Charming Unpredictability - Music of D'Anglebert

 

 

 

Jean-Heny D'Anglebert.

The son of a wealthy shoemaker, he was born in the town of Bar-Le-Duc, the seat of the old County of Lorraine, in 1629.

 

He was a talented musician, but without the right background, without the noble origin. At that time, it was impossible to succeed as a musician and build any kind of career without it. So he took the good-sounding name 'Jean-Henry' instead of the somewhat porous 'Henry', and then later on he maneuvered very skillfully with his 'pseudo-nobility', a wide network of contacts, and of course his music. In this way, he was able to enter very high court circles.
Later, he became a colleague and friend of Lully, and a favorite of the Sun King, 'Royal Harpsichordist', and became known as the most outstanding keyboard composer of his time.
From the 1650s, he composed many works, and in 1689 he published his harpsichord pieces, dedicated to the Duchess of Conti, who was herself an amateur harpsichordist.

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There are many excellent recordings of D'Anglebert's works, but there is one that is very, very special.

Listening to it, you immediately notice the strangeness that characterizes 'Style Brise'.
What is it? 
Actually, at first glance, it's a kind of over-decoration, usage of series of irregular arpeggios. 
To understand it, we have to go back to the lute, because that's where part of the origin lies. The Renaissance lute, but later, the Baroque lute as well, is a distinctly quiet instrument, so the emphasis, the dynamics that the Baroque required, were extremely limited.

 

To compensate for this 'weakness', mainly starting from Franconia, the targeted and better use of rhythmic deviations and ornaments came into fashion. That is, if, for example, we want to emphasize the first notes, they are given an arpeggio, and indeed, when listened to, this maneuver seems like a kind of dynamic emphasis.

The keyboardists, and especially D'Anglebert, went much further than this: they used continuous arpeggio garlands, keeping the basic melody constantly unfolding. From the first bar to the last.
This gives a kind of strange fragmentation and covers the basic melody so much that the musical motif itself remains barely discernible.

We could say, with a nice analogy, that yes, exactly like the overly decorated clothing culture in the court of the Sun King. 
Yes, there is a lot of truth in this, but the situation is much more complicated.

Because it is not possible to decorate completely according to one's own momentarily ideas; the internal structure of the expansions is very important; in many places a kind of pseudo-polyphony can be observed, with numerous begun fugue sections that lead nowhere due to their irregular, even irregular use, missing closures, motif returns that never occur, unfinished structures - all this envelops the entire performance in a charming unpredictability. Even if the basic melody itself is ridiculously simple. And the superimposition of the ornamentation-fluid opens up irrational spaces, a feeling of infinity suddenly enters the formula.

 * 

It's worth going a little deeper here.
This basic motif is indisputable, actually a cover-up, a concealment, a disguise, a mask, and we immediately find ourselves in Venice.
And in the middle of Carnival, in the middle of the Karnevál.

... Barnabas didn't believe him at first and even scolded the hippopotamus.
You think I don't recognize you! My own brother! Who do you think I am –
I am Gambrinus, said the whale.
Barnabas took off his mask.
Enough of the joke, he said, now take off your mask yourself.
Gambrinus said that he admitted it was a mask, but it was a mask imposed on him by material nature at birth, which he would only be able to take off when he moved away –
Barnabas was surprised by the answer. He immediately saw that the person he was facing was no ordinary person.
So you really are not Andrea.
Indeed, replied the stranger, I have no luck in knowing Mr. Andrea.
So you were not traveling in disguise at that time.
There was no question of any disguise. That is true, as I say.
Then you -
But please, didn't you know that when you travel, you travel in the most appropriate mask, because in this way you deceive the demons?
Perhaps, said Gambrinus, perhaps there were among us who knew about it. I, for example knew about it, but I confess I didn't think about it -
You neglected it rather frivolously -
I admit, I forgot. Next time I travel, I won't be so carefree, if only to avoid a similar situation in the future –

 

  * 

The word form 'ornaments' in old sources very often operates with the meaning field of 'blooming'. Covering in flowers. In other words, the essence is not the branch, nor the tree, nor even the flower itself. But the 'inside' of the whole, the metaphysics of 'blooming', according to which neither the future harvest nor the reproduction, nor even the new life, is of importance. One true and incorruptible essence constantly floats between Heaven and Earth: the phenomenon of flowering, its selfless beauty and grandeur.

