1 LP - 1C 063-30 118 - (p) 1973

1 CD - 8 26486 2 - (c) 2000

Bernart de Ventadorn - Martim Codax




MARTIM CODAX (13. Jhdt.)

Siete canciones de amigo - 2 Singstimmen, Organetto, Laute, Fiedel, Flöte, Schlagzeug

1. Ondas do mar de vigo 3' 11"
2. Mandad ei comigo ca ven meu amigo 3' 16"
3. Mia ýrmana fremosa treidos comigo 2' 30"
4. Aý deus se sab ora meu amigo 5' 20"
5. Quantas sabedas amae amigo 2' 00"
6. Eno sagrado en vigo 4' 27"
7. Y ondas que eu vin veero 2' 45"



Bernart de Ventadorn (12. Jhdt.)

Chansons d'amour


- Ab joi mou le vers e.I momens - 2 Singstimmen, Organetto, Psalterium, Chitarra sarazenica, Rebec, Lira, Schlagzeug 14' 02"
- Poi preyatz me, snhor - 2 Singstimmen, Laute, Lira 12' 00"



 
STUDIO DER FRÜHEN MUSIK / Thomas Binkley, Leitung

- Andrea von Ramm, Sängerin
- Richard Levitt, Sänger
- Sterling Jones, Streichinstrumente
- Thomas Binkley, Zupfinsrumente
 






Luogo e data di registrazione
Bürgerbräu. München (Germania) - maggio 1973

Registrazione: live / studio
studio

Producer / Engineer
Gerd Berg / Johann Nikolaus Matthies


Prima Edizione LP
EMI Electrola "Reflexe" - 1C 063-30 118 - (1 lp) - durata 49' 31" - (p) 1973 - Analogico

Prima Edizione CD
EMI "Classics" - 8 26486 2 - (1 cd) - durata 49' 31" - (c) 2000 - ADD

Note
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THE TECHNIQUE OF PLAYING MONOPHONIC MUSIC
The question of performance style warrants some comment, because it is this more than anything else that enables the musician today to come to grips with very early music, and it is an understanding of this that enables the listener to enter critically into this world of art.
We are accustomed to expect the musical score to reflect fairly precisely the sound of a performance; even allowing for a bit of improvisation here and there, we expect the general flow of the music to be what is notated in the score. This is essentially true of Western music from about 1300 on, beginning with polyphonic music. It is not true of monophonic music. The secular song of the Troubadours and the Juglares and many others was expressed on paper only in terms of the text and the melody, while its expression in sound was quite something else. Each region, or at least many regions, developed performance styles of their own, which means that the same song was performed differently in different places or under different circumstances.
The singing style is one thing that changed from place to place, the sort of improvisation is another, and the choice of accompanying instruments another. Even the very idea behind the performance, whether a spontaneous performance or a carefully arranged show for invited guests, had a significant influence on the resultant sound.
What we have here is the sort of thing the professional musicians at a wealthy court in southern France and in northern Spain made of this material. The instrumental prelude tries to attract attention to the performance, establishes the tonality and general aesthetic level of the song. The strophes are separated by interludes which serve as a diversion. The accompaniments are in different styles, now in dialogue with the singer, now providing an accoustical background, now moving with the singer along the same line. The guiding factor in the instrumental work is the playing technique of the instruments involved. Each instrumentalist tries to bring the essence of his instrument into play, to be sure, within the bounds of a chosen style but without subordinating the chracteristics of the instrument to contrapuntal ideology.

MARTIM CODAX
Martim Codax, the early 13th century Galician juglar has left us in his Siete Canciones de Amigo, his Seven Songs of Love the earliest surviving examples of Iberian secular Music. We know very littly about the man, nor do we completely understand how he came to write these songs as a cycle (no other song cycles are known from this period).
The setting is the town of Vigo, located on the Atlantic coast of Spain just above the Portuguese border, and well known today for its excellent cuisine of fish and mollosks.
In the 13th century, one came to Vigo by way of two routes: one was the Camino de Santiago, the Pilgrim Road, called the Camino Francés, because it led from France across the whole of the North of Spain (viz. El Camino de Santiago 1C O63-30 107 and 1C 063-30 108). The other route to Vigo was the Sea.
Today, ships come from far and wide, loading and unloading goods, bringing and taking away travellers; today, the ondas do mar, the waves of the sea drifting towards an industrial town no longer suggest a poetic image, no longer contain a mystery of completely unknown qualities. But in the 13th century no ships came from around the world to dock at Vigo, because then the world was flat, and the sea surrounded the only piece of land there was, and the sea led out to a great nothingness beyond, a darkness and emptiness feared by all men.
For Martim Codax the sea at Vigo was the end of the world, and it was never certain that who sailied away from that shore would not fall off the edge of the world never to return. That then is the emptiness of this lover who waits by the church on the hill overlooking the sea at Vigo, waiting for his (or her) belovod, not understanding why she (he) does not come.

BERNART DE VENTADORN
Bernart de Ventadorn was a troubadour, which we hasten to point out was not really a profession but an activity which was a part of and which reflected a particular life style.
Those familiar with France will know the Limousin, but few will know the town of Egletons, which is the closest rail connection to the ruins of the once very impressive castle of Ventadorn. Enviable were those inhabitants of the Languedoc in the 12th century, for life then was cosy in the South of France. The art of the troubadours flourished in the warm sun and gendered a particular cultural ambiance in the courts of the nobility, where love of beauty, of music, of poetry and women were central to the creative and recreative life.
We think of the Count of Poitiers, Peire Vidal, of Bertrand de Born, P. de Auvergne, G. de Bornelh, etc. etc. but of the many troubadours and the thousands of poems and songs they have left us, Bernart de Ventadorn and his five-dozen songs are classic.
Only in one attribute is Bernart not typical of his colleagues: he was of low birth, son of an archer and the woman who fired the bake-ovens at the castle of Ventadorn. Yet Bernart came to be accepted into the house of his benefactor, the viscount of Ventadorn, who himself was a singer and poet and may have been Bernart’s teacher. The viscount had an attractive wife who - according to the vida - was the cause of some considerable difficulty for herself and for Bernart, but there is not a shread of evidence to support that contention. It is true, to be sure, that Bernart left his comfortable Ventadorn involuntarily, and, practiced in the art of courtly love and courtly poetry, soon found a place at the court of Eleanore of Acquitaine, reina dels Normans, wife (at that time) to Henry II of England.
Bernart spent some time in Normandy and then went with the queen to England where he stayed at least for two years. There it was where he wrote Pois preyatz me, senhor... to his distant Asziman, the otherwise nameless object of his earlier attentions. Needless to say, Asziman was not the sole object of Bernart’s attentions, but an early and revered one. Bels-Vezers was another (Ab joi meu...), who some contend was the wife of the Count of Vienne and others say was the wife of Raimon V, Count of Toulouse whose name was Constance. What does it matter who she was. Bernart disguised the names of his loves effectively, even employing the masculine gender on occasion. Bernart de Ventadorn began to write poetry about 1140 and he died before 1194. All of his poems are love poems of a personal nature, of which the two selected here are quite typical
.
Thomas Binkley

EMI Electrola "Reflexe"