THE TROUVERE CHANSONS AS CREA TIONS OF A NOTA TIONLESS MUSICAL CUL TURE Hendrik Van der Werf THE TROUVERES occupy a curious and bifarious position in the cultural history of the Middle Ages. According to tradi- tion they were both poets and composers, which leads us to ask whether they were poets first and musicians second, whether their poems existed by grace of the melodies, or whether they attained the apogee of lyrical art: complete unity of poem and melody. Whichever is the case, the trouveres stand apart from their fellow poets, and especially from their fellow composers, in their predilection for monodic chansons which are often eso- teric in content. Some medieval authors such as Chretien de Troyes, Richard de Fournival and Jean Bodel, who are prima- rily known for literary works, also wrote chansons, but the famous trouveres, except for Adam de la Halle, produced chan- sons exclusively. Adam seems to have been exceptionally ven- turesome in his choice of literary and musical genres. As far as we know, no other trouvere composed polyphonic music, and he and Guillaume d'Amiens were the only trouveres to write chansons in fixed forms. Hundreds of trouvere chansons have been preserved.! They evoke colorful images and arouse great curiosity about the per- sonalities of the trouveres and the circumstances in which the chansons were created and performed. The scarcity of informa- tion has stimulated rather than dampened this curiosity, making it difficult sometimes to distinguish fact from fancy. In the last analysis, knowledge of the conditions surrounding the chansons remains quite incomplete. It is often pointed out that there were many noblemen among the troubadours, the earliest authors of vernacular lyric poetry; the ranks of the trouveres, on the other hand, included 1 For a list of the trouvere chansons with complete information about their sources, see Spanke 1955. HENDRIK VAN DER WERF graduated Ph.D. in Musicology at Columbia in 1964 and is presently teaching at the Eastman School of Music, Rochester. 61 burghers as well. We may' further assume that the ttouveres, whatever their social status, were in general not professional authors or musicians. It is widely accepted that the trouveres left the performance of their chansons to professional performers, the so-called jongleurs. Everything considered, it is easier to establish the characteristics of a trouvere chanson than of a trou- vere or a jongleur. A trouvere chanson is often preserved in more than one manuscript, but the melody of the chanson is seldom identical in all sources. In some cases the versions differ only slightly, whereas in others there does not seem to be any relationship between them, even though the text demonstrates that we deal with the same chanson. Nevertheless, there is usually no doubt about the common parentage of the preserved melodies even if the discrepancies are considerable. Thus editors of trouvere mel- odies are confronted with the problem of establishing the original melody, while wondering how so many significant changes could occur. Nearly all editors of trouvere melodies appear to have been guided by the principle that most of the discrepancies in the sources are deteriorations caused by scribal inaccuracy or by inadequacies of the oral tradition. Friedrich Gennrich, the acknowledged authority in the field of secular medieval monody, formulat.ed the following simple and seemingly undebatable principle for deriving the critical version of a medieval song from its various versions: correct the recognized errors and record the variants (1937:33). He explicitly rejects the opinion of those, notably Pierre Aubry (1909:XXVII), who warn that attempts to reconstruct the original melody of the trouvere chanson may well result in the creation of a new composition. Instead, Gennrich claims that "at present we are able to estab- lish a critical version of the melody with equal if not greater certainty than the text" (1955:XIV). At first sight Gennrich's principles seem quite acceptable even though he seldom men- tions the corrections he makes in his own editions. But a closer examination reveals a number of aspects that are questionable to say the least. Gennrich's method of editing medieval monody is extensively explained by Werner Bittinger (1953), who gives the careful reader the impression that this method con- sists of a set of directions for distilling the best possible melody from a number of different versions of a chanson, . - and for proving that the versions we find in the chansonniers 62 are scribal deformations of this best version. Aubry's observa- tion-certainly startling for its time-that the discrepancies were legitimate variants rather than errors goes unheeded. He regarded the indistinct melodies and the imprecise notation as the chief causes of the variants (1909:XXIV). Philologists who publish the poems of the trouveres en- counter problems similar to those of the musicologists who edit the melodies. Since very few of the melodies but nearly all of the poems have been published, it is worthwhile examining the philologists' approach. We find that the 19th- and early 20th- century editions of poems were based upon the principle that somewhere under a blanket of scribal errors and other deterio- rations lay the original poem in all its charm and beauty. Ac- cordingly, the editors set out to correct all errors and emend all changes made by later hands. However, they gradually concluded that their basic principle implied some questionable assumptions, such as, that the scribes were extremely inaccurate and made scores of mistakes, and that the chansons could only deteriorate during the process of being performed and copied. According to these assumptions, each chanson was sent into the world as a good chan'son which the performers and scribes corrupted and forgot parts of, offering a poor substitute for the original poem. Realizing these implications, some editors came to the conclusion