Adam de la Halle "the Hunchback" is justly the most famous composer of the late 13th century, and his greatest gift to posterity, Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion, is the first-ever opera - a pastoral romp brimming with delightful songs that easily stand the test of over seven centuries. In this authentic yet innovative performance, the narrator (stage-right) tells the story in the original French dialect with his many voices - from coarse to courtly - while the singers move between a contemporary English interpretation (stage-left) and the timeless mediaeval lyrics and melodies of the super-troubadour himself.
TONUS PEREGRINUS Mary Remnant - bells, drum, fiddle, gittern/citole, harp, pipe & tabor, rebec, shawm, symphony, copy of Whitecastle pipe John Crook - Adam li Bochus / Pilgrim / Narrator, voices Alexander Hickey - Aubert li Chevaliers / Sir Albert, tenor Richard Eteson - Baudons / Baldwin, tenor, coconuts Francis Brett - Gautiers li Testus / Walter the Mule, bass Joanna Forbes - Huars / Howard, soprano Kathryn Oswald - Marion, alto Rebecca Hickey - Péronnelle, soprano Alexander L'Estrange - Robin, countertenor, tambourine Antony Pitts - Rogaus / Roger, bagpipe drone, copy of Billingsgate trumpet, cowhorns, portative organ, tambourine, director
AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE October 2006 "In a review of two anthologies that included excerpts from Adam de la Halle's play about Robin and Marion (Mar/Apr 2005) I expressed my wish for a DVD of the complete work. While this recording is not what I still wish for, Antony Pitts has released a new version of the complete work that presents some problems but is also quite fascinating. While the earlier truncated recordings were made only in the original Old French [starting with Binkley's very truncated version from 1966, rereleased on Teldec 21709; see also May/June 1992 & Mar/Apr 1994), this recording is an exercise in right and left brain discrimination. Centered in the mix are the original songs in their original language. In the left channel John Crook presents the full text of Adam's playas a dramatic narration in Old French, and alternating with the original in the right channel is a modern English adaptation by Rosemary and Antony Pitts. While this may at first sound a bit like a Berlitz language tape for Old French, I found that I became involved directly in the story through the English version but was also trying to hear and learn the subtleties of Adam's original words-and the distinction between the two on this recording is more than linguistic. The Old French narrator is miked closely, almost as if it were an audio book recording, while the English dramatic version is more distant, as if the players were on a stage acting out this sometimes rather funny mini-drama. While the notes say it is possible to adjust the balance in favor of one language or the other (the songs are common to both), 1 found on various machines that I could never entirely fade out the other side-there were always a few linguistic "ghosts" around. As inventive as this solution is for the presentation of a 13th Century French drama for a contemporary English audience. I still think current technology is not quite up to a multilayered presentation of recorded material. My ideal would have been either two separate recordings (along the lines of the German and English versions by Ute Lemper of Cabaret Songs, Sept/Oct 1997:279 & May/June 1997: 281) or, perhaps by eliminating the extra rondeux, motets, and the excerpt from Adam's Li Jus du Pelerin, the two versions could have fit separately on a single disc. The first solution was most likely unfeasible owing to basic economics, and the second would have been perhaps a bit too academic. Pitts has supplied a creative alternative that is reasonable and sometimes extremely funny. My only complaint is that texts and translations are only included for the play's songs and not for the rondeux and motets used as interludes." (Brewer) BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE June 2006 on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Adam de la Halle’s Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion (Naxos 8.557337): *****performance *****sound "This is a story of a shepherdess and her lover whose bliss is briefly interrupted by a randy, passing knight. Composed circa 1286 for the (then) French court in Naples, it has 30 little tunes, but is otherwise mostly dialogue, resembling a musical more than an opera. There have been other recordings of this piece in France (...) but they do little with the music and concentrate on dramatic effect. Here, the approach is more complex. Out of your left speaker comes the original French text spoken by John Crook and, out of your right, the songs are in French and the play is acted out in English. Owing to excellent recording techniques, this is not as confusing as it suggests. Characters are portrayed simply but with dramatic flair. Kathryn Oswald gives us an almost Julie Andrews-like Marion and Alexander L'Estrange is perfect as silly Robin. Bare melodies are prettily decked out with percussion and strings and we get some extra motets and songs for good measure. It would be hard to present this medieval entertainment in a more winning manner."
