Probably, we would simply pass by this talented medieval composer, if he was not mentioned in the Chantilly Codex - the pivotal music manuscript of the 14th century that is considered to be one of the monuments of medieval music. His name was Johannes Cuvelier. Up to this day Johannes remains an enigma as we don’t know nothing about him before 1372 and after 1387. We don’t know the dates of his birth and death, and only by guess think that he was born in Tournai, France.
However all those rare bits of information that we possess present us an unusual for those times educated man who had big success as a composer, statesman and a poet. He also wrote biographical books, because history mentions him for the last time when he finished a manuscript about an opportunistic conqueror Bertrand du Guesclin. He was definitely a councellor of the French king Charles V, as old documents state that he was the “diseur” and “faiseur” of the monarch.
The famous Chantilly codex preserved only some of his musical works that were composed in the elaborate, elitist style known as the ars subtilior. These early French musical compositions are eccentric, whimsical, extravagant; it contains the widest diversity of emotion.
This famous medieval composer who was born in Toledo in 1221 and died in 1284 in Seville had become one of the most outstanding intellectuals of the Middle Ages. From 1252 Alfonso X king of Castile, Leon and Galicia was not just a distinguished composer, musician, poet and writer. He also created advanced code of laws, founded universities of Salamanca and Toledo, gained considerable fame in astronomy and established Castilian as a language of higher learning. His scientific achievements earned him a nickname throughout Europe - people of different nations called him El Sabio, which means “The Wise”.
Alfonso X commissioned or co-authored numerous works of music during his reign. Yet, the most important of his works is the vast compilation Cantigas de Santa Maria (”Songs to the Virgin Mary”). Luckily for us, The Cantigas collection is one of the largest musical treasures that survived from the Middle Ages. It consists of about 420 poems that are for the most part on miracles attributed to the Virgin Mary.
A famous medieval composer Jacob Senleches was also known as an excellent harpist. He developed many rhythmic and notational innovations in a medieval style known as as the ars subtilior. We are aware of his creative period that lasted from 1382 through 1395 through some scant information and a small number of transmitted exquisite compositions. However, up to this day, specialists consider Jacob as one of the central personalities of ars subtilior.
He was possibly born in the French town of Senleches and served at the court of Eleanor of Castile. One of the survived composition tells us that he laments her death in 1382 and resolves to seek his fortune in other countries. Later we find him at the service of Cardinal of Aragon Pedro de Luna. And the last written record about him came to us from a supplication to the Roman pope Benedict XIII. In this document Jacob Senleches was asking for the benefice attached to a parish church in the diocese of Cambrai.
In my previous blog entries I promised to continue telling you about lost in the history famous composers of the transitional era. Although, they were extremely popular at the late medieval times, their heritage either vanished throughout the years or brought us some minimal but significant evidence about their talents.
Fate played one of the most peculiar tricks on famous Italian composer of the late medieval times Giovanni Mazzuoli. In fact I found during my web analytics research that there was the second name assigned to him - Giovanni degli Organi. Giovanni Mazzuoli was famous not only as a composer but also as a great musician organist during his life from around 1360 till 1426.
Giovanni learned to play the organ from his father Niccolo. The latter trained his son while he was also serving as an organist of the church of Orsanmichele until 1376. Thanks to his gift and intensive training, Giovanni was handed over the very same position after the death of his father in 1379. He also played the organ in several other churches and cathedrals and taught his son Piero as his father did. Pieró assisted Giovanni during his last years of service.
When we say, that Giovanni was a famous composer we actually telling a little white lie. None of his works reached our times. There are several works attributed to him, but specialists can not claim them his for sure. So, how can serious web analysts judge his works and write his name to posterity?
An important source of medieval Italian music - Squarcialupi Codex - is the illuminated manuscript compiled in Florence, Italy in the early 15th century. It consists of 216 parchment folios. Most of them are well-preserved and they are, in fact, in a great condition. There is a large section in Squarcialupi Codex dedicated exclusively to the musical pieces created by Giovanni Mazzuoli. The section is marked out under his name and a portrait is presented at his head. But for unknown reasons, the pages are blank. There is absolutely no music written there. All pages are decorated around the edges but left blank otherwise.
Another Italian manuscript San Lorenzo discovered not so long ago does contain his musical compositions. Unfortunately, the paper of the manuscript is in such poor condition that the pages with Mazzuoli music are essentially unreadable. Curiously, though, his son Piero Mazzuoli, who also created music is also included in this manuscript. And over a dozen of his musical pieces survived. Basically, this is one of the rare cases when a great composer is best remembered for the absence, rather than the presence of his musical compositions.
In the ocean of classical music there will always be famous composers, whose bio got lost due to the sands of time. There were wildly popular not only as composers but also as famous musicians as well. I found their names from the research that I conducted at my web analytics company with several other coworkers. The ones that I will tell you about played their important role in the transition from medieval to Renaissance music. My story about them will continue in the future blog entries.
