The entire early vocal style itself is ornamental
January 2, 2023 8:32 PM   Subscribe

Medieval European singing sounded more "Middle Eastern" than is commonly believed. Musician Farya Faraji looks at "how the overall singing style of European Medieval music was markedly different from current Classical conservatory techniques, and resembled current Greek, Arabic, Bulgarian or Turkish forms of singing far more—styles of singing defined by less precise pitch and florid melismatic delivery."
posted by Cash4Lead (29 comments total) 47 users marked this as a favorite
 
Does this mean early [European] music ensembles are gonna have to rethink their styles?
posted by clawsoon at 9:29 PM on January 2, 2023 [3 favorites]


like any reputable art, history is an argument, not a science.

I'm enjoying this argument.
posted by philip-random at 9:32 PM on January 2, 2023 [10 favorites]


His discussion of the written notes being the dead husk that has to be brought to life by the musician immediately makes me think of jazz fakebooks. If people of the future rely solely on the melody+chords of fakebooks to understand jazz, they'll be missing a lot.
posted by clawsoon at 9:41 PM on January 2, 2023 [9 favorites]


This is such an interesting video, and to me it feels like it has echoes of the discovery that ancient Roman and Greek statues were likely polychromatic (previously).
posted by montag2k at 10:26 PM on January 2, 2023 [4 favorites]


Off topic: There was no 'discovery' about classical statues being painted tho: it just hit popular consciousness, since even quite old art textbooks would mention it in passing.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 12:44 AM on January 3, 2023 [12 favorites]


i appreciated this comment under the video and his reply:

Comment: Very interesting. Here in Serbia people tend to say, "ah those evil Ottomans! They ruined our music, and now our music sounds oriental." But it seems our contemporary folk music is just a continuation of our old traditions.

Reply: Well said! It’s indeed a common reaction in Balkan countries to attribute the “oriental” sounding aspects to Ottoman influence, but generally these oriental elements are attested in the Balkans as far back as the Hellenistic Era, which makes it impossible to attribute them to Turkish influence. Turkish music undoubtedly influenced Balkanic music (and vice versa), but identifying which influence was from which side is a lot more complicated than going off of what we have associated with “orientality” today, since these are only our modern associations. For the most part, Serbian, Bulgarian and neighbouring traditions are far more continuous with pre-Ottoman occupation than we give them credit for

(there's a bit more in that particular thread on ottoman culture)
posted by cendawanita at 3:18 AM on January 3, 2023 [7 favorites]


I for some reason thought this was fairly commonly known.
posted by kyrademon at 4:37 AM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]


This is very Eurocentric of me, but I'm suddenly curious about who, why, when and how Western European music changed. It sounds like we've got at least a couple of thousand years of musical tradition covering the entire area from Europe and North Africa to India. Then one corner of it rejected that tradition a few centuries before colonizing most of the world.

Maybe something to do with the Protestant Reformation and its preference for plainness? The Industrious Revolution and its production of large numbers of instruments for ever-larger ensembles that had to be coordinated more tightly and allowed less room for improvisation (like the journey from King Oliver to Nelson Riddle in jazz)? The reductionism of the Enlightenment? The takeoff of the printing press? (Did Chinese classic music take a similar turn when printing took off there?) Just a random change in stylistic preference that isn't connected to any larger movements?
posted by clawsoon at 4:50 AM on January 3, 2023 [7 favorites]


Armand D'Angour, professor of ancient Greek and accomplished cellist, has studied ancient Greek music and has thoughts on the subject here.

(His work was offered previously on the blue and in the commentary all hell broke loose. So much for music soothing the savage breast.)

Mr Faraji was also interviewed by Luke Ranieri of Polymathy, and if you have any interest at all in ancient Greek and Latin language, you should definitely check out his work.

posted by BWA at 5:25 AM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]


I’m looking for recommendations of recordings in this style, particularly of Guillaume du Fay. Ensemble Bulgarka Jr recorded a Palestrina Mass in their style in the 90s which I recommend. I’ll pick up some of the Ensemble Organum CDs, obvs.
posted by Emmy Noether at 5:26 AM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]


I for some reason thought this was fairly commonly known.

