Herodotus was the first to describe a fountain of youth in writing. Having been sent as spies to the court of the Ethiopian King by Cambyses II of Persia, the author tells us how the ‘fish-eating’ emissaries enquired of the King the secret of his health and longevity. In response, the King
led them, it is said, to a spring, by washing in which they grew sleeker, as though it were of oil: and it smelled of violets. So light, the spies said, was this water, that nothing would float on it, neither wood nor anything lighter than wood, but all sank to the bottom. If this water is truly such as they say, it is likely that their constant use of it makes the people long-lived.9
Thus began a fascination with the rejuvenating power of water which has per-sisted in poetry and myth for fully two and a half thousand years. The Alexan-der Romance, for instance, gives several variants of a story in which AlexanAlexan-der the Great travels through the ‘Land of Darkness’ in an attempt to find the ‘Wa-ter of Life’. The legends of Pres‘Wa-ter John tell that a fountain of youth was just one of many wonders possessed by the magnificent King. Five hundred years ago, the fountain of youth was said to have found a home when the European
9Herodotus,The Histories, trans. by A.D. Godley (London: Heinemann, 1921–24), III, §23.
Figure 1.4: Roman de Fauvel; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS fr.146, folio 42r (detail).
explorer Juan Ponce de León, searching for the life-giving spring, instead discov-ered Florida. The magically restorative power of water is a trope both old and tenacious.
If there are numerous written descriptions of fountains of youth, visual rep-resentations of it are no less prolific. One image in particular is especially note-worthy (see figure 1.4). Balding and bearded elderly men walk with sticks or crutches, carefully picking their way from the right towards the centre of the im-age. There, a large basin plays host to the black baptism of its occupants.10 They excitedly rub and douse themselves with the water which gushes down from the mouths of the grotesquely deformed gargoyles above. Finally, on the left, the men emerge from the font and clothe themselves—once more young, upright, and virile.
What relevance does the trope of the fountain of youth, and the image in figure 1.4 in particular, have to the history of keyboard arrangement? The inspiration for the image comes from a poem written at the French Royal Court between
10For an explanation of how the illumination inverts traditional baptism imagery, see Kauffmann [1998].
1310 and 1317 by Court Chancery Gervais du Bois, the Roman de Fauvel. The poem tells the story of the rapid ascent to the highest levels of the aristocracy by an immoral horse-beast called ‘Fauvel’, helped in his passage by the evil machi-nations of Dame Fortuna and Vaine Gloire, his eventual bride. The poem most likely satirises the life of Enguerran de Marigny, a courtier whose career trajectory was similarly steep, and supposedly just as morally dubious, until his ignomin-ious hanging in 1315 following the death of King Philip IV.11TheRoman de Fauvel explains the evil intent with which Fauvel uses the fountain:
Encore y a greingneur merveille Qui me met la puce en l’oreille Et me fait penser trop souvent:
C’est que Heresie a en couvent A Fauvel d’esloingner sa vie, A sa fame et a sa lignie Par la fontainne de jouvent.12
By being reborn through unholy baptism in the fountain, Fauvel’s satanic off-spring ensure their future dominion over France.
A transcription of the text of theRoman de Fauvelprovides the bulk of the con-tent which makes up the manuscript in which the image in figure 1.4 can be found, MS français 146 of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Fr.146 was most likely completed in 1317 and is a veritable cornucopia of material, containing
“a complainte d’amour, a table of contents, a version of theRoman de Fauvel in-terpolated with music and images, a collection of eight political poems or dits attributed to Geoffroy de Paris. . . , a collection of songs attributed to Jehan de Lescurel and a rhymed chronicle.”13 The image of the fountain of youth is found in the bottom right-hand corner of folio 42r, concluding one of many interpolated motets by Philip de Vitry which enliven this presentation of theRoman—in this case,Tribum que non abhorruit / Quoniam secta latronum / Merito hec patimur, whose text details the decline in favour of de Marigny (see figure 1.5).14
Tribum que non abhorruit indecenter ascendere furibunda non metuit Fortuna cita vertere, dum duci prefate tribus in sempiternum speculum parare palam omnibus non pepercit patibulum.
11For a full summary of the story and its origins, see [Dillon, 2002, 10–28].
12[Långfors, 1914–1919, 189], lines 1587–1593.
13cite[12]dillon.
14Note that Dillon also observes that the folio includes, just above the image, a text from the bap-tismal service—Hic fons—corrupted to draw attention to the “devious and perverted acts that occur in the fountain.” See [Dillon, 2002, 256].
