The Foundation for Iberian Music

presents

Medieval Percussion

Instruments in

Spain and Italy:

A Little Festival

Thursday, viii Idus Maii mmviii

The Graduate Center/CUNY

34^th Street and Fifth Avenue

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1:00-2:00 P.M.

CONCERT

Elebash Recital Hall 

De mar a mar:
Music in the Medieval Iberian Peninsula

Ensemble Sendebar

Mauricio Molina, Director

I

Quantas sabedes amar amigo            

Ondas do mare de Vigo

Ai Deus, se sab’ora meu amigo

Mia irmana flemosa                                                                  Martin Codax (13th c.)

II

Muito debemos varoes loar a Santa Maria (CSM 2)

A Madre do que livrrou (CSM 4)

Santa Maria amar devemos (CSM 7)                                        Cantigas de Santa Maria,                                                                                                          Alfonso X el sabio (13th c.)

III

Virgen Madre gloriosa (CSM 340)

Virgen Santa Maria (CSM 47)

Como podem per sas culpas (CSM 166)                                     Cantigas de Santa Maria, 

                                                                                                Alfonso X el sabio (13th c.)

IV

Tant m’abelis

Ab la fresca clardat                                                                  Berenguer de Palou (12th c.) 

Donna por vos ay chausia                                                       Anon. (13th c.)

Pus astres no m’es donatz                                                      Guiraut Riquier (13th c.)

V

Como o nome da virgen (CSM 194)                                      Cantigas de Santa Maria

Tanto son da Groriosa (CSM 48)                                              Alfonso X el sabio (13th c.)

Cuncti simus                                                                   

Los set gotx                                                                             Anon., Llibre Vermell de          

                                                                                                   Montserrat (14^th c.)

With the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west and with the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Iberian Peninsula is almost entirely framed by the sea.  During the Middle Ages, this land, the most southerly part of which stands only a few kilometers from the North African coast, enjoyed an astonishing history of cultural exchange between Christian, Muslims, and Jews. In De mar a mar, the ensemble Sendebar explores the rich repertoire of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century medieval Iberian music composed at

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some of the most important cultural centers of the Peninsula. The performance includes music from the Cantigas de Santa Maria of King Alfonso X “The Learned” (13th c.), the Cantigas d'Amigo of the Galician troubadour Martin Codax (13th c.), the courtly songs of the Catalan troubadour Berenguer de Palou (12^th c.), and spiritual pieces from the manuscripts known as the Códice las Huelgas (13^th c.) and the Llibre Vermell of Montserrat (14^th c.).

The first set of pieces belongs to the corpus of the so-called Cantigas d’Amigo, a literary genre that consists of a monologue spoken by a young woman who anxiously awaits for the return of her lover.  (See the separate sheet for the texts and translations of all the songs on the program.)  These songs, attributed to the Galician troubadour Martin Codax (active around 1213), make reference to Vigo, one of the most important Iberian ports on the Atlantic Ocean.  Also characteristic of the genre is the organization by parallel couplets, a poetic technique in which the text of the second couplet repeats that of the first almost verbatim, thus intensifying the theme of the piece and permitting each idea to unfold systematically in two parallel scripts.  The parallelism is further enhanced by a procedure called “leixa pren,” in which the first line of the third and fourth strophes are identical to the last line of the second couplet. Finally, as is customary in this repertory, each piece includes a refrain that diverges from the thematic and poetic structure of the rest of the poem.  Scholars have suggested that the Cantigas d’Amigo evolved from an older genre of female songs native to the Peninsula that was formalized by twelfth- and thirteenth-century Galician troubadours who were connected with the intellectual-artistic environment of Santiago de Compostela.

The second and third sets consist of pieces from the thirteenth-century Cantigas de Santa Maria (CSM), a collection of more than four hundred monophonic pieces in Galician-Portuguese composed and compiled in Castile at the multicultural court of King Alfonso X “the wise” (1252-1284).  Most of the poetry of these pieces is narrative and usually recounts miracles performed by the Virgin.  In general, the CSM are comprised of an initial refrain of two or more lines followed by a stanza. This stanza begins with a new rhyme that is heard three times before returning to the original rhyme of the refrain.  After that the refrain is presented again. Thus, the poetic structure of the poems can be shown as AA/bbba/AA.  That the strophic form of the Cantigas is similar to that of the zejel, the most popular poetic structure in Islamic Iberia, suggests a close relation between the two forms.  In terms of its music, the poetic structure of the CSM is often set in tripartite fashion, with the refrain and the second half of the stanza being set to the same music, while the stanza’s first half is set to a different melody.  Since the music of the refrain reoccurs before the rhyme of the refrain reappears at the end of the stanza, the poetic and musical structure rub against one another, with this asymmetry representing the most representative structural feature of the repertoire.

Although a substantial number of by Catalan-born troubadours have survived to our day, only few reach us with their melodies.  The surviving pieces are not in Catalan but in Occitan, the language of the troubadours, and their melodies and musical structure also follow musical schemes that are characteristic of the courtly repertoire of southern France.  In our fourth set we present two of these pieces:  Tant m’abelis and Ab la fresca clardat, both composed by the Catalan troubadour Berenguer de Palou (fl. 1160-1209) in honor of the noble woman Maria de Peralada. The last piece of the set, Pus astres no m’es donatz, is by the troubadour Guiraut Riquier (c. 1230-c.1300); dedicated to the Catalans, it was composed with an eye to gaining the patronage of the Catalan-Aragonese  King Jaume I.

