Although wandering minstrels or bards have existed since the
world began, and although the poetry they have left is often
suggestive, the music to which the words were sung is but
little known.
About 700-800 A.D., when all Europe was in a state of dense
ignorance and mental degradation, the Arabs were the embodiment
of culture and science, and the Arab empire extended at that
time over India, Persia, Arabia, Egypt (including Algeria and
Barbary), Portugal, and the Spanish caliphates, Andalusia,
Granada, etc. The descriptions of the splendour at the courts
of the Eastern caliphs at Bagdad seem almost incredible.
For instance, the Caliph Mahdi is said to have expended
six millions of dinars of gold in a single pilgrimage to
Mecca. His grandson, Almamon, gave in alms, on one single
occasion, two and a half millions of gold pieces, and the
rooms in his palace at Bagdad were hung with thirty-eight
thousand pieces of tapestry, over twelve thousand of which
were of silk embroidered with gold. The floor carpets were
more than twenty thousand in number, and the Greek ambassador
was shown a hundred lions, each with his keeper, as a sign
of the king's royalty, as well as a wonderful tree of gold
and silver, spreading into eighteen large, leafy branches,
on which were many birds made of the same precious metals. By
some mechanical means, the birds sang and the leaves trembled.
Naturally such a court, particularly under the reign of
Haroun-al Raschid (the Just), who succeeded Almamon, would
attract the most celebrated of those Arabian minstrels, such as
Zobeir, Ibrahim of Mossoul, and many others who figure in the
"Arabian Nights," real persons and celebrated singers of their
times. We read of one of them, Serjab, who, by court jealousy
and intrigues, was forced to leave Bagdad, and found his way
to the Western caliphates, finally reaching Cordova in Spain,
where the Caliph Abdalrahman's court vied with that of Bagdad
in luxury. Concerning this we read in Gibbon that in his palace
of Zehra the audience hall was incrusted with gold and pearls,
and that the caliph was attended by twelve thousand horsemen
whose belts and scimiters were studded with gold.
We know that the Arabian influence on the European arts came
to us by the way of Spain, and although we can see traces of
it very plainly in the Spanish music of to-day, the interim of
a thousand years has softened its characteristics very much. On
the other hand, the much more pronounced Arabian characteristics
of Hungarian music are better understood when we recall that the
Saracens were at the gates of Budapesth as late as 1400. That
the European troubadours should have adopted the Moorish _el
oud_ and called it "lute" is therefore but natural. And in
all the earlier songs of the troubadours we shall find many
traces of the same influence; for their _albas_ or _aubades_
(morning songs) came from the Arabic, as did their _serenas_ or
serenades (evening songs), _planhs_ (complaints), and _coblas_
(couplets). The troubadours themselves were so called from
_trobar_, meaning to invent.
In the works of Fauriel and St. Polaye, and many others, may
be found accounts of the origin of the Provencal literature,
including, of course, a description of the troubadours.
It is generally admitted that Provencal poetry has no
connection with Latin, the origin of this new poetry being very
plausibly ascribed to a gypsy-like class of people mentioned
by the Latin chroniclers of the Middle Ages as _joculares_
or _joculatores_. They were called _joglars_ in Provencal,
_jouglers_ or _jougleors_ in French, and our word "juggler"
comes from the same source. What that source originally was
may be inferred from the fact that they brought many of the
Arab forms of dance and poetry into Christian Europe. For
instance, two forms of Provencal poetry are the counterpart
of the Arabian _cosidas_ or long poem, all on one rhyme; and
the _maouchahs_ or short poem, also rhymed. The _saraband_,
or Saracen dance, and later the morris dance (_Moresco_
or _Fandango_) or Moorish dance, seem to point to the same
origin. In order to make it clearer I will quote an Arabian
song from a manuscript in the British Museum, and place beside
it one by the troubadour Capdeuil.