Remember the Accidentals and the Naturals? Of course, you do. Who could ever forget those musical travellers who were, once upon a time, smash hits at the Lydian Mode and the Dorian Mode musical theatres? I’ll let you in on a little secret, though. Whenever you hear someone say “Once upon a time…”, you should know that what they are about to tell you is a story . It didn’t really happen. They’re making it up. But that doesn’t mean you should shut your ears just because you know someone’s lying or spinning a yarn. No, you should listen even closer so that you pick up on the hidden truth and the masked metaphor. Which music is full of!
For instance, take the Naturals family I told you about earlier. What do their names sound like? That’s right. Each of them represents the musical note their name sounds like. The mom Gina was a metaphor for the note G Natural, dad Seethapathy was C, and young Abe was supposed to be A minor. The Accidentals were black people and the black keys on the piano are called… surprise, surprise… accidental notes! I’m pretty sure you picked up on all that.
Music is full of hidden clues just like this. You should always perk up your ears whenever you hear music. And it helps to give pieces of music several listens, because you’ll find that you end up learning something new every single time!
TroubadoursAnyway, that’s enough of the big reveal. What we should really be talking about here is what the Accidentals and Naturals were supposed to be. They were troubadours, or travelling musicians. These troubadours were for real. They lived between the 12 and 14 Centuries in and around Europe and played a huge role in spreading music far and wide. They wrote and sang songs in Latin or a Mediterranean language called Provençal.
Their songs were about brave men, damsels in distress, love failures, parodies and a lot of romantic poetry. They had readymade types of songs for every mood and situation. The Salut d’Amour was a song about lovers writing to each other. The Devinalh was a riddle that the listener had to work out. Using a Gap , a troubadour could boast and brag about his non-existent skills. A planh was sung when there was something really sad to lament or mourn. The Sirventes was a comical rant supposedly sung by a drunken soldier!
Know why the troubadours were pioneers in music? Because they took the church music, which was — let’s face it — getting pretty darn boring by then (always about fearing God and how we should all be good little children) and turned it into a fun storytelling medium! And music is always more fun when it’s a soundtrack to a story we can enjoy and identify with, right? And who cares if the story is made up? That’s what a troubadour, whose name means “someone who makes stuff up”, is literally supposed to do!
