About the Music

 

Secular vs. Sacred | "Medieval" | Renaissance | Composers We Like

Secular vs sacred

Otter's Court chooses to focus on secular (non-religious) music. Most European music that was recorded during the Middle Ages and Renaissance was done for the Catholic church, so we have a bit more limited selection of repertoire when we stay away from that. However, we want to get this lovely music out to everyone regardless of religious affiliation and felt that keeping it secular was the best way to do this.

However, religion infused Medieval and Renaissance life. Catholic Christianity was a basic assumption for most of Europe. (Islamic countries and Jewish culture were also rich in music at the time, which we will explore in future concerts.) It's almost impossible to avoid religious references completely in the music, so we don't try. It permeated the culture of the period completely and this is reflected in the music.

Historical Notes

"Medieval"

The "Middle Ages" refers to about 500-1500 and is usually used as a descriptor for specifically European history. This is, obviously, a huge span of time. Lumping all the music for a thousand years together under one adjective can be problematic!

Other languages tended to fare better than English (English got whomped when the French invaded in 1066), and we have compilations such as Piae Canciones from Finland and Cancionero de Palacio from Spain. These are all from later in the period, because:

Europe was pretty messed up during most of this period. It's also called the "Dark Ages" because civilazation was somewhat spotty. Knowledge was preserved in bits and pieces and all of it had to be carefully hand-written on parchment or vellum. Musical notation as we know it didn't exist at all until around 1000 when Guido d'Arezzo started using the four-line staff.

"-th century"

15th century = the 1400's. You probably know this but it took me longer than I like to admit to figure it out. 16th century = the 1500s, etc.

All of this means: the earliest music we do is from the 1200's, and most of our Medieval pieces are from the 15th century. An exception is the music of Guillaume de Machaut, but that guy is a Ph.D. thesis in himself (here's his wikipedia entry for an intro).

The music that we do have is mostly just melody lines (Machaut being a notable exception). Music of the time was highly improvisatory (musicians made it up as they went along, according to certain rules- like modern jazz). Thus, anything you hear besides the melody is usually a modern addition.

Performance practice of Medieval music differs widely. There's no way to know what it actually sounded like in the year 1250. We try to strike a balance with "historically informed performance".

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The Renaissance

Somewhere in the 1400's, depending on your source, Europe started to get its act together. Great thinkers, instead of mainly dying in wars and plagues, started changing philosophy, art, architecture, religion, music, etc. Gutenberg came along with his printing press. Church music developed complicated polyphony (multiple voices singing independent lines of music together so that it all fits)

This means we have a great deal more music to choose from in this period. Much more was being written, and a lot of it was being written down.

There so much information about this period and its music, that I won't even try to summarize it here.

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Our Favorite Composers/Compilations

Of course we love them all, but here are a few we particularly enjoy. Links are to wikipedia entries.

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Missing Pieces

If all the music that was actually performed during that time were recorded, we would be able to specialize a lot more, and this group might, for example, perform only late 1300's French popular song. However, hardly anything got written down. For example, there are only about 26 Medieval English songs with music preserved, and many of these are incomplete or corrupted. (All of these can be found wonderfully documented and sometimes reconstructed, in Medieval English Songs (Dobson & Harrison, 1979, out of print and rather expensive.)

Why is "Renaissance" so hard to spell?

It's a French word, which goes a long way towards explaining it. "Naissance" means "birth" (Naître is the verb "be born.") The word "nascent" (emerging) comes from the same root. Re-naissance thus means "rebirth." Keep the re-birth idea and you may avoid spelling it with two n's. I can't really help you with the "naissance" part.

What's the "c." about?

It stands for "circa" and means "approximately" or "we don't quite know, but it was around then."