Several generations of musicologists have studied, often in detail, urban musical cultures through a vast swathe of Europe. For Italy, Germany, the Low Countries and England we have assembled masses of information. Still, for some areas interest has been less intense, with France being a leading example: despite a handful of local studies (most from the late nineteenth century), there had been no attempt to provide an overall view. Now we have the excellent study by Gretchen Peters which fills this long-standing gap in our knowledge. As Dr Peters points out, there are very good reasons why we have not had such a comprehensive survey before. France was a larger and more diverse region than others, comprising at least four different language groups. A dozen or more cities are of such size and importance that each could demand months, if not years, of sifting through the surviving documents to get an adequate sense of their cultures. In addition there are at least fifty more cities of substantial, if lesser, importance which demand attention. To even begin the task of gathering the essential information demands an almost heroic resolve. Paris presents a particular problem: almost all relevant documents were destroyed in the nineteenth century. The lack of information for what was by far the leading artistic centre of the country has dealt a crippling blow to our understanding. Despite all these obstacles, Peters has managed to construct a remarkably effective composite picture of music in urban France.
After an introduction, the book is divided into two main sections. The first consists of three chapters; the first of these is devoted to civic patronage in southern France, the second to that of central France, the third to northern France. The second section also has three chapters, the first concerning the occasions which demanded music, the next on the professional relationships of urban minstrels, with a final chapter devoted to ‘conflicting images of the medieval minstrel’. The appendix of musical instruments will be useful for readers with limited knowledge of the background. The book concludes with a general index and an index of musicians named in the text.
The introduction sets the time frame (1300–1500) and explains the quite restricted focus of this study, which in contrast to studies such as Reinhard Strohm's on Bruges or Frank D'Accone's on Siena concerns only music in the secular sphere. Music of ecclesiastical urban institutions is considered only when the interests of the secular and the sacred intertwine (in processions, for example). While not mentioned in the introduction, music associated with aristocratic courts is also excluded; more on this point shortly. The book is written in such a way that it can serve the interests of general historians as well as musicologists (there are no music examples, and musical instruments are carefully described).
Peters chose to open with her strong suit, music in the urban centres of southern France. This was a happy choice, for not only does she know this area particularly well (it was the subject of her Ph.D. dissertation) but the leading cities in this region appear to have supported music in a way which distinguishes them from the cities in the north. She begins with three cities: Montpellier, Narbonne, and Nîmes. Montpellier is the centrepiece; it was the largest, and at that time the dominant city in the region. Saying ‘largest’ and ‘at that time’, however, raises issues that recur throughout this study. The period 1300–1500 was one of extraordinary instability. Disease, particularly the series of plagues which began in 1348, overpopulation, and prolonged periods of warfare devastated many cities. French cities were particularly hard hit due to the recurring waves of invasions of the Hundred Years War (running roughly from 1350 to 1450), with most losing over half their inhabitants. Montpellier felt the effects dramatically, dropping from a population of perhaps 40,000 in about 1300 to less than 15,000 in 1400, with only slow growth thereafter. That is, through most of the time span under consideration, the size of Montpellier was quite modest.
The city, nonetheless, provided consistent support of civic instrumental ensembles. The first surviving account book, from 1357–8, records payments to ‘five minstrels of the consulate’, with banners provided for two trumpets and two cornamusa (reed instruments of some sort; one was probably a bagpipe, the other might have been a shawm). The fifth player, evidently, was a ‘nacharayre’, a player of small kettledrums. Only two other fourteenth-century accounts survive, but the numbers and distribution within the ensemble seem consistent.
Little research has been directed to instrumental ensembles of this kind in the fourteenth century. We have not a single scrap of music, and no contemporary descriptions which might tell us anything of performance practice. The situation seems to have been that at around 1300 European wind bands still performed following the practices of their Mideastern origin (a result of contacts brought about by the Crusades). The band provided a kind of ceremonial noise: a couple of double-reed instruments (shawms) would noodle away in the mid to upper register in a kind of heterophony, while one or two trumpets might woof away from time to time with notes from their lower register. About 1350 European ensembles began to develop along different lines. The trumpets separated from the double reeds and began to expand in size; by 1500 leading courts had a dozen or more trumpets in their entourage. The shawms started on a path that would lead to increasing musical sophistication; by about 1380 two sizes of shawm had been developed, capable of playing soprano and tenor parts, and by the early fifteenth century ensembles of three or four were established throughout the major centres of Europe.
