A professional entertainer of any kind from the 12th century to the 17th, juggler, acrobat, story-teller etc.; more specifically, a professional secular musician, usually an instrumentalist. This article is concerned chiefly with the period between about 1250 and about 1500, the heyday of minstrelsy.
3. Minstrel instruments and ensembles.
LAWRENCE GUSHEE/RICHARD RASTALL
Etymologists agree that the Latin ministerialis, meaning office-holder or functionary, is the source of the Old French ‘menestrel’ and of the English ‘minstrel’. By the 9th century the Latin word had also come to mean craftsman or handworker (cf the French métier from the Latin ministerium). Thus it is not known whether instrumentalists and other musicians came to be called minstrels because of their official or unofficial connections with noble courts or because of their virtuosity and technical specialization. At any rate both the Latin and the French terms were used in fiscal records and literary sources of the first half of the 13th century to designate either craftsmen or musicians, but this ambiguity disappeared by the end of the century. The former sense persisted in the 14th century in countries, such as Spain, that were slow in using the Latin word to indicate musical performers.
Slightly before ‘menestrel’ (later ‘ménétrier’) came into general use, the French term used to describe secular musicians was ‘jogleor’ (‘jogleur’, later ‘jongleur’, in English ‘jogelour’). It may be that the change in nomenclature (in the early 14th century) reflected a change in function, from the jack-of-all-trades entertainer to the specialist in playing a single instrument. In other Romance languages the Latin ministerialis did not give way to a vernacular equivalent; the Spanish ‘joglar’ and Italian ‘gioccolatore’ remained in use into the 15th century.
The troubadour Guiraut Riquier (c1275) claimed, however, that, whereas in Provence ‘joglars’ covered a number of different types of musician, in Spain their functions were distinguished by different terms: instrumentalists (juglares), imitators of animal sounds etc. (remedadores), troubadours who travelled from court to court (segrieres) and street musicians (cazurros). In a reply no doubt written by Riquier but attributed to Alfonso X of Castile, his patron, it is suggested that street entertainers and the like should be called bufones; that he who could comport himself among the rich with cortesia and ciencia in playing instruments, reciting narratives and singing songs and verses made by others should be called juglar; that he who could make (trovar) words and melody should be called trovador; and that he who could do it with mastery and with an ethical or moral message should be called don doctor de trobar. Germanic languages generally used the word ‘Spielmann’, though forms of the French word (e.g. ‘minstreel’) are frequent in Flemish and Dutch records.
At all times and in all languages the naming of the player after his instrument was common, but there is some confusion over the nomenclature for secular singers. Although most references to minstrels appear to indicate instrumental performance only, there is no reason to suppose that the instrumentalists did not also sing; nor should the possibility be ruled out that, in some cases, ‘minstrel’ means ‘singer’. In the second half of the 14th century the confusion is somewhat mitigated by the use of such terms as ‘menestrel de bouche’ or ‘juglar de boca’.
Although even in the 14th century the word ‘musician’ (or its cognates) could, in addition to its traditional sense of judge and theorist of music, refer to performers, it was not until the 16th century that it began to offer serious competition to ‘minstrel’, by which time ‘jongleur’ seems virtually to have vanished. By the end of the 16th century ‘minstrel’ had come to designate wretched mendicants, capable only of croaking or scratching out old-fashioned songs. An analogous shift can be observed in French, in which ‘ménétrier’ had come to mean village and country musicians. With the Romantic reawakening of interest in the culture of the Middle Ages, ‘minstrel’ became frequent in the special sense of wandering poet-musician, and to this day the word evokes the image of the itinerant singer accompanying himself on a plucked string instrument before an audience of knights and their ladies – a real enough phenomenon but only one among many in the range of medieval secular music. (In English the terms ‘minstrel’ and ‘minstrelsy’ have a broader meaning than their equivalents in other languages, and their use in this article is merely a convenience.)
There is no reason to suppose that at any time during the Middle Ages secular musicians were absent from western Europe. One difficulty in interpreting the historical documents is that wherever records are kept in Latin the same terms, chiefly ‘histrio’ and ‘mimus’, serve to designate entertainers of all sorts, including musicians, from the 9th century to the end of the 14th. All were tarred with the same brush by the ecclesiastical authorities, who as a rule deplored their mode of life or even forbade it: the Commemoratio brevis (c900; GerbertS, i, 213) is unusual in its partly respectful attitude. Some modern scholars view the secular musician-entertainers of this early period as a continuation of the entertainer class of late Roman culture, but such an abstraction tells nothing of their specific functions, nor does it rule out the existence of other social or ethnic traditions.
