Critical and Historical Essays
While this of course takes nationalism out of the composition
of German folk song so-called, the latter has undoubtedly gained
immensely by it; for by thus divesting music of all its national
mannerisms, it has left the thought itself untroubled by quirks
and turns and a restricted musical scale; it has allowed this
thought to shine out in all its own essential beauty, and thus,
in this so-called German folk song, the greatest effects of
poignancy are often reached through absolute simplicity and
directness.
Now let us take six folk songs and trace first their national
characteristics, and after that their scheme of design, for
it is by the latter that the vital principle, so to speak, of
a melody is to be recognized, all else being merely external,
costumes of the different countries in which they were born. And
we shall see that a melody or thought born among one people
will change its costume when it migrates to another country.
Arab Song
[Figure 29]
Scheme [Figure 29a]
Russia--Reiteration
[Figure 30]
[Figure 31]
Red Sarafan
[Figure 32]
Scotch
[Figure 33]
[Figure 34]
Irish--Emotional in character, with greater perfection in design
[Figure 35]
Spanish
[Figure 36]
Egyptian
[Figure 37] (Note augmented intervals)
The characteristics of German and English folk songs may be
observed in the familiar airs of these nations.
The epitome of folk song, divested of nationalism, is shown
in the following:
[Figure 38]
[12] The antiquity of any melody (or its primitiveness) may
be established according to its rhythmic and melodic
or human attributes.
XII
THE TROUBADOURS, MINNESINGERS AND MASTERSINGERS
Although wandering minstrels or bards have existed since the
world began, and although the poetry they have left is often
suggestive, the music to which the words were sung is but
little known.
About 700-800 A.D., when all Europe was in a state of dense
ignorance and mental degradation, the Arabs were the embodiment
of culture and science, and the Arab empire extended at that
time over India, Persia, Arabia, Egypt (including Algeria and
Barbary), Portugal, and the Spanish caliphates, Andalusia,
Granada, etc. The descriptions of the splendour at the courts
of the Eastern caliphs at Bagdad seem almost incredible.
For instance, the Caliph Mahdi is said to have expended
six millions of dinars of gold in a single pilgrimage to
Mecca. His grandson, Almamon, gave in alms, on one single
occasion, two and a half millions of gold pieces, and the
rooms in his palace at Bagdad were hung with thirty-eight
thousand pieces of tapestry, over twelve thousand of which
were of silk embroidered with gold. The floor carpets were
more than twenty thousand in number, and the Greek ambassador
was shown a hundred lions, each with his keeper, as a sign
of the king's royalty, as well as a wonderful tree of gold
and silver, spreading into eighteen large, leafy branches,
on which were many birds made of the same precious metals. By
some mechanical means, the birds sang and the leaves trembled.
Naturally such a court, particularly under the reign of
Haroun-al Raschid (the Just), who succeeded Almamon, would
attract the most celebrated of those Arabian minstrels, such as
Zobeir, Ibrahim of Mossoul, and many others who figure in the
"Arabian Nights," real persons and celebrated singers of their
times. We read of one of them, Serjab, who, by court jealousy
and intrigues, was forced to leave Bagdad, and found his way
to the Western caliphates, finally reaching Cordova in Spain,
where the Caliph Abdalrahman's court vied with that of Bagdad
in luxury. Concerning this we read in Gibbon that in his palace
of Zehra the audience hall was incrusted with gold and pearls,
and that the caliph was attended by twelve thousand horsemen
whose belts and scimiters were studded with gold.
We know that the Arabian influence on the European arts came
to us by the way of Spain, and although we can see traces of
it very plainly in the Spanish music of to-day, the interim of
a thousand years has softened its characteristics very much. On
the other hand, the much more pronounced Arabian characteristics
of Hungarian music are better understood when we recall that the
Saracens were at the gates of Budapesth as late as 1400. That
the European troubadours should have adopted the Moorish _el
oud_ and called it "lute" is therefore but natural. And in
all the earlier songs of the troubadours we shall find many
traces of the same influence; for their _albas_ or _aubades_
(morning songs) came from the Arabic, as did their _serenas_ or
serenades (evening songs), _planhs_ (complaints), and _coblas_
(couplets). The troubadours themselves were so called from
_trobar_, meaning to invent.
In the works of Fauriel and St. Polaye, and many others, may
be found accounts of the origin of the Provencal literature,
including, of course, a description of the troubadours.
It is generally admitted that Provencal poetry has no
connection with Latin, the origin of this new poetry being very
plausibly ascribed to a gypsy-like class of people mentioned
by the Latin chroniclers of the Middle Ages as _joculares_
or _joculatores_. They were called _joglars_ in Provencal,
_jouglers_ or _jougleors_ in French, and our word "juggler"
comes from the same source. What that source originally was
may be inferred from the fact that they brought many of the
Arab forms of dance and poetry into Christian Europe. For
instance, two forms of Provencal poetry are the counterpart
of the Arabian _cosidas_ or long poem, all on one rhyme; and
the _maouchahs_ or short poem, also rhymed. The _saraband_,
or Saracen dance, and later the morris dance (_Moresco_
or _Fandango_) or Moorish dance, seem to point to the same
origin. In order to make it clearer I will quote an Arabian
song from a manuscript in the British Museum, and place beside
it one by the troubadour Capdeuil.
