Page 78 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

FiguRE 4.6
A thirteenth-century Spanish miniature showing a medieval fiddle (the rebec or vielle) on the left and a lute on the right. Both instruments were brought into Spain by the Arabs and then carried northward into the lands of the troubadours and trouvères.
FiguRE 4.7
Hans Memling (c. 1430–1491), musical angels painted for the walls of a hospital in Bruges, Belgium. The depiction of the instruments is remarkably detailed.
Figure 4.7 shows a group of angels playing musical instruments of the late Middle Ages. Moving from left to right we see a straight-pipe trumpet, early trom- bone, small portative organ, harp, and vielle. The vielle (pronounced like the let- ters “V-L”) was a distant ancestor of the modern violin. It usually had five strings that were tuned in a way that made it very easy to play block chords, the same way that guitars today can easily produce basic triads, or “bar chords.” In fact, in medi- eval society the easily portable vielle served the function of our modern guitar: not only could it play a melody, it could also provide a basic chordal accompaniment for songs and dances. To hear the sound of the vielle, return to A chantar m’er, where it provides a solo introduction and then an accompaniment to the voice.
Music in the Renaissance, 1450–1600
Renaissance means literally “rebirth.” Historians use the term broadly to desig- nate a period of intellectual and artistic flowering that occurred first in Italy, then in France, and finally in England, during the years 1350–1600. Music historians, however, apply the term more narrowly to musical developments in those same countries during the period 1450–1600. But what was being reborn? During the Renaissance, writers, artists, and architects (see Figure 4.8) rediscovered the clas- sical world of Greece and Rome searching for models for civic and personal ex- pression. How should city government operate? What should a building look like? What about the sculpture erected within it? How should a poet construct a poem? How ought an orator fashion a speech, or a musician a song? The remains of classi- cal antiquity, some of which were just then being unearthed, provided the answer.
For musicians the process of “rebirth” posed a unique problem: no actual music from Greek and Roman times survived to be rediscovered! So Renaissance
56 chapter four music in the middle ages and renaissance
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© The Art Archive/Real Monasterio del Escorial, Spain/Laurie Platt Winfrey
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