White swans, peacocks, giant black toads, androgynes, red dragons, yellow serpents that consume their own tails; triple-headed birds sealed in crystalline vessels; skies filled with gods, cosmic eggs, hieroglyphs, and winged pyramids; all of these wonders, prodigies, monsters, and portents are the stuff of the art and literature of medieval alchemy.
From the time of Hermes Trismagistus (second century AD) onwards, European adepts insisted that, while the actual alchemical process was relatively straight-forward, it was necessary to couch descriptions of the Great Work in an impenetrably obscure occult language. This was ostensibly to keep out the riff-raff, but I also believe that alchemical secrecy and recondition satisfied an almost limitless appetite for mystery, intricacy, and conspiracy. The result of such an approach was the creation, over the course of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, of an alchemical art that is today frustrating, touching, compelling, and strangely beautiful.
Physically, the alchemical process involved the transformation of base metals into gold. Precisely what this base material consisted of was a matter of continuing debate over the centuries, though most alchemists agreed that it had to contain salt (white), sulphur (yellow), and mercury (red). This base substance was hermetically sealed inside a glass vessel called an alembic; then it was submitted to hundreds of processes that could take years to complete. "Patientia" was a favorite motto of the alchemists.
In the initial phases, the raw material was slowly cooked down into a nasty black mess sometimes called the Toad of the Earth, from which a vapor was extracted. To achieve this end, the substance was changed from earth to air, then to fire and water. Later in the process, the four elements were reunited and turned to a white mass inside the alembic. Then, through "fermentation," the matter grew root- or branch-like crystals that seemed to rise like a tree out of the putrific stuff at the bottom of the vial. Finally, if the alchemist had gotten his recipe right, extraneous metals were separated from the end product, which was the red-gold philosopher's stone.
Philosophically, the Great Work was nothing less than an attempt to attain eternal spiritual life through an intense study of the neoplatonic cosmological system, and all the Judeo-Christian mystical philosophies (Kaballah, gnosticism) that complemented it. For fervently Christian alchemists (many clerics were alchemists in the Middle Ages), Christ was the lapidus, the philosopher's stone. All approaches to alchemy in Europe involved some sort of process of death and resurrection.
It is important to understand that the great alchemical writers insisted that the seeker after truth had to be pure of heart and that the Great Work was the supreme allegory of human life; every stage of the alchemist's journey served as an analogy for a spiritual step in the transformative process.
Medieval and Renaissance alchemists embraced as central to their philosophy the idea of the Music of the Spheres. The ancients believed that the motions of the planets produced a series of harmonies that rang through the heavens but were beyond the capacities of earthly creatures to hear. Nevertheless, alchemists intuited their presence, and, on the level of microcosm, imitated their sounds. When they were in tune with the cosmos, their music could take on magical and healing powers, focusing the concentration, and, by giving joy to their hearts, cure melancholia, sleeplessness, and the stings of venomous insects. Boethius's Lady Philosophy and Machaut's Lady Hope recommended song as a gentle remedy for the psychic wounds meted out by Dame Fortune. Musical instruments often appear in pictures of alchemical laboratories. However, real alchemical music is extremely rare, "En pulcher lapidis" being one of the three examples that I know of.
Johannes Tecenensis was a central European priest and alchemist active in the later fourteenth century. His metrical alchemical "recipe" was set to music around 1400. The poem is typically obscure: the white, yellow, and red flowers are the salt, sulphur, and mercury that make up the base matter; the "fourfold motion" may refer to the exposure of the substance to heat, moisture, cold, and dryness.
In the next section, the poet seems to be telling us that the Great Work is cyclical and without end, like the ourobouros (the snake that eats its tail) or a moebius strip. The "thirsty, fruitful land" symbolizes that part of the process in which water vapor rains down on the black mass in the alembic, while the "root," or tree of life represents some form of crystallization of the substance.
In many alchemical images, this tree is surrounded at its base by the ourobouros, the "roaring" dragon that stands for the element mercury. A winged disc (here, the moon) can be an intermediary between god and man. The "triple essence" is clearly the Christian Trinity, which refers back to the triplicity of salt, sulphur, and mercury. The final imagery of the descent back to earth describes the successful conclusion of the alchemical experiment, the cyclic return to earth of that which has been there all along.
