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How to Write Medieval Music
Jan. 15th, 2008 12:05 pmI think I want that to be my next A&S class. I've got a good start on it.
We have so many talented people writing original songs in the SCA, and so few of them sound anything like medieval music is thought to sound like. (I include myself in that; my last piece, "By Your Side," sounds exactly like a 1970s Jesuit hymn ripping off John Denver to get then-young butts into pews.) I'm persuing Ross Duffin's "A Performer's Guide to Medieval Music," and it's no wonder. A lot of this stuff is obscure, especially if you're a play-by-ear, theory-what-theory? sort of bard.
A simpler how-to, aimed at folks who don't have the time or inclination to spend months reading up on early music theory, would be useful.
At a first cut, I think I'd include:
Melody: Use Dorian mode, not the major scale. (Explain the difference with "Do, a Deer" or the like.)
Melodic Structure: Typical melodic span of an octave, give or take a few notes
Rhythm: Welcome to the biggest bone of contention in early music. Maybe introduce the rhythmic modes. Maybe. Otherwise, encourage 6/8 time.
Song Structure: Boy howdy, there's a lot out there to get familiar with. Lais, motets, chansons, canon, virelais, pastourelles, rondeau... each has an associated poetic and melodic structure (or lack of structure, or varying structure). We can go beyond quatrain verses with a quatrain chorus. I have an ambition now to write a lai!
Themes: What ideas and themes each of the types of songs typically addressed
Accompaniment: Simple is good. None is fine.
Improvisation: They say over and over again that improvisation was an important part of medieval performance. I don't know if SCA composers would want to write "simple" versions of their work for improvised ornamentation by performers, or take the more modern road and write down a canonical, complete version. There's an interesting digression on the purpose of notation, there, and perhaps this should actually be omitted from a 201-level class.
Discography: Examples to listen to and steal from.
Contrafacta: Written examples to steal from, for those who read music
That's my outline as of today, although I haven't read up on English and German monophony yet. That'll be the interesting part, IMO. A lot of the troubadors' linguistic tricks relied (understandably) on their language and its grammar, and that's not necessarily readily translatable to English. I want to see what our Germanic-language ancestors were up to...
We have so many talented people writing original songs in the SCA, and so few of them sound anything like medieval music is thought to sound like. (I include myself in that; my last piece, "By Your Side," sounds exactly like a 1970s Jesuit hymn ripping off John Denver to get then-young butts into pews.) I'm persuing Ross Duffin's "A Performer's Guide to Medieval Music," and it's no wonder. A lot of this stuff is obscure, especially if you're a play-by-ear, theory-what-theory? sort of bard.
A simpler how-to, aimed at folks who don't have the time or inclination to spend months reading up on early music theory, would be useful.
At a first cut, I think I'd include:
Melody: Use Dorian mode, not the major scale. (Explain the difference with "Do, a Deer" or the like.)
Melodic Structure: Typical melodic span of an octave, give or take a few notes
Rhythm: Welcome to the biggest bone of contention in early music. Maybe introduce the rhythmic modes. Maybe. Otherwise, encourage 6/8 time.
Song Structure: Boy howdy, there's a lot out there to get familiar with. Lais, motets, chansons, canon, virelais, pastourelles, rondeau... each has an associated poetic and melodic structure (or lack of structure, or varying structure). We can go beyond quatrain verses with a quatrain chorus. I have an ambition now to write a lai!
Themes: What ideas and themes each of the types of songs typically addressed
Accompaniment: Simple is good. None is fine.
Improvisation: They say over and over again that improvisation was an important part of medieval performance. I don't know if SCA composers would want to write "simple" versions of their work for improvised ornamentation by performers, or take the more modern road and write down a canonical, complete version. There's an interesting digression on the purpose of notation, there, and perhaps this should actually be omitted from a 201-level class.
Discography: Examples to listen to and steal from.
Contrafacta: Written examples to steal from, for those who read music
That's my outline as of today, although I haven't read up on English and German monophony yet. That'll be the interesting part, IMO. A lot of the troubadors' linguistic tricks relied (understandably) on their language and its grammar, and that's not necessarily readily translatable to English. I want to see what our Germanic-language ancestors were up to...