Like a continuous series of impressions. There is no Art of Fugue, no Grand Closing, only the mystique of constantly recreating flowering.

*

According to another / many approaches, this whole thing can be understood as a real immersion into the microstructure of music. It's as if we were looking at the melodic arc with a high-resolution oscilloscope, where strange roughnesses appear on the sustained note, and when zoomed in even further, it turns out that these are themselves melodic fragments, which are connected to the external, 'big' melody according to a very precise system.

Anyone who is good at math will immediately say that it is a 'fractal structure', and that is exactly what it is. And to make it even more complicated, this 'system', sonically, in these arpeggios, also receives pseudo-chromatic movement, which increases the scope for expression even further.

Well, yes, this is not the part for engineers who think music is just a bunch of sine waves...

 

 *

 

Elizabeth Farr's performance is simply brilliant. Because she further exacerbated this above incomprehensibility by sometimes separating the rhythm of the two parts, the right and left hands, more or less, breaking away from the metrum, to the point that there are a few quarters of a minute where things slip into complete isorhythm, remember?, isorhythm was Machaut's favorite tool back in the 1300s, in the era of HighArt polyphony...

At first it seems as if two harpsichordists are playing two different notes under/over each other, but then it turns out that this is a very intentional maneuver, the returns/meetings take place nicely, at each node, along a given line, and it becomes a beautiful sense of harmony.
This is freedom itself, isn't it?

In comparison, the metronome's time-segmentation is completely unnatural, ab ovo not even belonging to music, it brought more bleakness than it gave joy. The functioning of living systems, and indeed the functioning of the entire Universe, follows the above unpredictability much more than the artificial intervals created by man.

And the mystery of unpredictability, as so often in Early Music, instead of the direct constraint of causality, gives rise to something much more beautiful and much more elegant.

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The tones of the two Keith Hill instruments chosen fit nicely into this 'knightly work'.

 

The Blanchet harpsichord is a faithful reproduction of an early Rückers instrument, with two manuals and a beautiful tone.

The other is a lute-harpsichord with gut strings and a very special, delicate sound. No existing instrument has survived here, so the copy built in 2000 had to be created from paintings and old order documents; many of the latter papers bear J. S. Bach's signature, as the lute-harpsichord was his 'home' composing instrument.

*

The slow pieces are my real favorites. They have a strange, Wurlitzer-like feeling to them. Like when you turn the knob of a music box and something great, from a completely different plane, comes out of the strange little parts. 
The Music.

If we spin it slowly, even if we spin it quickly, it doesn't affect its reality.

Where does music come from? 
From the wooden box?
From the small metal plates? 
In the recording, from the instrument? 
Or is it an independent spiritual reality that has always existed?




 

I don't know.
One thing is certain, this is a pure magic.

And that's the point, and that's the only thing that matters.
 

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Images
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Machaut and the Salamanders

There is a record I have been beating around to write about for years. 

Why? This was penned in the nicest fashion by Szerb Antal; we do remember how Utas és Holdvilág starts, right the first page, second paragraph; we have just opened the book. I have encountered such an upbeat nowhere else:

During his protracted years of wandering he had travelled in many lands, and spent long periods in France and England. But Italy he had always avoided, feeling the time had not yet come, that he was not yet ready for it. Italy he associated with grown-up matters, such as the fathering of children, and he secretly feared it, with the same instinctive fear he had of strong sunlight, the scent of flowers, and extremely beautiful women.

…and I fear the Machaut record with the Salamander.

For the cover already is weird. The pink colour is like the yellow patch on a salamander, it warns the predators to be careful, it might be bitter. Or, without initiation, even venous. Do not chow it down avariciously. 

For this music is 300 years older than the ones I am generally fond of, although they are pretty old too. It comes from an age which is a laid table for the experts to debate about matters, a shaky ground, imprecise, absent and often false chronicles, dusty, half-burnt paper piles scattered about in wars.

For it is intellectually disturbing.

For there is a huge appeal in its strangeness, which is mostly incomprehensible today.

For it is the most beautiful music I have ever heard.

