The monophonic virelais of G. de Machaut have recently engaged with a contemporary understanding of early music. The non - simplistic character of Machaut’s monophonic virelais is increasingly advocated by many scholars. The studies by Leech-Wilkinson, Jenifer Bain, David Maw and Yolanda Plumley provide such evidence, engaged with the hierarchical, cadenza types, circular form, implied polyphony, interplay of melodic phrase and poetic line, indeterminate pitch center, and pre-compositional tonal relationship.[1] Furthermore the sophisticated nature of the monophonic works [2] and yet more their monophonic texture allow for scrutinizing the interplay of music and poetry.
The fact that Machaut was both musician and poet and wrote his own musical text makes us suspicious to explore if there are connections between Machaut’s text and music, the interplay between the music and the musical meaning, the relations between the music and the language sound of the text. I use the language sound to define the physical sounds of the text – the words themselves. In order to explore the relations, if any, between the music and the sound of the text I use Machaut’s monophnic virelai Dame à vous sans retollir from the Remede de Fortune a relatively early work, dating from the 1340s.
Machaut’s monophnic virelai Dame à vous sans retollir merges the “sound” of the text with the pitch space (Pitch space is the specific frequencies or registers created by pitches and/or intervallic distances between pitches [3]) of the melodic line, suggesting links between language sound and pitch. I will analyze the musical notation, the text and a musical performance using spectrographs. The spectrograph will allow us to highlight the function of the sounds of the text in the notation by a performance [4].
The progressive dark-bright trajectory of the refrain is produced and aligned with the similar pattern of development in the language sound of the text and the overall pitch motion. The performance analyses revealed that the language sound progression is clearly projected as the connection between pitch and language sound becomes stronger. The results of this study also support with more evidence the past studies of Cogan and Leech-Wilkinon.
[1] Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, “The Well-Formed Virelai,” in Trent’Anni di Ricerche Musicologiche:Studi in Onore di F. Alberto Gallo (Roma: Edizioni Torre D’Orfeo, 1996), 125–42; Jennifer Bain, “Tonal Structure and the Melodic Role of Chromatic Inflections in the Music of Machaut,” Plainsong and Medieval Music 14 (2005), 59–88; David Maw, “Meter and Word Setting: Revising Machaut’s Monophonic Virelais,” Current Musicology 74 (2002), 69–102; Yolanda Plumley, The Grammar of 14th Century Melody: Tonal Organization and Compositional Process in the Chansons of Guillaume de Machaut and the Ars Subtilior (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1996).
[2] Leech-Wilkinson has pointed out in relation to Machaut’s age and the virelais: “That most appear in F-Pn1586 (Mach C) means only that those were written by c. 1350, hardly an early date in Machaut’s life …” See Leech-Wilkinson, “The Well-Formed Virelai,” in Trent’Anni di Ricerche Musicologiche: Studi in Onore di F. Alberto Gallo (Roma: Edizioni Torre D’Orfeo, 1996), 125.
[3] John Latartara, “Machaut's Monophonic Virelai Tuit mi penser: Intersections of Language Sound, Pitch Space, Performance, and Meaning”, Journal of musicological research 27/3 (2008), 227.
[4] studies currently published: Robert Cogan, New Images of Musical Sound (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984); Robert Cogan, The Sounds of Song: A Picture Book of Music for Voice (Cambridge, Mass.: Publication Contact International, 1999); John Latartara, “Multidimensional Musical Space in Hildegard’s ‘O rubor sanguinis’: Tetrachord, Language Sound, and Meaning,” Indiana Theory Review 25/1–2 (2004), 39–74; Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, “Rose, lis Revisited.” As Leech-Wilkinson in “Rose, lis Revisited” states, “Performances have been allowed almost no place, as yet, in the scholarly study of medieval music. Because performances cannot be historically correct they have been set aside as necessarily outside the bounds of scholarship, interesting, but unreliable” (252).