I think it is somewhat known that this music was more improvised/ornamented. I think the emphasis of the video is that this involved more quarter/microtones than we might expect.
posted by delicious-luncheon at 5:46 AM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]


I wonder if some of the transition to western classical singing came about due to the growth of polyphony. Wouldn't it be harder to manage an ensemble with each performing intonation and ornamentation?
posted by Emmy Noether at 6:23 AM on January 3, 2023 [5 favorites]


Clawsoon: This is very Eurocentric of me, but I'm suddenly curious about who, why, when and how Western European music changed. It sounds like we've got at least a couple of thousand years of musical tradition covering the entire area from Europe and North Africa to India. Then one corner of it rejected that tradition a few centuries before colonizing most of the world. Maybe something to do with the Protestant Reformation and its preference for plainness?

Western (though really, flemish-italian) music had already become quite complex, long before the reformation. The increase in polyphonic complexity music went hand-in-hand with the development of our system of musical notation, which was a one-time event: there are many ways of writing language today, but (practically) only one of writing music. I do not know why this happened only once and I doubt anyone does: like the industrial revolution, it may have required rather complex and particular circumstances to occur.

Once you have polyphonic music, however, a ‘plain’ or ‘smooth’ way of singing may be the most natural way of keeping it somewhat comprehensible to the listener – this, anyway, was the conclusion of the pioneers of the ‘historically informed performance’, which came up in the 1950s. It may (as Emmy Noether remarks above) be the reason for the divergence between western europe and the eastern mediterranean.

Contrary to what the linked video may suggest, old and medieval music is not normally sung in a ‘classical’ style: the pioneers of h.i.p. worked hard to undo the innovations of the classical and romantic periods. (See here for an example of Bach performed in a more naïve, ‘classical’ style.) But as Faraji compellingly argues, their reconstruction may not be correct.

The comparison with current middle-eastern singing techniques is a very recent development, and it will be exciting to see how far into the ‘future’ of western music (i.e. not just plainchant and medieval chanson) these techniques can be (and thus, may have been) used. It may take a while to find out, as our ears will have to adjust to the new sounds.
posted by trotz dem alten drachen at 7:10 AM on January 3, 2023 [3 favorites]


His discussion of the written notes being the dead husk that has to be brought to life by the musician immediately makes me think of jazz fakebooks.

That's exactly what it was like, esp. with figured bass. That's the reason I couldn't watch Ken Burns' Jazz documentary for more than about fifteen minutes, because he kept claiming that there was no improvisation in music before the twentieth century, which anyone who's taken an intro-level history of Western music or music theory knows is patently ridiculous. In the days of baroque opera, people would go to the show every night because they knew that tonight's performance was going to be different from what they heard the night before. One of my voice teachers specialized in early music, and he went so far as to not even let me write any ornaments into my score.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:31 AM on January 3, 2023 [7 favorites]


I would appreciate a playlist of recordings in the style that he claims is more historical. He's got a few short samples in the video but frustratingly little.
posted by Nelson at 7:46 AM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]


I am sorry, but I cannot go through TFV to find this out. Does Faraji provide audio clips of "authentic" Medieval style performance?

What if we have already been listening to "historically-informed performances" of Medieval plainchant and polyphony for the last 40 years? Is he talking about something different than we already have heard?

And of course we have noticed that it sounds very different from the Western classical art music tradition from no later than Palestrina (for example) onward. Is he just explaining that bit by comparing it to more modern Mediterranean musical performance styles?
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:28 AM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]


Two interesting points from near the end of the video: the hypothesis that this ‘eurasian’ form of chant may be hellenistic in origin – if any of you can point to research on this issue, please post it here – and the unsurprising but important-to-realise fact that it is mostly racism keeping us back from exploring this direction of research. At the festival of old music, this still is very much a fringe position. But we will see (and hear) more of it, I hope.
posted by trotz dem alten drachen at 9:09 AM on January 3, 2023


I don't think I can disagree with anyone who has a giant cute pupper balled up in their lap.
posted by lumpenprole at 9:30 AM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]


Does this mean early [European] music ensembles are gonna have to rethink their styles?

