This week’s theme is…Rondos Old & New! When we hear music, our minds are constantly, and subconsciously, asking a very simple but important question: “is what I’m hearing right now the same or different than what I’ve heard before?” Musicians understand this important principle and so strive to balance the opposing forces of familiarity and contrast throughout their works. Too much of the same will get boring; too little of the same will become incoherent. The traditional forms that have governed music for centuries reflect this, most especially the rondo with its distinctive refrain that keeps coming back after we hear contrasting sections. The rondo has given musicians a basic but powerful and effective way to organize their musical materials in time for almost a millennium. This week we listen to examples from all across history.
Rondos Old & New, Day 1 – “Je muir, je muir d’amourete” by Adam de la Halle
There are different spellings depending on what country the music is from. The Italians and Germans tended to spell it “rondo”, whereas the French preferred “rondeau”. Both of those refer to essentially the same form, most often distilled as ABACA, although there are, of course, countless variations (as many as there are different rondos, really). But sometimes when you see the word “rondeau”, or its plural “rondeaux”, it refers to something a bit different, and quite a bit older. There is some controversy over how closely the two rondeau are related even though the words are identical. Some historians suspect a strong historical continuity. Others, like the great serialist Arnold Schoenberg, find this prospect dubious at best. Regardless, historical continuity or not, there is a significant resemblance that is worth noting.
The key element of a rondeau, old or new, is the refrain, that is a section that keeps coming back. That word is probably familiar to you. Any song you hear on the radio or sing around the campfire will most likely have a memorable and catchy refrain that is sung between the verses. There’s something satisfying, both emotionally and cognitively, in savoring the comfort that the refrain provides in its regular return. The formula is not new. For centuries musicians, and poets, have understood and harnessed the power of the refrain in their verse and song.
Some of the first in recorded history were the troubadours and trouveres. If you’ve heard either of those words before I wager it would be troubadour. Perhaps the word evokes images of medieval starving artists, itinerant singers wandering from place to place with lutes on their backs, singing for their supper in the villages and bergs they happened upon, and singing to the birds in the trees along the way. Recent scholarship has put this romantic myth to rest. There were itinerant singer poets, but they were called minstrels or jongleurs. The troubadours and trouveres were focused professionals who dedicated themselves to the production of high quality verse and song to grace courtly ears. Many were aristocratic themselves and so had personal experience with the themes of courtly love that heavily seasoned their poetry.
With both of them living and working in what is now France during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the difference between troubadours and trouveres is largely geographical and, consequently, linguistic, but they were rather similar in their medium and manner of artistry. The troubadours were in the southern regions and the trouveres in the north. They worked in different languages. The southerly troubadours sung in Old Occitan and influenced similar artists in Spain, Italy, and Germany. The trouveres sung in the northern dialects that became French and, judging by the sound of their songs, provided the initial kindling that flared up into Franco-Flemish polyphony shortly after. It’s only a hop, skip and a jump from the trouveres to Guillaume de Machaut, who wrote songs in many of the same forms as they, for instance, rondeaux.
For the trouveres I suspect there was very little distinction between poetry and song. They must have gone together quite naturally, with hardly any boundary between them. And they channeled their themes of chivalry and unrequited courtly love into a small handful of fixed poetic forms that could be counted on to provide reliable effect once filled in. Both pleasing in proportion and natural in their cognitive pacing, these formes fixes, or “fixed forms”, became old standbys, oft-used outlines which helped guide the creation of affecting verse and song. For the listener, the fun would have been in identifying the familiar pattern while discovering how the trouvere filled it up with new words.
The rondeau was one of three fixed forms, the others being ballade and virelai. All had their unique outlines of phrase structure and rhyming scheme. The rondeau is arguably the most exacting and intricate. It also exists in several different flavors of varying length. But we’re going to keep it simple and examine the most basic. The form, spelled out in letters, looks like this:
ABaAabAB
Any time you see a lower case letter, it means that it rhymes with the initial uppercase version, which always comes first. So you can get a sense of the rhyming scheme from looking at the letter code. Mind you this is a general outline. Some rondeaux don’t exactly fit this blueprint, and some are considerably more intricate. But it gives you the basic idea.
One of the greatest trouveres was Adam de la Halle. He went, as did many notable folks from around the 1200s, by several different names, including one that means “Adam the Hunchback”. I’ve heard that he vigorously denied the implication of that name, and it would be interesting to know its source (some speculate that it actually referred to one of his ancestors and he simply couldn’t shake the name). Unfortunately, not much is known about his personal life, a state not altogether uncommon for people of this time I’m sure. Even his date of birth varies by more than a half century depending on the source. And don’t let your associations with hunchbackery throw you: he was a keen intellect and a masterful artist. Here is one of his rondeaux:
Haunting, no? Adam had a real bead on the idea of courtly love, the distant, unrequited, chivalrous longing celebrated by aristocrats with too much time on their hands. It’s like equal parts emo, stoicism, and idolatry, and strikes us pragmatic 21st century folk as kind of absurd, but was the animating influence to so much music, poetry and art of Adam de la Halle’s time. What amazes me about music like this is that it is so spare and basic, and yet so evocative, and it fits the sensibility that gave rise to courtly love so completely. The rhythm has a dreamy, fantasizing lilt, but the harmony is pure silent suffering. The moment it starts you can feel the cold, bare stones of the castle walls, lined with tapestries, and royal eyes tearing up upon their thrones in response the affected romance of the poetry. And do you hear that plaintive refrain returning again and again?
Adam de la Halle was notable in that he wrote both monophonic (single line) songs, and also polyphonic songs which anticipated the music in multiple parts that would dominate Renaissance Europe. Je muir, je muir is polyphonic, but you may not have realized it from the last video because some of the parts were played softly by instruments. Here is another version, quite evocative in its own way, which presents the entire texture as sung by voices:
| Original French | Absurdly Stilted Google Translation |
| Je muir, je muir d’amourete,
Las! ai mi Par defaute d’amiete De merchi. A premiers la vi douchete; Je muir, je muir d’amourete, D’une atraitant manierete A dont la vi, Et puis la truis si fierete Quant li pri. Je muir, je muir d’amourete, Las! ai mi Par defaute d’amiete De merchi. |
I’m dying, I’m dying of love affair,
Alas! ouch, poor me! For I have no girlfriend, For misery. First I found any tender; I’m dying, I’m dying of love affair, one every violent way since I saw ; Then I found her so wild When I begged. I am dying, I am dying of love affair, Alas! ouch, poor me! For I have no girlfriend, For misery. |
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