Lullabies of Time E-Book

Maher Asaad Baker

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 136

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Step into a world where the ancient and the contemporary intertwine through the melodies and myths of France. Lullabies of Time explores the deeply rooted history of French folk music, tracing its origins in pagan rituals, medieval festivals, and everyday life. From the peaks of the Pyrenees to the windswept shores of Brittany, discover how these timeless songs have preserved the stories of forgotten heroes, spirits, and sacred places. With detailed insight into regional diversity, the role of music in social upheaval, and the magic of mythology, this book uncovers how French folk traditions evolved, survived, and shaped a nation. Through centuries of change, the voices of farmers, sailors, and rebels echo across time, carrying the unspoken secrets of their world. This is a journey into the heart of a musical tradition that continues to inspire, enchant, and hold the pulse of a forgotten past.

Leseprobe

Maher Asaad Baker

Lullabies of Time

© 2024 Maher Asaad Baker

ISBN Softcover: 978-3-384-45964-0

ISBN Hardback: 978-3-384-45965-7

ISBN E-Book: 978-3-384-45966-4

This work, including its parts, is protected by copyright. The author is responsible for the contents. Any exploitation is prohibited.

Cover image designed by Freepik

Contents

Introduction

Origins

Diversity and Identity

Social Functions

Mythology and Legends

Medieval and Renaissance

Music and Revolution

Modernization and Nationalism

20th Century

Preservation and Globalization

The Future

Disclaimer

About the Author

Introduction

France is a country located mainly in the heart of Europe. The culture and folklore of France its many inheritances are the music and folklore of France, which are testaments of the unity of the country’s rich heritage, which changed during the centuries. When initiating a journey into French music and folklore, one is walking through a historical landscape populated by tradition and invention, regional distinctions and the pervasive effect of history.

The earl of medieval French music was at once in the time when the oral tradition of folk music was a lifeblood in communities. It was the troubadours and trouvères, poet musicians from the south and North of France respectively that echoed through the courts and castles of the land. Intricate tapestries of love, chivalry and social commentary, their songs were often d with the accompaniment of the lute, vielle (a medieval fiddle) and flute accompanied. Rooted in folk tradition, but on this evidence, the influence of the Catholic Church's liturgical music — its solemn, its polyphony — was evident in this music as well. Medieval French music was characterized by an interactivity of the sacred and secular elements which reflects the dependency of the Church and the Nobility, two major influences on the country’s cultural environment of the period.

The medieval era is where our French music story starts as French music was the oral tradition of folk music that kept communities alive. From the court and castles of ‘the land,’ the music of the troubadours and trouvères, poet-musician troubadours and north of France respectively, resounded. Introspective and intricate tapestries of love, chivalry, and social commentary, very often accompanied by the lute, vielle (a medieval fiddle) and flute, their songs were performed. This was rooted in folk tradition, but, like the folk music of its day, was marked by the influence of the liturgical music of the Catholic Church, with solemn chants and polyphonic compositions thereof. Medieval French music’s blending of the sacred and secular corresponded to the proximity, symbiosis of, and rivalry between the Church and the nobility, two institutional powers among the milieu of authoritative forces imbricated in the cultural history of the era.

France was at the crossroads of Renaissance artistic and intellectual revival at the dawn of the Renaissance. This period was marked by an exploding interest in humanism, the philosophy that man, not God, was the centre of the universe. The secularization of music was echoed in an increase of composers' themes such as the earth, love, and the human experience. While composers like Josquin des Prez and Clément Janequin fashioned chansons which were both musically complex and deeply expressive, looking like picture books, they seem to have strived to tell the story of their age through their vivid portraiture of everyday life.

At the same time, the folk music of France proceeded, as did the disparate cultures inherited from the myriad tradings crossing the Mediterranean in the centuries leading up to the 60s. Each region had its musical language, from the Celtic set to Brittany and Occitan in the south to the Spanish in the north. Variations in both the types of instruments and those who played them were great: bagpipes of central France, for example, hurdy-gurdy of the Auvergne and tambourine of Provence each added to the rich sonic tapestry of French folklore. Rather, the development of these regions in question contributed to, and were not isolated phenomena, on the broader fabric of French musical identities. They intercalated and encrusted with one another to breed a contriver and ordinarily developing musical scene.

The Baroque period was an era of sophistication and wealth, and in the ornate and tremendously detailed compositions which characterize the Baroque period. French Baroque music is the very example of music that is elegant, refined, and straight from classical harmony. Its musical language was identical to the music of Lully and Couperin. During Louis XIV – the Sun King – the court was a hub of musical innovation, with the king being such an important part of the artistic trends of this period. It was not simply music in Baroque, neither a means of entertainment, but a powerful means of propaganda in its time, to promote absolute monarchy, and the divine right of kings.

