Before listening to the works below, read the assignment in your text,
Todd, Discovering Music
I. Since You Have Forgotten Me (Puis qu'en oubli sui de vous)
As an introduction to the sound-world of the Ars nova (the music of 14th-century France), listen to
Machaut's "Puis qu'en oubli sui de vous"
("Since You Have Forgotten Me"), using the listening guides in the textbook and the recording on the textbook website. Pay particular attention to the (complicated) form of this work.
II. Machaut, "Quant en moy" (When I Was First Visited by Love)
Listen to an additional piece of secular music by Machaut, the three-voice motet,"Quant en moy" ("When I was First Visited by Love").
You'll want to know "Quant en moy" well, since we'll discuss it in class.
The piece should probably be titled
"Quant en moy/Amour et biaute parfaite/Amare Valde," because, like most medieval motets,
it consists of three texts sung simultaneously.
Such works, with multiple texts, are called polytextual compositions.
Before listening to the recordings, study the (three!) texts below. What do you notice immediately about the relative length of the three poetic texts?
Study the rhyme schemes. Are they carefully planned or seemingly random and free?
The lowest voice, the tenor,
is relatively slow moving and is played in the first recording on a viol, an early bowed string instrument.
Although the words are not sung in this recording, the tenor part is based on 30 notes taken from a Gregorian Chant from Holy Saturday.
The words "very bitter" in the chant refer to waiting for the Last Judgement. Part of Machaut's clever word play in this motet is to juxtapose
the word "amare" (bitter) with the nearly identical sounding word "amour" (love), which appears frequently in the upper two voices.
This sort of combination of sacred and secular was not sacrilegious to the Medieval mind.
The upper two voices, the triplum and motetus, each sing a separate love poem whose words are in a very elegant
and artificial courtly style. When you listen, compare
the relative speed of these voices and figure out how it relates to the number of words in each of the poems.
Another intriguing feature of this work (easiest to understand by concentrating on the tenor) is that it was
composed using a technique called isorhythm: the melody is based on a repeated rhythmic pattern and on a pattern of pitch repetitions.
However, unlike most music we're used to hearing, the rhythmic pattern and the pitch pattern are different lengths.
Since they don't coincide (the rhythm starts to repeat before all the pitches are used up),
such repetitions take a lot of practice to hear. If you concentrate on the moments when the string instrument drops out for a second or two, you
can perhaps start to hear the beginning of each new rhythmic pattern. We'll do more listening and talk in detail about isorhythm in class.
For now, it's enough to understand that isorhythm represents the height of medieval musical artifice and intellectual ingenuity.
Finally, listen to the fast, almost jazzy, echos between the upper voices at the highlithed words
"doubter--espoir--celer--d'avoir, etc. This medieval technique, where one voice "fills in"
silences in another part, is called hocket. Note how the poems are arranged cleverly so that the alternation of texts almost creates
an "argument" between the two poems about the nature of love (fearing-to hope, fainting-to have).
Triplum
Quant en moi vint premierement
Amours, si stres doucettement
Me vost mon cuer enamourer
Que d'un regart me fist present,
Et tres amoureus sentiment
Me donna avuec doulz penser, Espoir d'avoir
Merci sans refuser.
Mais onques en tout mon vivant
Hardement ne me vost donner.
E si me fait en desirant
Penser si amoureusement
Que, par foce de desirer,
Ma joie convient en tourment
Muer, se je n'ay hardement.
Las! et je n'en puis recouvrer, Qu'amours, secours
Ne me vuet nul prester,
Quien ses las si durement
Me tient que n'en puis eschaper.
Ne je me weil, qu'en attendant
Sa grace je vuyeil humblement
Toutes ces dolours endurer.
Et s'Amours loyal se consent
Que ma douce dame au corps gent
Me vueille son ami clamer, Je scai, De vray
Que j'arai sans finer
Joie quAmours a fin amant
Doit pour ses maus guerrdonner.
Mais elle attend trop longuement
Et j'aimmer si folettement
Que je n'ose merci rouver,
Car j'aim mieus vivre en ensperant
D'avoir merci procheinnement
Que refus me veingne tuer.
Et pour ce di en soupirant:
Grant folie est de tant amer
Que de son dous face on amer.
Top voice
When I was first visited by
Love, he so very sweetly
Enamored my heart;
A glance is what he gave as a gift,
And with amourous sentiments
He presented me with this delightful idea: To hope, to have
Grace and no rejections.
But never in my whole life
Was boldness a gift he meant for me.
And if, in my passion,
He make me think so amorously
That thatnks to desire
My joy turns into torment,
Must turn, since I am not bold.
Alas! I cannot save myself-- For love, no help
Will lend me.
Love, who hold me so tightly
In his grasp that I cannot escape.
Nor would I want to escape, as while waiting
Her Grace I want every pain
Most umbly to endure;
And if true love agrees
Tha my sweet lady, of such noble bearing
Should call me her friend I know, In truth,
I shall have, without end
The joy with which love must reward
A perfect lover for his troubles.
But she is making the wait too long!
And I lover he so madly
That I dare not ask for mercy
As I should rather live in hope
Of receiving mercy by and by
Than be killed by refusal.
And that is why I say, as I sigh:
What great madness this love is
which turns a sweet song into a bitter one.
Motetus
Amour et biaute parfaite Doubter, celer
Me font parfaitement
Et Vrais Desirs, qui m'afaite De vous, duer dous,
Amer sans finement.
Et quant j'aim si finement, Merci, vous pri
Car elle me soit faite.
Sans votre honnour amenrir,
Car j'aim mieus einsi languir
Et morir, s'il vous agree,
Que par moy fut empiree
Vostre honnour, que tant desir,
Ne de fait ne de pensee.
Middle Voice
Love and perfect beauty fearing, fainting
Are what consume me entirely.
And true desire has made me Love you, dear heart
For ever and ever
And as my love is perfect I beg, to receive
your mercy, let it be granted.
With no diminishment of your honor
As I would rather languish
And perish, if it pleases you
Than by my acts or thoughts
Injure your honor
Which I deem so precious.
Listen again to a different performance, this one with voices on all three parts. The tempo of this performance is also considerably slower, which makes the rhythm seem
less nervous and quirky. It also tends to minimize the effect of the dissonant clashes between the voices. Which performance do you prefer?