Not really. Generally speaking "early" music ensembles are performing music from later periods. By the time music started getting really polyphonic, singers and instrumentalists had a lot less leeway to embellish.

I specialized in early 19th century Italian opera for around a decade (before moving on to ... well, late 19th century opera) and none of this is particularly surprising. Embellishing the written melody, adding cadenze, etc. in various characteristic ways was a big part of the operatic vocal tradition well into the 19th century. Although singers really should be ornamenting the crap out of Handel, Mozart, Rossini, etc. they usually don't nowadays because that practice gradually gave way to more "come scritto" views as opera seria influences gradually gave way to romantic/verismo traditions over the course of the 19th century. Phillip Goissett once pointed out to me that singers of early to mid 19th century Italian who don't do appoggiature, ornaments, embellishments, variations, cadenze, etc. are singing wrong notes from a performance practice standpoint. One thing that is available to singers of 19th century opera that is unavailable to singers of 15th century vocal music is a relative abundance of contemporary manuscripts documenting how the music was actually performed compared to what was on the page--sometimes even written in the hand of the composer himself.

The presenter makes some interesting points about performing substantially more than what is on the written page, but as a person who has sung music in which all these techniques have been employed I would suggest that it's possible to do it without sounding like middle-eastern singing. Different musical traditions in different eras have different characteristic ways of employing ornamentation/variation/etc. Thus, for example, a performer would not ornament a piece by François Couperin the same way as a piece by his contemporary Alessandro Scarlatti. Furthermore, a performer would not ornament a piece by Alessandro Scarlatti the same way as a piece by Giacomo Rossini written 100 years later, even though they are both within the Italian tradition. All of which is to say that the presenter makes choices that are reminiscent of middle-eastern vocal practices when ornamenting a European piece, but it's unclear to me that these are similar to the choices that would have been made by Guillaume de Machaut in 14th century France.
posted by slkinsey at 10:04 AM on January 3, 2023 [6 favorites]


Just plopping down a link to traditional Irish sean nós singing which is highly ornamented and fairly different from classical European singing and often characterized as middle eastern sounding.
posted by misterpatrick at 11:01 AM on January 3, 2023 [7 favorites]


I'm not a specialist, so I won't be able to do this argument justice, but the account of the development of Gregorian chant in Richard Taruskin's 5 volume History of Western Music describes the creation of written, monophonic plainchant (which would form the basis over time of the music theory underpinning western classical music until the 19th century) as an initiative by Carolingian kings to consolidate control by Rome of the Catholic church and to replace the various local and diverse liturgies with a standard Roman liturgy and body of music.

One fascinating part of this history is that the plainchant was written to conform to Greek philosophical writings about the power of harmony and musical modes, and was mandated as a return to a more musically pure and spiritually powerful worship music, like the Greek ancients used. In other words, the music that we hear and think immediately "this sounds old" was designed to sound old when it was created in the 7th century!

One lovely tidbit from that history:

By the ninth century, however, the legend of Pope Gregory as composer of what has been known ever since as "Gregorian chant" was firmly in place. It was propagated not only in literary accounts like that of John the Deacon but also in an iconographic or pictorial tradition that adapted a motif already established in Roman illuminated manuscripts containing Gregory's famous Homilies, or sermons, on the biblical books of Job and Ezekiel. According to this tradition, the pope, while dictating his commentary, often paused for a long time.

His silences puzzled the scribe, who was separated from Gregory by a screen. Peeping through, the scribe beheld the dove of the Holy Spirit hovering at the head of St. Gregory, who resumed his dictation only when the dove removed its beak from his mouth. (It is from such representations of divine inspiration that we get our expression, "A little bird told me.")

posted by mtthwkrl at 11:35 AM on January 3, 2023 [8 favorites]


Emmy Noether: Ensemble Bulgarka Jr recorded a Palestrina Mass in their style in the 90s which I recommend.

