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C ON T E N T S
vii
index 506
T his book was originally published in 1989 as a volume in the Prentice Hall
History of Music series. Its continued popularity over nearly thirty years
and demands for a new edition suggest that it has achieved its original aim, which
was to “introduce to a wider audience the rich treasures of music from medieval
Europe.” For this second edition I have thoroughly revised and updated the text,
re-edited the musical examples, slightly reduced the amount of printed music,
included a new selection of illustrations, and completely re-created the index. But
I have been persuaded to retain the careful organization, accessible tone, broad
scope, and detailed musical analyses of the original.
I begin with a picture of life in the Middle Ages, including both its lurid
challenges and its spectacular artistic and technological accomplishments. This
establishes the context for the historical review of the place of music in medieval
life that follows. But first I explain the legacy of music theory that the Middle
Ages inherited from antiquity. Chapter 3 sets out a simple and logical view of the
principal locus of medieval musical activity—the liturgy of the Christian
Church—and the ways that music functioned in church services over hundreds
of years. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss the principal services of the liturgy—the Mass
and the Office—not just in theory but by analyzing closely two specific services:
first the Mass for Pentecost and then the Matins service for Christmas. Chapter 6
shows how plainchant composition continued into the later Middle Ages and
how the appearance of logical systems of organization, such as the melodic modes
in music and versification in texts, transformed artistic style. Chapter 7 surveys
the repertory of secular songs that appeared in the early eleventh century in what
is now southern France and then spread to other parts of Europe. The beginnings
of another vastly influential innovation—polyphonic music—are revealed in
Chapter 8 and then followed into their first great flourishing in Paris, at the
Cathedral of Notre Dame, in Chapter 9. Chapter 10 looks at some of the remain-
ing examples of instrumental music that we have from medieval times to show
that these colorful pieces must represent traces of a deep and flourishing
xi
tradition. Chapters 11 and 12 are parallel to each other. The first surveys the spec-
tacular history of music in fourteenth-century France, with a special focus on the
masterpieces of Guillaume de Machaut, while the second does the same for Italy
and Franceso Landini. The last chapter shows how the music of these two great
fourteenth-century traditions was gradually transformed into the seeds of a new
style: that of the early fifteenth century and the beginnings of the Renaissance.
The book contains a great deal of printed music in order to avoid the awk-
wardness of a separate anthology. All of it was transcribed from original manu-
scripts or newly edited from published editions. I have also edited many of the
texts, and all the translations are my own. Recordings of many of the musical
examples are available on the website www.oup.com/us/yudkin. These were orig-
inally produced specifically for the book by Thomas Binkley, one of my teachers
and one of the early imaginative geniuses in performing and recording medieval
music.
I am grateful to all the readers of this book over the years and to the large
number of people who have contacted me to say how much they enjoyed reading
it or using it in their classes. The original editor of this book was H. Wiley Hitch-
cock. His painstaking, sensitive, and insightful comments on everything from
the overall structure of this book to its tiniest details were invaluable. My editor
at Oxford University Press is Richard Carlin, with whom I have worked with
great pleasure on many projects. He is himself a record producer and the author
of several books on folk, country, and traditional music. I am most grateful to
him for his initiative in undertaking the publication of this new edition of Music
in Medieval Europe.
T his book is written with a single aim: to introduce to a wider audience the
rich treasures of music from medieval Europe. Although today a greater
variety of music is available both in print and in recorded form than ever before,
our educational and performing institutions are still highly conservative in their
training and programming. Students and professional musicians are mostly in-
curious about the huge quantity of music that lies outside the narrow band of one
hundred and fifty years designated as the “common practice” era. As a result,
people are deprived of the largest part of their musical heritage. If music students
become more interested in compositions from the Middle Ages, if educated ama-
teurs occasionally enrich their leisure hours by listening to medieval music, the
aim of this book will have been achieved.
It becomes clear in studying a musical era from the distant past that much is
missing. Trends are established, and consequences are drawn, on the basis of
what has survived. Sometimes there are reasons for this survival: An important
group of works is widely disseminated and discussed at the time of its composi-
tion, or a piece becomes the basis for others that follow. But sometimes it is a
matter of chance: Works are copied onto the back of a manuscript, or are pasted
into the binding of a book, and their accidental discovery changes our entire view
of the period. One writes a history of music constantly aware of the many such
pieces that have not survived and of how different the overall picture might look
if they had. It has been estimated that between eighty and ninety percent of all
manuscripts produced during the medieval period are no longer extant.
