigns until 1477.”[i]

So let us go from the original Burgundian lands to the larger Franco-Flemish territory, the birthplace of masterful enlumineurs, but also the birthplace of extremely influential musicians, such as Adriaan Willaert (c. 1490 – 7 December 1562).

As well, Bruges remains the foremost centre in the manufacture of rugs and tapestries, some containing motifs we have mentioned in earlier blogs, such as what I have called the grape and leaf motif, better described as the “vine motif.”

Adriaan Willaert: The Venetian School of Music

But music is our subject, albeit in a very introductory manner.

What I wish to point out is that the musicians whom the Italians hired were Franco-Flemish musicians and that among these musicians was Adriaan Willaert, the Flemish composer, born in Bruges, who founded the Venetian School (1550 to around 1610).

In other words,  Italy did not bring music to the north, the north went down to teach music to the Italians who then exported their own music to Vienna.  Such was the road travelled by Antonio Vivaldi (4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741).

Vienna would later become home to Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, the three main composers of the classical era.

However, in the seventeenth-century, musicians trained in Italy also settled in France, Lully being the foremost representative among Italian-born French composers.  Ironically, France owes the French Overture to Italy, but not altogether, as it all began in the expanded Burdundian lands, not to mention that Franco-Flemish composers brought music to Italy.

Adriaan Willaert’s most influential appointment was as maestro di cappella of St. Mark‘s at Venice.  He occupied this post from 1527 until his death in 1562 and students came to him not only from Italy, but from all over Europe.

In other words, Reynard the Fox was born in Nivardus of Ghent’s Isengrimus (c. 1140), where he was called Reinardus.  The frères de Limbourg, who produced the richly-decorated Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry were born in Nijmegen, in what is now the Low Countries.  Very fine rugs and tapestries are still made in Bruges.  And now, Adriaan Willaert, born in Bruges, has taken music to Italy.

The French Chanson and the Madrigal

To return to music, we could discuss polyphonic music, but it seems best to begin with the not-so-humble monophonic song.  I have written “not so humble” for those who love Schubert‘s (31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) Lieder: songs.

Willaert wrote 60 French chansons and 70 Italian madrigals (songs in the mother [madre] tongue) and trained a flock of madrigalists whose ancestors were courtly singers, or trouvères, members of the upper bourgeoisie and aristocrats who worshipped women.  Madrigalists did not worship women, but they have left us beautiful songs, including love songs.

Madrigals can be written for several voices (polyphonic) or for one voice (monophonic).  The example I am using is a monophonic madrigal, composed by Willaert and entitled  O quando a quando havea.  I have not found the text, but I will look for it.

click to hear O quando a quando havea; click to hear Lully

Lute

* * *

November 21, 2011

[i] J. P. Burkholder, D. J. Grout and Claude V. Palisca, A History of Western Music (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006 [1973]), p. 175.

The Fitzwilliam Book of Hours, Comments, Palimpsests

20 Sunday Nov 2011

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A detail from the Macclesfield Psalter, England, East Anglia, c.1330 MS.1-2005 f.193v

A detail from the Macclesfield Psalter, England, East Anglia, c.1330 MS.1-2005 f.193v (Photo credit: Fitzwilliam Museum)

There is more to say on every subject I have discussed regarding feasts and the seasons.  For instance, we haven’t looked at the Fitzwilliam Book of Hours, a sixteenth-century masterpiece, preserved at the University of Cambridge.  With respect to the Fitzwilliam Book of Hours (Bruges, 1510), the Folio Society has published a limited number of copies of this extraordinary Franco-Flemish manuscript. In fact, a visit to the Fitzwilliam Museum site will reveal the existence of other illuminated manuscripts.

The Fitzwilliam Book of Hours is particularly interesting in that it represents, among other topics, the agony of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, which, as I have noted elsewhere, albeit tentatively, underlies the concept of keeping hours: we keep Vigil.  As well, the narrator mentions the incorporation into Books of Hours of pre-Christian elements.  Books of Hours are

  • a daily Vigil (the Canonical Hours);
  • an account of the Seasons (the Solstices and the Equinoxes, marked by feasts);
  • an account of the labours of each months;
  • a Gregorian calendar showing feasts, dates on which saints are remembered, etc.;
  • a compendium of psalms, prayers, chants, etc.;
  • a Zodiac calendar also including mythological references predating Christianity;
  • etc.

But, perhaps more importantly, Books of Hours also point to oneness in diversity.  The degree of darkness and light has been celebrated in most cultures.  And if the dragon is menacing to Europeans and friendly in China, it is nevertheless a universal zoomorphic animal.  So is the Unicorn.

Moreover, although the degree of darkness and light is a scientific truth and a demonstration of heliocentrism, it is also a cultural marker.

And we have also seen the twofold dimension of time, the vertical and the horizonal:  kairos and chronos.  To a large extent, our celebrations are a manifestation of the moment (kairos) as opposed to time infinite.

As for the texts we have glimpsed, one of my readers pointed out that they are palimpsests.  There is a text underneath the text, and a text underneath the second text, as well as a text underneath the third text.  Yet the texts, mostly similar texts, thus unveiled may have originated in one culture.

The story within the story structure reflects a deeper level of intertextualité than can exist between texts.  So intertextualité does not happen only between texts, but there are instances of text(s) within texts, or play(s) within the play.

And we also have motifs: the mille-fleurs motif, the Bizantine leaf and grape motif, the Greek key motif, variations on the Celtic eternal or endless knot motif.

In short, there is an abundance of similarities, yet originality and uniqueness remain. Text, graphic art, including anonymous art and decorative art, and music all stem from one mold, the human mind and the human senses, yet there is constant newness and youthfulness to things eternal.