One traditional role that has fascinated scholarship since the 18th century is that of the bard or epic poet-singer. He is usually supposed to have recited his lengthy tales to simple melodic formulae corresponding in their articulation and repetitions to the half-lines, lines and couplets of epic or narrative verse; he is also thought to have supported his song with an instrument such as the harp or fiddle. An image of this kind of verse- and music-making can be formed on the one hand from scattered documents of the Middle Ages up to about 1300 (see Chanson de geste) and on the other from still extant or only recently extinct practices in non-literate cultures. Questions of individual or so-called collective creation and composition, textual variation and improvisation, mnemonic schemes and oral transmission have been intensively studied in the last 60 years by historians of literature and folklore.
If such poet-singers can be thought with good reason to form a class distinct from entertainers with skills in non-verbal domains (instrumentalists, dancers, acrobats, prestidigitators, animal trainers and the like), the position of the 12th- and 13th-century creators and performers of lyric or didactic stanzaic poetry in the vernacular is not so clear. Whereas there is every reason to date the development of epic narrative poetry well before the beginning of written records and to see it as an essentially non-literate art, the various schools of Romance and Germanic poetry appear to be literary in every sense. But although there is a considerable corpus of French and Provençal poetry dating from before 1300, very little of it was transmitted with music, and such music as there is bears the signs of oral transmission. The nature of the relationship between poets and instrumentalists or singers, or the combination of these functions in one individual, has often been discussed in connection with the Provençal troubadours.
A number of 13th-century French poets are also known to have been musical performers or composers: Adenes (often called Adenes le roi), was a menestrel in the employ of the Count of Flanders from about 1270 to 1300; another, Adam de la Halle, belonged to the retinue of the Count of Artois. These poet-composers and their music are interesting in view of the special character of bourgeois society and culture in the Low Countries and the close relations between the feudal nobility and the bourgeoisie.
There are two major sources of facts and impressions concerning the varied roles and functions of medieval minstrels: literature, in which, especially in poetry, the symbolic element often outweighs the descriptive; and financial records, which only now are beginning to be explored systematically. While 13th- and 14th-century poetry mentions many instruments by name, financial records are less specific, and neither source gives much information as to what exactly the instruments were, how they were played (in terms enlightening to a modern musician) or how they sounded. How instruments were held and typical groupings of minstrels can sometimes be seen in manuscript and easel painting from the early 15th century on, but the pictorial record before that is thin and frequently ambiguous (see fig.1). There is also very little evidence concerning regional differences or the development of performing practice.
The records are equally ambiguous concerning the size and composition of ensembles; it is possible that both polyphonic and monophonic works were performed by more than one musician to a part. Payments for solo minstrelsy on every sort of instrument were frequent, as were those for two minstrels: a pair of fiddles or trumpets, or a plucked and a bowed string instrument, were apparently standard combinations. One can rarely be sure that simultaneous payment to several musicians meant that they played together, but in those accounts that permit such interpretation a variety of trio combinations is found, and occasionally quartets (three shawms and a trumpet were probably standard). Larger groups also appear, mostly in connection with urban processions. The division of instruments into haut and bas groups seems to have been common in the 15th century and relatively so in the 14th, though it is difficult to identify undesignated pipes and the ‘ghiterne’, which may be found in the company of both haut and bas instruments. The so-called alta capella, a trio or quartet of shawms and sackbuts (sometimes including the S-shaped slide trumpet), was also a 15th-century development. The chief percussion instrument was the nakers, usually found with trumpets and/or shawms, but the tabor was much used with softer instruments.
Little is known of the repertory performed by the minstrels. The various scraps that seem to be dance music (the estampies of F-Pn fr.844, the pieces of GB-Lbl Harl.978 or the istanpitte and saltarellos of GB-Lbl Add.29987) are so diverse in date, style and probable geographical origin that no coherent picture appears. Nor is it clear what place notated pieces occupied in a musical practice that was predominantly unwritten and to some extent extemporized. Certainly the Estampie must have been the leading kind of dance, and if it followed the pattern of many later dances it must have progressed by the mid-14th century some way beyond its beginnings as functional dance music; its characteristic structure – progressive repetition with ouvert and clos endings – seems specially well adapted to duet playing, particularly by similar instruments. The existence of this practice is corroborated by Raimbaut de Vaqeiras, who composed the poem Kalenda maya to an estampie that he first heard played by two fiddlers from France. From the end of the 14th century the basse danse also entered the minstrels’ repertory, though its structure, and the ensemble of two shawms and slide trumpet or trombone frequently associated with it, sharply contrast with what is known of the estampie. As well as accomplished dance music, minstrels seem to have played the tenor and contratenor parts of the standard three-voice polyphonic chanson of the 14th century; Johannes de Grocheio (c1300) singled out fiddle players as particularly skilled in this practice. In the generations after Machaut, and perhaps during his lifetime, minstrels are even supposed to have composed such works.