The distribution of instruments in Montpellier raises some fascinating issues. As Peters notes, the city's patronage follows the pattern of that of Italian cities. Nevertheless, the distribution of instruments in Montpellier was distinctive. The prominent cities of Italy, Bologna, Florence and Venice, for example, boasted six or more trumpets in about 1350, with (in the case of Bologna and Florence) only a single reed instrument and a kettledrummer. Florence then revised its patronage framework in the 1380s and instituted a three-part wind band (Bologna did the same in 1399). The Montpellier ensemble, however, evidently remained until very late in the fourteenth century one which combined trumpets, reed instruments and kettledrums. As Peters notes, the configuration of the Montpellier group suggests that the earlier Near Eastern tradition ‘may have been maintained in some centers for longer than has been thought’. By about 1400 or shortly thereafter, however, Montpellier was also supporting the same kind of shawm ensemble found elsewhere, that is, one consisting of one or two soprano shawms, a tenor shawm, and an early version of the trombone.
The surviving documents from Montpellier are particularly varied, and Peters has pulled information from a range of sources including financial accounts, notarial records, and minutes of decisions of the city council. This has allowed her to construct an unusually detailed picture of the contexts for music in the city. A primary function of the civic ensemble was to perform in front of the city council members in processions (she lists over thirty such occasions in 1371–2, for example). In fact, while the ensemble was identified as an official city group (called ‘our minstrels’ or something similar), was provided with city livery and medallions, and the banners of their instruments carried the city coat of arms, in the fourteenth century the players were still paid per performance. Not until early in the fifteenth century were they granted an annual salary.
If we might hope that other cities in the region would provide further clues to fourteenth-century developments, our hopes are quickly dashed. Narbonne, though almost as large as Montpellier, supported no civic ensembles at all, nor did the slightly smaller Nîmes. The picture is similar in the next group of cities Peters discusses (Toulouse, Albi, and Bordeaux). Toulouse was comparable to Montpellier in size and importance, but it maintained more modest musical forces in the fourteenth century (only a pair of tower trumpeters), expanding to a small wind band just prior to the turn of the next century. Albi and Bordeaux, however, supported only tower trumpets through the entire span considered. The pattern becomes even clearer in the final group of southern cities, Avignon, Marseilles, Aix-en-Provence, Orange and Apt. Not one of these went beyond supporting one or two tower trumpeters. In short, in the entire southern region, only in Montpellier and Toulouse were there ensembles with permanent support from civic funds.
The picture in civic patronage was even more bleak in the central region. Peters sifted through documents in archives in Tours and Orléans in the Loire valley, in Châlons-sur-Marne, Reims and Troyes in Champagne, Dijon in Burgundy, and in Arras, Beauvais and Rouen to the north and west of Paris; of these cities only Troyes seems to have been willing to devote funds to the support of a civic ensemble. This only changed when Peters shifted her focus to the north with such cities as Douai, Lille, St-Omer and Tournai. These cities all showed a very different spirit, as all were providing for ensembles by early in the fifteenth century at the latest. Most of these cities, though French-speaking, were in fact in the county of Flanders, at that time part of the holdings of the duke of Burgundy. Their commercial ties were with cities such as Bruges and Ghent to the north, and, quite importantly, they were then not under the authority of the king of France. In any case, Flemish cities large and small were vigorous in their support of civic ensembles, and the ties of this northern slice of French-speaking cities evidently involved cultural as well as well as commercial relations.
