Polyphonic Secular Music and National Styles

From Dance to Art Music.

Soon after its development, the new polyphonic technique was employed by composers to set non-religious songs, applying it to the different regional types that already existed as monophonic forms. Secular songs stemmed mostly from music intended for dancing, and, in their monophonic format, retained many of the characteristics of dance music, including regular rhythmic patterns and simple melodies with regular phrases. Once polyphony was adopted for this repertory, however, its relationship to dance became increasingly distant. Polyphony, with its potential for complex interrelationships among the parts, tempted the composers to experiment with refinements and sophistications on all levels. The result was a growing body of art music that set traditional poetic text forms, but was technically much more demanding than its monophonic predecessors. By the late fourteenth century the polyphonic secular repertory had replaced much of the monophonic in courtly circles, both in quantity and in prestige.

Court Musicians.

The performance of these pieces required the ability to read music and therefore they were the domain of musically literate performers, both amateur and professional. The resident musicians in the major courts adopted this new collection of compositions in their daily performances; kings, counts, dukes, the pope, and cardinals in all areas prided themselves on the quality of their court musicians, and vied with one another to hire the highest quality performers and composers and to commission manuscripts of the new repertory. Musical establishments such as those at the French court in Paris, the Sforza's in Milan, and the papal court first in Avignon and later in Rome became havens for the finest musicians, but none reached the prestige of that of the duke of Burgundy, whose ensemble of vocal and instrumental musicians set the standards for all of Europe well into the fifteenth century.

Burgundian Dominance.

Initially the styles and techniques of the polyphonic songs were as regional as the monophonic secular repertory, but that soon changed. By the end of the fourteenth century the most influential musical style was that of the area known as Burgundy, including much of what is now northeastern France as well as Belgium and the Netherlands. As the political power of Philip the Bold (duke of Burgundy 1364–1404) grew in the last decades of the fourteenth century, so too did his cultural influence, spreading his musical preferences throughout Europe. Franco-Netherlandish sacred and secular music influenced the writing of composers in all of Europe, especially in Italy where not only the northern repertory was imported, but also the composers and performers themselves. A single example of the influence of the Burgundian musical tastes can be seen in the area of dancing: the fifteenth-century choreographed dances in Italy, Spain, Germany, and England all were modeled on the Burgundian basse danse. Not only was the idea of choreographed dancing itself of Burgundian origin, but also the way in which the music was formally composed as only a single line of long notes that was to be expanded in performance into polyphonic form by the musicians themselves. Even the make-up of the usual dance band was copied from the ensemble at the Burgundian court: two shawms and a slide trumpet. There is very little surviving secular polyphony from the other European countries, owing to a combination of factors that include the ravages of time and war, and a preference for the improvisatory style. Whatever the reason, we do not have a significant body of secular polyphony representing England, Germany, or Spain until the very end of the fifteenth century.

France and the Chanson.

The French secular forms of the late Middle Ages were based on earlier dance music, all of which was built on a verse-refrain structure matching the construction of the poetry. The chanson (meaning "song") repertory consisted of hundreds of compositions in the forms well established from the time of the troubadours: rondeau, ballade, and virelai. By the time they became polyphonic, however, around the year 1300, it is doubtful that they still had a practical dance association; their structure and the subtle nature of their rhythmic flow would make them difficult to dance. All of the forms were in two melodic sections, differing from one another only in the way in which the repeat scheme works and whether or not the music for the refrain was also used for part of the verse. The existence of a refrain in each of them suggests a performance in which a soloist sings the verse and everyone else (the chorus) sings the refrain. Undoubtedly this was the performance practice in the earlier Middle Ages, but the later, more complex, polyphonic songs probably were completely sung by soloists. There is a special repertory of chanson from around the year 1400 that is full of notational complexities that make them extremely difficult to read and transcribe into modern notation. They are often referred to as Ars subtilior (the subtler art), and when performed have a slightly "jazzy" sound because of their rhythms.

French Forms.

