Music As We Know It

One of the last, but not the least, trobaritz, famous poet Garsenda de Sabran was of highly aristocratic origin. She was a patron to Occitan literature, especially the troubadours. Among trobaritz she had she was known as beautiful Garsenda de Proensa.

She was born around 1180 as the Countess of Forcalquier, large medieval county in Provence and inherited her title from her grandfather, because she lost her mother in an early age. She untied the houses of Barcelona and Provence because at the age of thirteen she got married to Alfonso II, son of Alfonso II of Aragon and Sancha of Castille. Her husband was the first in line to inherit Provence and become its Count.  Then, quite unexpectedly Garsenda’s father and her husband died and she became a sole guardian of her son Raymond Berengar IV.

Her brother-in-law Peter II of Aragon made an attempt to steal Garsenda’s inheritance by passing the regency of Provence to his brother Sancho. But people of Catalonia and Provence loved Garsenda so much that a big dissension started. All Provencal aristocracy lined up behind Garsenda as well, so the regency was passed back to her again. A council of nobles was even established to protect interests of their beloved Countess.

During her regency she became the shining center of a poetic and troubadour circle. They composed songs and poems and dedicated them to Garsenda. She probably was a very beautiful woman - even the author of her biography fell in love with her and loved her for the rest of his life until he entered the monastery.

These were troubling times and there was one revolt after another in attempt to rob the beautiful Countess of her lands. But Garsenda managed to raise her son and pass him her native Forcalquier. Later, somewhere after 1220, she quietly retired to the monastery.  We don’t know the exact date of Garsenda’s death but, it is highly likely that she lived a very long life, going to be over 80 years old. It seems that she was still alive in 1257, because someone with identical name made a donation to the church with a request for three priests to pray for her soul.

In 1895 citizens of Paris were flowing to see the La Princesse lointaine at the theater. Great Sarah Bernhardt played the leading female role on the stage. And French dramatist Edmond Rostand, who wrote this drama was lauded by the whole Europe. In the center of his creation there was a story about love of a troubadour to a beautiful princess who lived far away from him… So, where did this story come from?

Well, once upon a time there was a famous troubadour Jaufré Rudel. He really existed and was quite famous composer and poet of his times. Rudel is even considered to be one of the inventors of the “love from afar” style in troubadours poetry. He was of noble origin, in fact, his title was Prince of Blaye. History did not leave us much about Rudel, the only thing that is known for the fact is that he died overseas during Second Crusade around 1147. Several his fellows-troubadours, including famous Marcabru, composed their songs about him, lamenting on his death. Seven of Rudel’s poems have survived to the present day, four of them with music. And here is where we could end this story, when something interesting happened.

Years later, some anonymous writer, carried away by his imagination, wrote Rudel’s fictionalized biography. This style was called vida and was quite popular in the medieval period. This vida became the basis for a legend. According to it Rudel fell in love with Countess Hodierna of Tripoli without even seeing her! He just heard about her beauty from pilgrims, who were returning from the Holy Land. Rudell was so smitten, that he took a long sea journey just to see Hodierna. Unfortunately, during the voyage, he fell sick and was brought ashore in Tripoli already a dying man. When Hodierna heard the news, she came down to the shore from her castle and Rudel died in her arms.

The whole legend was a fluke, and, naturally, it never happened. But it was romantic! When 19 century Romanticism authors discovered the legend, they just could not pass the opportunity and meet it the halfway. To mention a few, Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Ludwig Uhland, Heinrich Heine, Giosué Carducci created their poems based on this fiction story. In the next century more epic poems and even an opera were created as well.

Usually, they say that life is more interesting than fiction. This time it was the other way around.

This famous troubadour from Provence lived almost to be one hundred years old - from 1180 to 1278. Due to his extraordinary for these medieval times life, he had a rare chance to observe deep changes around him. He saw how his native Occitan culture first went up to its highest point. And he witnessed its decline during the Albigensian Crusade and its post-Albigensian Crusade state. The name of this famous composer, poet and troubadour was Peire Cardenal. And his works are kind of different from many other troubadours of his time.

A lot of materials about Peire are still waiting for English author who will write a book about this exceptional man. There are so many materials that still need to be translated from Occitan and French into English. So what do we know now about Peire Cardenal?

He was born in Puy-en-Velay, Auvergne, France apparently of a noble family. And he was educated as a canon himself. Peire studied at the foremost cathedral school in Puy before becoming a song writer. He visited various courts of kings and barons, and had a jongleur to sing with him.

He left us his generous heritage - around a hundred pieces of his survived. Several of the tunes reached us as well. This number of works can hardly be matched by other poets of the age. Cardenal’s biography written by Miguel de la Tor mentions that Peire was possibly influenced by Bernart de Venzac, an obscure troubadour who was famous earlier for his bitter irony. So like Bernart, Peire Cardenal is attacking the perceived corruption of society and contemporary crisis of spiritual values. He tells us a great deal of envy, greed, adultery, and pride. His language, however, is skilled and he employs a vocabular at once popular, colorful, rich with rare and deeply expressive words.

His songs, especially those that lambasted hypocritical clerics won him many enemies. But Peire, obviously, could not care less about this. Even with all these enemies Cardenal became one of the most celebrated troubadours of his time. His poems much satirical criticism of the contemporary moral and political climate, sometimes verging on heresy. Here is one of Cardenal’s famous quotations that went through times:

“If some beggar steals a bridle
he’ll be hung by a man who’s stolen a horse.
There’s no surer justice in the world than that
which makes the rich thief hang the poor one.”

Previously, I was telling you stories about medieval composers whose dates of birth and date are unknown. There were also famous composers, whose first name or last name is not definitely established. Today’s story is about famous composer of the late medieval composer, whose point of origin and nation that  he came from are still a mystery, along with other details mentioned above.

Historians are so puzzled, that they simply call him European composer. They still argue whether he was Flemish or Italian.  And they call him Egardus, although, they are not sure that this is his name at all.  His name, a copy of one of his works in a Flemish manuscript  suggest a Northern origin. Yet all of his works are found in Northern Italian manuscripts with one exception. And that exception, a Polish manuscript, has strong Italian connections.

Only several compositions of Egardus survived. They sound less complex than other mid-century composers, but this lack of complexity can be attributed to an early date for his works. So, I guess, this is an opportunity for discovery, because all other attempts by prestigious experts failed. The only thing that may be stated with a not of hesitancy is that Egardus lived somewhere in between the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.

In the end of the fourteenth century there was a monk who was writing tirelessly secular music. He was especially good at writing songs in the form of ballata, an Italian form of a song that was popular in Europe up for about hundred fifty years or more. This Italian composer was called Andrea da Firenze. In the late medieval period he was a member of Servite monastic order and took a vow of poverty, in order that all his time and energy could be expended on religious work.

When he entered the order, he got his first assignment: to build an organ for the Servite house in Florence. And what he did? He hired his dear and close friend - another prolific composer Francesco Landini as a consultant. These guys had fun and drank a lot of wine during this assignment. And in the end they managed to expense the wine that they drank and submitted the receipts to the order! Historical evidence shows that they drank a lot during three days that took them to tune up the instrument.

Well, evidently, in spite of being drunk most of the time, Andrea was successful with his first assignment. Soon he received a second one - to build an organ for Florence Cathedral. Two friends had a couple of other similar tasks to build organs in other Italian cities as well.

Obviously, Andrea was not just a prolific famous composer, but a great business administrator as well Andrea was also active within his order as an administrator. He was moving up the monastic order’s “corporate ladder” pretty fast. Soon he became a prior of two monasteries in Italy. But that did not stop him. Almost up to the end of his life in 1415 he ruled the entire Servite order in Tuscany.

Basically, we don’t know much about Andrea’s life before he became the monk. We don’t know his age at all. He got lucky, because since he entered the order in 1375, his members monks kept all their records in pristine environment. And anyways, we know about Andrea than the bios of other fourteenth century famous composers. His survived heritage includes thirty elegant and dramatic songs, with eighteen being for two voices and twelve for three.

Who was Wolfram von Eschenbach? We know nothing about him, except that he was one of the greatest Medieval poets and minnesingers. I came up with empty hands while researching him in my local web analytics company. Wolfram is best known today for his Parzival, sometimes regarded as the greatest of all German epics from that time. Eighty four surviving manuscripts of Parzival indicate his tremendous popularity, not only in his time, but, even in the following two centuries. Parzival was translated and published by a Swiss scholar Johann Jacob Bodmer in 1753. Later, famous composer Richard Wagner used Parzival as the main source of libretto to his great opera, Parsifal.

Yet, no matter how hard specialists try, they did not recover any historical documents about Wolfram and his works are the sole source of evidence. There was a lot of historical investigations about him, that established that Wolfram was a German knight, who was likely born around 1170 and died somewhere close to 1220. The past along with Parzival also brought to us his two other narrative works and nine surviving songs that are considered to be masterpieces of medieval art of minnesingers.

Wolfram von Eschenbach probably serviced a number of courts during his time. Historians name a number of his possible patrons, but the evidence is circumstantial. In his Parzival Wolfram claims that he is illiterate and dictates his work. However, this fact is regarded with high level of sceptisim by most scientists. The dialect of his works is East Franconian and he mentions a couple of times that he is Bavarian. Thus precipitated a claim by at least four places name themselves as a place of birth of a famous poet and composer. As other famous medieval poets Wolfram was included in the famous Codex Mannese - medieval manuscript about famous poets with illustrations, created in the 14th century. However the picture of Wolfram and surrounding arms and heraldry turned out to be just the imagination of the artist.

Very little is known about the life of Meister Rumelant. He was, probably either German or Danish minnesinger, who was active or flourishing.during the decade between 1270 and 1280. Several pages are dedicated to him in a famous Codex Manesse, the most beautifully illumined German manuscript, created in the early 14th century.

We know that he was composing songs about mystic love. One of them, that tells about love of God for the Virgin Mary survived to our days. We also know that he was mourning the death of the murdered Danish king Erik V, nicknamed Klipping. In 1286, Eric V was assassinated in a small village by a number of the nation’s most powerful noblemen. Meister Rumelant composed several songs about this tragic event. He also created songs about the new king of Denmark Erik VI, who recovered Denmark as a Scandinavian great power.

Master Rumelant was the first to mention the 12 tones or standard melodies of the Meistersingers - this is how special German lyric poets and composers were called for the next three centuries. Meistersinger poetry played a large part in German town life, expecially in the 15th and 16th century.

One of the most famous German minnesingers Neidhart von Reuental was born in Bavaria and lived in Austria. His name is most likely a pseudonym and we don’t know much about his life at all.

Neidhart’s creative period lasted for almost thirty years - from 1210 to 1240. He was well-known for his sarcastic and comical masterpieces that were extremely popular in Europe. His songs were so harsh, that they were complete opposite to the topics that regular minnesingers used, singing about courtly love and romances. In his most famous songs called May Time he starts describing beautiful landscape and peaceful spring, but pretty soon switches to insulting his foes and several friends and allies who betrayed him. In spite of his harshness, the popularity of Neidhart’s songs gave birth to many imitators of his style in the next two centuries. Specialists even gave these imitators special names, like pseudo-Neidharts.

There was an extremely talented female poet and composer who lived in England in the late 12th century.  And evidently she came from France. We have virtually zero biographical details about her, and only speculations and medieval gossip. We don’t even know her true name for sure.  The only reason why historians call her Marie de France is because of one simple line in one of her published works. It, basically, says: “My name is Marie, I am from France.”

Marie de France used for writing continental French, that was, in turn copied by Anglo-Norman scribes.  She also translated some Roman literature.  A collection of short narrative poems not unlike shortened versions of romances survives till this day. Plus, some fables and description of saints’ lives. Scholars tried to date her works but did not reach unanimous decision. Some say, her works were written between  1160 and about 1215, others date them between about 1170 and 1205.  Historians are also confused when they try to guess identity of Marie de France. There is a line of candidates ranging from half-sister of Henry II, king of England, to several abbesses and the wife of somebody named Hugh Talbot.

There are not many works of medieval female troubadours or trobaritz, as they called them in Occitan, that survived to our days. Specialists attribute to them from twenty three to forty six works only. We have names of a dozen or more trobaritz but very few biographical details. Some of them were even considered fictitious in the past, like Alamanda de Castelnau. Only later after numerous researches, it was found that her name was mentioned by at least three famous troubadours, who pointed at her prominence in Occitan poetic circles. And only one of her songs reached us.

Two trouvères from Arras, in Picardy, France remain mysterious as well. They were called Dame Margot and Dame Maroie and they created music and wrote poetry somewhere in the 13th centuyry. But all that we have today is their only existing work, which represents a single debate song. And guess, what? This song survives in two manuscripts, and each version give separate and unrelated melodies.

The same goes for Beatriz de Dia. She was born somewhere in the 12th century, and, probably, was the daughter of Count Isoard II of Día. One song in Occitan with the music intact came to us through the ages, other songs exist too but without the melody. According to her short romanticized biography, Beatriz was married to Guillem, Count of Viennois but she was deeply in love with famous troubadour Raimbaut of Orange.

We know somewhat more about famous trobaritz Na Castelloza, who created music and poetry in the early thirteen century. She was a noblewoman from Auvergne and a wife of Turc de Mairona, Her husband’s ancestors had participated in a Crusade, which was the origin of his name. She wrote several songs about Arman de Brion. She was in love with him, but he was of greater social rank than Castelloza. Romanticized biography describes her as vivacious, highly intelligent and beautiful lady. Her four songs still exist, but, unfortunately, all without music. This, however, makes her the share the tie for the title of the most prolific of female troubadours in terms of surviving works. Only Beatriz de Dia certainly has also four songs to her name. The subject of all Caselloza poems is courtly love.