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Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères: An Anthology of Poems and Melodies by Samuel N. Rosenberg; Margaret Switten; Gérard Le Vot Review by: Judith A. Peraino Notes, Second Series, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Mar., 1999), pp. 766-769 Published by: Music Library Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/900462 . Accessed: 14/06/2014 23:19 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Music Library Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Notes. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 195.34.79.208 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 23:19:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères: An Anthology of Poems and Melodiesby Samuel N. Rosenberg; Margaret Switten; Gérard Le Vot

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Page 1: Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères: An Anthology of Poems and Melodiesby Samuel N. Rosenberg; Margaret Switten; Gérard Le Vot

Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères: An Anthology of Poems and Melodies by Samuel N.Rosenberg; Margaret Switten; Gérard Le VotReview by: Judith A. PerainoNotes, Second Series, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Mar., 1999), pp. 766-769Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/900462 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 23:19

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Music Library Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Notes.

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This content downloaded from 195.34.79.208 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 23:19:59 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères: An Anthology of Poems and Melodiesby Samuel N. Rosenberg; Margaret Switten; Gérard Le Vot

NOTES, March 1999

VOCAL AND CHORAL MUSIC

Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres: An Anthology of Poems and Melodies. Edited by Samuel N.

Rosenberg, Margaret Switten, and Gerard Le Vot. (Garland Reference

Library of the Humanities, 1740.) New York: Garland Publishing, 1998. [List of illustrations, acknowledgments, p. x-xi; introd. (S. Rosenberg), p. 1-6; essay "The Music of the Troubadours and Trouveres" (G. Le Vot), p. 7-13; essay "Music and Words: Methodolo-

gies and Sample Analyses" (M. Switten), p. 14-28; pronunciation guide, p. 29-31; the songs, p. 33-357; references, p. 359-68; selective discog- raphy, p. 369-70; indexes, p. 371-78. Cloth; acid-free paper. ISBN 0-8153- 1341-1 and accompanying compact disc (Bard Records, DDCD1-9711, c1997). $85.]

Any anthology of troubadour and trou- vere songs represents both an immense task and a noble effort to deal with a host of issues ranging from concerns about the editing of music and text to debates over musical expression and distinctions of genre-issues that stem from a cultural crossroads between oral and written pro- duction. Students of this repertory can eas- ily become lost in the forest of details, and Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres is a welcome addition to the several reference books and collections published in the last two decades aimed at distilling and illustrat- ing the wide scope of medieval song. There is much to recommend in this anthology beyond the accessibility to poems, transla- tions, and melodic transcriptions it pro- vides. But scattered throughout the volume are numerous problems, albeit more in the nature of irritations rather than grievous errors or faulty reasoning.

Comprehension-both in the sense of in- clusion and understanding-is clearly the goal of the three compilers, Samuel N. Rosenberg, Margaret Switten, and Gerard Le Vot. The anthology presents a total of 144 songs (100 with music) attributed to twenty-three troubadours and twenty-seven trouveres (including several women), plus

thirty anonymous chansons and three poly- phonic motets. The songs are grouped by author or, in the case of the anonymous pieces, by genre. Nearly every group has at least two examples to illustrate a variety of compositional techniques and styles. I do not know of any other single volume de- voted to both the southern and northern repertories that offers such a satisfying breadth and depth of material. The anthol- ogy also features an abundance of support- ing documentation and indexes, including three introductory essays; a much wel- comed pronunciation guide to Occitan and Old French; critical and biographical com- mentaries preceding each song category; numerous indexes(most importantly for manuscript sources, represented genres, and the selective discography); and an ac- companying compact disc, which includes recordings of twelve songs from the anthol- ogy and three additional instrumental pieces.