One of the great puzzles that this book reveals is that in the heart of France only three cities (Montpellier, Toulouse and Troyes) of the over twenty considered patronised instrumental ensembles. This is in stark contrast to cities in Italy, Germany and Flanders, where often even minuscule towns somehow scratched together resources to provide for a civic ensemble. Peters offers a quite plausible explanation: that in France the authority of the crown worked as an effective brake on civic autonomy – and the civic ensembles, in their livery and with banners and medallions, served as both visual and aural symbols of the independence of their cities and were thus subject to royal suppression. This explanation, however, is not completely adequate. Until 1477 Dijon was held by the duke of Burgundy, and Bordeaux until 1453 was within a region controlled by the king of England; neither city supported ensembles, but many cities in England and in the Burgundian Low Counties did. And if the royal attitude was negative it seems odd that Troyes could have escaped the scrutiny of the monarchy. There is no question that royal restriction of local powers was a critical factor, but other issues seem to have been in play as well. In Germany, for example, it is quite clear that civic ensembles were symbols of a town's stature – and pride. ‘Pride’ in turn engendered a sense of rivalry. If Nuremberg and Augsburg had ensembles, Regensburg, Munich and Ulm had to have them as well. I would suggest that while suppression from the crown was a central reason, it was not the only one that can explain why French cities did not develop the conditions that might have led to more active patronage of civic ensembles.
In the second section of the book Peters offers a broad view of musicians, their profession, and aspects of their lives. Chapter 4 deals with freelancing: employment opportunities that could be offered by confraternities, churches and universities (Toulouse and Montpellier both had distinguished universities), and the desire for music at weddings, festivals and bathhouses. Teaching also offered income potential, both for masters taking apprentices (which involved long-term contracts) and for amateurs (which were usually fixed, short-term arrangements.) Chapter 5, concerning professional relationships, includes discussion of confraternities, guilds, apprenticeships and minstrel schools. Chapter 6 centres on minstrels as individuals, with sections on musicians as outcasts and as respected members of their cities, and on their economic status and mobility.
This second section reveals the extent of the information that Peters has been able to dredge up from her many hours of archival labour. The survey of employment opportunities is as comprehensive and well-founded a discussion of the topic as is available. The same is true of the discussion of guilds and minstrel schools. Especially valuable is the discussion of economic status, with the table of relative wealth of musicians in Montpellier of special interest – six of eleven musicians listed were above the median wealth, with one in the 87th percentile, another in the 90th percentile: some of these musicians were doing very well indeed.
In any work of this kind there are the inevitable glitches, some of which were probably due to a lack of a specialist editor. On page 40 Narbonne is indicated as being north-east of Montpellier (it is of course south-west); on page 48 the banks of the Garonne River are noted as ‘being carefully preserved during the twentieth century’ – a phrase obviously written well before the book was published; on page 216 Peters refers to minstrels of ‘local royalty’ when the appropriate term is local nobility. Slightly more important are some omissions. The discussion of the doucaine should certainly have referred to the article by Herb Myers, which provides an authoritative description of this troubling instrument.Footnote 1 Some cities may have modelled their patronage on Italian practice; in addition, French court records occasionally provide significant information on civic musicians. Thus it is regrettable that important works by Timothy McGee (especially his recent monograph on music in Florence)Footnote 2 and Gustav Arnaud d'Agnel (on music at the court of René d'Anjou)Footnote 3 are not mentioned or included in the bibliography. Peters suggests that St-Omer was a Flemish city, i.e. not just within the county of Flanders, but that the language spoken there was Flemish. The accounts of the city, however, are consistently in French, and while there may have been a significant Flemish presence, the dominant culture remained French. All of these omissions and lapses are, of course, relatively minor. The cut-off date of this study is 1500. Given that thousands of documents had to be consulted, it was sensible and even essential for Peters to limit her study in this way. There remains a need for a survey of music in French cities in the sixteenth century, when the patronage of instrumental music was surely more active. For example, in Arras in 1501 a four-part wind ensemble was engaged on a long-term contract apparently for the first time. Moreover, records of royal entries in the sixteenth century indicate that the presence of civic ensembles was a more general phenomenon in French cities than had been the case earlier.
One final point can be made, not as a criticism but rather an indication of another area where the fine effort in this volume can be expanded. The focus here is exclusively on music within French cities. What we now need is a complementary effort to provide an overview of music supported by the French nobility. This is a particularly pressing need: while French cities were not vigorous patrons of instrumental music (as is clear from this volume), French nobles were. No court had more influence on instrumental music in the early fifteenth century, for example, than that of the Valois dukes of Burgundy. We now have a comprehensive overview of urban music, but we still lack an analogous survey of the music of French courts of the Renaissance.
