A Rhythmic realization for Raimbaut de Vaqueiras’

Kalenda Maya

Liduino Pitombeira (Louisiana State University)

<[email protected]>
<[email protected]>
http://www.pitombeira.com

Abstract: The musical production of the troubadours is transmitted to us through about forty manuscripts of which
only four contain musical notation. Rhythmic information is not sufficiently provided because those manuscripts
are all written in non-mensural notation. This paper proposes an alternative for the rhythmic interpretation of
Raimbaut de Vaqueiras’ estampida Kalenda Maya in light of the theories of rhythm for the music of the troubadours.
In order to understand some of the criteria used to edit this kind of music, a brief survey of the rhythmic theories for
the troubadours’ repertoire, including some renditions of Kalenda Maya derived from those theories, is provided.
Keywords: Kalenda Maya, troubadours, medieval rhythm, modal, isosyllabic, declamatory.

Uma realização rítmica de Kalenda Maya de Raimbaut de Vaqueiras

Resumo: A produção musical dos trovadores nos é transmitida através de aproximadamente quarenta manuscritos,
dos quais somente quatro contêm notação musical. Informações relativas ao aspecto rítmico não estão disponíveis
em virtude desses manuscritos serem escritos em notação não-mensurada. Este artigo propõe uma alternativa
para a interpretação rítmica da estampida Kalenda Maya de Raimbaut de Vaqueiras com base nas teorias
rítmicas aplicadas à música dos trovadores. Com o objetivo de melhor assimilar alguns dos critérios utilizados na
edição deste tipo de música, adicionou-se um breve exame dessas teorias rítmicas, incluindo algumas realizações
de Kalenda Maya derivadas das mesmas.
Palavras-chave: Kalenda Maya, trovadores, ritmo medieval, modal, isosilábica, declamatória.

The musical production of the troubadours is transmitted to us through about forty manuscripts
of which only four contain musical notation. Those manuscripts, as pointed out by VAN DER
WERF (1984, p.10-11), are all written in non-mensural notation and therefore do not provide
enough information regarding rhythm. The purpose of this paper is to discuss and suggest an
alternative for the rhythmic interpretation of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras’ estampida “Kalenda Maya”
in light of the theories of rhythm for the music of the troubadours.

The composer of “Kalenda Maya” was born in Vaqueiras (Provence) probably around 1150. He
was a troubadour and companion-at-arms of Boniface I. According to Robert FALCK (2005),
only seven of the 35 poems ascribed to him survived with music. The estampida “Kalenda
Maya” is his best-known work. Raimbaut probably died in 1207, although some scholars believe
that he died only in 1243.
1
The text of “Kalenda Maya” is found in several manuscripts, but only one preserves the melody.
According to MCPEEK (1973, p.142), there are six extant estampidas in the troubadour’s repertoire,

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but “Kalenda Maya” is the only one with music and text preserved. The fact that the estampida is,
according to AUBREY (1996, p.x), a genre associated with dance might lead one to imagine that
a regular rhythmic edition—using modern notation—would be the only possible solution to decode
the piece and make it available for performance. In fact, almost all the recordings of this piece I
have listened to since my first contact with early music (in 1984) present a regular rhythmic rendition
or at least a hybrid rendition, in which a free interpretation is concomitantly applied (this is the
case of the rendition recorded in 1997 by the Syntagma ensemble—a group in Northeast Brazil—
of which I was a member at the time). However, in 1984, Hendrik van der Werf, who does not see
any evidence that the estampida was a dancing song (VAN DER WERF, 1988, p.55), edited this
piece using stemless notes, i.e., with no clear indication of rhythm (VAN DER WERF, 1984, p.292-
293). In order to understand some of the criteria used to edit this kind of music, I will provide in the
following paragraphs a brief survey of the rhythmic theories for the troubadours’ repertoire including
some renditions of “Kalenda Maya” derived from those theories.

There are several theories that study the musical rhythm of the troubadours (and of their French
northern counterpart, the trouvères) but they all can be structured in three main groups: modal,
isosyllabic, and declamatory. Text is of central importance for all those theories in view of the
fact that its relationship with music, in terms of prosody for example, is sometimes the only
possible key to decipher the rhythmic structure of the piece as a whole. A description of the
most important branches of each theory is given below.