The music, a single melodic line, is highly unusual; it consists primarily of two motifs, a seven-note descending scale, and a rising four-note figure. Both occur at appropriate places in the text. Both numbers, 7 and 4, are numericalogically significant, 7 being the number of days of the creation, the known planets, and metals, while 4 is the number of elements, humors, alchemical colors, and Evangelists.
Tecenensis may have followed a seven-part alchemical process that consisted of: (1) death, (2) the mirror of the soul, (3) the raising of the corpse, (4) the elevation of spirits, (5) descent and planting of the seed, (6) tinctures of the soul, and (7) resurrection. The deliberate ambiguity of this and all other alchemical texts allows almost limitless room for interpretation. Additional insights into its hidden mysteries will be gratefully received!
One of our most fondly held notions about the Renaissance is that it saw the rebirth of the study of Classical mythology. In truth, the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses were kept alive through the disciplines of alchemy and astrology, and their stories were retold throughout the Middle Ages.
Boethius included an affecting version of the Orpheus legend in the Consolation of Philosophy (c. 520), and many mythological tales crop up in Jean le Meun's part of the Romance of the Rose (c. 1275). Medieval writers and readers drew on surviving copies of the works of Virgil and Ovid's Metamorphoses as primary source materials for Classical mythology. Ovid's works were sufficiently popular to inspire an Ovide moralisé, an anonymous, Christianized version of the Classical legends in the early fourteenth century.
By around 1400, there existed a group of French humanists, which included Christine de Pisan, who were deeply involved in classical studies. Among their patrons were Charles V of France and his brother Jean, the Duke of Berry. Berry was one of Medieval Europe's great arts supporters, a veritable fourteenth-century J. Paul Getty. He commissioned the writing and illuminating of all kinds of books, including the fabulous Tres Riches Heures, painted by the Limbourg brothers, an Ovide moralisé and several works by Christine de Pisan.
Berry was also a music lover. He was responsible for the renovation of several church organs and is thought to have imported the first Flemish pedal organs into France. The duke was a lifelong acquaintance of the enigmatic Count of Foix, Gaston Fèbus. While both men were learned and shared a passion for dogs and music, they were not friends. Few spoke kindly of Jean, who valued art objects and animals more greatly than the lives of human beings. Fèbus spent a good deal of his time protecting Gascony from the greedy duke.
One particularly distasteful bit of political maneuvering Fèbus was forced to undertake was the virtual sale of his young charge, Jeanne de Bolougne, to Berry, who on the death of his first wife, expressed a desire to have a young girl for his next bride. Even Berry's mad nephew, Charles VI, was taken aback when he heard of his uncle's marriage plans.
Fèbus stalled Berry for a year, until Jeanne was thirteen, and then exacted from the duke the formidable sum of 30,000 francs and several of his finest mastiffs. The wedding ceremony took place in Toulouse, and according to the chronicler Froissart, the music was splendid.
Poets, musicians, and their patrons formed a series of tightly knit, interlocking circles during this period; everybody knew everyone else. Both Berry and Fèbus knew Machaut and Froissart. Christine di Pisan's father was an astrologer and alchemist in the court of Charles V, and doubtless knew Machaut, Berry, and Foix, as did Jean Froissart. Indeed, poets and musicians often quoted one another's works. They shared a love of clever, almost recondite verse and music of the greatest delicacy and sophistication.
"Calextone" is one of the loveliest compositions of the era, and "Fumeux fume" one of the more outrageous. "Calextone" is Callisto, a lovely nymph who followed Diana. Jupiter saw her and desired her. In order to seduce her, he assumed the form of Diana. As a result of this liaison, Callisto became pregnant, which the real Diana discovered one day when she and her nymphs were bathing together. The enraged goddess banished her nymph.
Meanwhile, Juno, who had watched this affair with smoldering jealousy, now saw an opportunity for revenge. She metamorphosed Callisto into a huge she-bear and exposed her to the tortures of perpetual pursuit by hunters both human and animal. Finally Callisto was run to earth by her own grown-up son by Jupiter. Just as he was about to drive a spear into his mother's breast, Jupiter at last intervened, whirling them both into the firmament, where they became the neighboring constellations Ursa major and Arcas.
There can be no doubt that "Calextone" was written for the Duke of Berry, who was as lecherous as Jupiter and also very fond of bears. He kept several in a small menagerie, which accompanied his stately progresses through the French countryside. Bears appear frequently in the illuminated borders of manuscripts belonging to the duke. But who was Callisto? In classic medieval fashion, the first letter of each line of poetry spells an acrostic: C-A-T-H-E-L-L-I, presumably some form of Catherine. (Incidentally, the last word of the poem is a play on the name of the composer, Solage.) "Calextone" was composed at about the time of the duke's marriage to Jeanne de Bolougne and seems to be concerned with a royal nuptial. Perhaps Cathelli was Jeanne's middle or family name.