Guillaume de Machaut was born in 1300, he served John Luxemburg Czech king first; then he became canon of Rheims under Charles Navarra. He was also a very famous poet; his music was so popular that his works were found in over 70 manuscripts, which seems absolutely unique in knowledge of the 14th century.

The tools of the time was so different from those of today that it is a wonder that we can listen to this CD. First, the era is before the major-minor hegemony. It is hard to imagine for mind you, we are holding the guitar, we have the lyrics of The House of the Rising Sun in mind, but we must not use either the major or minor chords…

Which interval was harmonious and which was not is even astonishing. 

Namely, it is the third on which today’s music is built. The use of third was limited the time. 

Why? 

Because it was regarded dissonant, imperfect; they said so with a piteous, patronizing tone.
What was perfect, we are at loss?, there were the two hotshots, the Divine Octave known as Perfect Prima, and, of course, the Quint, the universal superstar. 

Scraping our semi-knowledge of tuning systems together, indeed, the octave existed as a base from the metaphysical far-away mist. Where Pythagoras would not understand what cannot be comprehended for it is the sound base partition, there are seven spheres, seven planets, seven colours, seven gulps in a glass of water which are swallowed in seven seconds each. And the quint is always a clear quint, pure quint is the whole [Hungarian] name. 

According to physics, if we should find mysticism too much, the overtone lines of the hit sound start with octave, quint, octave quint (again), third, then the others, so the tone is built up simply this way, rather than according to third step. 

So we are living now in the third-polluted era.:) What a strange...

On the one hand, the judgement of harmony is basically different, on the other hand, there was real polyphony with genuine, equal parts as regarded even today, and the basic aesthetical principle of counter-motion and mirror construction valid today existed already, no matter how weird it is. 

Mainly if we have a glance at the calendar while standing in the mud sunk to the knees somewhere in the drainage of a big river among birds, fishes and salamanders, where the Square of Franciscans lies today…

There are even more oddities. 

Series of intended breaks sound at times, the part is interrupted. It is the hoquetus which really means hiccup where the aborted part is taken over by another and is served between them like a baton.

Then here is isorhythmia peculiar to motets. 

What is this? It is the multiple repetition of similar rhythms. This does not help us much for we could say that it is ab ovo true for most music. However, Ars Nova was such a long time ago that we bump into something incomprehensible again, that is, the rhythm (talea) and the melody (colour) moved entirely separately. The rhythm line and melody line were almost never of the same length, so if they were interlocked then, according to the rules of interference they clustered on given nods, e.g., at the end or middle of each third or seventh phase or anywhere but very precisely. 

Why is it such a big deal? 

On the one hand, it could occur with different melodies during the repetitive rhythm so new themes were borne continually; on the other hand, there was complete freedom until the meeting points which were filled with insane diminutions or ornamentations at times. 

Yes, here is the root of “free music” and when we listen to a sonata of classical music it is like putting our heads in a compractor...

As the music progresses the feeling of harmony enhances. It comes from our enthusiasm but it is grounded too. For in the era of Ars Nova the music is in motion; each chord thrives toward perfect, i.e., semi-perfect toward perfect, and imperfect toward semi-perfect, so harmony is being built up. All this in a way that dissonance is given place, not only because it could not be bypassed during the conduct of the counter-point, but because it is the real driving force of the progress from chord to chord. Do not believe that the latter went smoothly; Machaut was attacked for this false love; it did not fit in the system the time.

The whole is pervaded by the principle of Renaissance unity; there are no triads bringing the difference of the individual where one wears a red pullover, the other a black one, here the colour of outfit does not count but the fact what kind of human beings we are counts. It is a much more honest music, at least it is exempt from accretions.

All motets are included on the record, the forms are various, simple monody, instrumental diminution, a capella, virelai, chanson, we have everything, the theme is Death, Love and Hope in the secular world of the clerical and chivalric ideal. The base of traditional motet is a Gregorian as lower part, the tenor, generally unrecognisably for the rhythm is completely different; dulpum and triplum are built upon this, and sometimes a counter-tenor fourth part.