The chief difficulties in comprehending the social functions of the minstrels stem from the absence of a comprehensive repertory of written music and the failure of medieval writers on music to devote any attention to them. Salmen (1960) singled out four factors contributing to this lack of critical attention: vagueness in systematic sociological foundations; lack of a complete view of European historical sources; failure to look to surviving traditions for parallels with extinct practices; and a lack of comparative studies of non-European cultures in which travelling musicians lived in similar circumstances. The role of the minstrels is deeply involved with the sociology of medieval musical life, which can only be fully understood from a systematic analysis of non-musical sources and an understanding of the musical characteristics and artistic possibilities of largely illiterate musical cultures. Granted such general considerations, knowledge of minstrelsy is also very uneven according to country or geographical area. In France and Burgundy, noble and royal minstrels held the centre of the stage; in the Low Countries, urban or bourgeois instrumentalists; and in Spain, poet-musicians. Of the position in some countries (e.g. Italy) virtually nothing is known. Although this diverse picture is partly due to real regional differences, it is also the result of unevenness in the historical records and of the varying interests – often motivated by patriotism – of the few modern scholars who have worked on the subject.
While the organization of musical life and therefore the social status of the minstrel differed from one region to another, it is clear that some secular musicians of the later Middle Ages were completely outside the predominant social structure; along with entertainers generally and others (e.g. wandering clerks) they had no fixed abode and owed allegiance to no civil or ecclesiastical authority. In the absence of historical records it is impossible to describe the musical life of the vast rural majority (85–95%) of the medieval population of Europe; it is not known whether musicians providing music for rural populations were called minstrels, what proportion of instrumental to vocal music there was or how it was performed. Moreover, the music of the medieval church has no demonstrable direct relationship to minstrels or minstrelsy, although bishops who were also temporal lords supported minstrels, and minstrels were often essential in urban religious processions and sometimes participated in church services. Necessarily, then, the two main divisions of inquiry are the courts and cities of medieval Europe. In both cases, accounts and other records providing names and numbers of musicians, dates and places are virtually non-existent before about 1200, rare until about 1300, sporadic but significant until 1350 and increasingly common thereafter. Although the pattern of documentary evidence is partly due to the loss of older records, it also reflects social changes in which book- and record-keeping went hand in hand with increasingly regulated and normalized forms of feudal and municipal government; this development had a direct bearing on the social context of music-making.
The chief sources of information concerning court minstrels are household accounts of the monarchs and noblemen of medieval Europe; these are sometimes quite full, as in the case of the Household and Wardrobe Accounts of Edward I of England (see Rastall, 1964, 1968), sometimes vexingly skimpy, as in the case of the French Valois kings (largely because the archives of the Chambre des Comptes at Paris were destroyed in 1737). In addition there sometimes exist ordinances specifying the size of the household and its administrative subdivisions, along with the duties and perquisites of the retinue. The accounts often furnish names, dates, places and precise sums of money given as regular wages, gifts, liveries or extraordinary expenses, and they sometimes specify the instruments played by a minstrel – though it is doubtful whether such designations needed, or were intended, to be precise – but they do not usually provide direct evidence for the size or composition of ensembles or the nature of the repertory.
In the earlier part of the period under consideration, a noble household – though it might range from 30 or 40 to several hundred – did not always include minstrels on the payroll. For example, while Robert, Count of Artois (1250–1302), appears to have had up to half a dozen minstrels in his regular employ, none are found in the accounts of his daughter and successor, Mahaut (1302–29). Philip VI of France (1328–50), in a household of at least 140, had only two minstrels, according to an ordinance of 1355; but 13 years later his son John, Duke of Normandy, employed at least 12 instrumentalists. In particular it is not at all clear that there was a general increase through the 14th century in the numbers of minstrels employed. To find no minstrels on regular wages in a sizable household is unusual, but the number employed seems to have borne little relationship to the size of the household as a whole. The development of French secular polyphony during the 14th century may well have been influenced by the assiduous patronage of minstrels by John the Good of France (1350–64) and his sons, Charles V (1364–80) and the Dukes of Berry, Burgundy and Anjou.
