OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

by Stephen Fry

  I say we clasp a picture of her in one hand, a full goblet of wine in the other, and zoom on to 1179 to toast her non-witchly, eccentric musical-ness. Or whatever. Actually, is that a wart on her left cheek?

  THE FIRST MUSICAL JOKE (BUT NOT MOZART'S)

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  o. 1179, the year of the death of Hildegard of Bingen, or Rupertsberg, depending on how much of a control freak you pride yourself on being. It was also the year, in fact, that the world's first musical joke started doing the rounds. It lives on now as a Bing Crosby/Walt Disney joke, but the original, as you can see below, was about Hildegard herself. It went something like this. Interrogate: 'Quod differentum est trans Hildegard von Bingen et Waltus DisniusV Repondatum: 'Bingen singen, sed Waltus Disnius!' Mmmm… Maybe you had to be there. The twelth century, I mean. It was probably around this time that early jokes about drummers and percussionists were born. Jokes such as, 'What's the range of your average drum? About ten feet with a good throwing arm.'

  If you think I'm being a little hard on drummers, then let me tell you: this is no more than my job. I'm told there is a long-standing musical tradition, going back centuries - as you can see - which is behaviourally requisite for all musicians, and always has been. It runs alongside the virtue of 'always keeping an eye on where your next job is coming from' and it's known, in the business, as 'always being rude about drummers'. It is up there alongside 'always taking the piss out of viola players' and, to a lesser extent - albeit just as important -'always dragging your knuckles along the floor of the pub if you play a brass instrument'. The drummer must always expect to be the butt of 'musical jokes'/ To this end, I have enclosed a simple list of the best 'drummer' jokes, except the one that's so rude it can't be published. 1. Q: How do you know when there's a drummer at the door? A: The knocking speeds up. 2. Qj What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians? A: A drummer.

  3. The one that can't be published.

  Anyway let's get on. We've got to get to 1225, for 'the next big thing' in music, as they say. Along the way let me try and fill you in on anything you need to know. Modena Cathedral is consecrated in 1184, and, not to be outdone, three years later, the good burghers of Verona complete theirs. In fact, cathedrals are huge at the moment. Not just literally. Everybody wants one. Bamberg start theirs, Chartres theirs and the ochre-topped buildings of Sienna look forward to being ever in the warm shade of theirs. I tell you this for a reason, obviously, not just to pass the time of day, but more of that in a moment.

  CARMA-CARMA-'CARMA-

  CARMA-CARMINA BURANA…

  YOU COME AND GO…

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  on't let me forget to tell you about the carmina????, now, either. It was around the year 1200 that the carmine burana were written. These were a set of monastic songs, many of them with J3 With the possible exception of Mozart's work entitled Musical Joke, it is my theory that there is no such thing as a good musical joke. A 'musical joke* is an oxymoron, put about by slightly nerdy music students to get them out of the spotlight and have it shone back on the IT mob. somewhat racy lyrics in Latin and German, which were found in Benediktbeuren in what is now Bavaria but back then was Bohemia.

  Despite their origins within a monastery - or, more likely, because of their origins in a monastery - they concern themselves with subjects like love, and… drinking and… well, how shall I put it… lust! These bawdy ballads were written around the same time as Cambridge University was being founded, but were relatively unknown for a good eight centuries or so, until the Munich-born composer and educationalist Carl Orff put them to use in his piece of 1937, which he called simply Carmina Burana. I've made a note to mention this nearer the time so, for now, let's get on.

  Stand-up comedians. They started around now too. Probably to give the musicians a break, chance to nip to the bar, that sort of thing. Of course, they were called court jesters and they started to gain in popularity following the turn of the thirteenth century. Apart from that there were a bunch?" more cathedrals: work started on Reims, Salisbury, Toledo, Brussels and Burgos, as well as a new one for Amiens (old one burnt down - careless!), and a facade for Notre Dame. Ail in all, if your business card read 'Keith Groat - Cathedral Builder' then my guess is, despite the name setback, you were going to be a rich man. Which brings me neatly, if idiosyncratically, to 1225 and 'the next big thing'.

