Cuidoient li losengier Part 3

A lot of conversation has come up from my working on this particular piece. One being that we can't even be certain that where this was from was the same as the dialect I have been researching. In otherwords, place specific accents. Or, even, as I have come to find in my research of Russia, just because, as is stated in the book Singing Early Music, “...all were increasingly dominated from the end of the twelfth century by Francien, thelanguage used by the royal court...” does not mean that far out-lying regions had adapted easily as quickly. I look at Russia and how long it took for some places to become Christian even though Igor and Olga pushed the religion. Some smaller cities that didn't have as much contact with the larger regions kept mostly to themselves. And there is no reason that similar could not have happened here.

So, how do we decide what was being spoken in the area? Well, we have three facts we can look at that we know. We can look at education, the time period the piece was written in, and the nameof the author.

In this case, we know the name of the man who wrote the piece, as in the original document stamped in a circle at the beginning of the piece, is Guillebert de Berneville. According to the melodies left behind, we know he was a trouvere, famous in 1260, who was frequently present at entertainments by the nobility of Flanders. He was famous in the Arras region. From the sounds of it, Berneville sounded rather educated and certainly important enough to follow the change of the times.

Arras, during the middle ages, was a regional central hub for culture in France. In 1180 it became an important location for banking and trade, wool being of great importance since the 4th century. So certainly this doesn't sound like a small podunk area that was left behind by the times.

And now, education. France was not without education at the time, having the University of Paris which was started in mid 12th Century. So there is a possibility that this trouvere may have gone to a university as he was well chosen to perform for nobility as a favorite.

So now we look at the differences between what I had done before and what should be done.

The book that this was found in has it's own bibliography at the bottom the Oxford Anthology musical bars. It says:

R 1287; Paris; Biblioteque de l'Arsenal, MS 5198, p. 145.

My questions, of course, is was this a song writtenin 1287 or just simply collected and put into a book in 1287. So, again, we go back to Guillebert. The only information I can find on him says (fl c 1250-1280). Does this mean he lived exactly 30 years or is this just an estimate? I can not fully be certain. I have a feeling it is an estimate. In which case, he lived just on the cusp of when the book Singing Early Music says the language of early French turned into Middle French, which was 1250.

Because of this, I am now going to write out the rules for early and mid for consonants and then give the IPA of early and mid so we can pick apart how things changed. I also want to write the difference between singing and speaking, as there were differences.

So, let's start with early. We already have gone through all the rules of the early consonants, if you recall, in my previous post, but I will refresh your memory here. And then, if you recall, I had used mid vowels instead of early because I felt that there were hints in the writing style to show that is how it was supposed to be. But I could be wrong. I will write later of my speculation of this after we have gone through the early and middle in lyrical manner. Again, here are the rules from Singing Early Music:

-Double consonants are simplified to single except r's.
-Double r's are pronounced [rr] with 2 or sometimes 3 tongue flips.
-Double s's denotes [s]
-Single s's denotes [z]
-All final consonants are pronounced except voiced become unvoiced ([d], [g], [v] all become [t], [k], [f] respectively)
-Voicing or unvoicing due to the following consonant was a common practice
-c before an a, o, or u is pronounced [k]; before an e or i is  pronounced [ts]
-ch is pronounced [ʧ]
-g before an a, o, or u is pronounced [ɡ]; before an e or i is pronounced [ʤ]
-j is pronounced [ʤ]
-l at the beginning of a word or syllable is pronounced [l]; if followed by a consonant, even if in the next word, is pronounced [w]; if il or ill, pronounced [ʎ]
 -n and m both are still pronounced after their nasalized vowels
-[ɲ] is pronounced much like the Spanish ñ and usually spelled gn or ign
-q or qu is pronounced [k]
-r is pronounced [r̥] much like in modern Spanish or Italian
-s in the final position is pronounced as [s]. Inside a word, s maintains a [s] when followed by a t,p, or k. Followed by any other consonant, it is silent (to me, this all means that an s sounds as a [z] if followed by any vowel. Otherwise, these rules apply).
-x was used commonly for -us which was usually pronounced as [ws]
-z is pronounced [ts]

This will make the first verse to instead read as such:

kɥidɔjãnt li lɔsãnʤjɛr̥

pɔr̥ ʦə sə il õnt mãnti

kə ʤə mə dɔjɛslɔjɲjɛr̥

dãmɔr̥s ɛt də mõn ãmi

ɛ nõn djɛw ʤə lãmər̥ɛ

ɛt bõnãmɔr̥ sɛr̥vir̥ɛ

nɥit ɛt ʤɔr̥

sãns fɛr̥ɛ fɔlɔr̥

ɛt ʤjɛrãnvɔjsiə

ʧãntãnt ɛt ʤɔliə

And now we will look at strictly middle French. Look here at the changes in lyrical consonants:

-spellings do not reflect pronunciation

-simplified affricatives: [s], [ʃ], [ʒ]

-silent [s] seen before consonants and in final position

-loss of many final consonants

-c before an a, o, or u is pronounced [k]; before an e or i is  pronounced [s]

-ch is pronounced [ʃ]

-g before an a, o, or us is pronounced [ɡ]; before an e or i is pronounced [ʒ]

-j is pronounced [ʒ]

-l at the beginning of a word or syllable is pronounced [l]; if followed by a consonant, even if in the next word, is pronounced [w]; if il or ill, pronounced [ʎ]

-n and m both are still pronounced after their nasalized vowels

-[ɲ] is pronounced much like the Spanish ñ and usually spelled gn or ign

-q or qu is pronounced [k]

-r is pronounced [r̥] much like in modern Spanish or Italian, final r's dropped in 13th C

-rr is pronounced as [r̥] with a single tap only in speech, having not been accepted in song as such until mid 17th C.

-all final consonants disappeared in popular language, but in literary (song and poetry), the situation was complex. Inside a line of verse, s was only pronounced if the following word began with a vowel and it was voiced: [z]. At a pause or end of the line a final s was fully pronounced [s]. Inside a word s was always silent even though it remained in spellings until 18th C. Before disappearing, s was pronounced in an aspirated form [x] before transforming into a lengthening of vowel form. (To me, I am hearing... s is forever and always silent when followed by a consonant unless it ended a word or began a word. It certainly confuses me quite a bit, that's for certain.)

-x was used commonly for -us which was usually pronounced as [ws]
-z is pronounced [s]

Although they state all consonants become silent at the end of words, they don't really comment further on that when describing the rules. It seems mostly the letter s becomes silent. But I am going to follow the rules of each consonant being silent so we can see the difference between the early and mid French. So here is our example of mid French:

kɥidwɛãn li lɔzãnʒjɛr̥

pɔ sə sə i õn mãnti

kə ʒə mə dwɛlwɛɲjɛr̥

dãmɔr̥ ɛ də mõ ãmi

ɛ nõ djø ʒə lãmər̥ɛ

ɛ bõnãmɔr̥ sɛr̥vir̥ɛ

nɥi ɛ ʒɔr̥

sãn fɛr̥ɛ fɔlɔr̥

ɛ ʒjɛrãnvwɛsiə

ʃãntãn ɛ ʤɔliə

I can certainly get a good feel of where modern French came from just looking at the difference between early and middle French and I'm sure if I go ahead and get the Renaissance French written out in IPA as well, I will learn even more through that. This has been an amazing experience to figure out. I finally feel confident enough now that I'm going to start working on the tune to the piece now, but I'm not going to stop trying to figure out how, exactly, this may have been pronounced.

To follow the process from the beginning, please view my other entries on this song:

Part 1 

Part 2