Listening at Court and at Home:

Trabodour Song, Renaissance

Madrigal, Piano Trio and Saz Semaisi
 “A chantar m’er de so” c. 1175

• The Countess of Dia

• genre: Trabodour Song (canso)

• Trabodours and Trobairitz: noblemen and noblewomen

who wrote and performed courtly songs for their own
entertainment.

• a strophic song (five complete stanzas + partial sixth

stanza) each stanza in the so-called bar form (AAB)
 Troubadour song
• Troubodour: poet-composer of southern France, often of aristocratic standing, in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

• Troubadour songs are part of the monophonic song tradition, although evidence
suggests that they were sometimes accompanied.

• courtly love was the subject of most troubadour songs (refined, unattainable love
for one who is admired from a distance)

• canso: the most significant genre of troubadour song that expressed the courtly
sentiment of fin’amors (courtly love or refined love)

• alba: a song about lovers interrupted by the dawn

• serena: a song about a lover impatiently awaiting his partner’s arrival in the
evening

• pastorela: a song about a knight suggesting to a peasant girl that they make love

• Song construction reflected rhyme schemes and syllable counts, and texts were often
set in strophic form. Consistent syllable counts in the poetry allowed subsequent
verses to easily utilize previous melodic material.
 “Morir non può il mio cuore” (“My heart cannot die”)
(1566)

• by Maddalena Casulana (c.1540–1590) employed as courtesan by the

powerful Medici family

• genre: madrigal in four part (each part is ideally sung by one singer)

• texture: rapid alterations between polyphonic or homophonic

textures

• structure: through-composed
 European Courtesan culture in
the Renaissanc Era
• Courtesan: female court attendant who is educated or trained as
a performer in multiple artistic and intellectual areas

• How did Renaissance notions regarding music’s sensuousness

shape women’s musical activites?

• Very limited room for performance activities for nobel women,

the relegation of musical duties to courtesans and the exclusion
of women in general from public space
 Madrigal
• Italian secular vocal genre that utilizes poetic and sometimes sexually suggestive texts.

• Although its origin goes back to the 14th century, it is the sixteenth-century madrigal
that carries the most historical weight (High Renaissance)

• Ideally it is sung by one singer per part, in an intimate setting.

• The music consists of a sometimes equally rapid turnover of sections in imitative

polyphony or homophony.

• emphasis on word painting

• entrance of female virtuoso singers into madrigal performance in the 1560s

 Clara Schumann, Piano Trio in G minor (1846)
)

• Clara Schumann (1819-1896); a leading piano virtuoso of her day;

wife of a prominent composer and critic Robert Schumann

• performance focused training; self-doubts as a composer

• a societal bias against female composers in the 19th century

• “I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up

this idea; a woman must not desire to compose—there has never yet
been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?”

• performance setting: middle- and upper-class homes

 Piano Trio in G minor (1846)
• a piano trio in four movements

• an example of 19th century middle class domestic music

• a testament to Schumann’s personal suffering, a reflection of

her musical training and interests

• movement in focus: III. Movement

• form: ABA (ternary form)

 Tanburi Cemil Bey, Şedaraban Saz Semaisi
(Samâi Shad Araban)
• Tanburi Cemil Bey (1843-1916)

• Genre: saz samaisi: a movement in fasıl (a suite of individual pieces)

• form: ATBTCTDT

• Makam: Şedaraban

• Usul: Aksak Semai

• Tanbur (a long-necked lute)

• the nature of composition in Ottoman music-culture

Şedaraban (Shad Araban) Makamı
Küçük Usüller