Fig.1 – A facsimile from Manuscript R showing “Kalenda Maya.” (Manuscript Paris, Bibliotheque nationale, f. fro 22543)

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Chronologically the modal theory was the first one to be proposed. Both Pierre Aubry, in 1907,
and Jean-Baptiste Beck, in 1908, claim to be the authors of this theory. They assert that the music
of the trouvères used rhythmic modes based on observations of certain manuscripts, especially
one containing Adam de la Halle’s works, in which monophonic settings are written in non-mensural
2
notation and polyphonic settings are written in mensural notation. They deduce that if this repertoire
can be expressed in both monophonic and polyphonic formats (in which a regular rhythmic
interpretation would be mandatory for synchronization since it involves more than one part) then
the melodies, when isolated from the polyphonic context, would keep the regular rhythmic shape
even if notated with non-mensural signs. Those observations on the northern repertoire are also
applied to the southern (troubadours’) repertoire. One important edition of “Kalenda Maya” based
on this theory was prepared by GENNRICHER (1960, p.16), which is shown in Example 1.
TISCHLER (1989, p. 227), who strongly advocates a metric-rhythmic interpretation of this repertoire,
even though it does not follow inflexibly the rhythmic modes, considers that the meter of medieval
poetry was based on stress rather than on the length of syllables. Another point to be considered
is that in this edition the same rhythmic shape is applied for all strophes.

Ex.1 – Gennrich’s edition of “Kalenda Maya” (Gennrich, Friedrich. Troubadours, Trouveres, Minne- and
Meistersinger. Koln: Arno Yolk Verlag, 1960)

I will now present my own metrical-rhythmic rendition of “Kalenda Maya” based on certain rules
proposed by the modal theorists and then compare it with Gennrich’s rendition. BECK (1979,
p.27) presents five general transcriptional rules for this repertoire, as follows: 1) tonic accents in
words are associated with accent in music, 2) duration is increased if an accented syllable
coincides with an unaccented beat and vice versa, 3) rhyme is always going to be placed on an
accented beat, 4) rhythm defined for the first measure is regularly applied to an entire phrase or
even for the whole song, and 5) only one syllable relates to each element in a mode.

Regarding “Kalenda Maya,” all those above rules can be applied to generate a metric rendition
with the exception of rule no.2, because the musical notation does not give any information
about accented and unaccented beats. Therefore, I am also going to consider two other
observations made by AUBREY (2000, p.130) on the songs with measured notation: 1) oxytone
2 John Stevens defines rhythmic mode as “a recurrent metrical pattern of long and short notes.” He says, “the
standard system of six rhythmic modes was devised by the theorists of the thirteenth century for the notation
and analysis of polyphony. The application of modal rhythm to monophony is a twentieth-century invention.”
(STEVENS, 1986, p.508)

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rhyme syllables are long, usually preceded by a short note, 2) paroxytone rhymes are always
given the rhythm long-long. If the text has the rhythm and if this rhythm depends on the syllabic
stress, then the first step in the edition consists of determining the stressed syllable for each
word of the first strophe (and the results would apply for the remaining strophes). This task
would be3 easy if we knew how the stress was accomplished in Old Occitan. According to Dr.
Akehurst , the stressed syllable of a word can be expressed in terms of length, loudness, or
intonation curve but there is no evidence about the way it was used in Old Occitan (AKEHURST,
2001). My choice is to use length to establish stress because this is the only way to cause direct
4 5
implication on rhythm. Two other specialists in this field corroborate my own stress choice.
I present below the first strophe of the poem with syllabic division and stress defined by Dr.
Stephane Goyette. When necessary, the stress is indicated with an acute accent (´) over the
syllable. Numbers within brackets indicate the quantity of syllables for each line.
Ka-lén-da máy-a [5]
Ni fueills de fái-a [5]
Ni chans d’au-zéll [4]
Ni flors de glái-a. [5]
Non es qe.m plái-a [5]
Pros dó-na gái-a [5]
Tro q’un is-néll [4]
mes-sa -giér ái-a [5]
De vós-tre bell cors, qi•m re-trái-a [9]
PIa-zér no-véIl q’ a-mórs m’ a-trái-a [9]
E jái-a [3]
E•m trái-a [3]
Vas vos dón-na ve-rái-a, [7]
E chái-a [3]
De plái-a [3]
•L ge-lós, anz qe•m n’es-trái-a. [8]

The second step in the editing process consists of notating the natural rhythm of the poem
based on some of the rules mentioned above. Example 2 shows the result obtained for the first
four lines with the application of two basic rules: 1) tonic accents in words are associated with
accent in music and 2) paroxytone rhymes are always given the rhythm long-long (even the
oxytone rhymes in the poem, such as “zéll” in the third line, have their value expanded by the
two-note ligature and become pseudo-paroxytone – see Fig.1; this fact equalizes the number of
syllables, i.e., the third line that has four syllables is artificially adjusted to five syllables).

