ABSTRACT
At the upper end of the social scale, part-songs satisfied a pan-European public for vernacular polyphony. Here one should remember that written polyphony marked out a set of practices and a musical culture that stood apart from urban minstrelsy. Minstrels were primarily instrumentalists who controlled their repertory and employment through a guild system based on orality and secrecy. Masters taught monophonic chansons and dance tunes to their apprentices by rote, circumventing musical literacy and thereby preserving trade secrets. In contrast, polyphonic chansons were produced by composers or, as contemporaries would have called them, "musicians" -musicians trained at cathedral schools, where they learned to read and write polyphonic songs, masses, and motets. The separation between their world of written music and the music of minstrels was noted by Noel du Fail, who in 1549 set the two terms against one another when
hedescribedaseriesofsongsas"chansonsplusmenestrieresquemusiciennes" ("songsmoreminstrel-likethanmusicianly").2 1heminstrel/musiciandistinction heldforinstrumentsaswell:"thehurdy-gurdy[vielle]isfortheblind,therebec andviolfortheminstrels,theluteandguitarforthemusicians:'theauthorofLa maniered'entoucherlesluesetguiternesobserved,remindingusofthegapbetween minstrelsyandcomposedpolyphonythatchordalinstrumentsliketheluteand keyboardmightbridge.3Chansonssatsquarelyonthehorizonsharedbyminstrels andmusicians,and,aswewillsee,oneofthebroaderhistoriestobetoldaboutthe chansonbetween1520and1640ishowminstrelsyandcomposedpolyphonycame tooccupymuchofthesameterrain.
