Breton Lai - Latin Heroic Lai - Sequence - Spielmann und Kleriker (ca. 1200) - Sequentia

Ensemble: Sequentia
Album: Spielmann und Kleriker (ca. 1200)
Video: Ms. Latin 15158 - XIII secolo
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The title of this recording focuses on an important underlying aspect of medieval, and especially 12th-century, musical life: the interaction between two seemingly opposed groups of musicians, the clerics of the church and the professional secular minstrels. The conventional modern view of music in medieval Europe often makes a simplistic distinction between, on the one hand, the secular world of the travelling minstrel, who sang of erotic love and politics before noble audiences in castle halls, accompanied by a wide variety of instruments, and, on the other hand, the hermetically sealed world of church music, where priests, monks and nuns devoted themselves to a ritual music of praise and devotion, looking upon minstrels, love songs and musical instruments as works of the devil.
In fact, these two worlds had much in common. The courtly minstrel (Old French, jogelor; Middle High German, Spîlman) and the clerical musician (Latin: clericus, referring to all clergy, with the term cantores applying to liturgical vocal soloists) shared not only a love of music and poetry, but a vast repertoire of melodies, song-forms, instruments, and instrumental/vocal techniques as well.
But how and where did these worlds intersect? As with any investigation of medieval life, we must piece together the whole picture from tantalizing bits of evidence. For instance, we know that in the 12th-century, monasteries were recruiting increasingly among young adults of noble birth, as opposed to the earlier custom of accepting young children as oblates. This means that many novices, especially those of noble birth, would have come into the cloister with a prior experience of tournaments, courtly entertainment, secular love poetry and music. In addition, we know that several of the Occitan troubadours spent the winter months in monasteries, composing new cansos of love; and from these same monasteries, especially those in Aquitaine, came the 12th- century flowering of monophonic and polyphonic versus, masterpieces of the cantores' art. We even find secular musicians employed by members of the Church hierarchy, those bishops and abbots of noble birth whose tastes in music, as well as in politics, were more worldly than we might think. Medieval English payrolls inform us, for instance, that certain bishops and abbots had their own private minstrels. The Bishop of Durham once attended a royal festivity in the company of his two "harpours". Finally, we find an entire repertoire of simple clerical songs from the so-called Notre-Dame School of the late 12th century, which were probably intended for group singing, playing, and even dancing on special feast-days.
The list of such examples could go on and on. As we examine the "Renaissance of the 12th-Century", there begins to emerge a picture of great flux and exchange between the musical spheres of court and church. For this recording, we have chosen larger lyric forms, common in northern Europe, such as the sequence and the lai, forms which served the singer of courtly love, the instrumentalist, as well as the cantores of the church.

This is Sequentia’s first recording released in 1981, four years after the ensemble was founded, and had firmly established its repertoire focus and sound. The ensemble’s co-founders Barbara Thornton and Benjamin Bagby are joined here by Margriet Tindemans (medieval fiddle) and Crawford Young (medieval lute) in an ambitious – and unheard-of at that time – programme consisting of only five large-scale lais (instrumental and vocal), showing their relationship to the sequence form which was the inspiration for the name ‘Sequentia’. (https://www.sequentia.org/)

I wish you happy listening!
Mirkò Virginio Volpe
MUSICA MEDIEVALE
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1. Olim sudor Herculis - Firenze, Bibl. Laur., Plut. 29.1, fol. 417
2. Lai du Kievrefuel - Paris, Bibl. Nat., fr. 12615, fol. 66
3. Lai Markiol - Paris, Bibl. Nat., fr. 12615, fol. 72
4. Lai des Amans - Paris, Bibl. Nat., fr. 12615, fol. 69
5. Samson dux Fortissime - London, Brit. Mus., Harley 978, fol. 1
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Barbara Thornton - voice
Benjamin Bagby - voice, harp
Margriet Tindemans - fiddle
Crawford Young - luth, gittern
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