One of them was a great Frenchman Richard Loqueville who played the harp as a virtuoso and taught it to the son of the Duke of Bar in 1410. We know only about the eight years of his creativity and then his traces in the history vanished. During this short period this famous composer also taught singing to the choirboys of the duke’s court and later taught music at Cambrai Cathedral. History brought to us less than a dozen pieces of his music.
Another famous composer who helped the transition to Renaissance music was Nicholas of Radom who was connected to the Polish court. He created somewhere in the early 15th century at the court of the Polish king Jagiello and left us pieces of memorable polyphonic music full of religious contemplation.
History brought to us the name of a famous for his times composer Pycard, whose full name is unknown. We don’t even know whether he came from England or France. What we know is that his music is complex and unusual in its virtuosity. Survived pieces tell us that he was one of the most technically advanced and creative composers of the 14th century. His name and music survived only because specialists found them in the invaluable Old Hall Manuscript- the largest, most complete, and most significant source of English sacred music of the late 14th and early 15th centuries.
In my preceding blog entry I was telling you about the Chantilly Codex - brilliant medieval manuscript that allowed us to know famous composers that created music in the second part of the 14th century. It is a mysterious document because some of the music pieces in it are so complex and sometimes experimental, that only a very small circle of people living at that time could really understand what this was all about.
In relation to that manuscript I must introduce great French composer Solage who was definitely a prominent figure in the late medieval period. From the annals of my web analytics company I found out that he probably served at the French royal court. And he was the one who composed the most pieces in the Chantilly Codex, thus expressing the new direction for music called by musicologists call ars subtilior, the experimental compositional school centered around Avignon.
All we know about the life of Solage we got from the texts that accompanied his music in the Codex. Any other information about Solage seems to be irrevocably lost. Without any doubt ten works in the Codex can be attributed to him and two more are considered his because of stylistic original similarities discovered during research.
The plot of his single satirical rondo in the Chantilly Codex remains a mystery up to this day. It tells us about… the society of smokers. Specialists really don’t have any explanation because tobacco was not to be known in Europe for another two centuries! So they came up with a theory that Solage was mocking the potheads who engaged in the hashish or opium smoking.
There are some doubts though, because even later tobacco smokers were persecuted by Catholic Church who thought of them as devil worshipers. So there is a place for new discoveries on this issue.
Yet the members of the society of smokers are real historical figures. One of them is none the less than the nephew of a famous composer Guillaume de Machaut, that I wrote about in one of my blog entries.
There is scarce information about many famous composers of medieval music. Sometimes musicologists and historians know nothing at all except for the name of a famous music creator and a couple of lines telling about the influence and greatness of a certain maestro.
The situation could have been even worse if we did not find invaluable medieval manuscripts that contain music pieces confirming the status of a medieval composer. One of these manuscripts is called the Chantilly Codex. As a web analyst and music specialist I can’t help admiring the thoroughness of the manuscript. It contains around 112 polyphonic pieces written mostly by famous French composers of the late medieval period ranging from the middle of 14th century up to the beginning of the 15th century. Specialists usually define the style of the music as ars subtilior.
The Chantilly Codex allowed us to see how complex and experimental music was developed at that period. It represents practically all music styles including ballades, rondeaus and motets. It also told us about famous composers whose name is impossible to establish, there are just nicknames based on cryptic anagrams and palindromes.
One of the famous composers whose only piece was published in the codex was Borlet. Yet, there is a gnawing suspicion that this name is just the anagram of a French composer who serviced Martin V of Aragon in 1409. This does not make the research any easier, because that French composer’s name is also hard to decode. History brought to us more of his cryptic anagrams like Trebol, Triboll and Trebol from other contemporary sources. Could this be one and the same individual? We still don’t have an affirmative answer. The only existing theory is that all these nicknames might simply tell us one and the same first name of the mysterious composer - “Robert”.
There are six pieces under the name Trebor in the Chantilly Codex. They show us that this famous composer served in European courts because he in his creations he describe historical events of that medieval period. One of his pieces tells us about the reign of the count of Foix, another about the invasion of Aragon kingdom the island of Sardinia in 1388.
Trebor was very influential and other contemporary sources cross-reference this as a fact. Among them are famous Avignon composers Grimace and Franciscus Andrieu who quote some of his music creations in their own works.
One of the very prolific and famous composers of the Middle Ages Jehan de Lescurel was a transitional figure from the trouvere period to the ars nova. I found from the archives of my local web analytics company that out of his large heritage only 34 works survived. Among them are all kinds of songs with unique style which obviously were significant for famous composers of later period. Although Jehan died in 1304, composers that followed Jehan, valued his work. In fact, their esteem for him was so high that they even included him in the famous 14th century Roman de Fauvel. This manuscript was so wildly successful and still copied into the 15th century. Yet, the date of his death could be imprecise as I am going to explain down below.