A considerable amount of the musical legacy of medieval Europe has been
deliberately omitted as being beyond the scope of this book. No detailed exami-
nation has been made of the music of the Eastern liturgy, although Byzantine and
other Eastern chants certainly deserve serious study in their own right. Also the
so-called folk music of Northern and Eastern peoples—Russian polyphony in
parallel seconds, the winter epics of Romania, Slavic war-songs—some of which
may represent a living survival of the Middle Ages, has been left to other experts.
xiii
One day perhaps we shall be able to produce a fuller picture of music in medieval
Europe, taking into account both East and West, North and South, both written
and unwritten forms, both “folk” and art music. Perhaps then these distinctions
will seem less meaningful than they do today.
This book contains a considerable amount of notated music. Music from the
Middle Ages is much less easily obtainable than that of other repertories, and it
seemed advisable to include as many representative examples as possible, rather
than expecting readers (and teachers) to hunt down elusive editions and rare
publications. In fact, most of the music presented here has been re-edited from
the standard editions or newly transcribed directly from the manuscripts. Only
rarely is a previous edition followed precisely.
The texts follow medieval orthography, irregular and inconsistent as that
may be. This includes the omission of accent markings in Old French and the
other vernaculars. The one exception is the superscript e (umlaut) in Middle
High German, which is found in the manuscripts, but modernized here.
I have newly translated all the texts, including sacred and secular, prose and
verse, Latin and vernacular. In the translations I have aimed at clarity and trans-
parency, avoiding archaisms. I have also attempted to capture the tone of the
originals—high-flown in some cases, thought-provoking in others, popular and
slangy in still others. The presentation and layout of the examples, both in their
text and in their music, is designed to illustrate as clearly as possible the form and
structure of the original compositions.
Most pieces are given in their entirety. For a few of the longer ones, there was
room only for an extract: In these cases a clear idea is given of the scope and di-
mensions of the entire piece, and a reference to a complete modern edition is
provided.
A large number of recordings have been produced especially for this book.
They reproduce many of the most important musical examples in vivid, imagina-
tive performances. The recordings are tied directly to the examples printed in the
book, so that readers may hear as well as see the music they are studying. This is
important for all music, of course; for a repertory that is unfamiliar, it becomes
particularly vital.
In producing a book such as this, one is constantly aware of how much is
owed to others. The scholar of the Classical tradition, Robert Bolgar, possessed an
extraordinary breadth of knowledge and a deep, abiding humanity that affected
several generations of students. William Peter Mahrt of Stanford University
taught his students how to think about music of the Middle Ages. His influence is
everywhere in this book. Thomas Binkley brought much of the medieval reper-
tory to life in the recordings he made with the Studio der frühen Musik and other
groups. Without his genius and imagination we would have a barer, far less
informed view of the treasures of medieval music as sounding works of art. His
generosity and commitment are illustrated by the recordings he produced espe-
cially for this book.
Then there are the countless scholars in the United States and Europe whose
work is slowly pushing forward the frontiers of our knowledge about the medieval
era and about the role that music played in it. Many are friends and colleagues;
nonetheless, for all of them I must content myself with a group acknowledgment.
My colleague Joe Dyer was especially generous with his time, answering the
telephone at all hours of the day and night to field unusual questions about the
liturgy—and almost everything else. He was also kind enough to read the first
several chapters of this book while they were still in draft form and to offer con-
structive criticism. David Stillman, an expert in languages, kindly advised me in
regard to some of the idiosyncrasies of Gallego-Portuguese and Old French. He
even came up with a complete linguistic analysis of the Cantiga de Santa Maria
that appears as one of the examples in Chapter 7.
Much of the extremely laborious task of copying out the musical examples,
tracking down rare editions, ordering microfilms, and the like was carried out by
my research assistant, Teresa Neff. She was a patient and reliable collaborator,
with many helpful suggestions that directly affected the way the whole project
evolved. She has my sincere thanks. My son Daniel was learning to push the keys
of my computer during the first years of work on this book. If there are any extra
Ds in the text, it is his fault.
Finally, it is impossible to express here the extent to which I relied upon my
wife, Kathryn, during the preparation of this book. The dedication says what I
mean.