that efforts to reconstruct the original had produced only a new version. A hallmark of the old editorial policy can be seen in the fol- lowing announcement on the title page of a collection of chan- sons by the Chaste lain de Coucy: Die Lieder Castellans von Couey naeh samtliehen Handsehriften kritisch bearbeitet (Fritz Fath, ed. 1883). In a later edition by Arthur Langfors we see the emergence of a new approach. He remarks that "by making a small number of corrections fin a certain version] one obtains an excellent text; we shall indicate only the princi- pal variants in the other manuscripts" (1917:65). The new edi- torial method invited discussion among scholars concerning the nature of the small corrections one should make, but in general there were no more attempts to reconstruct the original. The philologists came to the conclusion that for a long time studies of medieval literature were influenced by "prejudices and prepossessions which years of association with printed matter have made habitual ... If a fair judgment is to be 63 passed upon literary works belonging to the centuries before printing was invented, some effort must be made to realize the extent of the prejudices with which we have grown up, and to resist the involuntary demand that medieval literature must conform to our standards of taste" (Chaytor 1945:1). In study by H. J. Chaytor just quoted we find revealing information about medieval reading and writing habits, about oral tradition, and about the methods of copying texts, and we are made aware of the enormous change in attitude towards language in general, and the written or printed word in par- ticular. This change has come about mainly since the invention of printing. If the findings of the philologists are applied to the study of the melodies, the discrepancies in the manuscripts become sources of abundant information about the compositional technique of the trouveres, the performance habits of the jong- leurs, and the scribal methods of copyists. Our first and probably most important conclusion is that, in general; the different versions of a chanson present that chanson as it was performed by different jongleurs who had learned the chanson by rote either directly or indirectly from the trouvere himself. In other words, the chansons were in the first place disseminated by oral tradition and not by copies made from the trouvere's autograph. Only towards the end of the trouvere era did the chansons become "collectors' items," and only then was the chanson, written down as it was per- formed at the time. It follows that we should not judge the melodies from their appearance in notation, but rather we should sing them while thinking of an audience; instead of basing the analysis of a chanson upon one melody reconstructed from sev- eral sources, we should analyze all the melodies as they appear in the sources. Then, when comparing these different versions we should realize that it was not compulsory for a performer always to sing a chanson with exactly the same melody. For him a chanson was not an untouchable entity with a sacred "original form" to be respected and preserved. It was normal for a jongleur to perform in the way he thought that particular chanson ought to be performed and we should not pass judg- ment on a jongleur who invented part of a melody or even an entire one. Thus the differences in the versions are not neces- sarily infractions of the rules for performing someone ,else's composition, as present-day audiences would be inclined to think; 64 neither should they be considered as conscious improvisations upon a given theme in the modern sense of the word. On the. contrary, according to the jongleur's concept, he was singing the trouvthe's melody even though, according to our concept, he was varying it. The difference between these concepts reflects the fa<;:t that our attitude towards printed music differs con'- siderably from the jongleur's attitude towards the poetry and melody of a chanson learned by rote. As a second conclusion from the work of the philologists, we must stress the important effect of oral tradition on scribal copying methods. There may be documentary evi- dence for the oral tradition of the melodies,2 but without dissemination of this kind the discrepancies among the versions of a given chanson would have been different, unless it is assumed that the scribes either did not know anything about music or that they continually did' their best to change the original as much as possible without writing a new chanson. A chanson may have been notated on different occasions after performances by one or several different jongleurs; each s\lch notation may have been copied several times, and the version which we find in a manuscript may be a first notation or a remote copy of it. We may safely assume that the scribes (those who first notated it and those who made copies) did make changes but that .only an infinitesimal number of these changes are caused by real scribal inaccuracy; instead, they are the consequence of the attitude towards a chanson trans- mitted by oral tradition and of the medieval methods of copy- ing.I do not wish to imply that medieval methods of copying were primitive, only that in several respects circumstances were different from those of today. There was no one pre- scribed way of performing a certain chanson, nor was there the uniformity in musical notation that we now know. Monody was much less uniformly notated than the measured polyphony of the period, though they were perhaps notated by the same scribes. Furthermore, we may conclude that the scribes did not copy at sight symbol for symbol. Instead, certain manu- scripts show clearly that a scribe must have sung to himself 'We are not trying to establish the extent to which oral tradition affected the dissemination of the text. Since there are empty staffs above the words of so 'many chansons we may conclude that it was more difficult to obtain the music than the words, and that there may well have been more copying of the poems than of the melodies. 