(b Le Pallet, nr Nantes, 1079; d Saint-Marcel, nr Chalon-sur-Saône, 21 April 1142). French philosopher, poet and musician of Breton origin. After studying philosophy in Paris, he taught dialectic at the cathedral school. His love affair with Heloise, the young niece of Canon Fulbert, brought him fame as a musician. However, after they had secretly married in 1118 Fulbert had Abelard castrated. Heloise became a nun and he became a monk at St Denis. His highly original scholastic method and his restless and blunt nature aroused opposition to his teaching; principal among his opponents was Bernard of Clairvaux. After condemnation by the Council of Sens in 1140, Abelard found support from Peter the Venerable, Benedictine Abbot of Cluny.
Abelard’s songs are few beside his numerous theological and philosophical writings. Heloise’s testimony suggests that his love songs must have been important from both a literary and a musical point of view. In a later letter (probably revised by Abelard) she declared that he had ‘the gift of poetry and the gift of song’; he ‘composed quite a number of metrical and rhythmic love songs. The great charm and sweetness in language and music, and a soft attractiveness of the melody obliged even the unlettered’. These songs, presumably in Latin, have all been lost: they have not been identified among the anonymous repertory.
Some time after 1130 Abelard composed a hymnbook for Heloise, who was by that time Abbess of the convent of the Paraclete. While Bernard of Clairvaux was having a hymnal composed for the Cistercians from the traditional material, Abelard was creating one which was totally new and homogeneous in style. He grouped the hymns by metre, and thus managed with only a few melodies. The hymnbook was not widely used and only one of the melodies has survived: that of the splendid hymn of Saturday, O quanta qualia. It is in the Dorian mode and in AAB form, yet it is shaped in wide-ranging melodic arches. The verse is iambic, but the placing of melismas is as irregular as is usual in hymns of the period.
The six planctus, written after 1130, mark the climax of Abelard’s poetic and musical work. All are based on biblical themes. They are conservative in use of rhyme, often employing only assonance, and yet in rhythm and musical structure they show a highly original style. Formally these songs are linked with the intermediate sequence form (see Sequence (i)) by their rhymed lines and parallel strophes. Abelard extended this parallelism by three- and fourfold repetition. Internal rhyme and musical repetition are used to make smaller phrase-units within a line. (See also Planctus.) The form was imitated in the French Lai, partly by means of direct contrafactum: thus the Lai des pucelles, a French love song from the end of the 13th century, adopted the verse structure and melody of Abelard’s Planctus virginum.
All six planctus survive with imprecisely diastematic staffless neumes (in I-Rvat Reg.lat.288, ff.63v–64v). Planctus VI is the only one found also in square notation (in GB-Ob Bodley 79, ff.53v–56, and F-Pn n.a.lat.3126, ff.88v–90v); it is in the Mixolydian mode, and yet the first and last strophes are Hypomixolydian. Because of this the song has the unusual range of d to g'. Contemplative passages are extended by melismas, while narrative sections are set syllabically and feature dramatic climaxes. The musical form was imitated in Godefroy de Breteuil’s Marian lament Planctus ante nescia (included in the Carmina burana).
Stäblein’s theory that Abelard was only a poet and that the melodies were ‘written by an anonymous musician’ has not been taken up in the literature. The written evidence is too convincing, as is the matching of words and music in Planctus VI. The planctus are found only in sources from the late 12th century and the 13th, and show the influence of later musical taste. Their notation gives no suggestion of modal rhythm, and nothing is otherwise known about how or under what circumstances they were performed.
Text editions: Petri Abaelardi opera, ed. V. Cousin (Paris, 1849–59/R)PL, clxxviii, 10–70Lateinische Hymnendichter des Mittelalters, 1st ser., ed. G.M. Dreves, AH, xlvii (1905), 142–232 [complete edn of poetry]Peter Abelard’s Hymnarius paraclitensis, ed. J. Szöverffy (Albany, NY, 1975)
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O quanta qualia, ed. in MMMA, i (1956), no.590 |
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Planctus I: Abrahae proles Israel nata (Planctus Dinae filiae Iacob), transcr. in Machabey and cited in Weinrich (1969) |
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Planctus II: Infelices filii, patri nati misero (Planctus Iacob super filios suos) |
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Planctus III: Ad festas choreas celibes (Planctus virginum Israel super filia Jepte Galadite) [contrafactum: ‘Lai des pucelles’, Coraigeus sui des geus k’amors viaut]; ed. G. Vecchi: Pietro Abelardo: I ‘planctus’: introduzione, testo critico, trascrizioni musicali, Collezione di testi e manuali, xxxv (Modena, 1951), pp.i–vi |
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Planctus IV: Abissus vere multa (Planctus Israel super Samson) |
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Planctus V: Abner fidelissime (Planctus David super Abner, filio Neronis, quem Ioab occidit) |
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Planctus VI: Dolorum solatium (Planctus David super Saul et Jonatha), ed. in Weinrich (1969) and Dronke; text ed. in Weinrich (1968) |
A. Machabey: ‘Les “Planctus” d’Abélard: remarques sur le rythme musical du XIIe siècle’, Romania, lxxxii (1961), 71–95
B. Stäblein: ‘Die Schwanenklage: zum Problem Lai-Planctus-Sequenz’, Festschrift Karl Gustav Fellerer zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. H. Hüschen (Regensburg, 1962), 491–502
J. Maillard: Evolution et esthétique du lai lyrique des origines à la fin du XIVe siècle (Paris, 1963)
W. von den Steinen: ‘Die Planctus Abaelards: Jephthas Tochter’, Mittellateinisches Jb, iv (1967), 122–44
L. Weinrich: ‘Dolorum solatium: Text und Musik von Abaelards Planctus David’, Mittellateinisches Jb, v (1968), 59–78
L. Weinrich: ‘Peter Abaelard as Musician’, MQ, lv (1969), 295–312, 464–86
P. Dronke: ‘Peter Abelard: “Planctus” and Satire’, Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages: New Departures in Poetry 1000–1150 (Oxford, 1970), 114–49 [melodies transcr. I. Bent, 202–31]
M. Huglo: ‘Abélard, poète et musicien’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, xxii (1979), 349–61
J. Jolivet, ed.: Abélard et son temps (Paris, 1980)
C. Waddell: ‘Peter Abelard as Creator of Liturgical Texts’, Petrus Abaelardus: Person, Werk, Wirkung, ed. R. Thomas (Trier, 1980), 267–86
LORENZ WEINRICH