The past is a different country which requires a great deal of research and imaginative effort to recreate in its multilayered richness of sights, sounds, smells, textures and tastes. Visiting the Chiltern Open Air Museum a few years ago I found myself shouting to be heard over the almost unbearable thunder of iron-rimmed cartwheels rolling over cobbles. I’d had no idea carts were so loud – and that was one single, large, four-wheeled wagon pulled by a single horse. Imagine the din around the warehouses of London Docks in the 1880s!
Music goes beyond natural sound, though. Music is a cultural construct full of meaning; it reflects, interprets, and to a large extent creates the manners and desires of its own time. It's natural to refer to music as we construct history. Swingtime, jazz, rock and roll, punk, reggae, hip-hop – all tell something about the decades in which they flourish. Impossible to imagine the sixties without the Beatles or the Kinks. The same must be true for the deeper past. I once thrilled to a British Museum reconstruction of a Roman trumpet call, and what about the prehistoric bone flutes that were played in caves like Lascaux?
My children’s novel DarkAngels (HarperCollins) is set on the Welsh borders in the 1190s, and features a flawed heroic figure, Hugo of La Motte Rouge, Norman warlord and ex-crusader who believes his dead wife may – just may – not be dead after all, even though seven years have passed since he buried her. She may have been spirited away by the elf-folk and taken into the tunnels under the hill. In which case, there may be a chance he could rescue her.
There are a quite a few 12th century legends on this mysterious subject, the idea of lost lovers re-encountered in some fairy land of the dead. Walter Map, a courtier at the court of Henry II, tells the story of a Breton knight who rescued his dead-and-buried wife when, months later, he saw her whirling in a fairy dance. And the retelling of the Orpheus myth, Sir Orfeo, probably also ultimately dates from this time, from a Breton lai subsequently translated into Middle English.
So there I was with the idea that my knight Lord Hugo would be a sort of Orpheus figure. Therefore he needed to be musical. Now the Breton lais are lengthy stories in verse; they were performed by minstrels who probably chanted them with a musical prelude and interludes. And of course the 12th and 13th centuries were also the time of the troubadours of southern France, whose songs were primarily songs of fin’ amour– of romantic love in high society.
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| Garden of Pleasure, Harley 4425, 15th C. |
It’s been suggested that the notion, even the emotion of romantic love was created by the troubadours, a product of the hot-house needs of often very young noblemen and noblewomen living with nothing much to do in close proximity in small castles, spending time together every day, yet with sex strictly off-limits - marriage being a formal matter of property and alliances arranged by their elders. So this new music arose, a music of youth, full of expressions of forbidden desire: subversive, exciting, dangerous and fashionable.
Many troubadours were high-born men and women, whose songs would usually be performed by a joglar or jongleur, a professional singer. Still, it seemed to me quite possible that my own Lord Hugo might on occasion be prevailed upon to sing his own songs – especially if he thought that doing so might help win back his wife from the dead land.
Many troubadours were high-born men and women, whose songs would usually be performed by a joglar or jongleur, a professional singer. Still, it seemed to me quite possible that my own Lord Hugo might on occasion be prevailed upon to sing his own songs – especially if he thought that doing so might help win back his wife from the dead land.
So now I needed to listen to troubadour songs. Here's one anonymous 13th century song, performed by Conjunto de Camara de Porto Alegre. They don't sing it all: as you can see, below, it's quite long. I made a free translation to get myself in the mood for writing songs for Lord Hugo.
Volez vous que je vous chante Would you like me to sing you
Un son d’amours avenant? A fine song of love?
Vilain nel fist mie, By no peasant it was made,
Ainz le fist un chevalier But a gentle knight who lay
Sous l’ombre d’un olivier With his sweetheart in his arms
Entre les bras s’amie. In an olive tree’s shade.
Chemisete avoit de lin She wore a linen chemise,
Et blanc peliçon hermin A pelisse of white ermine –
Et bliaut de soie Of silk was her dress,
Chauces ot de jaglolai Her stockings were of iris leaves
Et solers de flours de mai And slippers of mayflowers
Estroitement chauçade Her feet to caress.
Ceinturete avoit de feuille Her girdle was of leaves
Que verdist quant li tens meuille, Which grow green when it rains,
D’or est boutonade Her buttons of gold so fine,
L’aumosniere estoit d’amour Her purse was a gift of love
Li pendant furent de flours And it hung from flowery chains
Par amours fu donade. As it were a lovers’ shrine.
Et chevauchoit une mule And she rode on a mule,
D’argent ert la ferruere The saddle was of gold,
La sele ert dorade; All silver were its shoes;
Sus la croupe par derriers On the crupper behind
Avoit plante trois rosiers To provide her with shade
Pour faire li ombrage. Three rose-bushes grew.
Si s’en va aval la pree As she passed through the fields
Chevaliers l’ont encontree She met gentle knights
Beau l’on saluade: Who demanded courteously:
“Belle, dont estes vous nee?” “Fair one, where were you born?”
“De France sui la louee, “From France am I come.
De plus haut parage.” And of high family.”
“Li rossignol est mon pere “The nightingale is my father
Qui chant sor la ramee Who sings from the branches
El plus haut boscage. Of the forest’s highest tree.
La seraine est mon mere The mermaid is my mother
Qui chante en la mer sale Who sings her sweet notes
Li plus haut rivage.” On the banks of the salt sea.”
“Belle, bon fussiez vous nee! “Fair one, well were you born!
Bien estes emparentee Well fathered, well mothered
Et de haut parage. And of high family.
Pleüst á Dieu nostre pere Might God only grant
Que vous ne fussiez donee That you should be given
A femme esposade.” In marriage to me!”
Could a song be more sensual, the object of desire more dangerous? The lady in this chanson is a headily-erotic blend of wildwood flowers, songs and the fairy world; that purse which hangs from her girdle on flowery chains ‘like a lover’s shrine’ is certainly a metaphor Freud would have recognised. No wonder the young knights acknowledge her ‘high degree’ and long for her hand in marriage. It’s enough to turn their parents’ hair grey.
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| Lady out riding, 16th C, by Gerard Horenbout |
Troubadour songs often use images such as the coming of the green leaves in spring, and the song of the nightingale, to express the pain and delight and longing of love. Here’s Guillem de Peiteus, Count of Poitiers and Duke of Aquitaine, comparing love to a hawthorn bough:
As for our love, you must know how
Love goes – it’s like the hawthorn bough
That on the living tree stands, shaking
All night beneath the freezing rain
Till next day, when the warm sun, waking,
Spreads through green leaves and boughs again.
(Tr. W. D. Snodgrass.)
In the end I wrote this for Hugo to sing of his love:
When all the spring is bursting and blossoming,
And the hedge is white with blossom like a breaking wave,
That’s when my heart is bursting with love-longing
For the girl who pierced it, for that sweet wound she gave.
And I hear the nightingale singing in the forest –
Singing for love in the forest: “Come to me, I am alone…
Better to suffer love’s pain for a single kiss
Than live for a hundred years with a heart of stone.”
It’s Hugo’s love and pain that drives the plot of Dark Angels and I really needed the plangent, beautiful music of the 13th century to get it right.