Neidhart von Reuental (1190-1240): "Wol dir liebe sumerzît!"

[Martin Jonas]

Neidhart von Reuental (1190-1240): "Wol dir liebe sumerzît!"

Tune from a 14th/15th century manuscript printed in Franz M. Böhme, "Geschichte des Tanzes in Deutschland", 1886.

Arranged by Klaus Stezenbach:

http://www.kstez.de/Wol_dir_liebe_su...h_century_.pdf

The words to this medieval German minnesang are by Neidhart von Reuental, one of the best-known German troubadours. The tune is from a later manuscript and may not have much to do with Neidhardt. It's rather catchy, though -- just the thing for a renaissance fair (to tie in with the current discussion on repertoire for these).

I'm trading the tune and rhythm between my Baroq-ulele (pseudo lute) and OM, playing mainly fifths double stops for a more medieval sound.

"Baroq-ulele" nylgut-strung mandolin
Mid-Missouri M-111 octave mandolin



Pictures from the Codex Manesse.

Martin

[Andy Boden]

Nicely done! .... as you say, the consecutive fifths lend authenticity.

Cheers - Andy

[vkioulaphides]

Very nice! Of course, of course... voice-leading is part and parcel of the sonority, and you wouldn't have it any other way.

Reminds me (rather tangentially) of a scene in an opera by Mussorgsky where an ever-so-slightly nutty serf stands up in the village square and delivers some bizarre diatribe; the piece breaks every rule of 19th-century harmony and voice-leading, so much so that ever-diligent, academically inclined Rimsky-Korsakov "corrected" the score in a posthumous edition, writing in perfectly "correct" major/minor chords, in gleaming perfection— thereby completely killing the intended effect of the rough-hewn, bearded Russian villager that Mussorgsky's genius had so brilliantly painted on the stage with all his "wrong" notes.

So keep on strumming, open fifths and all!

Cheers,

Victor

[Joseph Baker]

Martin,

" playing mainly fifths double stops for a more medieval sound."

Could you explain this a bit further?

As always, I enjoyed your music.

Thanks!

Joseph Baker

[Martin Jonas]

" playing mainly fifths double stops for a more medieval sound."

Could you explain this a bit further?

These are treacherous waters, and I'm wary to tread into them in the presence of actual composers Victor and Andy who know much more than me about the evolution of compositional theory and voice leading. There is a pretty good Wikipedia article on consecutive fifths here, which explains it at great length.

The heavily simplified pop version is that one of the principal reasons why medieval music sounds so different from renaissance and baroque music, and somewhat dissonant to our ears, is that there was a paradigm shift in the early renaissance from accompaniment in perfect fifths to third-based harmonies (minor or major thirds). One easy way of making accompaniment sound more "medieval" is therefore to play chords without a third, i.e. play "power chords" consisting only of the root and the fifth. As the third is what makes them either minor or major chords, these fifths-based chords are neither which makes them arguably more suitable to accompany tunes that predate the notion of classical harmony. They are therefore popular in strummed accompaniment for medieval dance tunes by modern reinactment groups, and indeed for accompanying Irish tunes where the purists complain about the straightjacket of minor/major chord guitar accompaniment.

Of course, this doesn't have much to do with any sort of authenticity or historical accuracy -- strummed chordal accompaniment isn't really a medieval concept. True medieval polyphony was more horizontally than vertically connected and different voices usually sang or played quite different melodies with chords, harmony or dissonance being essentially fortuitous and fleeting.

In the context of this song, Klaus Stezenbach's version that I've linked above is set out like a standard folk song lead sheet, giving a melody in 6/8 time with chord symbols on top (in this instance Em, Am, G, F and Dm). I tried playing those actual chords, but I found it sounded more (pseudo-) "medieval" if I strip the third out of all the minor chords and most majors, strumming perfect fifths. On OM and mandolin, that's very simple as the instruments are already tuned in fifths.

Martin