Luogo e data di registrazione		Kirche, Séon (Svizzera) - 24 maggio / 2 giugno 1976
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Gerd Berg / Johann-Nikolaus Matthes
	Prima Edizione LP		EMI Electrola "Reflexe" - 1C 069-46 401 - (1 lp) - durata 51' 59" - (p) 1976 - Analogico
	Prima Edizione CD		EMI "Classics" - CDM 7 63148 2 - (1 cd) - durata 52' 00" - (c) 1989 - ADD
	Edizione CD		EMI "Classics" - 8 26523 2 - (1 cd) - durata 51' 59" - (c) 2000 - ADD
	Note		-

VOX HUMANA in music of the middle ages The human voice, vox humana, in the music of the 12th and 13th centuries is the focal point ofthis recording. The period offers the earliest widespread display of professional singing within both the church and courtly circles, it offers the earliest discussions of learned singing, and it offers responsible critical comment on the preferred singing styles of different regions. The sources include both the secular literature and works of scholar. In the secular sphere the professional singer was a purveyor of poetry, often - though not always - poet and singer in one. In the homeland of the troubadours, Occitania, the social structure provided for a winter spent in writing and composition of a repertory to be employed during a summer season of aristocratic social encounters, at which songs were but one of the entertainments. The French trouveres to the north cultivated a similar entertainment structure involving the participation of both paid and amateur singers. The parallel literature from the Germanic lands is called Minnesang, and here as in the others repertories, love is on theme among many. Poetry, not music, was the moving force behind this song, and the authorship of the melodies is not communicated in the documents, only that of the text. Oftentimes a melody served for more than a single text, a text for more than a single melody. New texts patterned after existing ones became a form of homage to a distinguished poet. The entire repertory is monophonic, meaning that the original creative musical impulse is confined to the generation of melody. Latin, the international language of the educated, was employed in a distinguished but very different body of song. Apart from a few exceptions, the large body of this Latin repertory is of serious stuff, philosophical observation, admonition to poverty, etcetera, and while there is a body of Latin erotic poetry, drinking songs and the like, (Golliards) it was seldom set to music. This latin repertory was concieved for the limited consumption of the educated and probably seldom involved professional singers. Song in the secular world had two clear aims: to persuade and to be self-preserving. The performance determined the first, the poetic quality the latter. The persuasiveness of a performance depended upon skills of musical performance, gesture, language ability and related attributes. The mode of performance was unlike anything in the church, although vve have evidence of the great care with which the liturgy was designed to persuade. Secular song was shaped for each performance, and few songs were performed frequently. Instrumental support for the singer, the sparse documentation notwithstanding, was neither uncommon nor necessary. The combination of instrument with singer formed a distinct sound-picture of unique quality, a colour of sound not available - officially - in the church (attemps to introduce instruments into the church were repeatedly condemned by church authority). We can sympathize with the desire to bring into the church the miriad sounds of countless colourful instruments which were all available to the musical entertainment outside. The key word is colour. There was indeed a great assortment of instruments, the vielle, rebec, rabel, lira, rote, lute guiterne, citole, chitarra sarasenica, psalteiy, harp, flute and doucaine to name just few. Because essentially any of these instruments might mingle with any other, many varied and inticing instrumental colours might surround a singer’s voice. It is however probably fair to say that more time was spent absorbing the music of the church than that of the secular musicians. In a few of the larger establishments - notably Notre Dame de Paris - church musicians found ways to adorn their music with ornaments of new sounds quite unlike those of the secular world. The new colour of sacred music was polyhony, which can be viewed as an attempt to ornament liturgical and paraliturgical music in a manner unlike existing secular practice through the creation of a new vocal sound. Whereas instruments created colour through the heterophonic performance of monophonic music, voices, being of essentially similar quality, developed the colour of polyphony as a new resource which was to shape the succeeding music of the West. The vox humana grew from being a casual purveyor of text to being an instrument of colour, even devoid of text, and thus the creator of an abstract musical art for which special vocal techniques had to be learned. The Music and the Composers Several compositional genera for the voice developed in and around the liturgical music in the late 12th century. Liturgical music consisted largely of chant, of course, however there was an irrepressaple urge to amplify the chant (as well as the entire liturgical service), which led to new and interesting creations. Tho amplification of liturgical texts occured as tropes (new material) of farces (existing material). Tropes normally involved tho composition of new melody, and oftem overwhelmed the item being import by sheer size. Tropes occured as polyphony as well as monophony. The genre called conductus consist of musical settings of Latin non-liturgical and non-biblical texts. These settings might be monophonic (conductus simplex), or polyphonic (conductus duplex, triplex, etcetera). Conductus was composed in one of two manners, either with a melody, which was placed at the bottom with synchronized disciplined descanting above, or it was a composition of short sections with no clear melody but consisting of a flow of consonance and dissonance as well as syllabic and melismatic writing. The text was treated for maximum comprehensability, the words being pronounced at the same time in all the parts. The rhythm of the text determined the rhythm of the music, while in melismatic passage the rhythm derived from the practice called modal rhythm, similar in many ways to iambic, trochaic etcetera meters. Organum, which also made use of modal rhythms, occures exclusively in liturgical composition. Organal composition in the period under discussion proceeded in a manner quite unlike conductus. An existing chant melody is amplified by organum per se in which each note of the melody is sustained while melismatic descant is placed over it, by discant style in which both chant and descant move in modal rhythms, and these styles are bridged