Sumptuous songs: Musical Values and the Medieval Romance Tradition

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• Emma Dillon (King’s College, London)
• Wednesday 06 March 2013, 17:00-18:00
• Recital Room, Faculty of Music, West Road.

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From its inception, romance had a sound-track. Whether it was the clamor of combat or the sweet strains of song that accompanied the conspicuous demonstrations of courtly prestige and romantic engagement, sound was a no less potent marker of the genre than the more familiar material and narrative emblems we associate with romance. This paper examines the sonic presence in romance with a particular focus on the Old French tradition which, in its heyday in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was famous for a highly idiosyncratic and imaginative use of song. Jean Renart’s Roman de la Rose, and Guillaume de Machaut’s Remede de Fortune stand at the outer limits of a convention for inserting pre-existent and sometimes newly composed songs into the text: in the mouths of characters, offering insights into their motivations, ambitions, and inner thoughts; as soundtrack and ambience in scenes of social interaction and display, to name but a few examples. My talk focuses on a peculiarly materialist theme in the treatment of song in romance. As has often been noted, material objects are a common currency in romance: samite fabrics, chivalric paraphernalia, and a constant exchange of gifts, all serve to connect romance to the real environments of its production; and to invest romance with a carefully calibrated taxonomy of social and economic values. While song’s immateriality seems to be the antithesis to this environment of tangible ‘stuff’, the materialist theme of romance interacts with song in numerous ways. Songs are bestowed as gifts, while lyrics often mirror and the world of high materiality with imagery of luxury. On occasion, a curious affective relationship appears to exist between the sensual experience of fabrics and the act of singing, and characters are prompted to lyric expression by the touch or sight of beautiful fabrics. In pursuing such relationships, romance offers a way to explore values of song: the ready-made taxonomies of value (social and economic) attached to ‘stuff’ in romance afford us a way of ascribing value to song, too. However, it is a reciprocal relationship. If song is understood as a luxury item, what exactly is the source of its worth? Beyond its practical economies, song taps into a more elusive history of medieval values, those pertaining to expression, feeling, and something approaching aesthetics. Romance thus provides a rich terrain in which to explore aspects of emotional experience; by the same token, song may enrich the understanding of the function and experience of romance itself.

This talk is part of the Faculty of Music Colloquia series.

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