Adam de la Halle (13th century): Le
Jeu de Robin et de Marion
(alternative
titles: Li Gieus de Robin et de Marion, Li Jeus du Berger et de la
Bergiere, Mariage de Robin et de Marote)
TONUS PEREGRINUS
Mary Remnant, bells,
drum, fiddle, gittern / citole, harp, pipe and tabor, rebec, shawm, symphony,
copy of Whitecastle pipe
Adam li Bochus / Pilgrim / Narrator - John Crook, voices
Aubert li Chevaliers / Sir Albert - Alexander Hickey, tenor
Baudons / Baldwin - Richard Eteson, tenor, coconuts
Gautiers li Testus / Walter the Mule - Francis Brett, bass
Huars / Howard - Joanna Forbes, soprano
Marion - Kathryn Oswald, alto
Péronnelle - Rebecca Hickey, soprano
Robin - Alexander L'Estrange, countertenor, tambourine
Rogaus / Roger - Antony Pitts, bagpipe drone, copy of Billingsgate
trumpet, cowhorns, portative organ, tambourine, director
Music by Adam de la Halle, edited and arranged by Antony
Pitts
(except for Motet II, edited by Rebecca A. Baltzer with additional alterations
by TONUS PEREGRINUS)
English versions of Li Jus du Pelerin and Li Gieus de Robin et de
Marion by Rosemary Pitts and Antony Pitts, directed by Joanna Forbes and
Antony Pitts
The 13th-century trouvère Adam de la Halle was also known as
Adam d'Arras and Adam le Bossu, thus giving us both the place of his birth in Northern France and the striking nickname/surname "the Hunchback", although Adam
himself claimed that it was a name not a description. Adam was both composer
and poet, a blending of métiers most famously seen in his compatriot of
the following century, Guillaume de Machaut. As well as numerous chansons, jeux-partis, motets
([Track 23], [40]) and rondeaux
([12], [23], [31]), Adam wrote a small number of plays of which
Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion is perhaps the earliest surviving
combination of music and secular drama: the first opera, no less, coming a
century or so after Hildegard of Bingen's sacred music-drama Ordo virtutum.
Adam de la Halle moved in courtly circles, including the company of Robert II,
Count of Artois (his traditional peasant hero Robin, diminutive both in name
and in courage, may have been taken as a droll reference to his patron); and
like the Pilgrim of our Prologue Adam travelled long and far from his native Arras.
Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion was written in the later part of the
13th century and the various titles in the manuscript sources (Li Gieus de
Robin et de Marion, Li Jeus du Berger et de la Bergiere, Mariage
de Robin et de Marote) tell us something more of the
subject matter, shepherds and love, and that the work survived in different dialects
of mediaeval French. Robin et Marion itself is a slightly forced
marriage of two different but related pastoral traditions, the first of which
presents a potentially amorous encounter between a knight and a shepherdess,
while the second recounts in detail the antics and horseplay of peasants and
shepherds. So the first half of Robin et Marion ([3] - [32]) is full of
dramatic action and many solo songs for the main protagonists, while the second
half ([33] - [44]) is a riotous romp through various party games and food-related
jokes. Whether a lord and lady being read to by the trouvère himself, or a
noble company having fun dressing up and pretending to be peasants, Adam's
audience would have been familiar with both types of play and would have
appreciated the local and personal references with which he embellished their
stock comic situations, including, perhaps, the political tension surrounding
the French Angevin court at Naples where it is thought Robin et Marion was first performed in the late 1280s. They would probably also have been
familiar with the tune of Robins m'aime, Marion's first song ([3]), and
set by someone, if not by Adam himself, in a polyphonic version ([1], [25], [45]).
The customary love-story, outlined in the track-listing, tells itself, but in
Adam's version it is the shepherdess Marion who comes across as the strongest
character, able both to fend off the Knight's unwelcome advances and to twist
her fiancé Robin round her ring finger.
Much has changed in the last three-quarters of a millennium,
but perhaps the most readily-felt areas of development, even for the
aristocratic audience cultivated by Adam de la Halle, are in home improvement
and home entertainment: we now take central heating and television for granted,
whether or not we submit to their comforts. Performing Robin et Marion for
a multi-cultural audience listening to a compact disc in the privacy of a car
or living-room presents a number of challenges that were not present for the
late 13th-century trouvère or troubadour. The original play as it survives is
mostly (spoken) text with an uneven spread of simple, unaccompanied melodies.
The text itself is recognizable as a cousin of modern French, but hard even for
a native French speaker to follow in its entirety. The music is memorable but
limited in range and without any written-down counterpoint or harmony. Our approach
to the music has been to glean instrumental references from the story, and to
accompany the melodies with as "live" and improvised a feel as
possible. Our approach to the text has been from two angles: that of the single,
professional narrator (initially probably Adam himself) employed to wile away
long dark evenings huddled close to the fire; and that of a group of educated friends
and members of the patron's household enjoying themselves immensely in the
sending up of country folk, perhaps with the lord himself as the Knight or as
Robin. For a modern audience used to assimilating information simultaneously
from many different sources, this multilayered approach seems both legitimate
and appropriate, but it is also possible to adjust dramatically the left-right balance
of the stereo mix in order to listen to this recording in different ways: the "authentic"
voice of the Narrator tells the story in the original French dialect to the
left of the mix (stage-right), while the singers rattle off a modern-day English
interpretation to the right of the mix (stage-left); in the middle and across
the stereo mix are the songs, each tracked separately for convenience. The
Narrator is heard close to, while the individual characters in their
21st-century English outfits inhabit a modern aristocratic hall with its wooden
panelling and distant hounds.
As regards the pronunciation our Narrator, John Crook explains:
"We will never know exactly what Adam le Bossu's French sounded like,
particularly as the oldest manuscripts of the play are at least two stages from
his original. The earliest are probably late thirteenth-century, from Picardy, and are thus close to Adam both in time and place; they contain several
characteristics of northern French pronunciation (such as 'pour coi cheste
canchon cantes' - modern 'pourquoi
cette chanson [tu] chantes').
By the date of Robin et Marion spelling was beginning
to become formalised and it is no longer safe to assume that all consonants
were pronounced; furthermore, the pronunciation of diphthongs remains a matter
of scholarly debate. In speaking the text I have attempted above all to be consistent;
I hope at least that my rendering would have been comprehensible to an audience
of Adam's day."
The Play of the Pilgrim (Li Jus du Pelerin) on which we
have based our introductory tableau ([2]) refers specifically to Adam, and may
be one of his literary self-references, a habit taken to the extreme by Machaut
in his own "True Story", Le Voir Dit. Even if not written by
Adam himself it seems to be intended as a prologue to his Robin et Marion, with one particularly testy character in common: Gautiers li Testus (Walter
the Mule). Like the polyphonic motets and rondeaux which we have
liberally interspersed throughout the drama, plainchant was part of the musical
context within which Adam's audience would have interpreted the catchy tunes
and earthy lyrics of Robin et Marion as a chance to let their hair down.
In fact the plainchant and Adam's motets also provide a more serious reference
back to an older musical tradition; in particular, the tonus peregrinus chant
(in [2]) formed the basis for some of the very earliest notated polyphony in
the 9th-century Scolica [Scholia] enchiriadis, while the motet De ma
dame / Dieus / OMNES ([23]) is itself based on a fragment of the Viderunt
omnes chant apotheosized by Léonin and Pérotin towards the end of the 12th
century: these can both be heard on our recording of Sacred Music from
Notre-Dame Cathedral (Naxos 8.557340).
Antony
Pitts