But as the French aristocracy revelled in the splendour of Baroque music, the folk traditions of France had impressed themselves on the common people. It was through the songs and dances of the peasantry that cultural heritage was preserved, communal values expressed and hardships of ordinary life survived. Folk traditions were not fixed though, but adapted and evolved for new social and economic needs. For instance during the time of the Industrial Revolution the rural landscape changed greatly causing people from the country to move to the cities. The process of urbanization had such an important effect on French folklore, as traditional songs and dances were transplanted to new environments and sweated out by experience of urban life.

The history of French music and folklore turned a corner with the French Revolution of 1789. For these revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity found expression in this music, new composers, such as Étienne Méhul and François-Joseph Gossec, composed works which celebrated the people’s victory over tyranny. The revolution also rekindled a long repressed interest in folk music as the new republic attempted to establish a national identity based on the national traditions of the people.

Yet when France reached the 19th century the Romantic movement swept across Europe and had an indelible mark on French music. As the emotional intensity and expressive freedom of Romanticism so inspired Hector Berlioz and Charles Gounod, so their name was drawn upon to create works that explore the extremes of human passion, and the sublime grandeur of nature. As in Poland, too, the Romantic spirit shaped the folk music of France, which was collected by such people as Théodore Hersart de La Villemarqué and François-Marie Luzel, who preserved the songs and tales of the regions. Their efforts stoked the flames of larger efforts to revitalize France’s own roots, a time in which the nation was seeking to reestablish its cultural heritage in the wake of high modernization.

Later in the 20th century French music and folklore were further changed. Deep scars on the cultural psyche of the nation remained from the two World Wars. As the interwar years witnessed a revival in interest in traditional French folk music, artists such as Georges Brassens and Édith Piaf drew on the abundant past of the chanson to create a new, more popular form on which to base their songwriting, that could speak to working-class experience.

After World War, though, France found itself in the middle of a wave of fast cultural and social change, brought about by global and technological changes reshaping the musical landscape. The advent of rock and roll, jazz, and all the international musical styles imposed a challenge on the dominance of traditional French music and eventually drew the styles together into new musical genres.

As a result, today the music and folklore of France still testify to the country’s long historical history. Unlike much of the music of northern Europe, the story of French music is one of constant evolution and mutation, structured by the simultaneous interaction of tradition and innovation, the faithful reflection of past glories and the inescapable imprint of historical events, even when they are not yet in the past. Exploring this story, entering this world, is to almost arbitrarily immerse oneself in the cultural heart of France, to see the spirit of the people and the soul of the nation expressed in the most spontaneous and powerful way possible: through music.

Origins

In Palaeolithic times, well before the invention of writing, man created music and other forms of rituals as a cultural phenomenon. It has been established that prehistoric man had a variety of instruments in the form of horns, drums, rattles and flutes. Perhaps these instruments were used in singing and dancing ceremonies of solidarity, hunting, fertility, cursing, and healing, ceremonial and animistic prayers, ancestral communion, and other customs and creeds. In the course of thousands of millennia, Paleolithic and Neolithic peoples gradually evolved a higher type of musical and religious art.

The Celts, who filled ancient Gaul (that is to say most of what is now France) during the Bronze and Iron Ages, were necessarily part and parcel of the musical and oral traditions inherent in their societies. The prehistoric motivation of the Celtic artwork was in poetic song and PVC that narrated exotic stories of heroism and mythology. However, in the Celtic society bards and musicians were honored as dignified persons. Bards were the preservers of the cultural memory; they recited hundreds of heroic and lyrical songs and tunes, as well as numerous ballads, and handed them on to descendants. Music was related to the rituals of the solstice and agricultural feast. Paganism as seen in the Celtic religion incorporated gods, plants, most animals and the land, thus had a strong philosophical inclination.

Music played a significant role also in Celtic warfare. Shakking horns were blown loudly instructing the enemies they were unterable they had to surrender. Drums set cadence for marching music when warriors went to battle. War songs were songs of triumph and celebrated good fighters; lullabies were songs of sorrow and grief. Courtship and love were prominent motives in the bardic material; actual music included sonnets calling attention to the worthy qualities of the beloved gents and ladies. At feasts, and other public events where a recital was to be presented, bards were accompanied by large bells and lyres. It is believed that dancers depicted new staking cycles, initiation ceremonies, mythological themes, and any other traditions of that tribe.