As we might expect, the three essays that open Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres form the most problematic aspect of this publication, for it is here that the editors enter the arena of scholarly debate over the interaction of words and music and the in- terpretation of troubadour and trouvere songs as a cultural phenomenon. In gen- eral, all three essays suffer from stodginess and long-winded prose. The relationship between words and music is a veritable ob- session with many scholars of medieval monophonic song, as made evident by just the titles of numerous recent publications such as Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance, and Drama, 1050- 1350 by John Stevens (Cambridge Studies in Music [Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1986]) and The Union of Words and Music in Medieval Poetry (ed. Rebecca A. Baltzer, Thomas Cable, and James I. Wimsatt [Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991]), and much of this writing tends to mystify in the guise of explanation. A curi- ous solemnity hovers over the contempla- tion of "words and music," and the opening paragraphs of the essays in Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres follow suit by evoking this solemnity with overly complex, obfuscating rhetoric. Thus Rosenberg be- gins his introduction with "These creators

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Page 3: Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères: An Anthology of Poems and Melodiesby Samuel N. Rosenberg; Margaret Switten; Gérard Le Vot

Music Reviews

had in common, above all, an idea of lyric that necessarily brought words and melody together in a single vocal construct" (p. 1). Le Vot's essay on the music (translated by Rosenberg) commences with a more ro- manticized view that "Behind the music written down by the medieval scribe and studied by the modern musicologist, a voice can be heard which unites melody and poetry in the act of singing, thereby ex- pressing above all else the pulsation of love's desire" (p. 7). And Switten opens with a convoluted statement of the obvious: "Song in the medium of the voice (and as received by the ear) does not separate music and words; it holds them together in a single artistic expression" (p. 14).

More simply stated, all three writers are merely noting that words and music "hap- pen," and they happen because of singing. This trivial point is all too frequently used to introduce the curious and much less triv- ial paradox of medieval high art song, that despite the nearly ubiquitous subjects of singing and song composition in the lyrics, the sources show a tenuous connection be- tween a particular set of words and a spe- cific group of notes. For modern readers and listeners, what is foreign and seemingly counterintuitive is not the slippery relation- ship between words and music, but the slip- pery relationship between creator and cre- ation. Singing, however, was a poetic ideal embodying a perfect courtly, somatic ex- pression of love and desire that had little to do with the practicalities of medieval musi- cal life. Given the costly and limited re- sources (including parchment and scribes skilled in both words and music), a precise written record of music compositions was not always possible, nor even a priority among a largely illiterate population.

Some retention of old rhetoric or out- moded formalist approaches in each essay will surprise many readers and suggest a ne- glect of important theoretical develop- ments during the past fifty years in other related disciplines such as literary criticism. With regard to the issue of "authoritative" or "authentic" texts, Rosenberg comments that "our manuscript sources can never be regarded as wholly authentic, in the sense of flowing directly from their putative origi- nators, or reflective of their full authorial intentions" (p. 4). This statement reveals a presumption that "authenticity" and "au-

thorial intention" are necessarily linked and available as a means for evaluating a given text in repertories that show stable transmissions and attributions. Yet as early as 1946, with the publication of the famous article "The Intentional Fallacy" by William K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley (Sewanee Review 54 [1946]: 464-88; revised version in The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry [Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1954], 3-18) and the ensu- ing rise of intellectual movements such as poststructuralism and New Historicism, scholars have questioned and debunked the linkage of authorial intention with au- thenticity, authority, and value. Most schol- ars now presume that the meaning and value of a text depend not upon gleaning the author's intention, but upon under- standing its significance within a particular cultural context. Although scholars of me- dieval secular song have necessarily turned to context for interpretation and evalua- tion, many have done so without regard to appropriate theoretical frameworks devel- oped in other disciplines. Thus in his intro- duction, Rosenberg seems to be reinvent- ing the wheel.

While Rosenberg introduces the reader to the basic issues facing the student of medieval song, Le Vot and Switten delve deeper into music analysis and the relation- ship of words and music. Le Vot, who edited all of the melodies, justifies his choice of one melody over another and ex- presses a skepticism toward generalities and a purely formalistic approach to relation- ships between words and music, eloquently remarking that "it does not seem especially desirable to systematize the melodic analy- sis of our songs, for the drive to clarify can too readily disturb our grasp of variable and heterogenous phenomena" (p. 10). Immediately following this statement, how- ever, Le Vot takes a surprising step back- wards, summarizing without question Friedrich Gennrich's 1932 reduction of me- dieval monophonic song into four melody types stemming from the hymn, sequence, rondellus, and litany of sacred chant (Grundriss einer Formenlehre des mittelalter- lichen Liedes als Grundlage einer musikali-schen Formenlehre des Liedes [Halle: Niemeyer]), af- firming that these types "constituted the field of poetic and musical invention in the Middle Ages" (p. 10). Gennrich's scheme is

