A Popular History of the Art of Music

we transport ourselves in imagination into Gaul in the seventh century, and casting our eyes to the right, the left, and to all parts, we undertake to render to ourselves an exact account of the state in which we find the national poetry, the following will be the spectacle which will meet our gaze: Upon one hand in Amorican Brittany there are a group of popular poets who speak a Celtic dialect, and sing upon the harp certain legends, certain fables of Celtic origin. They form a league apart, and do not mix at all in

n a Tudesque imprint. There they sing in a form purely Germanic the 'Antiquissima Carmina' ["Most Ancient Songs"] which Charlemagne was one day to order his writers to compile and put in permanent form. Between these two extreme div

Cantilenas-short songs of a ballad-like character. The language is a mixture of German, Latin and French, intermingled in a m

lcella f?

orps, belle

vientre li

a faire di

koltet les ma

niet chi maent

freely rendered into

irgin was

ful body, more b

of God would

her serve

e understand the e

who is above

uld not burn her, for the fire was pure; and when the king drew his sword to cut off her head the demoiselle did not contradict him, for she wished to leave the world. She prayed to Christ, and under the form of a dove

the cleverer minstrels to combine them into a single narration, and to impart to the whole so composed something of an epic character. Thus arose the famous Chanso

cond or even the third versions. At the head of the list we place the 'Song of Roland,' the Iliad of France. All the other songs of action, however beautiful and however ancient they may be, are far inferior. The text of the 'Song of Roland' as it has come down to us cannot have been written much before 1100. Besides this there is the 'Chanson de Nimes,' 'Ogier le Danois,' 'Jour de Blaibes,' all of which were written in the languages of Oc and Oil. All these have something in common; the verse is ten syllables, the correspondences are assonances and not rhymes. In style these Chansons de Geste are rapid, military, but above all dramatic and popular. They are without shading, spontaneous, no labor, no false art, no study. Above all it is a style to which one can apply the words of Montaigne, and it is the same upon paper as in the mouth. Really these verses are made to be upon the

their language, the Church its faith; but the Germans did more. For long centuries they had the habit of chanting in popular verse their origin, their victories and their heroes. Ab

ode. It is at times a complaint and more often a round. It is a hymn, above all religious and musical, which runs over the lips and which, thanks to its brevity, mainly, is easily graven upon the m

c places. They sing poems of 3,000 or 4,000 verses. These are the first of the Chansons de Geste. Out of the great number of cantilenas dedicated to a single hero it happened that some poet had the happy thought of combining them into a single poem. Thus came a suite of pieces about Roland or William, and from these, in time, an epic. The latest