Our relationships with people of the past are complicated.
We know they were there, thanks to all kinds of historical documents, but it still feels
like looking through a camera into an imaginary world inhabited by cartoon characters.
But that's what makes these rare moments even more astounding, when we seem to catch
one of them looking right back at us, through our own lens, as if they knew we're watching.
And what we find looking behind those actors in costume and make up is a human experience
that never really changed.
The painting you see here was made in the year 1518, exactly 5 centuries ago.
We don't know who the sitters are, only that they lived in Venice, apparently had
money, and liked music.
And that's about as much as we know about a certain »Vidal«, who during that very
same year was putting together a book unlike any other we know.
In it, he compiled the music of his teacher, the lute player Vincenzo Capirola, whom we
know only thanks to this one manuscript.
Here's how it starts:
»Considering as I, Vidal, that many divine works have been lost due to the ignorance
of their owners, and desiring for this quasi-divine book I wrote to be conserved for eternity,
I decided to ornament it with noble drawings, so that if it fell into the hands of someone
in lack of understanding, they would conserve it for the beauty of the pictures.
As it turns out, Vidal was right.
Among the thousands of handwritten pages people would fill with music during those years,
his book is by far the oldest substantial collection of lute repertoire to survive and
not eventually suffer the fate of an old telephone book.
Vidals time, the Renaissance, was defined by the rediscovery and newfound appreciation
for antiquity, or rather its surviving fragments.
What makes his perspective unique is the awareness for how his present might become the antiquity
to another renaissance in the distant future.
He knew this music would eventually go out of style and believed someone might rediscover
it if only it survived long enough.
For this reason his book is written in a way that makes it unique even among all other
historical sources of music.
Vidal assumes that we as readers have no idea what he's talking about and thus not only
describes how to move the right hand or manage difficult chords with the left, but also shares
the so called »secret of tieing strings onto a lute«, as well as how to read his notation:
»and by these dots you can see on which fret to make an ornament.
Nobody writes that down as one can do without, and those who know how to play use them by
their own discretion and whereever they like.
I simply notated them to show where doing them would be nice.«
This seems to explain why it's this very book that contains the earliest use of ornament
symbols in music history.
Musicians obviously used these effects all the time, but unless they wanted to explain
something to readers half a millenium into the future they apparently saw no point in
stating the obvious.
Vidals way of adressing us future readers can at times be endearingly personal, for
example when he tells us to »Repeat this piece, if you like.«
or unknowingly leaves the oldest known indication for piano:
Decorating the pages with donkeys and rabbits is of course only one method of preservation.
Another lute manuscript, though heavily fragmented and far less consistent, survived for even
longer, most likely thanks to its shape.
And then there's the output of music printing pioneer Ottaviano dei Petrucci, who published
the first ever lute print in the same city where Vidal wrote his book, only 10 years prior.
But while our manuscript survived for its uniqueness, the print did so by sheer number.
Thousands of copies were sold, of which fewer than a handful are left.
They use the same system of notation as Vidal and cover similar repertoire, mostly arrangements
of polyphonic songs, the typical kind of music then.
These so called intabulations were the closest thing to something like a recording, as they
allowed hearing a song without needing to assemble a group, by playing all the parts
simultaenously.
So while this print functions like a compilation album, exploring the Capirola manuscript is
akin to flicking through someone's personal playlists, not seldom an intimate insight
into their character.
The owner of this collection even went so far as to rate the individual tracks, mostly
with »beautiful«, »very beautiful«, »most beautiful«, »very much the most beautiful«
and so on.
There's really only one piece Vidal seems unsure about, calling it: »an old song that
by itself is not beautiful«.
The song he means is a spanish villancico from the 1470's and sounds like this:
and this is Vincenzo Capirola's arrangement of the same song:
So what the author is implying here in the year 1518 is that the only way to still enjoy
a song from the 70s is in the form of a remix:
Other such »oldies« from the 80s or 90s are treated similarily, like the most widely
spread and remixed french chanson at at the time, which in its original version is also
preserved in the famous »Chansonnier Cordiforme«, another heart shaped manuscript:
But as Vincenzo Capirola had grown up in Northern Italy, it's not unlikely that the way he
remembered that song sounded more akin to this:
And now his own version, the spelling of the title reveals that neither Capirola nor his
student seem to have known any french.
Of course the collection isn't limited to remixed oldies from outside italy.
There's a number of brand new italian songs, as well.
And it's surprising how they are treated very differently.
One example being this Frottola printed in 1514 by Ottaviano dei Petrucci.
And Capirola turns this into the following piece:
So while Vincenzo Capirola makes the old songs almost unrecognizable, they sound more like
something he'd have composed himself, he leaves the brand new songs practically unchanged,
the way anyone in Venice must have known them.
It remains hard to grasp for us how this book Vidal invested so much time and care into
was never meant to be read by all the people around him.
Even though it is entirely private, like a diary, he took great care not only in decorating
it, but also in writing with extreme clarity and free of errors, something you couldn't
say about many other handwritten sources.
