Monty Python's Terry Jones introduces us to the lives of the working musicians of the middle ages.

After all the talk about chant and the development of notation in last week's episode, I thought we ought to give a nod to the secular sound-makers of the Medieval period.

First and foremost, minstrels were enlisted to entertain. As servants of the court, they offered their music and stories to the aristocratic classes. A live, on-demand cover band playing all the standards for the well-to-do, if you will. I'd speculate that the good ones were also wildly talented improvisers: reframing popular refrains with creative hamonic and rhythmic language as a contemporary jazz ensemble would.

Second, they were historical resources. The songs they sang were often epic poems dedicated to the creative illumination of heroic deeds of significance or anecdotes of moral value – sometimes passed to them by others of their ilk, sometimes originally composed. Fictional, non-fictional, but mostly a mix of both – sensational stories told with beautiful sounds have enchanted humans for eons.

Although the minstrel guilds didn't really survive into the 18th century, the essence of the role never stopped evolving. From the troubadour to the singer/songwriter, the objective is still the same: to entertain, inform, and (if you're lucky) move listeners.

Phone in Terry Jones' hilariously entertaining TV documentary series Medieval Lives. The fourth episode of the BBC production is dedicated to the life of the minstrel and all that went with the slightly-less-than-glamorous job. I mean, what WAS glamorous in the middle ages, anyway?

 

 

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