From little details known to specialists it was possible to establish that Jenan de Lescurel was not definitely rich. He was the son of some Parisian merchant and received his training at Notre Dame cathedral. There is really nothing else known about his life except for a curious mistake related to him that musicologists made a while ago. For a long time they thought that Jehan’s life ended badly.
The reason for this conclusion was the old document they discovered. It said that on May 1304 three young clerics of Notre Dame were hanged for “debauchery and crimes against women”. Among the names of the executed clerics was the one that attracted specialists’ attention - Jehan Lescurel. So, historians took it literally and passed quick judgment: they thought our famous composer spent the last day of his life on the gallows.
However, many years later specialists had to reject this presumption. First of all, there is no link between the composer and some cleric who was hanged. Second, debauchery had never been a prominent theme of any of Jehan de Lescurel’s surviving lyrics. In fact, it is very charming and composed in the style of the later 14th century composers.
And the last research seems to put the end to the grave suspicion of poor composer’s end of life. It seems that Jehan de Lescurel was a rather common name in the early fourteenth century and almost definitely was a peculiar coincidence.
Famous composer Donato da Cascia undoubtedly was an integral part of the Early Italian Renaissance period, that we know as Trecento. He created his music in the second part of the fourteenth century. As in many other cases related to that period, we know nothing about this famous composer, his life, his date of birth or death. I did not find anything in the annals of my local web analytics company either. So, I can only suppose that he was from Florence or a place called Cascia, near Florence, as his last name says.
The only picture that specialists discovered, shows him in the typical robes of the Benedictine order, so we may assume that he was a monk or a priest. But here lies the mystery: out all his surviving music, there is not even a bit of religious music. It is all completely secular. All the sources of his music with just one exception were found in Tuscany.
Jacopo da Bologna most likely had some influence on Donato da Cascia’s works. We know about most of Donato’s music, thanks to Squarcialupi Codex - the illuminated manuscript compiled in Florence, Italy in the early 15th century. Even though, his music was written in the typical style of mid 14th century, it has exceptional virtuosity. All surviving madrigals created by Donato da Cascia represent the peak of virtuoso singing.
Although Walther von der Vogelweide was one of the most famous composers, poets and singers in medieval Germany, there are practically no contemporary records about him. By doing a lot of guesswork, specialists came to the conclusion that he was of noble birth but did not belong to the aristocracy or even higher nobility. His place of birth is unknown, but there are dozens of books with all kinds of theories about it. Some secondary evidence also points that he occasionally used a nickname, which was quite usual for the poets of the times during which he lived.. Generally, everybody agrees, that he period of life was overall from about 1170 to 1230.
We know that Walther mastered his craft at the court of Vienna because of his beautiful lyrics dedicated to the death of his patron, duke Frederick, who was a patron of poetry and art. Since his sponsor’s death Walther’s happy period of life had ended. He started wandering from court to court, singing for bed and bread. Even though famous composer was hoping that some new patron would notice and give him a shelter, he was not exactly suited for that type of life, mostly due to his poetry. It contained very emotional and scathing criticism of men and manners of the times, which made uncomfortable rich nobility. Thanks to his lyrics, he lost a position at the court of duke Bernhard of Carinthia and later was kicked out of the court of Dietrich I of Meissen, where as he mentions, he did not get neither money nor praise.
Yet, Walther’s poems give us the picture not only of a great artistic genius, but of a strenuous, passionate, very human and very lovable character. His talents and strong views became required by German society, when empire and papacy started their struggle in 1197. Walther took side with German independence and unity which gave him a place of significance in history. Till the end of his days, Walther remained a faithful Catholic, which is confirmed by religious poems. Nevertheless, he was fervently opposing the extreme claims of the Roman popes, whom he attacked with bitterness, expressing his deep patriotic feelings.
Walther never switched sides and a highly intelligent new emperor Frederick II held in high esteem poet’s genius and zeal. Thus, Walther received desired recognition and even a small fief in Franconia, that gave him a home and fixed position. Yet, he was complaining that this fief had little value. There is some evidence, that Frederick made Walther the tutor of his son, but this evidence based on one of his lyrics is disputed by modern researchers.
Walther von der Vogelweide did not stay immediately at his new fief long, he traveled for a while and only then settled at his new place. From there he was urging German princes to take part in the Sixth Crusade in 1228 but, did not participate in it himself, or at least did not go further than Tirol. In a beautiful poem he paints the change that had come over the scenes of his childhood and made his life seem a thing dreamed. When he was dying in 1230, he put in his will the request to feed the birds at his tomb every day.