The last two pieces in our program, Cincti simus and Los set gotxs, come from the Llibre Vermell de Montserrat, a manuscript produced during the late fourteenth century in the scriptorium of the Monastery of Montserrat, the most important pilgrimage center in medieval Catalonia.  We know from an indication that appears in the manuscript that both pieces were composed to be sung and danced by the pilgrims during their stay at the monastery, a prescription intended to replace the visitors’ own music, considered to be lascivious and impious, with “honest and devout songs.”  Los set gotxs is particularly interesting on the grounds that it is the oldest extant Catalan piece that celebrates the Seven Joys of the Virgin Mary, a traditional subject in Catalonian literature.  The piece is comprised of a stanza whose text is set to a melody that presents open and close endings (ouvert and clos), and a refrain that is repeated twice.  Moreover, since the manuscript refers to Los set gotxs as a “ball redon” (round dance), it was evidently intended to be danced.  In fact, the association of round dances with the cult of the Virgin Mary well attested to by contemporary musical iconography.

Perhaps the best example of this is an illustration that accompanies the Cantiga de Santa Maria, No. 120, in MS El Escorial, T.J.I., where a group of musicians play in honor of the Virgin Mary while a group of men perform a round dance.

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3:00-5:00 P.M.

PAPERS

Room 3491

 “New Evidence for the Origins of the Timpani

in Western Europe”

Susan Weiss and Ichiro Fujinaga

The standard earliest reference to large kettledrums in Western Europe is an account by the French eyewitness who describes the an envoy of the Hungarian King Ladislas V in 1457.  Modern renditions of this report, including one in Grove Music Online, are almost always incorrect.  The account is quoted in a history book written by an eighteenth-century priest named Benoit Picard of Toul (1663-1720).  Father Benoit, then, cannot be the actual eyewitness, as is often implied.

The paper will not only unveil a more accurate account of the 1457 event, but will also present new evidence to suggest an even earlier presence of these large percussion instruments in Western Europe.  Based on a recent discovery in a relatively well-known fresco by Lipo Vanni in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, dated 1363-1373, we are able to roll back the date of the earliest evidence of kettledrums in Western Europe by nearly eighty years, to the late fourteenth century.

 “Fai totz los cascavels ordir:

Reconstructing the Timbre and Performance Practice

of the Medieval Iberian Round Frame Drum with Jingles”

Mauricio Molina

Literary and iconographical medieval Iberian sources reveal that circular frame drums were widely used throughout the peninsula.  These instruments were known as panderos and consisted of thin parchment stretched over a shallow frame of light wood.  By the fourteenth century a type furnished with brass jingles was commonly used to accompany the courtly dance-song repertoire.  Contemporary accounts describe how the sound of the instrument was “sweetened” by its brass resonators.  In conjunction with an analysis of the instrument’s materials, these descriptions help us to reconstruct its sound color.  Different elements of pandero playing technique also can be witnessed in the sources.  An examination of modern frame drumming traditions shows that some elements have continued to be used in the Mediterranean area and Latin America.  This fortunate case of continuity offers us the unique opportunity to corroborate and expand medieval data with the observation of modern performance practices. 

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PARTICIPANTS

Ensemble Sendebar

Emily Eagen                              voice

Cristina Boixadera                   pipe and tabor, adufe

Mauricio Molina                                    pandero, adufe, tarija, hurdy-gurdy

Francesc Sans i Bonet              medieval bagpipes, caramella

Carlo Valte                               ‘ūd, tarija

Mauricio Molina, Director

Sendebar is an ensemble dedicated to the performance of medieval Mediterranean music.  Directed by the musicologist Mauricio Molina and comprised of a group of specialists in early and traditional musics of the Mediterranean, the ensemble reconstructs the performance of medieval music by combining a rigorous study of the historical sources with the observation of live traditions that display elements of this ancient practice. The group’s choice of instruments is based primarily on an illumination in the Haggadah de Barcelona, a fourteenth-century Jewish manuscript that shows an ensemble of musicians performing on lute, fiddle, bagpipes, pipe and tabor, and percussion instruments.

Ichiro Fujinaga is an Associate Professor in Music Technology Area at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University.  He has Bachelor’s degrees in Music/Percussion and Mathematics from the University of Alberta and both a Master’s degree in Music Theory and a Ph.D. in Music Technology from McGill University.  In 2003/04, he was the Acting Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) at McGill.  In 2002/03, he was the Chair of the Music Technology Area at the School of Music.  Prior to that, he was on the faculty of the Computer Music Department at the Peabody conservatory of Music/Johns Hopkins University.  

Mauricio Molina holds a Ph.D. in Musicology from The Graduate Center of The City University of New York.  Dedicated to the reconstruction of medieval Mediterranean music, he studies literary and iconographical sources of the period, analyzes instruments housed in museums, and conducts fieldwork in Europe, North Africa, and Latin America.  He is the director of the medieval music ensemble Sendebar and collaborates with various early and traditional music ensembles in Europe and the United States.  He has published articles and lectured and conducted workshops about medieval music and historical and traditional frame drums at universities, music festivals, and museums. His dissertation, “Frame Drums in the Medieval Iberian Peninsula,” received the Higini Anglès Prize in 2006 and will be published in Spain by Reichenberger-Kassel in 2008.