3 Frank Akehurst is Professor of French and Italian languages at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and
one of the editors of “A Handbook of Troubadours” published by the University of California Press in 1995.
4 Loudness would affect dynamics and intonation would affect pitch.
5 Dr. Gregory Stone, professor of French, Italian, and Comparative Literature at Louisiana State University and
Dr. Stephane Goyette, visiting assistant professor at Louisiana State University and specialist in Historical,
Romance, and Creole Linguistics.

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 Ex.2 – Tentative metrical-rhythmic rendition of “Kalenda Maya”

My edition disagrees with two aesthetic principles of the modalists expressed in Beck’s book, but
not in the rules (BECK, 1979, p.28-29). First, they considered that this entire repertoire was
expressed in ternary subdivision because until the beginning of the 14th century that was the only
way the musicians knew how to express music. If we do this modification by shortening the figure
of the second beat it results in mode 1 (long-short) embellished with fractio mode in some places.
Second, an anacrusis can always be more elegantly accommodated in the following measure.
Even with these two alterations, my edition would still be different from Gennrich’s because he
gives ornamental figures (for example, a descendent plica—fourth figure in the manuscript shown
in Fig.1, and a ligature—fourteenth figure) the same status of regular notes and this provokes
desynchronization between accented syllables and accented beats. Therefore, the natural stressed
syllable will never coincide with the accented beat, thus contradicting the very first rule of the
modal theory (see 5th paragraph above). A third step in the editing process would consist of
matching the suggested rhythm with the pitches in the manuscript. However, this step is beyond
the scope of this paper, which is to analyze only the rhythmic aspect of the piece.

The exercise of trying to edit the rhythm of “Kalenda Maya” using the modal theory proves to be a
confusing task because of the lack of objectivity of the rules, but this is, at the same time, good
since it is more open to different interpretations. To conclude my observations on this theory,
Example 3 shows another rhythmic rendition of “Kalenda Maya” by MCGEE (1989, p.49-50), who
considers that the rhythm should be derived from the melody itself. This is yet more subjective
than deriving the rhythm from the text. Let us now examine the second rhythmic theory.

The second theory—isosyllabic—was mainly proposed by the Italians Sesini, Paganuzzi, and
Monterosso in 1942, 1955, and 1956, respectively, and later adopted and refined by John Stevens.
According to STEVENS (1986, p.414, n.2), Ugo Sesini noticed that syllables in Romance
languages had approximately the same duration and that in the notation of troubadour’s songs
each syllable was associated with one neume (like in late medieval plainchant). Then, he
proposed that all syllables should be interpreted with equal duration. Stevens also mentions (in
the same passage) that for Sesini—and for Monterosso—the poetry had all the rhythmic
information necessary to interpret the piece, and that Paganuzzi proposed a kind of performance
with free rhythmic values similar to the Solesmes interpretation of Gregorian chant.

Stevens’ model establishes that, since medieval poetry is governed by syllable count and rhyme
(and not by syllabic stress as proposed by the modalists) and medieval monophonic melodies are
mostly notated having one neume to each syllable, then monophonic music should be interpreted
in an isosyllabic manner, i.e., the syllables should have approximately equal temporal distribution.
Stevens uses the same notation as declamatory theorists, as one can see later in this paper, i.e.,

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stemless notation, but I could not find any rendition of “Kalenda Maya” based on his method. Also
6
Sesini did not make any edition of “Kalenda Maya.” However, McPeek’s rendition, reproduced in
Example 4, seems mostly to follow the isosyllabic principles (MCPEEK, 1973, p.147).

Ex.3 – McGee’s edition of “Kalenda Maya” (McGee, Timothy J. Medieval Instrumental Dances. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press,1989)

6 He studied manuscript Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, R 71 supp., also known as G, which does not contain the
melody of “Kalenda Maya.”

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 Ex.4 – McPeek’s edition of “Kalenda Maya” (McPeek, Gwynn. “Kalenda Maya: a Study in Form.” In Medieval
Studies in Honor of Robert White Linker, ed. Brian Dutton, J. Woodrow Hassel, Jr. and John Keller, 141-154.
Valencia (Spain): Editorial Castalia, 1973.