THE GRAMOPHONE June 2006 A stirring Robin Hood tale and the first medieval 'opera' on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Adam de la Halle’s Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion (Naxos 8.557337): "This is a CD that demands the undivided attention of the listener... ...This is unquestionably an intriguing and highly original presentation of Adam's masterpiece. One has to accustom oneself to the fine medieval French narration coming in at one's left ear, and the modern English conversational version, giving the gist of it, entering at one's right ear... ...As the story unfolds, it is studded with gems of songs with stirring rhythms, some unaccompanied, others delicately accompanied by a selection of close on 20 early instruments... ...This is an enchanting entertainment, well worth the effort of trying to gather together all the various strands, and then to picture the complete drama in its original medieval context."
ALL MUSIC GUIDE www.allmusic.com April 2006 on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Adam de la Halle’s Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion (Naxos 8.557337): "This CD represents a bold attempt to make Adam de la Halle's Le jeu de Robin et Marion (The Play of Robin and Marion, ca. 1280), perhaps the first secular music drama in the Western tradition, intelligible to a general modern audience. The English ensemble TONUS PEREGRINUS (the name means wandering tone and is taken from a detail of chant theory) combines a scholarly background with a desire to put the fruits of the group's scholarly labors across to nonspecialists. The most unusual detail of this recording is that the play's dialogue is not only included (the manuscripts that preserve the play contain dialogue interspersed with unaccompanied songs) but also translated into English as it goes along... The result is surely the first Jeu de Robin et Marion that can be listened to by glancing at the booklet rather than keeping one's eyes glued to it... The small instrumental group works well, and the musicians convincingly inflect de la Halle's sparse songs in the direction of romance as required... The performance gives the play the charming directness and earthiness one sometimes finds in medieval art."
DAVID'S REVIEW CORNER April 2006 on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Adam de la Halle’s Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion (Naxos 8.557337): "...Biographies of Adam de la Halle are littered with the word 'probably' as we know precious little about the life of the French-born composer and poet. The few facts that we have for certain are his period of birth taking place in the mid-13th century and the certainty of his having travelled outside of France. This lack of knowledge is at odds with an unusual amount of his music that has survived, the quality proving that he studied with learned teachers. Through his life he took music technically forward, and moved it away from its sacred roots, his songs pointing to a composer well versed in the music played in French and Italian courts. It is here described as the first known opera, but in reality it is a collection of songs, some probably 'borrowed' by Adam from the popular ditties of the day. These he neatly linked together by spoken text to create a little light-hearted play. The end result - as presented here - is highly attractive, its elements of naughtiness handled with good taste. Two solo singers, who are both outstanding, are employed together with a small chorus, the singing and diction being excellent throughout. The work is performed in an English translation with a narration in French. To separate the two elements, the narrator is placed in a dry acoustic with a lively sound given to the action this is taking place around it..."
The 13th-century trouvère Adam de la Halle was also known as Adam d'Arras and Adam le Bossu, thus giving us both the place of his birth in Northern France and the striking nickname/surname "the Hunchback", although Adam himself claimed that it was a name not a description. Adam was both composer and poet - a blending of métiers most famously seen in his compatriot of the following century, Guillaume de Machaut. As well as numerous chansons, jeux-partis, motets (tracks 23, 40) and rondeaux (tracks 12, 13, 31), Adam wrote a small number of plays of which Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion is perhaps the earliest surviving combination of music and secular drama: the first opera no less, coming a century or so after Hildegard of Bingen's sacred music-drama Ordo virtutum. Adam de la Halle moved in courtly circles, including the company of Robert II, Count of Artois (his traditional peasant hero Robin, diminutive both in name and in courage, may have been taken as a droll reference to his patron); and like the Pilgrim of our Prologue Adam travelled long and far from his native Arras. Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion was written in the later part of the 13th century and the various titles in the manuscript sources (Li Gieus de Robin et de Marion, Li Jeus du Berger et de la Bergiere, Mariage de Robin et de Marote) tell us something more of the subject matter - shepherds and love - and that the work survived in different dialects of mediaeval French. Robin & Marion itself is a slightly forced marriage of two different but related pastoral traditions, the first of which presents a potentially amorous encounter between a knight and a shepherdess, while the second recounts in detail the antics and horseplay of peasants and shepherds. So the first half of Robin & Marion (tracks 3-32) is full of dramatic action and many solo songs for the main protagonists, while the second half (tracks 33-44) is a riotous romp through various party games and food-related jokes. Whether a lord and lady being read to by the trouvère himself, or a noble company having fun dressing up and pretending to be peasants, Adam's audience would have been familiar with both types of play and would have appreciated the local and personal references with which he embellished their stock comic situations, including, perhaps, the political tension surrounding the French Angevin court at Naples where it is thought Robin et Marion was first performed in the late 1280s. They would probably also have been familiar with the tune of Robins m'aime - Marion's first song (track 3), and set by someone, if not by Adam himself, in a polyphonic version (tracks 1, 25, 45). The customary love-story (outlined in the detailed track-listing on the back page of this booklet) tells itself, but in Adam's version it is the shepherdess Marion who comes across as the strongest character, able both to fend off the Knight's unwelcome advances and to twist her fiancé Robin round her ring finger. Much has changed in the last three-quarters of a millennium, but perhaps the most readily-felt areas of development - even for the aristocratic audience cultured by Adam de la Halle - are in home improvement and home entertainment: we now take central heating and television for granted, whether or not we submit to their comforts. Performing Robin & Marion for a multi-cultural audience listening to a CD in the privacy of a car or living-room presents a number of challenges that were not present for the late 13th-century trouvère or troubadour. The original play as it survives is mostly (spoken) text with an uneven spread of simple, unaccompanied melodies. The text itself is recognizable as a cousin of modern French, but hard even for a native French speaker to follow in its entirety. The music is memorable but limited in range and without any written-down counterpoint or harmony. Our approach to the music has been to glean instrumental references from the story, and to accompany the melodies with as "live" and improvised a feel as possible. Our approach to the text has been from two angles: that of the single, professional narrator (initially probably Adam himself) employed to while away long dark evenings huddled close to the fire; and that of a group of educated friends and members of the patron's household enjoying themselves immensely in the sending up of country folk - perhaps with the lord himself as the Knight or as Robin. For a modern audience used to assimilating information simultaneously from many different sources, this multi-layered approach seems both legitimate and appropriate, but it is also possible to adjust dramatically the left-right balance of the stereo mix in order to listen to this recording in different ways: the "authentic" voice of the Narrator tells the story in the original French dialect to the left of the mix (stage-right), while the singers rattle off a modern-day English interpretation to the right of the mix (stage-left); in the middle and across the stereo mix are the songs, each song tracked separately for convenience. The Narrator is heard close to, while the individual characters in their 21st-century English outfits inhabit a modern aristocratic hall with its wooden panelling and distant hounds. As regards the pronunciation our Narrator, John Crook explains: "We will never know exactly what Adam le Bossu's French sounded like, particularly as the oldest manuscripts of the play are at least two stages from his original. The earliest are probably late 13th-century, from Picardy, and are thus close to Adam both in time and place; they contain several characteristics of northern French pronunciation (such as 'pour coi cheste canchon cantes' - modern 'pourquoi cette chanson [tu] chantes'). By the date of Robin & Marion spelling was beginning to become formalised and it is no longer safe to assume that all consonants were pronounced; furthermore, the pronunciation of diphthongs remains a matter of scholarly debate. In speaking the text I have attempted above all to be consistent; I hope at least that my rendering would have been comprehensible to an audience of Adam's day." The Play of the Pilgrim (Li Jus du Pelerin) on which we have based our introductory tableau (track 2) refers specifically to Adam, and may be one of his literary self-references (a habit taken to the extreme by Machaut in his own "True Story", Le Voir Dit). Even if not written by Adam himself it seems to be intended as a prologue to his Robin & Marion, with one particularly testy character in common: Gautiers li Testus (Walter the Mule). Like the polyphonic motets and rondeaux which we have liberally interspersed throughout the drama, plainchant was part of the musical context within which Adam's audience would have interpreted the catchy tunes and earthy lyrics of Robin & Marion as a chance to let their hair down. In fact the plainchant and Adam's motets also provide a more serious reference back to an older musical tradition; in particular, the tonus peregrinus chant (in track 2) formed the basis for some of the very earliest notated polyphony in the 9th-century Scolica [Scholia] enchiriadis, while the motet De ma dame / Dieus / OMNES (track 23) is itself based on a fragment of the Viderunt omnes chant apotheosized by Léonin and Pérotin towards the end of the 12th century: these can both be heard on our recording of Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral (Naxos 8.557340).