It is not certain that only minstrels designated as such could provide court music on a regular basis. A number of court posts are frequently cited in close proximity to that of minstrel in the records, for example fools, heralds, waits, ushers, bodyguards, justicers or waferers, who were variously responsible for entertainment, protocol, procurement of prostitutes and guarding the gates and doors and who on occasion may also have provided music. The records also testify to a constant traffic of minstrels from other courts, as well as common minstrels with no designated status. Normally, court minstrels did not receive wages significantly higher than those of other lesser personnel of the household, nor did they enjoy social privileges; they were not badly paid and they received many occasional and extraordinary gifts. Players of the trompe or trompette were distinguished from other minstrels and were paid higher wages at some courts.
It has often been stated that minstrels frequently achieved a relationship of special intimacy and trust with their noble employers. This undoubtedly happened at times, particularly with harpers and other chamber musicians, but the fact that minstrels were often entrusted with messages and more devious political missions such as espionage may only reflect their mobility as an occupational group. In the 14th century particularly, minstrels often moved from court to court, were sometimes lent by their employers and seem often to have travelled independently of their masters. Two sorts of occasion – noble weddings, and ceremonies of knighthood which frequently took place at Pentecost – attracted vast assemblies of minstrels; in a few instances several hundred gathered, and the payroll of one such ceremony, at Westminster in 1306, lists over 150 names (see Bullock-Davies, 1978).
Minstrels sometimes remained associated with a court for many years, often surviving their original employer to serve his successor. There are no women on the rosters of court musicians, though they were sometimes remunerated as the wives of regularly employed minstrels. Minstrels were ranked as household servants, with appropriate daily wages, but little is known about any hierarchic or career structure. The style ‘magister’ was occasionally used, probably for a minstrel in charge of apprentices (in this context it does not denote a university degree). In the late 15th century the chief minstrel was known as the ‘marshal’ in some households. From the 1270s onwards we hear of minstrel-kings, who apparently exercised control over minstrelsy in particular regions. Although they were royal servants there is no evidence that minstrel-kings were household officers. Until the mid-15th century minstrel-kings were the same as herald-kings, but thereafter the heralds specialized and minstrelsy was controlled through civic and national legislation.
During the 14th century and the early 15th, annual assemblies of minstrels took place, chiefly in the Low Countries and at Beauvais, in the week before Laetare Sunday in Lent. They seem to have involved both city and court minstrels, some of whom came from as far away as Aragon and Navarre. The earliest known gathering of this sort was in 1318 at Bruges (though there may have been one at Ypres in 1313) and the last was in 1447 at Damme. They were usually called ‘escoles’ or ‘scoelen’ – i.e. schools in the sense of a large group – but there is evidence from the second half of the 14th century that there were also schools in the more usual modern sense, in which musical instruction was offered (for example at Paris). Little is known of the duration of the escoles, the numbers of musicians present or the purposes for which they met, though a few records state that they learnt new songs and purchased instruments. There may have been several concurrent regional meetings in a single year. Such gatherings can be regarded as contributing to a supra-regional musical culture and to the musical predominance of the Low Countries as early as the 14th century.
There is no distinct line of demarcation between an era of minstrels and minstrelsy and a subsequent one: indeed, in many rural areas minstrelsy never quite died out, and the village musicians in parts of eastern Europe and elsewhere appear to represent a tradition descended directly from medieval minstrelsy. In urban and court life minstrelsy gradually gave way to a different form of musical culture, mainly during the period 1500–1650. There are many interrelated factors in this change: the growth of musical literacy among the better minstrels; the appearance of an extensive body of written polyphony based on vocal styles (including important printed collections from 1501 onwards); the development of specifically instrumental styles; and the changes in social expectation that made the better minstrels aspire to the status of ‘musician’ and ‘gentleman’.
See also Guilds.
AshbeeR
BrownI
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E. Faral: Les jongleurs en France au Moyen Age (Paris, 1910/R)
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R. Rastall: ‘The Minstrel Court in Medieval England’, Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, Literary and Historical Section, xviii/1 (1982), 96–105
C. Bullock-Davies: Register of Royal and Baronial Domestic Minstrels, 1272–1327 (Woodbridge, 1986)
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F. Andersen, T. Pettitt and R. Schröder, eds.: The Entertainer in Medieval and Traditional Culture (Odense, 1997)