Roman de la Rose, Bruges c. 1490–1500. British Library, Harley MS 4425, f. 24
The Art of Courtly Love
Workshop
From Pop to Art: Courtly Love Song
Grace Memorial Episcopal Church, 1535 NE 17th Ave, Portland
Long before "art song" was a category, love songs were simply the pop music of the court — tunes for dancing, flirting, and passing the time, built on simple, catchy melodies anyone could pick up by ear. Over the course of the 15th and 16th centuries, French and English composers took these vernacular love songs and, piece by piece, dressed them in the full apparatus of learned polyphony: imitative counterpoint, text painting, increasingly intricate part-writing. The result is a repertoire that lets us watch, almost in real time, popular music becoming art music.
$40