Arabian Melody [Figure 39]
Pons de Capdeuil [Figure 40]
The troubadours must not be confounded with the _jougleurs_
(more commonly written _jongleurs_). The latter, wandering,
mendicant musicians, ready to play the lute, sing, dance, or
"juggle," were welcomed as merry-makers at all rich houses,
and it soon became a custom for rich nobles to have a number
of them at their courts. The troubadour was a very different
person, generally a noble who wrote poems, set them to music,
and employed _jongleurs_ to sing and play them. In the South
these songs were generally of an amorous nature, while in the
North they took the form of _chansons de geste_, long poems
recounting the feats in the life and battles of some hero,
such as Roland (whose song was chanted by the troops of William
the Conqueror), or Charles Martel.
And so the foundations for many forms of modern music were
laid by the troubadours, for the _chanson_ or song was always
a narrative. If it were an evening song it was a _sera_ or
serenade, or if it were a night song, _nocturne_; a dance,
a _ballada_; a round dance, a _rounde_ or _rondo_; a country
love song, a _pastorella_. Even the words descant and treble
go back to their time; for the _jongleurs_, singing their
masters' songs, would not all follow the same melody; one
of them would seek to embellish it and sing something quite
different that still would fit well with the original melody,
just as nowadays, in small amateur bands we often hear a
flute player adding embellishing notes to his part. Soon,
more than one singer added to his part, and the new voice was
called the triple, third, or treble voice. This extemporizing
on the part of the _jongleurs_ soon had to be regulated, and
the actual notes written down to avoid confusion. Thus this
habit of singing merged into _faux bourdon_, which has been
discussed in a former chapter. Apart from these forms of song,
there were some called _sirventes_--that is "songs of service,"
which were very partisan, and were accompanied by drums, bells,
and pipes, and sometimes by trumpets. The more warlike of these
songs were sung at tournaments by the _jongleurs_ outside the
lists, while their masters, the troubadours, were doing battle,
of which custom a good description is to be found in Hagen's
book on the minnesingers.
In France the Provencal poetry lasted only until the middle
of the fourteenth century, after the troubadours had received
a crushing blow at the time the Albigenses were extirpated in
the thirteenth century.
In one city alone (that of Beziers), between 30,000 and 40,000
people were killed for heresy against the Pope. The motto
of the Pope's representatives was "God will know His Own,"
and Catholics as well as Albigenses (as the sect was called)
were massacred indiscriminately. That this heresy against
the Pope was vastly aided by the troubadours, is hardly open
to doubt. Such was their power that the rebellious, antipapal
_sirventes_ of the troubadours (which were sung by their troops
of _jongleurs_ in every market place) could be suppressed only
after the cities of Provence were almost entirely annihilated
and the population destroyed by the massacre, burning alive,
and the Inquisition.
A review of the poems of Bertran de Born, Bernart de Ventadour,
Thibaut, or others is hardly in place here. Therefore we
will pass to Germany, where the spirit of the troubadours was
assimilated in a peculiarly Germanic fashion by the minnesingers
and the mastersingers.
In Germany, the troubadours became minnesingers, or singers of
love songs, and as early as the middle of the twelfth century
the minnesingers were already a powerful factor in the life
of the epoch, counting among their number many great nobles
and kings. The German minnesingers differed from the French
troubadours in that they themselves accompanied their songs on
the viol, instead of employing _jongleurs_. Their poems, written
in the Swabian dialect, then the court language of Germany,
were characterized by greater pathos and purity than those of
the troubadours, and their longer poems, corresponding to the
_chansons de geste_ of the north of France, were also superior
to the latter in point of dignity and strength. From the French
we have the "Song of Roland" (which William the Conqueror's
troops sang in their invasion of England); from the Germans the
"Nibelungen Song," besides Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival"
and Gottfried von Strasburg's "Tristan." In contradistinction
to the poetry of the troubadours, that of the minnesingers
was characterized by an undercurrent of sadness which seems
to be peculiar to the Germanic race. The songs are full of
nature and the eternal strife between Winter and Summer and
their prototypes Death and Life (recalling the ancient myths
of Maneros, Bacchus, Astoreth, Bel, etc.).
After the death of Konrad IV, the last Swabian emperor of the
House of Hohenstaufen, minnesinging in Germany declined, and
was succeeded by the movement represented by the _meister_ or
mastersingers. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
when Germany was broken up into countless small duchies and
kingdoms, many of the German nobles became mere robbers and took
part in the innumerable little wars which kept the nation in
a state of ferment. Thus they had neither time nor inclination
to occupy themselves with such pursuits as poetry or music. In
the meanwhile, however, the incessant warfare and brigandage
that prevailed in the country tended to drive the population
to the cities for protection. The latter grew in size, and
little by little the tradespeople began to take up the arts
of poetry and music which had been discarded by the nobles.
Following their custom in respect to their trades, they formed