Imagining the un-encoded: staging affect in Blondel de Nesle’s Mes cuers me fait conmencier

Abstract

Abstract In an article published in Music Analysis I argued that the finely wrought complexities of melody in trouvère song have been obscured by the persistent treatment of song structure as merely reflecting that of the poetry, its phrases bounded by the poetic line. By granulating the melody into units smaller than that of the poetic line I showed the high levels of creativity and structural fashioning of the music in some of Blondel de Nesle’s most unusual songs. The present article conversely focuses on one of Blondel’s most seemingly simple and straightforward works and explores what analysis has to offer our understanding of a song that at first view (and first hearing) has nothing special or interesting about its melody. Ultimately I propose that musicologists have no choice but to indulge in a serious exercise of the informed scholarly imagination when it comes to the performance possibilities offered by such a song. In such imagined performances, a flat, lifeless song can spring suddenly to life, offering insight into medieval music-making that is not currently available (and perhaps cannot be?) in modern performances.