The declamatory theory was proposed by Hendrik van der Werf in 1967 and adopted by
Christopher Page in 1986. Van der Werf believes that free rhythm was used to perform the
chansons of the troubadours and trouvères and he employs the term declamatory rhythm to
signify that the performer basically used to “declaim the poem without the music” in order to
identify its rhythmic shape (VAN DER WERF, 1972, p.44). The sound produced in the
recitation was then coordinated with the syntax and structure of the text in order to reveal
the natural rhythm of the poem, which for van der Werf is neither in the melody nor in the
text in isolation.

Moreover, the manuscript of the works of Adam de la Halle—the same one used as reference
by the modalists to justify their hypothesis (see 4th paragraph)—is also used by van der Werf
to show that the scribe used both mensural (for polyphonic genres) and non-mensural (for the
majority of the monophonic songs) notations merely because many melodies were really
unmeasurable and not because a mensural way of performance should be deduced for the
entire repertory. However van der Werf says that precisely measured songs can be found in
the manuscripts. Example 5 shows an excerpt from van der Werf’s edition of “Kalenda Maya”
7
based on his declamatory theory. As one can perceive, the music score does not provide any
rhythmic information.

7 Another declamatory rendition is found in Samuel Rosenberg, Margaret Switten, and Gerard Le Vot, eds.,
Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres: an Anthology of Poems and Melodies, (New York: Garland Publishing,
1998),157.

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 Ex.5 – Van der Werf’s edition of Kalenda Maya (Van Der Werf, Hendrik. The Extant Troubadour Melodies:
Transcriptions and Essays for Performers and Scholars. With Texts Edited by Gerald A. Bond. Rochester, NY:
by the author, 1984

I am not going to make renditions of Kalenda Maya based on isosyllabic or declamatory theories
because they would look practically the same as the ones shown here, since they basically
consist of reproducing literally the manuscript without introducing any rhythmic bias. In those
two theories, the true work of rhythmic interpretation is left to the performer.

I have examined several possibilities for understanding the rhythm of Kalenda Maya. Although
all the theories regarding the rhythmic interpretation of this repertory present reasonable solutions,
no one seems to have the complete truth since there are still many unanswered questions with
respect to text, music, and the relationship between both. As a performer, I would choose a
hybrid rendition by applying equally mensural (quasi-modal) and declamatory interpretations, in
order to express both lyrical and rhythmical (dance-like) aspects of the piece.

Ex.6 – Suggested rhythmic rendition of Kalenda Maya

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For the declamatory portion I would use Van der Werf’s rendition (Ex.5). For the mensural
interpretation I would use ternary subdivision—for the same reason pointed out above by Beck
(see 8th paragraph)—and synchronize the accented beats with accented syllables (an anacrusis
would be necessary at the beginning). Example 6 shows this suggested mensural rendition for
8
the first sixteen lines. Perhaps the present rendition is not the way that Kalenda Maya was
performed during Vaqueiras’ time, but it is presented here as one possible and informed solution.