  SPIRES INSPIRE

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  irst up, a brief overview of and foothold in 1225. Well, the Magna Carta is on its third reprint. Not bad for something with a dull ending and no real plot. In terms of the big names around at the time, on the one hand there's Francis of Assisi, who has a year left to live. On the other hand - definitely on the other hand -there's Mr Khan, or Genghis, to his friends. It's the time of the later Crusades, the Mongol invasion of Russia and papal excommunications galore. In fact, you couldn't move for being excommunicated. You had to so much as invade Scotland and that was it - VUMH! -e x? ommunication.

  So, that's just some of the detail of 1225, if you were to run up l lie highest mountain and look around. But what of'the time'? How must it have felt and smelt, if you know what I mean. And how was it, musically speaking? Well, that's why I was banging on about the cathedrals going up all over the place. Let's put ourselves in medieval shoes for a minute.

  Cathedrals - two things need to be understood about cathedrals. They're not cheap and they take a bugger of a long time to build. You can't buy them flat-packed with inadequate instructions and one bolt missing. These things are raised across generations. And that gives you a big clue as to who had all the money in 1225. It also gives us a clue as to the state of the music business in 1224. Because cathedrals needed filling not just with people but with music. In 1225, MUSIC was basically a «x-letter word spelt like this: C.H.U.R.C.H - music. Also, to the peasant in the street, it was oral, not unlike herpes simplex, in that it was passed from mouth to mouth. OK, doesn't quite bear up but you know what I mean. True, some written music was creeping in, in places, if you were rich enough. But generally, the norm was still a bunch of blokes, with faces like cows' bottoms, in draughty buildings singing one-note stuff. A bit like folk music today.

  And now 'the next big thing'. Well, again, if you were rich enough, you could say the next big thing was 'cotton', which the Spanish had, just this year, started manufacturing. If you weren't rich enough, though - and let's face it, most folk weren't - then 'the next big thing'" was almost certainly a piece of music called 'Sumer is icumen in'. fi Anyone know the collective noun for cathedrals? If not, can I venture floon'? A floon of cathedrals. Sounds fab to me and makes about as much sense as most other collective nouns. I figure collective nouns are much like mountains and polar regions - whoever gets there first can claim them and name them. So. Cathedrals. A floon. Thank you, and VII brook no arguments. fi Stephen Fry breaks the world record for highest number of print mentions EVER of the phrase Hhe next big thing'. Official.

  SUMER L'UV IN. ADME A BLAS

  T gnore that title and try this: Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing, cuccu Groweth sed and bloweth med And springeth the wude nu Sing cuccu* or to translate: Spring has come in Loudly sing, cuckoo Grows the seed and blooms the meadow And the woods spring now, Sing, cuckoo. 'Sumer is icumen in' - beautiful words, aren't they? - is an important piece in the great musical scheme of things, in no small part due to the simple fact that it even exists - quite a rare feat for any piece of music from this period. In fact, come to think of it, quite rare for anything written down at all. I imagine there are historians the world over who would scream with orgasmic delight if they were to unearth a piece of notepaper saying 'Gone to mother's - chops for tea' if it came from 1225. So the fact that we have it is great. But also, 'Sumer', if it doesn't mind me calling it by its first name, is important because it is so advanced. It's a round - a song where everybody sings more or less the same tune but at different times, a bit like 'Frere Jacques' - and it was written in six parts, four tenor and two bass, and was very complicated for the t
ime. It dates from the mid-thirteenth century and its language is the beautiful and slightly unkempt Middle English. If you don't speak fl Every time 1 read those words, I can virtually hear the birds singing, almost feel the sun shining, practically touch the disfigured heads as they're lovingly spiked on to sticks. Ahh… to be in 1225 again, now that 'Sumer' is here (or at least icumen in). OK, so 'sumer' means spring, so what: what's a season between friends7. Middle English - and to be fair there can't be many who do who aren't called Gandalf - then just try reading some in a Cornish accent. Works for me. It was almost certainly quilled by a monk of Reading Abbey, who is remembered now simply as John of Fornsete. It was meant to be a springtime song, heralding the approaching summer - figures - and is very folksong-like in style. There are some Latin words available to sing to it, but they don't fit anywhere near as well as the 'folk' type words and were almost certainly a later afterthought, just to show willing. It gains its 'next big thing' status by being so pioneering for its time. People just weren't meant to be singing this sort of thing in 1225. Indeed, some scholars think they weren't. In fact, when a very learned sort by the name of Doc Manfred Bukofzer looked into it in 1945, he decided it was almost certainly from a much later time. Still. Despite his concerns, it has managed to keep its place in the music history books as being written around 1225. So good old 'Sumer', that's what I say.

