minstrel: Filks

[Tadhg O Cuileannain]

--- Lisa and Ken Theriot <lnktheriot at cox.net> wrote:
> Christiana wrote:
> 
> [From what I understand, filking (or contrafacta, to
> use the more
> academic term) was generally common in period--the
> troubadours employed
> the practice as well.]
> 
> Defined only as "sung to the tune of".  No part of
> the lyric typically
> turned up, except in the cases where another writer
> was following on
> with the same characters or intended a criticism of
> the original work
> (the modern legal definition of parody).
> 

The early minnesingers very commonly took troubadour
and trouvere melodies and wrote German words to them
("Under der Linden" being a prominent example, but
some of the German words were not far from being
translations).  There are also instances of
troubadours borrowing tunes from each other, or from
other sources, e.g. Raimbault de Vacqueiras taking the
tune for Kalenda Maia from an estampie he heard played
by two fiddlers.


> 
> [After all, this was well before copyright law.]
> 
> Oh, so very wrong.  Copyright, originally literally
> "the right to make
> copies" exists from the early middle ages.

I think it's misleading to take the Columba case as an
exemplar of early copyright law.  For one thing, it's
a bit of an anomaly--I've never heard of any other
such cases in period.  Secondly, the book in question
was a scripture (a psalter, I think), not an original
work, so it really has no relation to modern notions
of intellectual property.

If there are any instances of people suing over the
use of their original work (especially music), I'd be
very interested to hear about it.  It is true that in
late period, after printing, one had to get a license
to publish anything, but originality doesn't seem to
have been a requirement for that.
  
> Circa 6th century AD, Columbcille (Saint Columba)
> was called before King
> Diarmait to answer a charge that he had copied a
> book written by his
> abbot, Finne/n (Saint Finnian), without the latter's
> permission.  The
> king ordered Columbcille to turn over the book
> (hand-copied, obviously)
> to the abbot, arguing that the copy was the
> "offspring" of the original
> and was thus the property of the owner of the
> original, just as a calf
> is the property of the owner of the cow.
> 

I make a distinction between contrefacta and filk--the
latter being modern (or sometimes "traditional") tunes
with SCA-oriented words about being a modern medieval
reenactor (usually humorous).  When I talk about
contrefacta, I mean period tunes with new words that
at least try to resemble or evoke medieval lyrics.

Personally, I just wish filk would go away, but I'm a
liberal so I tolerate it (from as great a distance as
I can tactfully manage).  We have filk because there's
a large overlap between SCA and SF/fantasy fandom (the
term filk comes from SF Cons), and a lot of people
don't care to keep their enthusiasms separate.

Real contrefacta are something we don't hear enough
of, IMHO--but that's probably because they're so much
harder to pull off.

Tadhg



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Tadhg O Cuilleannain of One Thousand Eyes
Tim Connor of Idaho Falls, Idaho
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