Solage's "Fumeux fume" pokes fun at a group of giddy young men who called themselves the Society of Fumeurs (smokers). One of their number was the poet Eustace Deschamps, the self-proclaimed nephew of Guillaume de Machaut, and a habitué of the French court. I suspect that he is the "Smokey" of the song. The poem, a rondeau, is unusually short, while the composition is unusually long, inviting the singer and the audience to lose track of what little sense the words make in the first place. The marvelously bizarre chromaticism of the music also leads the musicians through tonal labyrinths. In short, the piece is a vivid, merciless evocation of drug-induced inebriation. Did the Fumeurs smoke? and if so, what? Opium or hashish are the most likely candidates.
Most medieval people, even the most highly educated, believed in fabulous beasts, planetary influences, and other unseen powers that lay outside the Christian pantheon. It was thought that there was a kind of frontier area between the realms of god and man that was peopled by daemons and familiar spirits like Orton in Froissart's delightful story.
Similarly, in remote, fabulous parts of the globe dwelt strange creatures like the basilisk. This was a composite creature, a venomous winged reptile with the head of rooster. It could kill at a glance, and was lethal even to itself if it beheld its own image in a mirror. There was no cure for its poison, but it did have one natural enemy, the weasel. We now suspect that the basilisk was a fanciful, hyperbolic version of the king cobra, which is crested, spits its venom, and at one time was believed to hypnotize its prey; and of course, its deadly foe is the fearless mongoose. In the manner of the medieval bestiary, Solage's acid little song moralized the toxicity of the "basile."
"Deus Deorum, Pluto" is a difficult piece to evaluate. Is it for real? If so, it is the earliest-known musical setting of a deal with a daemon. Is it part of some forbidden incantatory rite? Or is it, like "Fumeux fume" (which it resembles musically) a send-up of some human folly? Incredibly, Zacharias wrote two brilliant mass-movements based on this demonic chanson.
Of all the Classical deities who lived on through the Middle Ages, the most powerful was the Goddess Fortuna. In Roman times, she personified the instability of life and was associated with other symbols of mutability, like the moon. She was such a considerable force over men's lives that the Church Fathers had to struggle mightily to subdue her. Early Christian writers subjected her to God's will by making her His agent, the great leveller of the rich, arrogant, and ambitious elements in society.
Over the course of the Middle Ages, her power seemed to grow rather than to diminish, especially during the second half of the fourteenth century, the time of the Black Death and the worst period of the Hundred Years' War. Her vast power was the subject of several major literary works, including The Consolation of Philosophy, the Anticlaudianus of Adam de L'Isle, Vitry's Roman de Fauvel, and Machaut's Remede de Fotune. There are at least forty pieces of music from the fourteenth century that concern themselves with her, and manuscripts abound with her likeness. Descriptions of her appearance and her realm still have the power to disconcert the modern listener.
All the music discussed thus far belongs to learned traditions and courtly societies. In the instances of "En pulcher lapidis," "Deus Deorum" and "Fumeux fume," a special kind of music was written to illuminate an unusual text.
In contrast, the chantari were popular verses intended originally to be performed outdoors for a large, diverse urban audience. The chantari were about the great "matters" of medieval romance: the stories of King Arthur's court, Charlemagne, and Roland. The great Renaissance poet Ariosto remembered listening to these stories as a child and modeled his Orlando Furioso on the epic themes and stanza forms of the chantari.
Because they belonged primarily to an oral tradition, no music to the chantari survives, though contemporary descriptions tell us that they were recited, sung, and occasionally accompanied by stringed instruments. Scholars suggest that there were two possible ways of setting the poetry to music: the first method was to use a melody that matched the versification and rhyme scheme; the second was to supply a chordal pattern over which the singer improvised an intonation.
For Carduino's first adventure, which will be sung in rhymed English brilliantly concocted by Lucy Cross, I have selected a fourteenth-century Italian melody, one of the very few that fits this poetic form. For the second episode, sung in the original Italian, I adapted a very old chordal pattern known as "La Spagna." This pattern may have accompanied performances of the Roland story, as its name suggests.
—Mary Springfels
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