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Page 4: Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères: An Anthology of Poems and Melodiesby Samuel N. Rosenberg; Margaret Switten; Gérard Le Vot

NOTES, March 1999

a purely formalistic organization of melody into four groups: stanzaic (hymns), cou- plets (sequence), verse-refrain (rondellus), and recitational (litany). But can we really accept that the various and complex trou- badour chansons are related to the highly standardized hymns simply because they both use strophic verse forms? Or that rondeaux (essentially short, bawdy call-and- response songs) originated "from responso- rial chant and the use of the antiphon as a refrain" (p. 11)? By today's standards of scholarship, Gennrich's categorization of melody types shows a patently absurd blind- ness to the words and their implications of social contexts, and, more astonishingly, a blindness to radically disparate musical pro-cesses.

In the longest of the three essays, Switten thoroughly explores the close expressive al- liance between words and music in me- dieval song, arguing that the two elements relate not just on a level of form but on a rhetorical level as well. Switten first lays out the tools for what she terms "the rhetorical approach to analysis" (p. 16): an explana- tion of versification, various ways of under- standing the pitch-content of the songs (scales, modes, and chains of thirds), and a brief section on genres. Two convincing analyses follow, demonstrating how the melody reflects not only the formal struc- ture of the words but also the subtle re- sponse to their meaning. From these later analyses it is clear that not all the previously discussed tools are equally applicable, and their uncritical presentation and disassocia- tion from the analyses hampers the useful- ness of her discussion. Switten, for exam- ple, stresses that in rhyme schemes using paroxytonic endwords (such as amourete with an accented penultimate syllable), "the final unaccented syllable is not counted" (p. 17, Switten's italics), and that we must "recognize the syllable as the central unit of measurement, not only for the poetry but also, it is to be remembered, for coordina- tion with the music." These "uncounted syl- lables," however, are always set to music, creating an entirely countable syllable in the music. Here poetic theory and musical praxis become disjunct, and perhaps pur- posefully so, for through music, this "un- counted" syllable becomes manifest.

Furthermore, Switten irritatingly and un- critically refers to rhymes using the gender-

biased terms "masculine" (for oxytonic end words) and "feminine" (for paroxytonic end words) and even reinforces this in- scription of gender stereotypes in her analyses, writing "the feminine rhyme 'ete' of lines 1 and 3, gracefully ornamented on the accented (penultimate) syllable, is fol- lowed in lines 2 and 4 by the more focused masculine rhyme 'er,' set to a brief de- scending figure" (p. 26). I see nothing par- ticularly unfocused about an "ete" rhyme, and it is rather typical that penultimate syl- lables in a poetic line receive a melismatic treatment, regardless of the word accent. For well over twenty years, feminist and poststructuralist scholarship has raised our awareness of just such gender coding, and this questioned retention of old terminol- ogy and rhetoric associating "feminine" with "uncounted," "unfocused," and "orna- mental" colors the essay with the darkest tint of traditionalism.

In her critical commentary preceding each troubadour entry, however, Switten's writing is engaging and informative, mixing close analyses with biographical and histori- cal context. By comparison, Rosenberg's notes preceding the Old French entries (many of which are anonymous) seem sparse, with little biographical data (al- though this is most likely due to the ab- sence in the northern tradition of anything like the vidas or razos preserved for the troubadours) and brief formal analyses. I do appreciate his discussion of dialectal fea- tures in the poetry, which helps to form a better map of northern centers of music production.