(Furious fortune has not feared to bring down swiftly the tribe which did not shrink from ascending indecently, while for the leader of the foresaid tribe, she has not refrained from preparing the gallows as an eternal mirror in the sight of everyone.)15
The relevance ofTribum que non abhorruitand its accompanying image to the history of keyboard arrangement lies in British Library Additional Manuscript 28550, the Robertsbridge Codex. The Robertsbridge Codex consists of only two leaves of music bound into the register of Robertsbridge Abbey, England. The date of the Codex’s completion is not known, but the current consensus is that it was written some time shortly after the midpoint of the fourteenth century.16 While it is not clear for precisely which instrument the music is scored, it is in-tended to be performed on a keyboard: John Caldwell explains that “in some places, the scribe even indicates that the left hand has to play the top part.”17 There can be no doubt that the Robertsbridge Codex is the earliest known source of notated keyboard music.
The music of the Codex consists of four complete and two incomplete works, all of which fall into one of two genres. The first set of three works are estamp-ies, a popular Italian dance form of the Trecento; of these, the first is incomplete.
The second genre of works represented here are intabulations, arrangements of vocal music for performance on keyboard or plucked-string instruments. Intab-ulation undoubtedly arose for practical reasons: keyboard- or lute-players want-ing to perform alongside vocalists would have had to prepare their own scores for performance by reducing the vocal parts from the singers’ various partbooks onto a single system.18 The Codex features three intabulations—one of which is incomplete—of earlier material.
The Robertsbridge Codex is the first notated keyboard music in history. The Codex is important to this study, then, because the two complete intabulations within it must be counted as the earliest extant keyboard arrangements. Indeed, they are the earliest extant arrangements of any kind. The two complete pieces which have been arranged in the Robertsbridge Codex for performance at the keyboard are sourced from MS fr.146—Fermissime fidem adoremus / Adesto, Sancta Trinitas, and, most interestingly,Tribum que non abhorruit / Quoniam Secta Latronum / Merito. The earliest extant keyboard arrangement is based on an original which was illustrated by an image of a black fountain of youth.
A fountain of youth illustrates the original motet on which the earliest known keyboard arrangements are based. Before the consequences of that fact are ex-plored further, some time will now be spent considering the musical significance of the arrangements contained in the Robertsbridge Codex. Three points will be made: first, arrangements are records of a series of decisions on the part of the ar-ranger which can be extrapolated through comparison of the arrangement and its
15Ed. and trans. David Howlett. Quoted in Bent [1997].
16See John Caldwell. “Sources of keyboard music to 1660.” In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/
music/26298(accessed April 6, 2010).
17[Caldwell, 1985, 9].
18Howard Mayer Brown. “Intabulation.” InGrove Music Online. Oxford Music Online,http://
www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/13823(accessed February 18, 2010).
Figure 1.5: Roman de Fauvel; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS fr.146, folio 42r,Tribum que non abhorruit / Quoniam Secta Latronum / Merito.
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Figure1.6:Intabulationfromthe Robertsbridge Codex, BritishLibrary Add i-tional Manuscript28550,ca.1360ofFermissimefidemadoremus/Adesto, SanctaTrinitasfromtheRomandeFauvel,BibliothèqueNationalede France, MSfr.146,transcriptionby WilliApel,1963.
originalandwhichrevealthesocialand musicalconditionsunderwhichthear -rangerwasworking;second,anycomparisonofarrangementandoriginal must focusas muchonthose momentswherethetwoareidenticalasonthosewhere theyaredifferent,forbothsimilaritiesanddif ferencesarekeytounderstand-ingthedialecticofinnovationandfaithfulnesswhichcharacterisesarrangement; third,andasaconsequenceoftheproceedingtwoclaims,nineteenth-century keyboardarrangementscannotbedismissedashistoricallyorartisticallyun in-terestingsimplybecausetheyseemtoerronthesideoffidelitytoanoriginal.
TheintabulationsintheRobertsbridgeCodexarereprinted,andcompared withtheiroriginals,inthe1963volumeof WilliApel’s CorpusofEarlyKeyboard Music.19The mostimmediatelynoticeablefeatureoftheintabulationsistheir floridornamentationoftheuppervoice.Thisischaracteristicof mostintabu la-tionsofthisperiod.InthecaseoftheAdesto,forexample, whatintheoriginal wasasimplecomposing-outofa minimf’followedbyasemibrevec’(overa heldf)hasbeentransformedintheintabulationintoarhythmicallyundulating seriesofneighbournoteornamentations(seefigure1.6). Analmostidenticalor -namentationstyleisalsoobservableintheopeningbarsofthesecondcomplete intabulation,Tribumquem(seefigure1.7).