Books of Hours

© Micheline Walker
20 November 2011
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Byzantine leaf motif 

(please click on the image to enlarge it)

Canonical Hours or the Divine Office

19 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by in Gregorian Chant, Liturgy

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Benedict of Nursia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the Rule of Benedict, Benedict of Nursia (c. 480 – 543 or 547) stated that, “As the prophet saith:”

Seven times a day I have given praise to Thee” (Ps 118[119]: 164), this sacred sevenfold number will be fulfilled by us in this wise if we perform the duties of our service at the time of Laud, Prime, Tierce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline; because it was of these day hours that he had said: “Seven times a day I have given praise to Thee” (Ps 118[119]: 164). For the same prophet saith of the night watches: “At midnight I arose to confess to Thee” (Ps118[119]:62 )[i]

Benedict of Nursia is considered the father of medieval monasticism and, during the above-named Canonical Hours, Cenobite Benedictine Monks (monks who lived under the rule of an abbey) sung psalms using Gregorian chant. Gregorian chant is named after Pope Gregory I (c. 540 – 12 March 604), but it was not fully codified until the monks of Solesmes undertook this task, in the nineteenth-century.

The monastery at Solesmes, France, had been lost to civilians during the French Revolution (1789 – c. 1794). It was restored and the liturgical Gregorian chants, now contained in the Liber usualis, were edited. However, Gregorian chant had nevertheless been used since the eight century. In the Rule of Benedict (XIX), Benedict writes: “Sing ye wisely” (Ps 46[47]:8). In Chapter IX of his Rule, we find a reference to a “cantor,”[ii] a Judaic term.

The Liber Usualis as Book of Hours

In other words, the Benedictine’s Book of Hours is the above-mentioned Liber Usualis, a compendium of liturgical Gregorian chants, first edited in 1896 by Solesmes abbot Dom André Mocquereau (1849–1930). The Canonical Hours are also called the Divine Office and Liturgy of the Hours.

Here are the Canonical Hours still observed by Benedictine monks. Benedict added an eight hour to the prophet’s seven:

  • Matins (during the night, at midnight with some), sometimes referred to as Vigils or Nocturns, or in monastic usage the Night Office; in the Breviary of Paul VI it has been replaced by the Office of Readings
  • Lauds or Dawn Prayer (at Dawn, or 3 a.m.)
  • Prime or Early Morning Prayer (First Hour = approximately 6 a.m.)
  • Terce or Mid-Morning Prayer (Third Hour = approximately 9 a.m.)
  • Sext or Midday Prayer (Sixth Hour = approximately 12 noon)
  • None or Mid-Afternoon Prayer (Ninth Hour = approximately 3 p.m.)
  • Vespers or Evening Prayer (“at the lighting of the lamps”, generally at 6 p.m.)
  • Compline or Night Prayer (before retiring, generally at 9 p.m.)* 

*in Wikipedia

Gregorian Chant

Incipit of the standard Gregorian chant setting
of the Asperges, from the Liber Usualis.

Although it is a Book of Hours, the Liber Usualis is not an illuminated manuscript, except for historiated initials. Despite a motivation, by the monks of Solesmes, to revive Benedictine monasticism, it is a modern book of Gregorian Chant. However, in the wake of its publication, a Motu Propio (letter from the Pope) for the reform of Church music was issued by pope Pius X (22 November 1903), approving of the Liber Usualis. It should also be noted that the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (opened by Pope John XXIII in 1962) retained Gregorian chant (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 116). So, although Monks now use the Liber Usualis, Gregorian chant has never fallen into obsolescence.

—ooo—

In earlier posts, I have stated that feasts were celebrated during solstices and equinoctial points and that consequently the transition between “paganism” and Christianity had not been abrupt. Similarly, Benedictine Hours are related to solstices and equinoxes.

However, the Hours are also rooted in the concept of vigilance. When Christ was taken prisoner by the Romans, he had been betrayed by Judas, his disciples would not keeping vigil with him. Christ was abandoned in the Garden of Gethsemane. Moreover, according to Matthew 27:45-46, when he was dying on the cross, at about the ninth hour Jesus cried, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? (Aramaic): “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Critic Northrop Frye suggests that these words: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” express the very essence of the tragic mode.

a sense of his exclusion, as a divine being, from the society of the Trinity.[iii]

Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

RELATED ARTICLE

Sources and Resources

[i] See Chapter XVI of the Rule of Saint Benedict.

[ii] Shebbeare, Wilfrid. “Cantor.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. 7 Dec. 2012.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03306a.htm

[iii] Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 36.

O Virgo Splendens (Llibre Vermell de Montserrat) Psallentes live

O Virgo Splendens (Llibre Vermell de Montserrat) Psallentes live www.psallentes.com

LeningradBedeHiRes

© Micheline Walker
19 November 2011
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The oldest historiated initial known, St Petersburg Bede, 8th century. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Music for the Très Riches Heures and the Book of Kells

19 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by in Art, Music

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Hildegard 
Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)
Illumination from the Liber Scivias showing Hildegard receiving a vision and dictating to her sribe and secretary
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 
 

Georg Philipp Telemann (14 March 1681 – 25 June 1767)

I have added a video to my post on the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.  The Duc de Berry’s Très Riches Heures is a Book of Hours, illuminated by the Limbourg brothers.

The music is a Magnificat, a canticle by Georg Philipp Telemann.

 

Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)

Hildegard von Bingen was an eleventh-century woman composer and a Doctor of the Church.  She was canonized on 10 May 2012. Let this be your introduction to her.

DBP_1979_1018_Hildegard_von_Bingen© Micheline Walker
19 November 2011
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