65 a section from the manuscript in .front of him-not necessarily the melody of exact.ly· one entire line-and then copied from memory what he had heard rather than what. he had seen. Consequently he put himself in the position of a jongleur .notat- ing his own performance. In this process he could make delib- erate changes and corrections, but he may also have uncon- sciously varied the melody more or less extensively by changing' the distribution of the melody over the text, by ornamenting the meloJy, or by simplifying it. "'It Furthermore, it may be assumed that many of the nota tors and copyists had respectable educations and knew more about the theory of music and the rules of rhetoric than many a trou- vere or any jongleur did. Consequently, we have to take into 'account a tendency on the part of notator and copyist to correct the trouvere and jongleur. Thus in some cases the changes made by the scribe are in accordance with performance practices, but in other cases the scribe's objective was to make. the chanson conform to the theories. In some chansons he may even have transformed free rhythm into . Of course, it is conceivable that among the many jongleurs who knew a given chanson there was one who performed it in its original form; subsequently, this chanson may have been written down 'exactly as the trouvere had created it. Thus we may possess the original. melody for some chansons; but we cannot be sure of our ability' to distinguish the original from among the recorded versions. We cannot simply assume that the version we think is best is theoriginat for it is quite possible that the jongleurs,. who were experienced singers, were better musicians than many trouveres and· improved upon the latter's creation. More important, even if we could determine the original version, we should not discard the others, because inmost cases the chansonniers present us with various fully acceptable melodies in the best manner of the period. 3In light of this knowledge we observe that most of the chansons in the manuscripts K, L, N, P and X were copied directly or indirectly from one mon source. On the other hand, many of the chansons in the manuscripts M and T are related in a different fashion: they were probably not copied from one common source but notated from different renditions, which, however, may have come from the same performer. Furthermore, we may conclude that the scribe of the Chansormier Cange was thoroughly familiar with motets, chan- sons in fixed form, and the like, and that this strongly influenced his opinion of the notation and the performanoe of the true trouvere chansons. (The manuscript sigla are those used in Spanke 1955.) 66 Rather than accepting the above observations as premises for further examination of the trouvere reper'toire, we .should regard them as two aspects of one complex theory. Other aspects of this theory concern rhythm, tonal' structure, melodic form, and the position of the trouveres in medieval culture, aspects which I shall discuss fully in future articles. Here I will briefly mention their major features: 1. Careful examination of the variants discloses that only a very small number of the chansons were meant to be per- formed in a strict, a modified, or a mixed modal rhythm. If all the chansons had been performed in modal rhythm, as is gen- erally assumed, variants would have been quite different. In fact, the variants are such that they could originate only in declamatory performances of. which the rhythm is free in two ways: first, accented and unaccented tones and syllables may come at irregular intervals, and second, there is not necessarily a simple ratio between the duration of one tone or syllable and that of another. 2. It also becomes obvious that there is no reason to assume < ' that the trouveres were guided by the system of the so-called church modes in composing their melodies, or that they wrote in major or minor scales with tonics, dominants, and leading tones, as has sometimes been suggested. Nor is there always the close interdependence between versification and melodic form which Gennrich describes. Instead, the melodies give the impres- sion of being "remembered improvisations" with little design and a rather loose organization. 3. The chansons in fixed form, the French motets, and the Spanish cantigas stem from the world of learned musicians, whereas the chansons of the trouveres originated and circu- lated in a notationless musical culture in which notation and theory exercised little or no influence, but in which the rules of rhetoric were well-known and faithfully observed. Instances of border-crossing are only occasional; therefore, a trouvere chanson resembling a monophonic motet is a rare exception. But it is just these exceptions that mislead so many musicologists who approach the chansons as intricate musical settings ofa text. Instead, a trouvere chanson is a poem to be declaimed to an unobtrusive melody which leaves the performer ample freedom for a dramatic re·ndition of the text and sometimes for showing off his beautiful voice. 67 REFERENCES AUBRY, PIERRE, ed. 1909 Joseph Bedier, Ch,!nsons deCroisade ... avec leurs melodies. Paris BITTINGER, WERNER . 1953 Studienzur Musikalischen Textkritik des Mittelalterlichen Liedes. Fried- rich Gennrich (Ed). Literarhistorisch-Musikwissenschaftliche Abhand- lungen, Wurzburg. Vol. 9. CHA YTOR, H. J. 1945 From Script to Print: an Introduction to Medieval Literature. Cam- bridge. GENNRICH, FRIEDRICH 1937 Grundsatzliches zu den Troubadour-und Trouvere-Weisen. Zeitschrift fur Romanische Philologie 57. 1955 Altfranzosische Lieder, Vol. 1. Tiibingen: Sammlung Romanischer Obungstexte, Vol. 36. LANGFORS, ARTHUR 1917 Les Chansons attribuees aux seigneurs de Craon. Helsinki. SPANKE, HANS, ed. 1955 Gaston Raynauds Bibliographie des altfranzosischen Liedes, neu bearbeitet und ergiinzt. Leiden. 68