19SeeApel[1963].
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Figure1.7:Intabulationfromthe Robertsbridge Codex, BritishLibrary Add i-tional Manuscript28550,ca.1360ofTribumquenonabhorruit/Quoniam SectaLatronum/ MeritofromtheRomandeFauvel,Bibl iothèqueNa-tionaledeFrance, MSfr.146,transcriptionby WilliApel,1963.
Ingeneral,andinkeepingwiththetechniquesondisplayinotherear lyintabu-lations,thetwoarrangementscarryoverasmuchaspossibleoftheirvoca lmod-els.Thefairlydramaticalterationstothemotetsintheformoftheornamentation ofthetoplinesoftheintabulations mustthushavebeen motivatedbyaserious concernonthepartofthearranger.Theyarepresumablyconcessionstothelack ofsustainprovidedbythestringsofthepluckedkeyboardinstrumentforwhich they wereintended. Thisprincipleisalreadyfamiliarfromlater works: mu-sicperformedontheBaroqueharpsichord wasreplete withornamentationfor exactlythesamereason.Thus,concealed withinthelogicofthedecisiontoor -namentthetoplineoftheintabulationsisoneofthearranger’s motivations—a desiretomakethenotessoundlonger—whichrevealsafactaboutcontemporary instrumentaltechnology—notesontheinstrumentfor whichthearrangement wasintendedcouldnotbesustained.
Otherconclusionscanbedrawnfromthesameevidence. Thefactoftheor -namentationofthetoppartsuggests,forexample,thatthearranger wasintent onrenderingtheauraleffectoftheintabulationascloseaspossibletothatofthe original;hewastryingtoimitatethesoundoftheoriginalbycreating,through ornamentation,lineswhich mimicthevoice’sabilitytosustainpitches.Further, thisobservationchangesthewayinwh ichitcanbeassumedthattheornamen-tationswerereceivedbycontemporaryaudiences. Wherepreviouslytheymight havebeentakenasaimless wanderingsupanddownthekeyboard,itcannow bearguedthattheywereunderstoodasattemptingto‘sustain’theoriginal,more fundamental,pitchesofthesource work.(Asanaside,thisistoasksomething extremelyprofoundofthelistener,tohavehimorher mentallysustainanote whichcannotbeheardinthesameformasthatin whichitis meant.Itisthis pointwhichdrivesSchenkeriantheory.20)
20SeeSchenker[1979].
The use of ornamentation in theAdesto and the Tribum quemdemonstrates a vital point about the historical value of arrangements: an arrangement is a prod-uct of a series of decisions made by an arranger concerning the adaptation of an original to a new medium and which contains implicit within it the justifica-tions for these decisions. Indeed, a brief consideration of five forms of arrange-ment at different times and places throughout history shows how they always reveal broader musical, aesthetic, social and technological trends. For instance, nineteenth-century adaptations of orchestral works for the piano were often at pains to find a convincing way of conveying the instrumental timbre of their originals, typically using tremolando to convey violin tremolo and drum rolls.
Because there is nothing necessary about this use of tremolando, it reveals that value was obviously placed on the achievement of a similarity of aural effect between the arrangement and the original. Second, Schuberth’s 1860erleichtert version of Beethoven’s Trauermarsch, for example, or the simplified edition of Liszt’sRákóczy-Marschreleased in 1872 by the same publisher, speak of an audi-ence who were not only keen to play and hear well-known works, but who were also untroubled by the fact that the only form in which they could manage to do so was not the one intended by the composer.21 Nineteenth-century arrangers of Baroque works were often called upon to justify the changes they had made to an original in updating it for contemporary performance, and normally relied on appealing to changes in various facets of public taste to do so. J. F. Edler von Mosel, for example, writing in 1843, argues that the alterations he makes to Han-del’s compositions while preparing arrangements of them are in response to a lack of singers properly qualified for the job, a distaste for Handel’s preferred means of formal expression, and the absence of a suitable concert vehicle within which these long works can be contained.22 Fourth, some arrangements demon-strate that certain instrumental technologies or ensembles have become available at all. The existence of an arrangement of the first movement of Beethoven’s first symphony for eight tubas, for example, suggests that tubas exist, it is possible for eight of them to be in the same place at the same time, eight people will be happy to take part in this kind of performance, an audience will be willing to accept this as a valid instrumental ensemble, and audiences will be happy to listen to musi-cal jokes (assuming that it is one).23 Finally, the contemporary preference for the kind of arrangement which sees harpischord music of the Baroque era performed on the piano evidences developments in instrumental technology and changes in public taste and performance style.