To this context, interactions and sometimes clashes with the Romans grew during mediaeval period due to the expansion of Celtic people into the Roman territories. Celts of Gaul were conquered by Rome in the second to fifth centuries CE and through the conversion of figures and motifs of the Roman / early Christian culture into Celtic styles, aspects of these civilizations melded together slowly. Writing as well as speaking of Latin was formally brought to the mainstream. Through roads, trade and cities the Gallic people were Romanised. Christianity gradually wrestled pagan backwaters. These drastic transformations occurred in the vaster Gallo-Roman context, even so, ancient folkways continued.

In the medieval period, the bards became known as classical poets, with a thorough acquaintance of the epic legend of the Celts and its heroes, Vercingetorix. They passed intact historical information on local plants and their use in medicine, traditional ways of grapevine cultivation for wine production, sacred groves associated with gods and spirits, springs which were regarded as divine sources etc. There were folk dances and music, costumes, and drama performed and still persisted, changing with the transforming social-cultural context under Roman imperial colonialization. Some elements of Celtic Gaulish culture, such as languages, bagpipes and fiddles and so on, and the celebration of feast, were maintained when the area was devastated in 407 or 408 CE and the Western Roman Empire formally collapsed in 476 CE.

By 6th century CE, the Merovingian Dynasty has also made its foothold over Frankish over the region. Even so, marks left by the Celtic and the Gallo-Roman presence were hardcarved and impossible to erase. Performers of old, however, had recorded pagan supernatural beliefs and agricultural praxis in folk and oral narratives and later in manuscript and printed ballads, lyric poetry, romance, illuminated manuscripts, choral and other liturgical music, and early drama or mystery play fragments. For several millennia of prehistoric and early medieval creation on Gallic territory, musicians and visionary artists imbued the culture with the legacy that eventually led to a uniquely French style.

Musical Instruments of France have a long history with the many traditional musical instruments of France which can be dated back to the ancient or medieval period. Musical instruments such as the hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes, vielle and flutes were well known household and travelling instruments among peasants and travellers in the countryside of France for many centuries and were used for the purpose of utility and enjoyment. All of these instruments were built according to the specific characteristics of the territories that constituted France – its mountains and forests, expansive farmlands and deep valleys.

Among those that literally stemmed from the French streets and country fairs in the medieval ages the hurdy gurdy is one. It is violently believed to have evolved from violin type instruments that Arab-Andalusian musicians brought to France through Spain. The secretary of the band turns a wheel, turning it with a crank, causing strings to vibrate — ones the musician controls by manipulating the keys. Because of its droning, deep pitch, it used to be popularly played outdoors and even used by beggars. It could equally be moved from one town to another or one region to another throughout France's towns and countryside. It had a loud clear tone with which it could play music across distances in wide expanses of geography. The early hurdy-gurdy, the earliest form of string instrument, began in the Medieval period and eventually transformed into a more complex form in the eighteenth century, by popularity amassed across the country.

The bagpipes have their roots in France too and apparently date back to at least the thirteenth century. Formerly, the bellows were filled with air which applied pressure on the piping that made the sound, of French bagpipes. They were coarse, and raucous, and were attributed to the shepherds from numerous rural areas of France who used them to entertain themselves while tending to the cattle or goats. Bagpipes were handy to be carried around and loud enough required by the shepherds who were outdoor most of the time. From the province of Brittany and Burgundy over Auverge and Provence bagpipe melodies reverberated through the woods and fields as shepherds tended their flocks. Unfortunately, from the numerous pieces of the ancient bagpipes, only a selection of them remained from the 17th century. There were other versions in the other centuries, and they also had the French legacy after them.

The vielle is a bowed string instrument, a precursor for the violin family developed in medieval France. It had five strings and a chromatic fretted fingerboard and obtained its timbre from arco bow and manual diagrams. Before roads were constructed in rural France the people lived apart from each other they held gatherings inside homes, taverns or barns for entertainment with vielle players giving active music for events, celebrations or for dancing. It added cheer to understated small country constructs as the citizens danced and celebrated. Vielles were an essential element of the instrumentation of blind and poor vagrant musicians from town to town in France earning their sustenance through charity or meager wages. Due to the capability of their instruments called vielles to be portable and easily adaptable, these musicians managed to get a living, which was not an exception for musicians all around France.

A type of flute, the simple transverse flutes that are made of wood, were existent from as early as the Middle Ages in the French region. They were linked with shepherds and agriculturists of the countryside who idly played them on pastures or fields. The simple flutes that could be created from easily accessible raw materials such as elder or bamboo, were found in the French forests and countryside. Their light and open notes boosted morale of the labourers at the close of the day. Another hunting weapon was flutes used by hunters including poachers who employed their sharp sound in trapping wildlife. Musicians on tours carried flutes to towns where spirited gig and dance tunes kicked up further in coarse village inns after flute tunes activated country spirits. Ideally, the manageableness and the availability of early flutes coincided with leisure activities that cut across geographical differences throughout France.