Bibliographic References
AKEHURST, Frank. Kalenda Maya. E-mail from Frank Akehurst < [email protected] > to Liduino J.P. De Oliveira
<[email protected]> in 30, November 2001.
AUBREY, Elizabeth. The Music of the Troubadours. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996.
______________. Occitan Monophony.1 In A Performers Guide to Medieval Music, ed. Ross W. Duffin, 122-133.
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000.
BECK, Jean-Baptist, Rhythm in the Music of the Troubadours. In The Music of the Troubadours, edited by Peter
Whigham, Provençal Series, V Il, 25-33. Santa Barbara: Ross-Erikson, 1979.
FALCK, ROBERT: ‘Raimbaut de Vaqeiras’, Grove Music Online (Accessed 29 September 2005), <http://80-
www.grovemusic.com.libezp.lib.lsu.edu/shared/views/article.html?section=music.50117>
FALVY, Zoltan. Mediterranean Culture and Troubadour Music. Budapest: Akademiaia Kiado,1986.
GENNRICH, Friedrich. Troubadours, Trouveres, Minne- and Meistersinger. Koln: Arno Yolk Verlag, 1960.
LINSKILL, Joseph, ed. The Poems of the Troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras. The Netherlands: Mouton & Co -
The Hague,1964.
MCGEE, Timothy J. Medieval Instrumental Dances. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,1989.
McPEEK, Gwynn. Kalenda Maya: a Study in Form. Medieval Studies in Honor of Robert White Linker. Ed. Brian
Dutton, J. Woodrow Hassel, Jr. and John Keller, p.141-154. Valencia (Spain): Editorial Castalia, 1973.
PARKER, Ian. The Performance of Troubadour and Trouvere Songs: Some Facts and Conjectures. Early Music
Vol. 5 No.2 (April 1977): 184-207.
ROSENBERG, Samuel, Margaret Switten, and Gerard Le Vot, eds. Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres: an
Anthology of Poems and Melodies. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998.
STEVENS, John. Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance, and Drama, 1050-1350. New
York: Cambridge University Press,1986.
TISCHLER, Hans. The Performance of Medieval Songs. Revue BeIge de Musicologie. Vol 43 (1989): 225-242.
VAN DER WERF, Hendrik.The Chansons of the Troubadours and Trouveres: a Study of the Melodies and their
Relation to the Poems. Utrecht: A. Oosthoek, 1972.
__________________.The Extant Troubadour Melodies: Transcriptions and Essays for Performers and Scholars.
With Texts Edited by Gerald A. Bond. Rochester, NY: by the author, 1984
__________________.The ‘Not-so-precisely Measured’ Music of the Middle Ages. Performance Practice Review,
USA. Vol 1/1-2 (Spring-Fall 1988): 42-60.

Suggested reading
AUBREY, Elizabeth. A Study of the Origins, History, and Notation of the Troubadour Chansonnier Paris, Biblioteque
Nationale, f.fr. 22543. Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1982.
______________.Non-Liturgical Monophon.. In A Performers Guide to Medieval Music, ed. Ross W. Duffin, 105-
114. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000.

8 The entire poem, as well as the complete works of Vaqueiras, can be found at http://www.trobar.org/troubadours/
raimbaut_de_vaqueiras/raimbaut_de_vaqueiras_15.php

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PARKER, Ian. The Performance of Troubadour and Trouvere Songs: Some Facts and Conjectures. Early Music
Vol. 5 No.2 (April 1977): 184-207.
ROSENBERG, Samuel, Margaret Switten, and Gerard Le Vot, eds. Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres: an
Anthology of Poems and Melodies. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998.
TISCHLER, Hans. Rhythm, Meter, and Melodic Organization in Medieval Songs. Revue BeIge de Musicologie. Vol
28 (1974): 5-23.
VAN DER WERF, Hendrik. Concerning the Measurability of Medieval Music. Current Musicology. Vol. 10 (1970):
69-73.
__________________.Recitative Melodies in Trouvere Chansons. In Festschrift fur Walter Fiora, edited by Ludwig
Finscher and Christoph- Hellmut Mahling, 231-240. Basel: Barenreiter Kassel, 1967.
__________________.The Trouvere Chansons as Creations of a Notationless Musical Culture. Current
Musicology.Vol. 1 (1965): 61-68.
VAN DEUSEN, Nancy. The Cultural Milieu of the Troubadours and Trouveres. Musicological Studies/
Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen, no. 62:1. Ottawa, Canada: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1994.

Liduino Pitombeira (Brazil, 1962) is visiting assistant professor of Composition at Louisiana

State University (USA), where he received his PhD in Composition with a minor in Theory under
the guidance of Dinos Constantinides. He also studied Composition in Brazil with José Alberto
Kaplan, Tarcísio José de Lima, and Vanda Ribeiro Costa. Performances of his works have been
given by the The Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet, the Louisiana Sinfonietta, the Red Stick
Saxophone Quartet, the New York University New Music Trio, Orquestra Sinfônica do Recife
(Brazil), Syntagma, Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra (Poland), and Orquestra de Câmara Eleazar
de Carvalho (Brazil). He has received many composition awards in Brazil and the USA, including
the first prize in the 1998 Camargo Guarnieri Composition Competition and the first prize in the
“Sinfonia dos 500 Anos” Composition Contest. He also received the 2003 MTNA-Shepherd
Distinguished Composer of the Year Award for his piece “Brazilian Landscapes No.1”. Pitombeira
is a member of ASCAP, College Music Society, Society of Composer Inc., National Association of
Composers-USA, American Music Center, and Sociedade Brasileira de Música Contemporânea.
His pieces are published by Cantus Quercus, Conners, Alry, RioArte, and Irmãos Vitale.

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