The rondeau (round dance) is the most complex form because the standard two sections of music are both used as the performer sings first the refrain, then the verse, and then again the refrain. This is further complicated by the insertion of a half refrain in the middle of the verse, as opposed to all other forms, where the refrain is always sung in its entirety, either at the beginning or the end of the verse. (For an example of a monophonic rondeau see Dance Chapter, "Vocis Tripudio.") A different complexity occurs in the ballade (which simply means "dance," as in the modern English word ball). Although the music of a ballade is again in two sections, the relationship between the verse and refrain is unbalanced because the refrain is usually quite short and therefore occupies only a part of the second section of music. The third type, the virelai (twist) is more similar to the rondeau. In this case, the refrain both begins and ends the musical setting, although it is not inserted in the middle of the verse as is the rondeau refrain.

Bird-song.

The texts of all of the chansons were usually the same idealized love topics found in the courtly love poems from the time of the troubadours and trouvères, although by the fourteenth century the language was not quite so stylized. There is one unusual type of text occasionally employed in the virelai, in which birds and their calls are included in the words and the music in order to symbolize particular sentiments. The bird symbolism included the following: the eagle, suggesting power or royalty; the lark, indicating mourning or warning; the crow, a sign of craftiness or mockery; the cuckoo, referring to cuckoldry; the falcon, suggesting power and danger; the peacock, a sign of beauty and vanity; the nightingale, symbolizing night and erotic love; and the turtle dove, indicating fidelity. In some of the polyphonic bird-song virelais, the singer professes one message in words while the bird sounds in the accompanying parts suggest something completely different.

Polyphonic Music in Italy.

There is very little surviving secular polyphonic music from Italy until the mid-fourteenth century, owing to the prominence of improvisation. When we do find some written music, it is quite different from the French style in that the melodies are far more rhapsodic, often organized as elaborations of the notes in the scale in contrast to the French style of short rhythmic-melodic motifs with clear phrase shapes. The early Italian compositions appear to be rather close images of what must have been the free improvisatory style. The largest collection of Italian music from the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries is contained in a beautifully illuminated manuscript that once belonged to Antonio Squarcialupi (1416–1480), Florentine organist, composer, and friend of the powerful Medici family. The Squarcialupi Codex (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, MS Palatino 87) contains 354 compositions by twelve of the most important Italian composers of the late Middle Ages, preceding the collection of each composer's works with a portrait. Most compositions are for two or three voices, and all are on secular subjects, written in three of the most important Italian musical/poetic forms: madrigal, ballata, and caccia. Composers represented in the manuscript are known to have worked in important north Italian courts such as Milan, Ferrara, Venice, and Florence.

Madrigal.

Although the madrigal is one of the dominant musical/poetic forms in late medieval Italy, its origins and even the meaning of the word itself are unclear. (The medieval madrigal should not be confused with the late Renaissance form.) Several theories have, however, been put forward. Its verse-refrain format suggests a possible relationship with dance forms, although what that might be is not certain. In any case its subject matter is usually a pastoral love theme, although there are some with strong political references. A typical madrigal format is in two musical sections—one for the verse and one for the refrain (ritornello).

STRUCTURE
of Medieval Song Forms

Nearly all secular songs in the Middle Ages were composed of two musical sections, but, unlike many modern songs where there is generally one melody for the "verses" (units made of a number of lines, each of which is sung only once) and another for the "refrain" (a line or group of lines that is repeated at regular intervals), the two sections of music in medieval songs were matched in a number of different ways with lines of text. In fact, the main difference between medieval song forms is that they differ in the way in which the lines of the verses and the refrains are distributed between the musical sections.