by short passages, sometimes called copula. Sections of organum called clausula were written in discant style, and were recomposed again and again for the same chant (substitute clausula, for which new descant is composed over the same section of chant. Sometimes in the 13th century, these clausula were texted; not only was the original chant text retained in the bottom, but additional texts were placed in the upper parts. Although originally these new texts were liturgically appropriate, they veered from that path and assumed decidedly secular character, ofter employing the French language. These French texts were freduently citations from French secular romances, and hence the name motet for this form. The motet became a separate genre of composition, completely secular in use, and a field for compositional experimentation. The bottom part was no longer chanted but was played on an instrument (vielle was preferred) and it is here that instruments first gain entrance to the world of learned, pholyphonic music. During the latter part of the 13th century, new rhythmic ideas were introduced into motet composition. Petrus de Cruce departed from the convention of modal rhythm by subdividing long notes into any number of sharter equal notes, three, four, five, six, seven etcetera. Rhythmic innovations and their notation settled into a system - Franco of Cologne, later Philip de Vitry - serving as the basis for modern musical thought and expression up to the present day. The Occitanian poetry of the 12th and 13th centuries, the Troubadour lyric, symbol of courtly love, included a wide range of subiects - politics, philosophy, nature, love - was composed on several artistic levels ranging from the simple song (trobar plan) to the enigmatic, dark poetry (trobar clus) including the unusual original rhymes (caras rimas). Arnaut Daniel was active towards the close of the l2th century, an enthusiast of the trobar clus. His poem "Io ferm voler" established his reputation for posterity, being the original sestina, praised by Dante and imitated by Petrarch and may others: six strophes containig six lines and six rime words which occure in a different position in each stroph, concluding with a tornada consisting of three lines each containing two of the rime words. This is one of the most published of the Troubadour lyrics. Raimbaut d’Aurenga, more or less a contemporary of Daniel, maintained in a dispute with Giraut of Borneilh that to compose in trobar plan was to court the praise of fools. Aurenga prefered to appeal to the men of intelligence through his caras rimas. In this poem he introduces a number of words which rime with his name. The German poets, Minnesinger, were unaffected by the catastrophic destruction of the Langue Doc through the Albigensian Crusade (of Agonie du Langue D'Oc 1C 063-30 132) and they continued the monophonic song tradition into the fifteenth century (of Oswald von Wolkenstein 1C O63-30 101). Meister Alexander (13th century), also called wild Alexander (der wilde Alexander) is poorly represented in the surviving collections from the Middle Ages. This was certainly one of the famous songs of its day, with an added stroph relating the innocent children, the snake and the bitten child to the parable of th foolish virgins. In the Middle Ages authorship was normally a reference to text rather than to music, so that we know the names of few composers of liturgical music. Without doubt, the best known composer in this genre (for us today) is Perotin, who is identified by a single medieval author, an Englishman known to us today as Anon. IV, who identified a few of his compositions in his 13th century treatise. Perotin composed organa, clausulae and conductus for Notre Dame in Paris. The compositions were originally performed by the schola cantorum od soloists at the cathedral, but circulated beyond these confines, and known long after organa was no longer sung in the Parisian liturgy. The Montpellier Codex, for example, a large 13th century collection of basically secular music of an educated circle, also contains this organum of Perotin, suggesting the possibility of its survival as non-liturgical absolute music (as it is performed here). (As part of the liturgy it would be performed but once a year). Instruments Many medieval sources provide us with information concearning the use of instruments and to a lesser extent about the attributes of the instruments: instruments themselves have not survived. During the monophonic period (12th and 13th centuries) instruments were usually combined according to color and function rather than range. The major types of instruments existed in an almost infinite variation, some suited for melody playing others for drones and still others for these combined. Thus a large ensemble would sparkle like a tree full of birds each with his own song (Chrestian de Troys), a splendid combination of reeds and flutes with plucked strings and bowed strings or all sorts. A great many of these instruments fell out of use or retreated from art music during the formative years ot the polyhonic period (14th century), as the demands of this new music became highly specific. Chitarra Sarasenica (Moorish Guitar) is one of the longnecked lutes common aroung the Medeterranian. It is plucked with a quill and has wire strings. It is pictured in the miniatures of the Cantigas manuscripts and elsewhere, and mentioned by Grocheo, Machaut, Ruiz and others. Lute is a short-necked plucked instrument, similar to the Arab ’ud. It is one of the most prevelant instruments in the l\/liddle Ages. Rapel refers to a longnecked bowed instrument similar to the chitarra Sarasenica, pictured in Iberian sources. The long wire strings yield a warm nasel tone not unlike that of many Eastern rebabs. Vielle is the most prevelant bowed instrument, the indirect ancestor of the violin. It is discussed by many authors including Johannes Grocheo and Jerome of Moravia. This last author also discusses the Lira, a small bowed string instrument with a pear shape, similar to the lirica of Dalmatia today. The voice, both male and female, cultivated the head, middle and chest resonance with greatly varying placement. Mixture of resonance areas seems to have been avoided, unlike modern practice, or at least was uncommon. There vvere strong regional characteristics of color and articulation techniques (The florid, stepwise singing of the Romans, the less ornate singing by leaps of the Teutons). The language was a major formative element in establishing the different regional characteristics of the voice. This recording was made to honour the artist Johnny Friedländer and was originally issued in a limited edition to accompany a set ot his lithographs which bore the title Hommage a Studio der frühen Musik. This is the first public offering of this recording. Gudrun Meier
EMI Electrola "Reflexe"