I say we clasp a picture of her in one hand, a full goblet of wine in the other, and zoom on to 1179 to toast her non-witchly, eccentric musical-ness. Or whatever. Actually, is that a wart on her left cheek?
THE FIRST MUSICAL JOKE (BUT NOT MOZART'S)
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o. 1179, the year of the death of Hildegard of Bingen, or Rupertsberg, depending on how much of a control freak you pride yourself on being. It was also the year, in fact, that the world's first musical joke started doing the rounds. It lives on now as a Bing Crosby/Walt Disney joke, but the original, as you can see below, was about Hildegard herself. It went something like this. Interrogate: 'Quod differentum est trans Hildegard von Bingen et Waltus DisniusV Repondatum: 'Bingen singen, sed Waltus Disnius!' Mmmm… Maybe you had to be there. The twelth century, I mean. It was probably around this time that early jokes about drummers and percussionists were born. Jokes such as, 'What's the range of your average drum? About ten feet with a good throwing arm.'
If you think I'm being a little hard on drummers, then let me tell you: this is no more than my job. I'm told there is a long-standing musical tradition, going back centuries - as you can see - which is behaviourally requisite for all musicians, and always has been. It runs alongside the virtue of 'always keeping an eye on where your next job is coming from' and it's known, in the business, as 'always being rude about drummers'. It is up there alongside 'always taking the piss out of viola players' and, to a lesser extent - albeit just as important -'always dragging your knuckles along the floor of the pub if you play a brass instrument'. The drummer must always expect to be the butt of 'musical jokes'/ To this end, I have enclosed a simple list of the best 'drummer' jokes, except the one that's so rude it can't be published. 1. Q: How do you know when there's a drummer at the door? A: The knocking speeds up. 2. Qj What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians? A: A drummer.
3. The one that can't be published.
Anyway let's get on. We've got to get to 1225, for 'the next big thing' in music, as they say. Along the way let me try and fill you in on anything you need to know. Modena Cathedral is consecrated in 1184, and, not to be outdone, three years later, the good burghers of Verona complete theirs. In fact, cathedrals are huge at the moment. Not just literally. Everybody wants one. Bamberg start theirs, Chartres theirs and the ochre-topped buildings of Sienna look forward to being ever in the warm shade of theirs. I tell you this for a reason, obviously, not just to pass the time of day, but more of that in a moment.
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on't let me forget to tell you about the carmina????, now, either. It was around the year 1200 that the carmine burana were written. These were a set of monastic songs, many of them with J3 With the possible exception of Mozart's work entitled Musical Joke, it is my theory that there is no such thing as a good musical joke. A 'musical joke* is an oxymoron, put about by slightly nerdy music students to get them out of the spotlight and have it shone back on the IT mob. somewhat racy lyrics in Latin and German, which were found in Benediktbeuren in what is now Bavaria but back then was Bohemia.
Despite their origins within a monastery - or, more likely, because of their origins in a monastery - they concern themselves with subjects like love, and… drinking and… well, how shall I put it… lust! These bawdy ballads were written around the same time as Cambridge University was being founded, but were relatively unknown for a good eight centuries or so, until the Munich-born composer and educationalist Carl Orff put them to use in his piece of 1937, which he called simply Carmina Burana. I've made a note to mention this nearer the time so, for now, let's get on.
Stand-up comedians. They started around now too. Probably to give the musicians a break, chance to nip to the bar, that sort of thing. Of course, they were called court jesters and they started to gain in popularity following the turn of the thirteenth century. Apart from that there were a bunch?" more cathedrals: work started on Reims, Salisbury, Toledo, Brussels and Burgos, as well as a new one for Amiens (old one burnt down - careless!), and a facade for Notre Dame. Ail in all, if your business card read 'Keith Groat - Cathedral Builder' then my guess is, despite the name setback, you were going to be a rich man. Which brings me neatly, if idiosyncratically, to 1225 and 'the next big thing'.
SPIRES INSPIRE
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irst up, a brief overview of and foothold in 1225. Well, the Magna Carta is on its third reprint. Not bad for something with a dull ending and no real plot. In terms of the big names around at the time, on the one hand there's Francis of Assisi, who has a year left to live. On the other hand - definitely on the other hand -there's Mr Khan, or Genghis, to his friends. It's the time of the later Crusades, the Mongol invasion of Russia and papal excommunications galore. In fact, you couldn't move for being excommunicated. You had to so much as invade Scotland and that was it - VUMH! -e x? ommunication.