It can be listened to more easily because Machaut placed the melody on the usual tenor part but the uppermost; it was a bold thing even that time, we can imagine what brevity it was to take everything else from underneath the upper part by Caccini, only an accompanying bass was left, it became Nuove Musiche, the monody, it opened the door for opera as a genre. This melody-oriented thinking is so trivial today that it is hard to understand that it was not so for centuries; so Machaut hanged out a bit, try to listen to his contemporaries or Josquin’s music a long time later, we can hardly make the basic melody out of the intricacy of the parts.

Do not search for the melodiousness of Vivaldi for do not have illusions; this music is extremely hard to listen to in a way that we can understand something of it. You need not be sad, it was that simple even the time; Jean de Crounchy says that the piece ought not to be performed in front of an ordinary audience but for well-trained ears who adore the niceties of the notes penetrating into the arts. 

All this 650 years ago.
Madness, is not it?

Do we know of more authors like him?
One off hand, for sure. Myself, as an Early Music fan, Bach’s music sprawls on my horizon, it is unavoidable, it floats like a big Zeppelin, it overshadows everything; you can but make comparisons. Bach and Machaut are at the two ends of an era with a distance of 400 years.
Was there any development or time passed only?
Let us agree to that everyone has their own answer and one from the encyclopaedia.

Bach’s music became theoretical and Machaut’s music metaphysical.
What does it mean? One is a master’s filtrate of theories built on the seeming world, we divide-multiply-do mathematics, the other lets the ancient unity through itself, the fragment of primordial existence.

One had all the spices at hand, the other had the salt only.

Both are good cooks but our taste of dishes are heavily different. And they are indeed; although one of them is a poet as great as Petrarca or Dante, at the moment the spice kitchen has a hard-on.

The ensemble is relatively unknown. Their approach is adorable for they made research and contemplated for two years how to serve all this. Their sophistication reveals in that they took time to figure out which old French dialect should be presented on the record.

We speak of poetry, poems, for the texts of the motets were loaned mainly from the secular repertoire and we must not forget that the music was not the train and subordinate of the lyrics but the prima, so if the verse foot did not work out, it was not possible to tailor the rhythm like today.
Are they simple little poems or even doggerels?
Well, we mishit all right as the lyrics is so multifaceted and multilevel that the expression textual polyphony was borne, the rest can only be guessed or I could write the matrixes about the Biblical references and arithmetical rule systems, the rhythm of verse forms, the places of syllables, the morphological accent dislocations and the like for weeks…

Well, after all this, shall we insert the CD or have a drink rather…?
Both are good ideas, we might as well do both.

Following the scaring there is no table of parts or isorythmia or the motion of semi-perfect.

What comes is something like a sudden ray of the Sun.
Some marvel.
A fine, nicely arched textile unrolls. It is very unusual and fine; we are filled by the rhythm of the lyrics and music; something novel we have not yet heard, or we picked the scattered morsels of it.

We have a slight presumption what it will be like at first…extravagant, it is the right word. The voices are phenomenal; it is like a choir of pow-wow verse, or a heart-breaking lover’s confession about the setting Moon. The rising beauty shakes nicely and definitely. It arouses because our [Hungarian] language is nice so it elevates for it is some upper music which can only elevate…

I know that many doors are locked, the bolts and padlocks are rusty; some will get their finger pricked, some will run away, some will not understand it, some will not like it. It is completely irrelevant. This music exists and works if many listen to it or no one. Its fractal network solidly built in the musical ground is unbreakable.

It is truly like a Salamander.

...of which it is common knowledge that it is unperishable, was never born and will never die, water does not hurt it; fire does not burn it because it lives inside fire.

And, indeed, the greatest joy in music to make it familiar with others.

As for me, I am happy that someone entrenched the topic with a great heart and showed how the planets rotated then.




Absolutely recommended.

Translated by Kenesei Andrea

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Thank you for  the great help coming from my musician friends.
I have the red pullover.

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Szerb Antal: Utas és Holdvilág
Antal Szerb: Journey by Moonlight
Highly recommended
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About primordial existence read more in the works of Hamvas Béla.







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Thank you for the images.
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Machaut: Messe de Nostre Dame - Graindelavoix

Guillaume de Machaut was born in 1300. He served John Luxembourg Czech king first, then he became the canon of Rheims during the reign of Charles Navarra. 

He was also a very famous poet. His pieces were found in over 70 manuscripts - it is completely unique considering the 14th century.