Chapter 3 PLAINCHANT
Example Piece Page number
Ex. 3.1a–f; 3.2 Chant for the Gospel of the Mass 35–36, 37–38
Ex. 3.3 Chant for the Oratio of the Mass 38–39
Ex. 3.4a–d Chant for the Epistle of the Mass 39–41
Ex. 3.5 Psalm 113, verses 1–4 42–43
Ex. 3.6a–b Psalm verse and Introit of the Mass for 43–45
Easter Sunday
Ex. 3.7 Pater Noster, beginning only 46
Ex. 3.8 Hymn, Rerum Deus Tenax Vigor, first 46–47
stanza
Ex. 3.9 Gloria, beginning only 47–48
Ex. 3.10 Sanctus 48–49
Ex. 3.11 Gradual of the Mass for Christmas 49–50
Ex. 3.12a–b Two Alleluyas, beginnings only 50–51
Ex. 3.13a–c Arch forms in chant 52
Ex. 3.14 Communion 53
Ex. 3.15 Tract, respond only 54
Ex. 3.16 The melodic modes 57
Ex. 3.17a–c Melodies exemplifying the melodic modes 58
Ex. 3.18 Antiphon in Mode 1, Dorian, final cadences 59
xvii
"Hän tulee! Hän tulee!" Syntyi kauhea tungos. Jokainen tahtoi tulla
lähemmä.
"Ja jospa tietäisit, sisar Borcsa", selitti Matias Toth, "että hänellä
on kotona vielä kolmesataa kuusiseitsemättä vaimoa".
"En."
"Mutta mitä sanovat siihen isä Bruno, isä Litkei?" urahti ylituomari
puolin vihaisena puolin nauraen. "Hehän ovat teistä tehneet miltei
pyhimyksen."
"Minäkö?"
"Minne?"
"Tuon varkaan! No, sen minä löylytän, jos hänet vain missä näen."
4.
Papit vietiin, ja Kecskemetin kansankapinahanke nukahti, ja läheni
se merkittävä päivä, jolloin senaattorien piti lahjoineen lähteä
Budaan — Turkin keisarin luo. Puvut olivat valmiit ja kolmeksi
viimeiseksi päiväksi ne pantiin kaupungintalolle yleisön
tarkastettavaksi. Siitä syntyi oikea juhlakulkue. Heitukka Pintyö
vartioi suurta pöytää, jolle aarteet oli levitetty houkuttelemaan.
Gyurka vanhus siinä seisoi kerubina, mutta lieskamiekan asemesta
hän heilutti kädessään pähkinäpuusauvaa. Niin ihanasti kaikki
välkkyi, että hänkin näytti sen tartuttamalta. Sellaiset verkot ovat
naiskasvoille suuri jälkiapu. Tavallista sievempiä neitoja hän rohkaisi
toisinaan, sekin oli hänen virkaansa. "Koetelkaapa vain sitä,
kyyhkyseni, tuolla sivuhuoneessa." Ja kuka olisi voinut vastustaa?
Oliko sydäntä, joka ei olisi rajummin sykkinyt, katsetta, joka ei olisi
kiehtoutunut? Kaikki "tuhannen ja yhden yön" aarteet eivät olleet
mitään näiden rinnalla. Kuinka moni tyttö hiipikään arkana kuin
metsäkauris kaikkien näiden ihanuuksien ympärillä ja antoi
katseensa hempeänä niillä harhailla, mutta pian avautuivat silmät
suuriksi ja alkoivat loistaa kuin kaksi liekehtivää kynttilää, jäsenet
alkoivat hiljaa vavahdella, ohimoissa poltti ja takoi rajusti, ja juuri
samaan aikaan sitten alkoi heitukka puhua. "Koetelkaa toki,
kyyhkyseni!" Ja he koettelivat ja olisivat sitten mielellään kuolleet!
Mutta voi sitä, joka tuon loiston kerran oli ylleen pukenut! Ihania
nauhoja pujotettiin heidän kiharoihinsa, vartalo nyöritettiin solakaksi,
heidän ylleen pantiin kummasti ommellut paidat, taivaansiniset
silkkipuvut, joihin oli kirjailtu hopeisia puolikuita, ja lisäksi jalkoihin
karmiininpunaiset pikkusaappaat ja huikaisevat koristukset. "Kas
noin, enkeliseni, tarkastele nyt itseäsi!" Heidän eteensä pantiin
kuvastin, ja tyttäret alkoivat riemusta remuella; he näkivät
keijukaisunta. Ja heidän siinä itseään kummeksiessaan, kaipuun
polttamin sydämin, aaltoilevin povin ja turhamaisuuden nälän
kalvamina, astui kerubi jälleen esiin: "Nyt riittää jo, riisuudu — tai jos
sinun tekee mielesi, niin käy aina noissa pukimissa".
Oli kuin jokainen sana olisi ollut pilvi, joka kuuroina valui tytön
kasvoille, niin murheelliseksi kävi lapsi. Tämäkin villinä kasvanut
oravainen karkoitettiin pureksimasta. Hän kääntyi pois ja pyyhkäisi
kädellään silmistä kumpuavat kyyneleet.
"Mikä nimesi?"
"Czinna."
"Minä lähden."