  ARS IS NOT TO REASON WHY

  ? ver the next seventy years or so, some important things gathered momentum in the world of music. This was a period when what was known as the 'ars antique was still the in thing. Meaning, literally, the old art, it was a term used only retrospectively for what was going on about now. It didn't really get its name until someone coined the term 'ars nova1 - new art - which was generally a freeing up from all the styles and some of the rules of the ars antiqua.

  The big three in the world of ars antiqua would have to be Leonin, Perotin and Robert de Sabilon. Leonin was often referred to as an 'optimus organista? - or 'very good when it comes to writing those lovely medieval-sounding harmonies' - and lots of his stuff still survives to this day. Perotin was the top man at Notre Dame in Paris for a time. De Sabilon also worked out of Paris, doing things you wouldn't believe with independent melodies. In fact, Paris was pretty big, generally, around now, and Notre Dame particularly. There were lots of troubadours, and minstrels all gathered in the city alongside monks and men of learning. It strikes me that it might have been not dissimilar to the turn of twentieth-century Paris, where artists, musicians and thinkers all gathered to form a steamy, Bohemian cafe-culture. This went on to leave its own heady mark on the arts in general, both then and now. One thing is certain, though, and that's that, in both periods, the cappuccinos were almost certainly cheaper.

  FRANCO IN GENERAL

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  ther luminaries giving off the dying light of the ars antiqua were chaps like Franco de Cologne/ Franco de Cologne - I know, unfortunate, isn't it, but at least he resisted the urge to spell it Franceau - was the guy generally credited with sorting out how long notes lasted. Sounds odd to say that now, I guess, but back then -well, someone had to get it all together. Just like Gregory the Gorgeous had sorted out plainchant, so Franco got to grips with notes and how you wrote down how long each note lasted. He set his stall out in a little book called De musica mensurabilis or, if you like, 'Of Music and Measures', which sounds a little like a lost manuscript by John Steinbeck.

  Up until now, there had been no agreed system for showing how long a note lasted. He it was who standardized the 'breve' as the unit of musical measure. A semibreve is this? and is four beats long. This? is a minim, and lasts two.

  And so on, down through to? the crochet (one beat) and the cute but ridiculously named hemi-demi-semiquaver I, the sort of Tinkerbell of notes: you have to believe that it exists or it won't. fi??? know, it seems to me that being around back then meant you could pick your name rather like newly ennobled lords pick their provenance today. So, today, you have Lady 'Ihatrhcr of Kesteven and Lord Wilson ofRievaulx or whatever, back then you had more or less the same, but you didn't have to wait to get into the Upper Chamber to do it. Everybody was at it. Personally, I think I 'd go for Fry of Soho. Maybe even… Fry of the Route of the 77 Bus -give me a bit of leeway.

  MACHAUT MUST GO ON

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  ow on to three of the leading names in music after 1300. De Machaut, Dunstable and Dufay. First up is the romantically titled Gaul, poet and composer: Guillaume de Machaut. Again, sorry to digress once more, but what a beautiful name. Just say it to yourself -Guillaume de Machaut. Gorgeous name. De Machaut was born in 1300 and soon realized he had a talent not only for poetry but also for music. By the year 1364, with still a good fourteen years left to live, he would have been forgiven for sitting back, resting on his ars nova, and enjoying himself a little. I mean, to be fair, simply being sixty-four in those days was a bit of an achievement, considering the new black was… well, the Black Death. ('Darling, MWAH, oh you look drop-dead gorgeous… Oh… you've dropped dead.)