In a number of extremely different ways, arrangements speak of contempo-rary social, cultural and aesthetic mores, as well as the technical means to which arrangers were bound. However, this is to show how arrangements contain in-formation about their contemporary culture only when they differ from their originals. Nineteenth-century keyboard arrangements remained by and large ex-tremely similar to the works which they arranged. This has typically been taken as a sign of any number of different lacks: a lack of invention on the part of the
21Beethoven [1860] and Liszt [1872].
22See von Mosel [1843]. Mosel’s position will be discussed at greater length in chapter two.
23Beethoven [1990].
arranger; a lack of worth of the final product; a lack of necessity for the arrange-ment in the first place; and so on. The clearest evidence for this litany of want is to be found in those many descriptions of arrangement which argue that the only arrangements worthy of study are those which manifest some kind of cre-ative departure from their originals: the definition of ‘Arrangement’ in the first Grovedictionary of 1879, for instance, is a catalogue of the deviations which ar-rangements manifest when compared with their originals, introducing a series of lists with phrases like “[t]he most important changes. . . ” or “the nature of Beethoven’s alterations. . . ”. It is through changes and alterations, it is typically argued, that an arrangement derives its worth.
In fact, remaining faithful to an original was not in the nineteenth century seen a sign of a lack of creative thought on the part of the arranger. When considered in light of the claim made above that the practice of producing an arrangement is the process of making a series of decisions, this is not surprising: deciding to be faithful to the score is just as significant a decision, and one which is also made for externally- and internally-motivated reasons, as deciding to change it. This was certainly the case in the nineteenth century. Critic Louis Köhler, writing in 1853, for instance, saw the ideal arrangement as “[t]rue to the original even to each ideally essential note; effective in the spirit of the same as far as a daguerreotype compared with the real object can be; and as easily performable as fidelity to the score, together with all reasonable limitation, will admit.”24 Moments where the arrangement remains faithful to the original are just as significant as those in which changes are made.
To return, for example, to the AdestoandTribum quem, numerous small devi-ations from the original are on display: in bar 7 of theAdesto, the intabulation but not the original features an incomplete upper-auxiliary note on the last semi-quaver of the bar to push bass motion onwards into the next minim in bar 8 (see figure 1.6). This is repeated in bar 75, where a very similar moment in the melody is accompanied by an almost identical addition in the bass (see figure 1.8). Other changes include the addition of a left-hand part in bars 16 and 43 to stop the intabulation from paring down to one voice. The significance of these additions only emerges, however, when it is made clear that there are other, similar mo-ments where the arranger does not alter the original. In bars 82 to 83 and 94 to 95, for example, there are no inserted upper-auxiliary notes in the bass, despite clear opportunities for them; and in bars 34 and 35 the arranger does not insert a new left-hand part, despite the fact that here the music does reduce to a solo line.
What the differing treatments of auxiliary notes and unaccompanied parts in the Adesto in fact demonstrate is that in the preparation and assessment of an arrangement, deviation and fidelity stand in a certain kind of dialogue with one another. This should not really be surprising; after all, arrangement is necessar-ily the placing in dialectic of the new and the same. An arrangement without fidelity is a free composition; an arrangement without deviation is the original work. Bars 16 and 43 only become especially interesting when it is noted that the arranger does not treat bars 34 and 35 in a similar way.
24[Köhler, 1853, 41].
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Figure1.8:Intabulationfromthe Robertsbridge Codex, BritishLibrary Add i-tional Manuscript28550,ca.1360,ofFermissimefidemadoremus/Adesto, SanctaTrinitasfromtheRomandeFauvel,BibliothèqueNationalede France, MSfr.146,transcriptionby WilliApel,1963.
Thereisanother,evenbetterexampleofthispoint. The mostobv iouslarge-scaledeparturefromtheoriginals madebybothoftheseintabulationsisthe melisma-likeornamentationoftheiroriginal melodies. Hereit wouldhaveto besaidthatthearrangeris mostfree withhisoriginaltext. Atthesametime, however,themelodyisonlywritteninthisflor idmannersothatthekeyboardin-strumentcanattempttomimicthevoice’sabilitytosustainpitches.Thepurpose oftheinnovativeornamentationisactuallytoallowtheintabulationtoapproach, notdistanceitselffrom,thesonicqualityoftheoriginalmotet.Thefeatureofthe arrangementsoftheAdestoandTribumquemwhichseemstobethemostdifferent fromitsoriginalisatthesametheonewhichistryingtobethe mostfaithfulto it.