See here on youtube. It’s a bold performance, that I would love to hear in-person & in-church. Hard to form an opinion on the style over my laptop speakers.
posted by trotz dem alten drachen at 1:14 PM on January 3, 2023 [3 favorites]


Aardvark Cheeselog: What if we have already been listening to "historically-informed performances" of Medieval plainchant and polyphony for the last 40 years? Is he talking about something different than we already have heard?

Faraji is talking about something that traditional historically-informed performances have not (yet) taken into account. It is not so much about ornamentation and improvisation (those have been part of the historically-informed praxis since the beginning), but more about technique and intonation. See the performance Emmy Noether recommended above: to western ears, it will sound distinctly nasal and unsteady.
posted by trotz dem alten drachen at 1:35 PM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]


In other words, the music that we hear and think immediately "this sounds old" was designed to sound old when it was created in the 7th century!
IDK, when I first heard medieval music performed ca. 40 years ago, when "historically-informed performance" was just starting to be a concept, my first thought was "that sounds weird." Though I had enough humanities education to know at least the names of the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Myxolydian modes.

Alan Watts was fond of claiming etymologies for words that turn out not to hold up. One of these was the claim that "holy" means weird, other at the root. It is not so. And yet, I think it is this wierdness, rather than oldness, is what was wanted to make it seem holy. I mean, really, who in 7th Century Western Europe was going to listen to modal music and think "old" and not "weird?" It's not as though the Carolingians had any cultural memory of Attic Greek music, I would think.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:51 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]


I think you can see the history of church music as going back-and-forth between ‘weird’ and ‘normal’: from the highly academic style of the late middle ages to Luther and Calvin’s popular hymns, which in the seventeenth century acquired a rather sacral, isorythmic style of singing, making way for the puritans to introduce catchy songs again, etc. etc. all the way to that dreadful ‘praise and worship’ that young people seem to like now. Cannot wait for that style to evolve into something hermetic and inscrutable.

About modal music being weird, however, I am not so sure. The dorian and lydian modes are just supersets of minor and major, after all, so that in many cases the difference is merely in the choice of notation. And indigenous musical traditions all round the world tend to be pretty creative with tonality.
posted by trotz dem alten drachen at 3:40 AM on January 5, 2023 [1 favorite]


all the way to that dreadful ‘praise and worship’ that young people seem to like now

What do you have against a million CCM guitarists in a million stadiums imitating The Edge?
posted by clawsoon at 4:02 AM on January 5, 2023 [2 favorites]


> Cannot wait for that style to evolve into something hermetic and inscrutable.

Sadly I do not expect to live long enough for that. But it is thought-provoking to wonder wonder. OTOH, when you look at the lyrics to say Vivaldi's Gloria they aren't a whole lot more elaborate than contemporary praise music. Maybe it's the being-in-a-dead-language part that makes it sound impressive.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 9:05 AM on January 5, 2023 [1 favorite]


I am reminded of one concert who is my last chamber ensemble where we sang four different works with four different regional/historical pronunciations of Latin. And another one with fierce debate over whether to sing shape note songs in the “authentic” style or prettied-up Western art tradition choral style. (The end result was somewhere in the middle. I was disappointed; I love a good shouty Sacred Harp.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:44 PM on January 5, 2023 [1 favorite]


I would appreciate a playlist of recordings in the style that he claims is more historical. He's got a few short samples in the video but frustratingly little.

So, I totally agreed with this, and left a comment asking for one, and he responded this:

Thanks for the suggestion! I’ve added a short list—obviously as said in the video examples are few and far between as few recordings apply this aspect of the vocal style, but for more, I especially recommend the Ensemble Organum :)


Which makes me unreasonably happy.
posted by lumpenprole at 8:32 AM on January 6, 2023 [1 favorite]


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