  De Machaut was one of the last great composers living in the age of the trouveres or troubadours, the particularly French version of what we in England called 'minstrels' or the Germans called ''minnesingers'', literally 'love singers'. A minstrel was effectively a paid, freelance musician, descended from the 'mimes' of ancient Greece and Rome, who were cast out during the barbarian invasions. They were originally actors who took up instruments to pay their way, at a time when this was considered very much a dubious thing to do (no change there, then). If this were the Bible, then the line would probably go something like this:

  Mimes begat joculatores; joculatores begat jongleurs: jongleurs begat troubadours: troubadours begat trouveres: trouveres begat menestriers; and menestriers begat minstrels. See?

  If, in this world of troubadours, trouveres and menestriers, you are having trouble spotting a minstrel, then here's a useful rule: troubadours sing and rhyme, menestriers play for dances, and minstrels melt in your mouth but not in your hand.

  And de Machaut, in the trouveres tradition, was as famous in his lifetime for his words as for his music. A more or less exact contemporary of Boccaccio, the man of the Decameron, he was born in the Ardennes but, having become both learned and a priest - and I'm sure it's possible - he enjoyed lengthy stays in the courts of John of

  Luxembourg and the Duchess of Normandy. But it was around the time of Navarre that he put all his efforts into achieving the as yet unachieved, pulling off the as yet unpulled, and doing the as yet… undone. The four-part Mass. No one had, as yet, come up with a Mass that moved according to the 'laws' of harmony, but that sounded… well, good. Rules can be obeyed to the letter, to make a perfectly 'correct' four-part Mass, but as to making it sound great - that was a whole different ballgame.

  MASS HYSTERIA

  ? four-part Mass, that is the issue. Could any composer manage to JLJL get four separate 'voices' (i.e. sopranos, altos, tenors and basses, for example) to sing separate tunes and yet cleverly make it all sound like perfect harmony?

  Imagine it this way, if you would. It's a still, muggy evening in Reims and de Machaut's 'Roger Bannister' moment is not far off. He and his team had been competing against the Italians to be the first to produce the musical holy grail of the time - the four-parter - but the journey had been cruel. What looked like early successes were hastily rehearsed, only to reveal several chunks of the Mass that were not in four at all - some were periods of three parts, some two. There was even an early prototype which had all the manuscript appearance of a four-part Mass, but, when sung, sounded almost totally monotonous and in unison.-"

  The setbacks had taken their toll, not just in terms of morale - two of the team had left with larynx problems, another had set up on his own, and de Machaut had lost a fourth in a tragic tongue accident sustained during a particularly fast bar of hemi-demi-semiquavers. But he was not deterred. He knew he could do it. No composer in history had yet done it, and the spoils to the victor
would be great. Well, ish! In a moment which will forever go down in the annals of history as 'that time when Guillaume de Machaut finished his Mass', he, quite brilliantly and with a single flourish of his quill, put the finishing bar line to his masterpiece. Inside, he knew this was it. He didn't need a rehearsal. He didn't need to sing it through to his mother. He knew. This was the first four-part Mass in history! As legend has it, he leant across to his chief-of-staff and uttered the now immortal line, cBof! J'ai besoin d'une tasse de the. Ou peut-etre quelque-chose plus fort. Allons! Au tete du chevaV Or, to translate: 'Ooh, I couldn't half do with a cuppa. Or maybe something stronger. Let's nip down the Nag's Head.'

  Great moment. Truly great moment. Ars nova at its best. And the Mass itself? Well, romantic reports would have it that it was used that night in the coronation of Charles V and, in that respect, signalled the start of a small but perfectly formed golden period in French music.fi

  Charles was one of those monarchs who don't come along very often, who loved music. Under his reign, France enjoyed a period as the shining light in world music. From the very year of Charles's coronation until the first twenty years or so of the fifteenth century, France was the centre of the musical universe - its capital city, if you like - a glory mirrored in the separate but corresponding worlds of French Gothic architecture and the learning symbolized by the University of Paris.