The transcriptions in Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres present a few oddities. Editors customarily transcribe these pieces using a $ clef to indicate the tenor range. Here, however, the transcrip- tions employ i, and only from the introduc- tion do we learn that the pitches are in fact an octave higher than originally notated. This practice becomes even more curious since the accompanying compact disc fea- tures the baritone Peter Becker singing the representative examples a fifth lower than originally notated in the sources. While the commentaries and poems appear in two- column format, the phrases of the music (offset by breaks in the staff) require the reader to shift gears and read across columns. Since the lines of poetry are not

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Page 5: Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères: An Anthology of Poems and Melodiesby Samuel N. Rosenberg; Margaret Switten; Gérard Le Vot

Music Reviews Music Reviews

numbered in the transcriptions and the format of the transcriptions remains unex- plained, the reader may become easily con- fused. This switch in format also occurs at one point in the table of contents (p. vii) at the junction between Old French anony- mous and ascribed songs. Clearly one soft- ware program generated the troubadour music while another produced the trouvere songs. In the troubadour section (edited by Le Vot and prepared by Switten), notes grouped under a slur crowd together, often merging into nearly illegible black, caterpil- lar-like clumps despite ample space be- tween groups of notes; conversely, the trou- vere music (edited and prepared by Le Vot) sensibly spaces the notes under hand- drawn slurs.

Since a thorough review of the compact disc would fill another column, only a few brief comments must suffice here. Though an attractive and helpful bonus, especially for undergraduates and historians working outside of music, the collection unfortu- nately does not offer very engaging or his- torically informed performances. Becker's voice is too low and heavy for these re- strained courtly expressions, and he deliv- ers the songs in a declamatory rhythm that sounds more like secco recitative than a carefully crafted melody. The constant use of a drone performed on a medieval fiddle wears on the ears and often obscures melodic subtleties.

The list of both substantive and superfi- cial irritations need not stop with those al- ready detailed. Nevertheless, Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres is a highly infor- mative and user-friendly anthology-one that offers not only a very good sampling of medieval French song, but also a sampling of the many problems plaguing medieval music scholarship today.

JUDITH A. PERAINO

Cornell University

Spiritual Songs in Seventeenth-Century Russia: Edition of the MS 1938 from Muzejnoe Sobranie of the State Historical Muzeum [sic] in Moscow (GIM). Transcribed and edited by Olga Dolskaya; editorial note by Hans Rothe. (Bausteine zur slavischen

Philologie und Kulturgeschichte.

numbered in the transcriptions and the format of the transcriptions remains unex- plained, the reader may become easily con- fused. This switch in format also occurs at one point in the table of contents (p. vii) at the junction between Old French anony- mous and ascribed songs. Clearly one soft- ware program generated the troubadour music while another produced the trouvere songs. In the troubadour section (edited by Le Vot and prepared by Switten), notes grouped under a slur crowd together, often merging into nearly illegible black, caterpil- lar-like clumps despite ample space be- tween groups of notes; conversely, the trou- vere music (edited and prepared by Le Vot) sensibly spaces the notes under hand- drawn slurs.

Since a thorough review of the compact disc would fill another column, only a few brief comments must suffice here. Though an attractive and helpful bonus, especially for undergraduates and historians working outside of music, the collection unfortu- nately does not offer very engaging or his- torically informed performances. Becker's voice is too low and heavy for these re- strained courtly expressions, and he deliv- ers the songs in a declamatory rhythm that sounds more like secco recitative than a carefully crafted melody. The constant use of a drone performed on a medieval fiddle wears on the ears and often obscures melodic subtleties.

The list of both substantive and superfi- cial irritations need not stop with those al- ready detailed. Nevertheless, Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres is a highly infor- mative and user-friendly anthology-one that offers not only a very good sampling of medieval French song, but also a sampling of the many problems plaguing medieval music scholarship today.

JUDITH A. PERAINO

Cornell University

Spiritual Songs in Seventeenth-Century Russia: Edition of the MS 1938 from Muzejnoe Sobranie of the State Historical Muzeum [sic] in Moscow (GIM). Transcribed and edited by Olga Dolskaya; editorial note by Hans Rothe. (Bausteine zur slavischen

Philologie und Kulturgeschichte.

Reihe B: Editionen; n.F., Bd. 4.) Cologne: Bohlau, 1996. [Acknowledg- ments, p. vii-viii; editorial notes, p. ix-xiii; pref., p. xv-xliii; bibliog., p. xliv-xlix; edition, 323 p.; index of ini- tiums, p. 325-29; essay "Redaktionelle

Anmerkung zu Handschrift und Texten" (H. Rothe), p. 331-38; fac- sims., p. 341-67. Cloth. ISBN 3-412- 08694-0. DM 118.]

