STEPHEN FRY - OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

? ver the next seventy years or so, some important things gathered momentum in the world of music. This was a period when what was known as the 'ars antique was still the in thing. Meaning, literally, the old art, it was a term used only retrospectively for what was going on about now. It didn't really get its name until someone coined the term 'ars nova1 - new art - which was generally a freeing up from all the styles and some of the rules of the ars antiqua.

The big three in the world of ars antiqua would have to be Leonin, Perotin and Robert de Sabilon. Leonin was often referred to as an 'optimus organista? - or 'very good when it comes to writing those lovely medieval-sounding harmonies' - and lots of his stuff still survives to this day. Perotin was the top man at Notre Dame in Paris for a time. De Sabilon also worked out of Paris, doing things you wouldn't believe with independent melodies. In fact, Paris was pretty big, generally, around now, and Notre Dame particularly. There were lots of troubadours, and minstrels all gathered in the city alongside monks and men of learning. It strikes me that it might have been not dissimilar to the turn of twentieth-century Paris, where artists, musicians and thinkers all gathered to form a steamy, Bohemian cafe-culture. This went on to leave its own heady mark on the arts in general, both then and now. One thing is certain, though, and that's that, in both periods, the cappuccinos were almost certainly cheaper.

O

ther luminaries giving off the dying light of the ars antiqua were chaps like Franco de Cologne/ Franco de Cologne - I know, unfortunate, isn't it, but at least he resisted the urge to spell it Franceau - was the guy generally credited with sorting out how long notes lasted. Sounds odd to say that now, I guess, but back then -well, someone had to get it all together. Just like Gregory the Gorgeous had sorted out plainchant, so Franco got to grips with notes and how you wrote down how long each note lasted. He set his stall out in a little book called De musica mensurabilis or, if you like, 'Of Music and Measures', which sounds a little like a lost manuscript by John Steinbeck.

Up until now, there had been no agreed system for showing how long a note lasted. He it was who standardized the 'breve' as the unit of musical measure. A semibreve is this? and is four beats long. This? is a minim, and lasts two.

And so on, down through to? the crochet (one beat) and the cute but ridiculously named hemi-demi-semiquaver I, the sort of Tinkerbell of notes: you have to believe that it exists or it won't. fi??? know, it seems to me that being around back then meant you could pick your name rather like newly ennobled lords pick their provenance today. So, today, you have Lady 'Ihatrhcr of Kesteven and Lord Wilson ofRievaulx or whatever, back then you had more or less the same, but you didn't have to wait to get into the Upper Chamber to do it. Everybody was at it. Personally, I think I 'd go for Fry of Soho. Maybe even… Fry of the Route of the 77 Bus -give me a bit of leeway.

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ow on to three of the leading names in music after 1300. De Machaut, Dunstable and Dufay. First up is the romantically titled Gaul, poet and composer: Guillaume de Machaut. Again, sorry to digress once more, but what a beautiful name. Just say it to yourself -Guillaume de Machaut. Gorgeous name. De Machaut was born in 1300 and soon realized he had a talent not only for poetry but also for music. By the year 1364, with still a good fourteen years left to live, he would have been forgiven for sitting back, resting on his ars nova, and enjoying himself a little. I mean, to be fair, simply being sixty-four in those days was a bit of an achievement, considering the new black was… well, the Black Death. ('Darling, MWAH, oh you look drop-dead gorgeous… Oh… you've dropped dead.)

De Machaut was one of the last great composers living in the age of the trouveres or troubadours, the particularly French version of what we in England called 'minstrels' or the Germans called ''minnesingers'', literally 'love singers'. A minstrel was effectively a paid, freelance musician, descended from the 'mimes' of ancient Greece and Rome, who were cast out during the barbarian invasions. They were originally actors who took up instruments to pay their way, at a time when this was considered very much a dubious thing to do (no change there, then). If this were the Bible, then the line would probably go something like this:

Mimes begat joculatores; joculatores begat jongleurs: jongleurs begat troubadours: troubadours begat trouveres: trouveres begat menestriers; and menestriers begat minstrels. See?

If, in this world of troubadours, trouveres and menestriers, you are having trouble spotting a minstrel, then here's a useful rule: troubadours sing and rhyme, menestriers play for dances, and minstrels melt in your mouth but not in your hand.

And de Machaut, in the trouveres tradition, was as famous in his lifetime for his words as for his music. A more or less exact contemporary of Boccaccio, the man of the Decameron, he was born in the Ardennes but, having become both learned and a priest - and I'm sure it's possible - he enjoyed lengthy stays in the courts of John of

Luxembourg and the Duchess of Normandy. But it was around the time of Navarre that he put all his efforts into achieving the as yet unachieved, pulling off the as yet unpulled, and doing the as yet… undone. The four-part Mass. No one had, as yet, come up with a Mass that moved according to the 'laws' of harmony, but that sounded… well, good. Rules can be obeyed to the letter, to make a perfectly 'correct' four-part Mass, but as to making it sound great - that was a whole different ballgame.

? four-part Mass, that is the issue. Could any composer manage to JLJL get four separate 'voices' (i.e. sopranos, altos, tenors and basses, for example) to sing separate tunes and yet cleverly make it all sound like perfect harmony?

Imagine it this way, if you would. It's a still, muggy evening in Reims and de Machaut's 'Roger Bannister' moment is not far off. He and his team had been competing against the Italians to be the first to produce the musical holy grail of the time - the four-parter - but the journey had been cruel. What looked like early successes were hastily rehearsed, only to reveal several chunks of the Mass that were not in four at all - some were periods of three parts, some two. There was even an early prototype which had all the manuscript appearance of a four-part Mass, but, when sung, sounded almost totally monotonous and in unison.-"

The setbacks had taken their toll, not just in terms of morale - two of the team had left with larynx problems, another had set up on his own, and de Machaut had lost a fourth in a tragic tongue accident sustained during a particularly fast bar of hemi-demi-semiquavers. But he was not deterred. He knew he could do it. No composer in history had yet done it, and the spoils to the victor would be great. Well, ish! In a moment which will forever go down in the annals of history as 'that time when Guillaume de Machaut finished his Mass', he, quite brilliantly and with a single flourish of his quill, put the finishing bar line to his masterpiece. Inside, he knew this was it. He didn't need a rehearsal. He didn't need to sing it through to his mother. He knew. This was the first four-part Mass in history! As legend has it, he leant across to his chief-of-staff and uttered the now immortal line, cBof! J'ai besoin d'une tasse de the. Ou peut-etre quelque-chose plus fort. Allons! Au tete du chevaV Or, to translate: 'Ooh, I couldn't half do with a cuppa. Or maybe something stronger. Let's nip down the Nag's Head.'