So, that's just some of the detail of 1225, if you were to run up l lie highest mountain and look around. But what of'the time'? How must it have felt and smelt, if you know what I mean. And how was it, musically speaking? Well, that's why I was banging on about the cathedrals going up all over the place. Let's put ourselves in medieval shoes for a minute.
Cathedrals - two things need to be understood about cathedrals. They're not cheap and they take a bugger of a long time to build. You can't buy them flat-packed with inadequate instructions and one bolt missing. These things are raised across generations. And that gives you a big clue as to who had all the money in 1225. It also gives us a clue as to the state of the music business in 1224. Because cathedrals needed filling not just with people but with music. In 1225, MUSIC was basically a «x-letter word spelt like this: C.H.U.R.C.H - music. Also, to the peasant in the street, it was oral, not unlike herpes simplex, in that it was passed from mouth to mouth. OK, doesn't quite bear up but you know what I mean. True, some written music was creeping in, in places, if you were rich enough. But generally, the norm was still a bunch of blokes, with faces like cows' bottoms, in draughty buildings singing one-note stuff. A bit like folk music today.
And now 'the next big thing'. Well, again, if you were rich enough, you could say the next big thing was 'cotton', which the Spanish had, just this year, started manufacturing. If you weren't rich enough, though - and let's face it, most folk weren't - then 'the next big thing'" was almost certainly a piece of music called 'Sumer is icumen in'. fi Anyone know the collective noun for cathedrals? If not, can I venture floon'? A floon of cathedrals. Sounds fab to me and makes about as much sense as most other collective nouns. I figure collective nouns are much like mountains and polar regions - whoever gets there first can claim them and name them. So. Cathedrals. A floon. Thank you, and VII brook no arguments. fi Stephen Fry breaks the world record for highest number of print mentions EVER of the phrase Hhe next big thing'. Official.
SUMER L'UV IN. ADME A BLAS
T gnore that title and try this: Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing, cuccu Groweth sed and bloweth med And springeth the wude nu Sing cuccu* or to translate: Spring has come in Loudly sing, cuckoo Grows the seed and blooms the meadow And the woods spring now, Sing, cuckoo. 'Sumer is icumen in' - beautiful words, aren't they? - is an important piece in the great musical scheme of things, in no small part due to the simple fact that it even exists - quite a rare feat for any piece of music from this period. In fact, come to think of it, quite rare for anything written down at all. I imagine there are historians the world over who would scream with orgasmic delight if they were to unearth a piece of notepaper saying 'Gone to mother's - chops for tea' if it came from 1225. So the fact that we have it is great. But also, 'Sumer', if it doesn't mind me calling it by its first name, is important because it is so advanced. It's a round - a song where everybody sings more or less the same tune but at different times, a bit like 'Frere Jacques' - and it was written in six parts, four tenor and two bass, and was very complicated for the time. It dates from the mid-thirteenth century and its language is the beautiful and slightly unkempt Middle English. If you don't speak fl Every time 1 read those words, I can virtually hear the birds singing, almost feel the sun shining, practically touch the disfigured heads as they're lovingly spiked on to sticks. Ahh… to be in 1225 again, now that 'Sumer' is here (or at least icumen in). OK, so 'sumer' means spring, so what: what's a season between friends7. Middle English - and to be fair there can't be many who do who aren't called Gandalf - then just try reading some in a Cornish accent. Works for me. It was almost certainly quilled by a monk of Reading Abbey, who is remembered now simply as John of Fornsete. It was meant to be a springtime song, heralding the approaching summer - figures - and is very folksong-like in style. There are some Latin words available to sing to it, but they don't fit anywhere near as well as the 'folk' type words and were almost certainly a later afterthought, just to show willing. It gains its 'next big thing' status by being so pioneering for its time. People just weren't meant to be singing this sort of thing in 1225. Indeed, some scholars think they weren't. In fact, when a very learned sort by the name of Doc Manfred Bukofzer looked into it in 1945, he decided it was almost certainly from a much later time. Still. Despite his concerns, it has managed to keep its place in the music history books as being written around 1225. So good old 'Sumer', that's what I say.