For many years, Olga Dolskaya has ex- plored the music of the vast and tumul- tuous territory bounded roughly by the Kiev-Moscow-Lvov triangle. Her edition Spiritual Songs in Seventeenth-Century Russia marks a culmination of this work by pre- senting a transcription of the extant folios of the entire manuscript Moscow, Gosu- darstvennyi istor'icheskii muzei, MS 1938. Dating from the 1680s, this manuscript is one of the earliest sources transmitting the genre (which had flourished earlier as im- provised, orally transmitted spiritual songs) known as kant and represents the very be- ginnings of the written tradition in the Moscovite-Ukranian orbit. The kant and the kontsert (the other major polyphonic genre of the period) are intimately tied to Orthodox sacred music; yet, as their names imply, both types have equally important ties to Western music.

Kanty are the simpler of the two genres. They are short strophic songs usually writ- ten for three voices in generally homo- phonic style and were probably intended for private devotions. Most texts of seven- teenth-century kanty are sacred, drawn largely from poetic sources. Several of the texts are by the Belorussian monk Simeon Polotsky (1629-1680), whose versified Psalter written in 1680 was set in kant style several years later by the singer and com- poser Vasilii Polikarpovich Titov, still only available in its entirety in an unpublished Soviet dissertation (N. A. Solov'ian, "Pesennyi sbornik V. Titova na teksty S. Polotskogo: Kak vydaiushchiisi-a pamiatnik russkoi kamernol vokal'noi muzyki vtoroi poloviny XVII veka" [Moskovskaia gosu- darstvennaia konservatoriia, 1978]). Kanty thrived for over a century; elsewhere Dolskaya outlines their importance in the formation of eighteenth-century Russian song ("From Titov to Teplov: The Origins

Reihe B: Editionen; n.F., Bd. 4.) Cologne: Bohlau, 1996. [Acknowledg- ments, p. vii-viii; editorial notes, p. ix-xiii; pref., p. xv-xliii; bibliog., p. xliv-xlix; edition, 323 p.; index of ini- tiums, p. 325-29; essay "Redaktionelle

Anmerkung zu Handschrift und Texten" (H. Rothe), p. 331-38; fac- sims., p. 341-67. Cloth. ISBN 3-412- 08694-0. DM 118.]

For many years, Olga Dolskaya has ex- plored the music of the vast and tumul- tuous territory bounded roughly by the Kiev-Moscow-Lvov triangle. Her edition Spiritual Songs in Seventeenth-Century Russia marks a culmination of this work by pre- senting a transcription of the extant folios of the entire manuscript Moscow, Gosu- darstvennyi istor'icheskii muzei, MS 1938. Dating from the 1680s, this manuscript is one of the earliest sources transmitting the genre (which had flourished earlier as im- provised, orally transmitted spiritual songs) known as kant and represents the very be- ginnings of the written tradition in the Moscovite-Ukranian orbit. The kant and the kontsert (the other major polyphonic genre of the period) are intimately tied to Orthodox sacred music; yet, as their names imply, both types have equally important ties to Western music.

Kanty are the simpler of the two genres. They are short strophic songs usually writ- ten for three voices in generally homo- phonic style and were probably intended for private devotions. Most texts of seven- teenth-century kanty are sacred, drawn largely from poetic sources. Several of the texts are by the Belorussian monk Simeon Polotsky (1629-1680), whose versified Psalter written in 1680 was set in kant style several years later by the singer and com- poser Vasilii Polikarpovich Titov, still only available in its entirety in an unpublished Soviet dissertation (N. A. Solov'ian, "Pesennyi sbornik V. Titova na teksty S. Polotskogo: Kak vydaiushchiisi-a pamiatnik russkoi kamernol vokal'noi muzyki vtoroi poloviny XVII veka" [Moskovskaia gosu- darstvennaia konservatoriia, 1978]). Kanty thrived for over a century; elsewhere Dolskaya outlines their importance in the formation of eighteenth-century Russian song ("From Titov to Teplov: The Origins

769 769

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.208 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 23:19:59 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions