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Music and Chivalric Fiction in France, 1150–1300

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1984

Christopher Page
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Extract

When the meal drew to a close the lady who had served the wine produced a harp and began to play it so sweetly that it was a wondrous thing to hear. So Sir Gawayn listened to her very willingly for a while until he began to feel the cold, for his tunic was not at all well dried. And when the cold got to him he rose up and went to the great fire which was in the middle of the Hall and took a stool and sat down before the fire, turning his shoulder and his back [to the flames] and warmed himself until he slept, as one who had been afflicted the whole day with the rain and the wind.

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Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 111 , 1984 , pp. 1 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 Sommer, H.O., ed., The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, 8 vols. (Washington, 1909–16), 7, Supplement, Le Livre d'Artus (Washington, 1913), pp. 173–4. I retain Sommer's orthography:Google Scholar

Qvant uint en la fin du mengier si traist la damoisele cele qui auoit serui du uin une harpe et comenca a harper tant do[l]cement que ce estoit merueilles a oir et a escouter si lescouta messires Gauuain une piece molt uolentiers tant que il comenca a refroidier que sa robe nestoit mie bien essuiee et quant il senti la froidure si se leua et uint au feu que granz estoit en mi la sale et prent il meismes un quarrel et sa[s]iet desus deuant le feu et li torne lespaule et le dos et se chaufe tant quil si endort come cil qui toz estoit debatuz tot le ior entier de pluie et de uent. Compare the episode in E. Stengel, ed., Li Romans de Durmart le Galois (Tübingen, 1873), lines 3217ff.

2 On thirteenth-century French pictorial sources See Foster, G., The iconology of musical instruments and musical performance in thirteenth-century French manuscript illuminations (diss. City University of New York, 1977). Foster concludes, quite rightly in my view, that pictorial material of this date has considerable limitations as a source of information about musical life and performance practice. As for archival sources, relevant documents are not plentiful from the thirteenth-century (and are extremely scarse for the twelfth). Furthermore there are very few documentary sources from any period of the Middle Ages which shed light upon the musical activities of courtly amateurs. Most financial records, for example, bear upon secular music only insofar as they record various kinds of transactions involving the services of minstrels. For some thirteenth-century examples, See Henry, A., ed., Les Ouvres d'Ardenet le Roi, 1 (Bruges, 1951), passim, but especially p. 65ff.Google Scholar

3 For examples see the texts gathered in E. Faral, Les jongleurs en France au moyen age, 2nd edition (Paris, 1971), Appendix 3, items 60, 63, 68, 113, et passim, and E. Bowles, ‘Musical Instruments at the Medieval Banquet’, Revue Belge de Musicologie, 12 (1958), pp. 41–51.Google Scholar

4 There are many indications in medieval literature that musical accomplishments were regarded as particularly appropriate to young girls (much as they were in nineteenth-century England). The evidence of didactic literature addressed to women is particularly revealing here. See Hentsch, A., De la littérature didactique du moyen age s'addressant spécialement aux femmes (Cahors, 1903), pp. 89 and 107, and J. Ulrich, ed., Robert von Blois sämmtliche Werke. 3 vols., (Berlin, 1889–95), 3, p. 70, lines 453–68.Google Scholar

5 Frappier, J., ed., La Mort le Roi Artu (Geneva and Paris, 1936), pp. 46–7. This is an exceptional reference; it seems that musicians have been gathered together to provide concerted instrumental music, for listening, in a chamber specially set aside for the purpose. I do not know of any directly comparable reference in Old French fiction. It may be that the anonymous author of La Mort le Roi Artu is recording some thirteenth-century antecedent of a practice recorded in association with King Charles V of France by both Froissart and Christine de Pisan. Froissart describes an occasion when after-dinner music is provided for Gaston Phébus and Charles by players of bas instruments in the chambre de parement of the castle of Toulouse; Christine de Pisan recounts a very similar event at Paris in 1377 (once again the music is played by bas instruments, this time in the chambre de parlement). See Kervyn de Lettenhove, ed., Oeuvres de Froissart, 25 vols. (Brussels, 1870–7), 14, p. 75, and S. Solente, ed., Le livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage Roy Charles V, 2 vols. (Paris, 1936 and 1940), 2, pp. 108–109.Google Scholar

6 For a superb account of this custom, this time in the most sophisticated of all Middle English Arthurian romances, see J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon, eds., Sir Gawayn and the Green Knight, second edition, ed. N. Davis (Oxford, 1967), line 853ff.Google Scholar

7 The question of whether medieval romances do, or do not, incorporate verisimilar references to social customs and practices reduces to a matter of faith: when reading these texts one either chooses to believe in the realism of details which seem credible and consonant with external evidence, or one does not choose to believe in them. It would be possible to present very sophisticated arguments in favour of atheism in this regard, for modern developments in literary theory have opened the study of literature to profound philosophical issues that turn upon how words mean, whether they mean what we take them to mean when we use them, and whether they mean anything; immersion in such questions will not fill us with confidence that medieval literature can reveal much about contemporary reality. Yet neither will it reassure us that we know, or can reasonably say, anything about the external world of objects and actions. On moral and humanitarian grounds I dissent from the sceptical view that imaginative literature in general, and medieval romance in particular, cannot reveal objective truths about the past; such scepticism ultimately deposes the notion of objective truth and leaves no basis for rational enquiry.Google Scholar

A more traditional ground for atheism would be to argue, in the best positivist tradition, that medieval romances, being ‘literature’, must be sharply distinguished from the objective records of fact (especially archives) which are the proper materials of the historian. This argument can be met in two ways.Google Scholar

Firstly, any historian who wishes to adopt this rigorously positivist line will need to base his historical credo almost entirely upon archival sources, yet ‘literary’ works (especially chronicles and saints' Lives) have long been exploited by historians. Indeed, a distinction between ‘factual’ writing and ‘fictional’ writing is hard to maintain in the contexts of the thirteenth century when the biography of a historical figure such as William Marshall could be written in verse and dressed out with many of the conventions of chivalric romance, and when a prose chronicle, such as Villehardouin's La Conquete de Constantinople, is strewn with verbal tags and hyperboles drawn from vernacular epics such as The Song of Roland.Google Scholar

Secondly, it is simplistic to draw a firm distinction between history and story. The modern historian does not write in a scientifically objective language which is devoid of rhetorical colouring and transparent to its object, for such writing is not possible to achieve. This is not to deny that historians may make objective statements about the external world; it is merely to urge that a firm distinction between the language of historical fact and the language of literary fiction is not possible and there is therefore no cause for the historian to disdain imaginative literature per se on the grounds that it may sully the nature of his discourse. See, for example, H. White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe (1974) and S. Bann, The Clothing of Clio : A Study of the Representation of History in Nineteenth Century Britain and France (Cambridge, 1984).Google Scholar

8 Old French fiction has been mined for its information about medieval music since at least the late sixteenth century. See, for example, C. Fauchet. Recueil de l'Origine de la langue et poesie francoise, ryme et romans (Paris, 1581), pp. 72–3. Modern works which exploit medieval literature in this way are too numerous to mention.Google Scholar

9 Of the tiny handful of references to polyphony in Old French literature the most striking is to be found in Wace's Brut of 1155, in a passage describing the festivities at Arthur's coronation. See Arnold, I., ed., Le Roman de Brut de Wace. 2 vols., Société des Anciens Textes Français (Paris, 1938 and 1940), 2, lines 10421–4. However, Wace is following his source closely at this point, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britannic, completed at Oxford c. 1136. Sec A. Griscom and R.E. Jones., eds., The Historia Regum Britanniat of Geoffrey of Monmouth (London etc., 1929), p. 456. For other passages which probably refer to polyphony See Wright, L., ‘Chanter a gresillon(s) and chanter es gresillons’, Medium Aevum, 35 (1966), pp. 231–5, and Y. Rokseth, Polyphonies du XIIIe Siècle, 4 vols., (Paris, 1935, 1936 and 1939), 4, pp. 65–7, 84, 219–220. There is a terminological problem with some of the texts cited by Rokseth, however. It is far from certain, for example, whether Old French motet customarily refers to a polyphonic genre when used in the non-specialist contexts of vernacular poetry and prose.Google Scholar

10 The most famous references to trouvères (complete with citations of songs) in Old French fiction are in Jean Renart's romance of Guillaume de Dole (ed F. Lecoy, Classiques Français du Moyen Age (Paris, 1962), lines 844ff, 1451ff, 3620ff, 4120ff and 5228ff). See also P.B. Fay and J.L. Grigsby, eds., Joufroi de Poitiers (Geneva, 1972), lines 3601–3692 (the troubadour Marcabrun), and J.E. Matzke and M. Oelbouille, eds., Le Roman du Castelain de Couci et de la Dame de Fayel par'Jakemes, Société des Anciens Textes Français (Paris, 1936), passim.Google Scholar

11 The Middle English Sir Gawayn and the Green Knight (see note 6) is a Romance plot of classic design. Sir Gawayn must leave Arthur's court and journey through wild country to have his valour and constancy tested in the wilderness at the Green Chapel; he then returns to Camelot where the community of knights is strengthened by his success in the test. In the text this scheme is playfully varied (the real test is over by the time Gawayn reaches the Green Chapel; what he receives there is only his ‘result’); yet the outlines of the archetypal Romance plot are clear and lucid throughout the tale.Google Scholar

12 This is the most distinctive contribution of medieval chivalry to the ethic of warriorhood and the bibliography devoted to it, both by historians of literature and historians of chivalry, is enormous. For a guide through the maze of theories which have been offered to explain it See Boase, R., The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love (Manchester, 1977). Among the works which have been devoted to the subject since the appearance of Boase's book one of the most impressive is R.H. Bloch, Medieval French Literature and Law (University of California Press, 1977).Google Scholar

13 For the original See Zeydel, E.H., ed., Ruodlieb (Chapel Hill, 1959), p. 110. The translation is mine, though I have drawn extensively on the facing-page version offered by Zeydel. On the Ruodlieb as the first surviving example of a medieval verse-romance See Dronke, P., ‘Ruodlieb : The Emergence of Romance’, in Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages : New Departures in Poetry 1000–1150 (Oxford, 1970), pp. 24–6 and 33–65.Google Scholar

14 Zeydel, op. cit., p. 110: Quem per sistema siue diastema dando responsa/Dum mirabiliter operaretur ue decenter. It is particularly striking that the author seems to be describing the performance of something closely akin to the later-medieval estampie: (1) Ruodlieb's music is danced to, (2) it has a reprise or refrain of some kind (responsa) and (3) it appears to have open and closed endings. With respect to this last detail, which is perhaps the most interesting of all, my translation of the words sistema siue diastema (‘now pausing on a note away from the final, now pausing upon the final…’) is based upon the definitions of these terms given in the De Musica of John ‘of Afflighem’: ‘diastema … occurs when the chant makes a suitable pause, not on the final, but elsewhere … systema … [occurs] whenever a suitable pause in the melody comes on the final …’. I borrow the translation from W. Babb and C.V. Palisca, Hucbald, Guido and John on Music (Yale University Press, 1978), p. 117; for the original, see J. Smits van Waesberghe, ed., Johannis Affligemensis De Musica cum Tonario, American Institute of Musicology, Corpus Scriptorum de Musica, I (Rome 1950), p. 80. If, as seems likely, John wrote in southern Germany around 1100, then he is well placed to be our intepreter of musical terminology in the south-German Ruodlieb which may have been composed during his lifetime.Google Scholar

15 I owe this point to Dronke, ‘Ruodlieb’, p. 54.Google Scholar

16 Zeydel, op. cit., pp. 110–3.Google Scholar

17 Whitehead, F., ed., La Chanson de Roland (Basil Blackwell, 1970), lines 281–5.Google Scholar

18 Pope, M.K., ec., The Romance of Horn by Thomas, 2 vols., Anglo-Norman Text Society (Oxford 1955 and 1964), 1, lines 1250, 1255–7. Compare lines 1050ff where Horn's beauty is described as radiant and angelic. On the presentation of the hero in this poem See Burnley, J.D., ‘The Roman de Horn and its ethos’, French Studies, 32 (1978), pp. 385–97.Google Scholar

19 Pope, op. cit., lines 2830–44.Google Scholar

20 I deal with this question at length in Voices and Instruments in the Middle Ages (forthcoming).Google Scholar

21 Pope, op. cit., lines 2788–9.Google Scholar

22 This contrast is discussed in Alexander Murray's richly discursive book Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978), pp. 125–7.Google Scholar

23 Whitehead, La Chanson de Roland, line 20.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., lines 24–6.Google Scholar

25 O. Schultz-Gora, ed., Folque de Candie, 3 vols. (Dresden etc. 1909, 1915 and 1936), 2, p. 2 line 9899.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., line 12512.Google Scholar

27 J.E. White Jr. ed., La Conqueste de Constantinople (New York, 1968), p. 90. Cf. p. 69.Google Scholar

28 London, British Library, MS Add. 12228, ff. 218–219. Guiron le courtois has not been published in modern times and the early printed editions are not adequate for the present purposes. The surviving manuscripts of the work are fully catalogued in R. Lathuillère, Guiron le Courtois (Geneva, 1966). MS Add. 12228 is of special interest in that the musical scenes of the romance are lavishly illustrated with coloured miniatures. For an example see The New Grove sv. ‘Performing practice’.Google Scholar

29 The best-known examples of such minstrels are those mentioned in the (mainly thirteenth-century) Vidas or ‘Lives’ of the troubadours. See J. Boutière and A.H. Schutz, eds., Biographies de Troubadours, 2nd edition (Paris, 1973), including pp. 39 (Guiraut de Borneill), 68 (Bertran de Born). For a striking northern example see J.E. Matzke and M. Delbouille, eds., Le Roman de Castelain de Couci et de la Dame de Fayel par Jakemes, Société des Anciens Textes Français (Paris, 1936), lines 356–420.Google Scholar

There is a similar episode to this one from Guiron le Courtois in the hitherto unpublished section of the Roman de Perceforest, probably composed between 1330 and 1350. Lionnel, a knight, composes the words of a lai which he wishes all vrays amans should know. A minstrel-harpist approaches Lionnel and offers to compose music for it so that it may be sung ‘in many assemblies and in many a noble celebration’. Lionnel agrees, requesting that the music should match the pitoiable mood of the poetry. This the minstrel does: ‘Sire’ [says the minstrel] ‘vous prometz que se vous le me voulez aprendre, au plaisir du dieu souverain, je le feray ancores jouer en mainte assemblee et en mainte noble feste’. ‘Par ma foy, mon amy’, dist Lionnel, ‘je te diray voulentiers les motz mais il n'a point de chant, et se tu en vouloies faire ung pitoiable comme est le dit, je t'en scauroie bon gre’.Google Scholar

‘Certes, sire’, dist le menestrel, ‘je le feray voulentiers’. Adont le preu Lionnel lui dist les moz du lay tant de fois qu'il le sceut par cveur. Ce fait, le menestrel lira sa harpe hors du fourreau et fut dessus ung chant … piteux, … British Library, MS Royal 19 E. iii, f. 139v.Google Scholar

30 Demain le harperai ge devant vos meesmes en pleine cort. British Library, MS Add. 12228, f. 220v.Google Scholar

31 ‘Missire Yvayn, vos qui tant vos alez delytant en noveax chant, ge vos promet que vos porriez demain oir un chant novel tout le meillor et le plus dolz et le mielz acordant que vos onques vissiez jor de vostre vie’. ‘Ha! por Deu’, fait missire Yvayn, ‘quant il est si bons, or me dites qui le fist, se Dex vos doint bone aventure’.Google Scholar

‘Certes’, fet il, ‘le meillor chevalier del monde le fist, ce est li rois Melyadus de Loenoys … demain le porriez vos oir apres hore de manger’. Ibid., ff. 220v-221.Google Scholar

32 … li dit tout en riant: ‘Demain vendra a cart un dit novel et un son novel tout le meillor et le plus mielz dit que onques fust aportez a cort … le plus meillor chevalier del monde le fist. Se tu puissiez ore faire que tu la preissez premierement et puis la me feisses savoir, ge seroie ton chevalier, se Dex me doint bone aventure’.Google Scholar

‘Or me dites’, fet ele, ‘qui est cil qui la porte a cort, est il chevaliers ou jugleor ou har peor?’ ‘Certes’, fait il, ‘il est chevaliers et est de Leonoys, et est chevaliers del roi Melyadus et chante molt bien, se sai ge bien veraiement car je l'ay oi’. Ibid., f. 221.Google Scholar

33 I am steering close here to some of the work on formulaic and oral-formulaic composition in medieval literature. See particularly D.H. Fry, ‘Old English Formulaic Themes and Type-Scenes’, Neophilologus, 52 (1968), pp. 48–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Roques, M., ed., Erec et Enide (Paris, 1952–3), lines 1983, 1987–1992.Google Scholar

35 For examples see Faral, op. cit., Appendix 3, numbers 60, 63, 92, etc.Google Scholar

36 A. Stimmung. ed., Der Anglonormannische Boeve de Haumtone, (Halle, 1899), lines 863 and 865.Google Scholar

37 Castets, F., ed., La Chanson des Quatre Fils Aymon (Montpellier, 1909), lines 6599–6604.Google Scholar

38 For a comprehensive collection of literary references in which the term bordon (in various forms and spellings) appears, See Trowell, B., ‘Faburden – New Sources, New Evidence; a Preliminary Survey’, in E. Olleson, ed., Modem Musical Scholarship (Stocksfield etc, 1980), pp. 28–78.Google Scholar

39 For some examples of references belonging to this genre see Faral, op. cit., Appendix 3, numbers 59a, 109, 172c etc.Google Scholar

40 Alton, J., ed., Li Romans de Claris et Laris (Tübingen, 1884), lines 9940–3.Google Scholar

41 Lecoy, F., op. cit., lines 1846ff; 5440ff; 2523ff;Google Scholar

42 Gennrich, F., Rondeaux, Virelais und Balladen, 2 vols., Gesellschaft für Romanische Literatur, 43 (Dresden, 1921 and Göttingen, 1927), 1, p. 10.Google Scholar

43 Page, C., ‘Jerome of Moravia on the rubeba and viella’, Galpin Society Journal, 32 (1979), pp. 77–98.Google Scholar

44 See Fallows, D., ‘Specific Information on the Ensembles for Composed Polyphony’ in S. Boorman, ed., Studies in the Performance of Late-Medieval Music (Cambridge, 1983), p. 109.Google Scholar

45 See note 9.Google Scholar

46 This point emerges with some clarity in certain Old Provençal narratives where liberal patrons are mentioned who are generous to both cavayers and joglars. See, for example, Jaufre (?c. 1170) in R. Lavaud and R. Nelli, eds., Les Troubadours, 2 vols. (Bruges, 1960–66), 1, p. 44, lines 79–84.Google Scholar

47 British Library, MS Add. 12228, ff.221v-222.Google Scholar

48 [Orgayne] li dist: ‘Sire chevalier, l'en m'a fait entendant que vos savez chanter et harper; ge vos pri que vos voiant cestes dames en faiciez partie de ce que vos en savez’.Google Scholar

Li chevalier, qui voloit qu'il en eust autre priere que de la damoisele solement, respont qu'il navoit ore talent de chanter, et toutes les dames le prient adonc, et quant il voit qu'eles le prioient si ententivement, et li chevaliers meesmes qui illuec estoient le prient autresint, respont: ‘Or me faites baillier cele harpe…’. Ibid., f. 222r.Google Scholar

49 Vernay, P., ed., Maugis d'Aigremont (Berne, 1980, lines 4361ff.Google Scholar

50 Ibid., line 637.Google Scholar

I am grateful to Professor J.H. Marshall, Professor J. Stevens, Dr David Fallows, Laurence Wright, Régine Page and Ann Lewis for their comments upon the first draft of this paper.Google Scholar