Medieval Song in Romance Languages (review)

In this book Haines writes with personal passion for a huge, "submerged" repertory of medieval song, nominally vernacular and secular, of the first millennium, virtually none of it ever recorded in documents for our study. I share his passion, and welcome his attempt to tell another kind of story about it, a story different from the learned account put out by recognized authorities, based on documents of European music (see pp. 148-53). For forty years, ever since I finished my History of Musical Style (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), I have been looking for a way to tell another story; but, as with Edison's light bulb, so far I have not learned much more than obstacles. In this short review I want to speak of how Haines has approached this most pressing task of medieval music history, and of how I think it might be done better.

My review will not include a critique of Haines's performance on the more traditional points of scholarship, except to say that he did well to present between two covers the very few extant musical fragments, with facsimiles; they provide what documentary evidence there is. These fragments were brought to light by previous research; we can be grateful for Haines's collection of this widely scattered material, and if we notice the publication dates of the individual studies we can see that interest in the topic goes back a long way—to before 1900, to the nineteenth century, to the eighteenth and even the seventeenth century; nor have opinions been lacking about how the fragments might fit into a larger picture such as Haines is trying to draw. Similarly, Haines provides a very helpful gathering of recent studies on, for instance, laments or carole dance-songs, and these studies show that movement towards a new picture is widespread and growing steadily, but on the basis of individual topics, not an overall synthesis. A few very recent items could be added. The most important, indeed essential, is Carol Symes's A Common Stage (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007); in this widely acclaimed book, Symes shows how theatre, with song, was performed in downtown Arras. Symes's spectacular demonstration is adjacent—and intensely relevant—to the problem of unrecorded Romance song.

Along with the unrecorded repertories of secular, vernacular song in the first millennium, Haines bundles a sharp critique of the neglect of women's musical activities on the part of the traditional learned accounts of medieval music. The criticism is quite properly lodged against the account of music of the second millennium, where musical as well as circumstantial documentation has always been available, but, indeed, neglected. For the later medieval period, circumstantial evidence adjacent to music—evidence of laywomen's devotional activity in their own behalf in default of the male administration of the Church—has recently become available in abundance; as it is brought to bear upon later medieval music, in coordination with updated ideas about musical performance, a different picture will result. In the earlier medieval period such extramusical evidence seems only just now to be coming available. It is especially needed in early medieval studies because of the absence of musical documents for women's activities, as for everything else; so the case cannot yet be made effectively here. Citing the widely accepted maxim that documents discouraging a musical practice, or of any practice, are ipso facto the best demonstration that the practice was widespread, Haines adduces the condemnation of women singers from writers, episcopal or whatever, from across the centuries. These condemnations (they make dreadful reading!) seem self-disqualified and useless for specific indications of medieval women's activities; and as historical data considered in themselves, they would require a critique of such scope as to strain the traditional understanding of European social history.

The main problem that concerns us here is the relationship of music to musical documents and to the history dependent upon them—in a millennium in which musical documents...