Modern Song Form

To understand how medieval song form worked, it is useful to look first at a simple modern verse and refrain pattern. In modern songs, including many church hymns and national anthems, verses usually alternate with refrains, either of which may include several musical lines. In some songs the verses may be long and the refrains short, while in others the pattern is reversed. The words of the verses change with each repetition of the verse melody, but the words of the refrain, set to a different melody, remain the same:

Minnesinger Bar Form

In this German form, the singer sings text lines (or groups of lines) one and two to musical phrase A, then sings the third line (or group of lines) to musical phrase B. The first A setting, for example, might contain four lines of text; in this case, then, the second A section would be identical in music and number of text lines, though the words would be different. The B section would introduce another new set of words and music, and might have a different number of lines altogether.

Cantiga Form

In a cantiga, a Spanish song form, the first section of music (A) acts as a setting for the refrain. Then, after two verses that are each sung to a new musical section (B), the first music (A, originally used for the refrain) reappears as a setting for an additional verse. The entire pattern can be repeated, beginning again with the refrain.

Rondeau Form

In this complex medieval form originating in France, the words of the refrain (which, in this version, is two lines in length) and verses (one line each) go back and forth between the two sections of music with three repetitions of the first tune in the middle of the song, so that the order is as follows: Music A (refrain line one), Music B (refrain line two), Music A (first verse), Music A (refrain line one), Music A (second verse), Music B (third verse), Music A (refrain line one), Music B (refrain line two):

Ballade Form

Verses in the French ballade generally ranged from 4 to 6 lines in length; the refrain was shorter, so as to combine with a half-verse on the second singing of musical section B.

Virelai Form

In the virelai, another French form, the refrain, sung only to melody A, is sung at the beginning of the song and then again following the three verses of each stanza.

The first two verses are sung to the second melody (B), and the third verse uses the melody of the refrain (A).

Madrigal Form

The format of a madrigal, an Italian form, is fairly simple: the two verses, which are similar in length, are sung to the A melody, and the ritornello, which usually has fewer lines of text, has its own melody (B).

Ballata Form

The Italian ballata form is exactly the same as the French virelai.

Ballata.

The name ballata, from ballare (to dance), makes the original purpose of this form quite clear. In fact, one of the most striking images of the ballata in fourteenth-century Italian society can be found in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, a collection of 100 fictional tales told by ten young people assembled in a country home to avoid the plague. In the story, each of the refugees is called upon every evening after dinner to improvise a ballata while the others dance. The ballata is in the verse-refrain form with two musical sections and the subject matter is always love.

Caccia.

The caccia (hunt) is usually written as a single melodic line that becomes polyphonic when a second voice enters after the first, singing the same music (see "Complexities" above). A few of these compositions have a textless accompanying part, but the form in all of them is a single verse without a refrain. The texts, although superficially about hunting, fishing, market scenes, and fires, usually carry a double meaning that is revealed only when the words of one phrase are interspersed among those of another during performance.

Francesco Landini.

Because the Squarcialupi Codex is retrospective, it includes compositions in the older Italian style with long, flowing, elaborate passages, as well as those composed later in the century by Francesco Landini. These are written with shorter, less elaborate phrases, demonstrating the strong influence of the French style. By the mid-fifteenth century, French culture had made such strong inroads into Italy that Italian courts began to import northern composers, performers, and repertory in preference to employing native musicians. Italian performers and composers continued to be hired in Italian courts throughout the fifteenth century, but the most prestigious positions were given to the northerners. It is worth noting that the motets commissioned for some of the most significant people and events in Italy were written by northerners, as, for example, by Johannes Ciconia for Michele Steno, Doge of Venice, in 1406; by Bertrand Feragut for Francesco Malpiero, Bishop of Vicenza, in 1433; and by Guillaume Dufay for the consecration of the Cathedral of Florence in 1436 (see below).

sources

Viola L. Hagopian, Italian Ars Nova Music: A Bibliographic Guide to Modern Editions and Related Literature. 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).

Christopher Page, The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France 1100–1300 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989).

—, Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1987).

Reinhard Strohm, The Rise of European Music, 1380–1500 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

Kurt von Fischer, Studien zur italienischen Musik des Trecento und frühen Quattrocento (Bern, Switzerland: P. Haupt, 1956).

see also Dance: Popular Dances ; Dance: Additional Dance Types