This work of his is well known for it is among the first pieces where the movements of the Mass are noted basically by one author. It was customary to compile the insertions of a ceremony or liturgy from various pieces in early times and even centuries later; however, everything is interweaved onto one idea; the record frames this peculiarity supplemented with some motets.

Why is it a speciality? 

On the one hand, it is the era of Ars Nova when the stock of musical devices was so different that we wonder how we can listen to this record, on the other hand, Machaut composed with such special musicality which makes it unique even today.

It was obviously noticed by many others too so Messe de Notre Dame is well known enough, it became a stronghold on the horizon of Early Music. 

However, this performance is so different that it almost restructures our hitherto opinions.

The question arises right away: did it sound this way in Machaut’s era or not? 

Critics seem to doubt it. 

In the case of Graindelavoix this opinion was nearly in the cards; mind you, the Ockeghem record was a big stone thrown into the nice still water of the early choir performances; it happened as long as 10 years ago, yet, the waves are still whirling. 

Now the situation is much more complex for this diction is expressively…what is like? …Well, it is as if it wished to deliberately go against the canon. 

Annoying?

It is.

One has the feeling that a flock of cavemen are locked in the church. Cacophonic shouting, parts random entering, outslides near half and quarter notes. The basics of Christian metaphysics were explained to a barbaric tribe with great difficulties, they were taught to sing the songs and now they can express themselves in this fashion.

When we try to make an opinion at first we might simply walk into the trap of trying to explain things backwards of which we haven’t the slightest idea how they worked in the past. When the well-bred, rice-powered Bach fugue, strict and soulless precision is the starting point in which we are stationary painted grey - then the failure of comprehension is guaranteed. 

Björn Schmelzer had an entirely different approach. He simply freed himself of the compulsory deductive forces of the performances of Early Music and set off from his own completely intuitive standpoint. Obviously, debates could go on till twilight over which approach is correct but we had better forget all these while listening to the music. Even when it ab ovo opposes the associative-compulsive operation of the human mind.

Anyway, we have seen something slightly similar in the Mediterranean world; remember the comparison of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater versions. Le Poeme Harmonique too got enough in the neck when it - fully rightly - was understood as part of a contemporary liturgy in some church near Naples at the beginning of the 1700s. At present we are 350 years earlier during Ars Nova where we can adore the dim stock of all kinds of theories even nowadays.

Amidst listening to the record the assumption that we are part of something magnificent is more and more silhouetting. 

We realise that those chaos entries occur according to a strict system; it attracts attention that the half note drops are fully precise. 

The voices are phenomenal, great arcs interweave the whole performance.

Wildness more and more seems honesty.

When we do believe the story of Jesus Christ.

It is just like that when restoring an old painting or piece of furniture: the forgotten colours and lights come to light. When we unwrap a thin piece of china out of a wooden box and we are taken aback by the delicateness of the hand painted patterns. For more and more inner delicacies are turning up. We must move extremely carefully in a weird network of a different musical language, in a vulnerable and transient matrix so that we can feel the beauty of the patterns of the cobweb.

Thus the strange situation emerges where thin strings are woven from this wild and implacable straightness in a way that their reception…what does it do? 

Well, let us say, it certainly civilises. 

Like with the porcelain. It civilises that the handle of the cup is not in the right place, totally non-ergonomic, too thin, bad to look at, gets broken…fine but then why all this misery? It makes our moves soft; if we do not want to spill the tea we must heavily focus to avoid breaking it while looking at the beautifully painted motives. And if we succeed in the manoeuvre then the flavour of the tea will be completely different than sipping from the chipped yellow cup. Or if we only carry it but do not understand, on our back, it is big pressure, yet we cannot reach it despite the fact that it is all around us… 

Is it highly recommended? 

Not entirely.

Let us not tell lies especially to ourselves. We cannot like both - this and String Serenade; there are things the Sun shines on differently. Thus there are some who runs away, some shut their ears and yell that it is cheap and meant for effect and let them torture with something else. There are some who are fond of Peres’s conventional record. And some who adore Bach collection rather or listen to the complete works of Mozart.

No any fault with their taste.

But there is a small part of the classical-music-lovers - whose tea will be of different flavour having discovered this CD.

This article was written for them.

Translated by Kenesei Andrea

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Thank you for the images.  

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