In this way, his manuscript is still rooted in the medieval book tradition that predated
the printing press.
The symbolism books carry today, referring to knowledge, wisdom, and the power of imagination
– or used in order to advertise printed books, stems from there.
For us, this is more of an ideological thing as any given volume is one of countless identical
copies, but before Gutenberg or Petrucci this was a very concrete concern:
As a handwritten book is a unique object, all the knowledge it contains is bound to
it, so it only made sense to treat it like a treasure, sometimes complete with lock and key.
In these illuminated manuscripts the decoration not only served to make the pages prettier
or illustrate their content.
The drawings were the result of specialized, time intensive work, further heightening the
value and prestige of these already expensive objects.
Plus medieval manuscripts would be far less present on our everyday internet without them.
What's curious is that even the most high brow texts were not seldom adorned with low brow themes:
ever changing combinations of plants, animals, humans and beings in between, often interacting
with one another in ways impossible to relate to any consistent narrative.
An immediately apparent use for these so called »drolleries« was to assist memorization.
For scholars having to retain entire volumes in their minds these drawings served as mental
book-marks that helped them recall the rest of the page.
The more absurd and grotesque these drawings, the easier they were to link to a specific
passage.
For his lute book, Vidal sticks to the features he must have observed in professionally illuminated manuscripts:
the scenes range from the ordinary to the curious, never quite showing a thematic relation
to the music they adorn.
What's consistent is the implication of a space: birds fly or sit on trees, exotic
as well as local animals are spread on a grassy ground, with some mythical creatures in between.
The interactions between these beings follow a set of simple patters, usually related to
conflict, but never woven into a larger narrative.
So these drawings don't illustrate a story but imply a self-sufficent parallel reality
with its own set of rules.
This especially finds itself reflected in Vincenzo Capirola's own compositions, the
ones he didn't base on existing songs or dance forms.
In those thirteen pieces he freely recombines fragments from the vocal music he arranged,
adding ideas of his own, some simple, some grotesque.
The compositional process seems to follow a set of rules but never any pre-defined text
or structured narative.
Like a story made up along the way, searching for a path through an imaginary world of musical
ideas, as the name Ricercare, meaning search, may imply.
As all imagined worlds reach their end when they are forgotten, Vidals decision to visualize
what lies behind these numbers might have been what saved it.
And they'll continue singing it forever just because
»This is the song that doesn't end«
»Yes it goes on and on my friend«
»Some people started singing it not knowing what it was«
»and they'll continue singing it forever just because«
We've already reached the end of this episode but there's still some things I'd like to say,
so as always I reserved a little time after the end of the actual episode to talk about
these more personal things.
Since last episode of me:mo there's been a bit wider of a gap, the reason being that
I was involved in a CD recording project with Vocal Concert Dresden, so I spend some time in Dresden.
And as always these projects take preparation, it takes a certain amount of time.
And if you know me:mo from previous episodes you might have noticed a change – of course
I mean the image quality.
The reason for this is that the 19 previous episodes of me:mo were shot on this, my phone.
Yeah, it's quite amazing what these phones can do these days.
But I figured it's finally time to get a proper camera and I made the investment.
But the reason I was able to afford this camera at this point in time is, of course, your support.
What I mean by that is the support I'm receiving via [www.patreon.com] That's a service that
enables viewers to make small »micro-donations« per episode which then enable me to, for example,
buy this camera, it was really financed completely out of the money I received through Patreon,
or in the future hopefully reserve more and more time to devote to all the preparation
that goes into these episodes: the research, the planning, the recording.
So, as always, the most important part of this final section of the video is my moment
to say thanks to all the viewers who decided to support me:mo in this way!
Apart from that I also wanted to send out a special mention to Peppe Frana, a friend
of mine who helped me with some of the more tricky bits in this 500 year old Venetian
dialect that was going on in the Capirola manuscript.
There's some point where you need the intuition and knowledge of a native speaker and in several
moments he was able to help me out.
Thanks, Peppe!
And furthermore I'd like to thank me:mo's first sponsor who's been supporting the
project in a very special way since the beginning.
It's the online string service [Cuerdaspulsadas.es] And on this website you can find all kinds
of strings.
Not only lute strings, but for all kinds of instruments.
And I guess if you ask them about Capirola's »Secret of putting strings onto a lute«
they'll probably be able to help you, too.
If you'd like to find out more about me:mo you can find more information and all previous
episodes, whether you're a patron or not, on me:mo's own website: [www.musicamemo.com]
There you'll also find a way to sign up to me:mo's own newsletter which will inform
you by email whenever I release a new episode.
And also, another new thing, there's a new section which I dedicated to translations
because I noticed there's many people who'd like to see me:mo but for whom English means
a certain language barrier.
So if you'd like to help out with that and make me:mo more accesible to people in your
home country, please don't hesitate to have a look on the website.
It's really quite a simple process to help with translating these subtitles.
So I suppose the only thing that's really left to say at this point is that I hope you
enjoyed this installment and that you'll be joining me for the next episode of me:mo!
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