Abstract
This essay explores the medieval ensemble Rondellus’s tribute album to Black Sabbath, Sabbatum (Beg the Bug 211200-002, 2002), and the extent to which instrumental timbre, vocality, rhythm, and musical setting help communicate ‘authentic’ medieval music. Of paramount interest is the way in which these performance practice elements are directed by the emotional expression consistent with the genres. Most of the Black Sabbath songs chosen perform emotions that range from anger and aggression to bitterness and pain. They do so through musico-emotional codes that communicate the body’s physicality: snarled or shouted vocals, distorted bass and guitar, pounding drums, and melodies characterized more by rhythm than pitch. Rondellus’s adaptation of Black Sabbath’s musical codes and emotional register is positioned against Ute Frevert’s theorization of emotional display as governed by social etiquette. The body in Rondellus’s ‘medieval’ music thus appears emotionally controlled, suggesting interiority and restraint.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The question of ‘authenticity’ in medieval music performances has been problematically conceived, given the historical span, the wide range of notational practices, the lack of detailed information regarding instruments, and the necessity of invention: see Leech-Wilkinson (2002), Taruskin (1995), and Treitler (1991), among others.
David Munrow (Early Music Consort), famous for his BBC productions Pied Piper and Ancestral Voices, was also instrumental in bringing early music to the public. Munrow provided musical selections for Ken Russell’s 1971 horror film, The Devils, which dramatized the supposed witchcraft of the Catholic priest, Urbain Grandier.
The growth of black and Viking metal, and these genres’ interest in medieval imagery (and anti-Christian imagery), have made Black Sabbath’s associations with medievalism more readily apparent; see Trafford (2019).
Consider, for instance, Errores Gazariorum (1430); Malleus Maleficarum (1486); Nicholas Rémy’s Demonolatry (1595); Francesco Maria Guazzo’s Compendium Maleficarum (1608); and Pierre de Lancre’s On the Inconstancy of Witches (1612) for well-known sources.
Tritones have a lengthy history as code for darkness or evil in classical music (Berlioz, Liszt). Crime and horror films from the 1950s and 60s – Perry Mason (1955), Mission Impossible (1966), Dr. No (1962), The Witches (1966) – continued this method of connoting fear and danger (Cope, 2010, 52).
For further discussion of this concept, see Cumming (2001).
The name was taken from a 1963 horror film, which, together with The Haunting and Rosemary’s Baby, inspired the band to pursue the experience of fear and horror in their music.
Compare with the ‘Vite perdite’ (CB 31); ‘Homo quo vigeas’ (CB 22); and ‘Dum iuventus floruit’ (CB30), released on the Studio’s recordings.
The use of imagery of the body also unites Black Sabbath’s songs with some of the songs on the Studio’s Carmina Burana albums. Compare ‘Junior’s Eyes,’ with the medieval ‘Planctus ante nescia’: ʻheart, sense and eyes torment your wounds.’
In this regard, the influence from the chanted sections of Orff’s Carmina Burana (‘O Fortuna,’ ‘Fortune plango vulnera,’ and even ‘In taberna quando sumus’) can be heard throughout.
Compare songs on Black Sabbath and Paranoid with those on Master of Reality and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath: the earlier songs are frequently in standard E tuning, but the latter albums experiment with drop D and C sharp tuning. (‘After Forever’ and ‘Solitude’ use D whereas ‘A National Acrobat’ and ‘Spiral Architect’ use C sharp).
References
Carlos, C. 2019. Ramble On: Medievalism as a Nostalgic Practice in Led Zeppelin’s Use of J.R.R. Tolkien. In Oxford Handbook on Music and Medievalism, eds. S.C. Meyer and K. Yri. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Cope, A.L. 2010. Black Sabbath and the Rise of Heavy Metal Music. Farnham, UK: Ashgate.
Cumming, N. 2001. The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Deaville, J. 2019. Evil Medieval. In Oxford Handbook on Music and Medievalism, eds. S.C. Meyer and K. Yri. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Fast, S. 2000. Days of Future Past: Rock, Pop, and the Yearning for the Middle Ages. In Mittelaltersehnsuch, eds. D. Redepenning and A. Kreutiger-Herr, 35–56. Kiel, Germany: Wissenschaftsverlag Vauk.
Frevert, U. 2014. Emotional Knowledge in Emotional Lexicons, Continuity and Change in the Vocabulary of Feeling 1700–2000. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Froese, B. 2013. Is It the End my Friend? Black Sabbath’s Apocalypse of Horror. In Black Sabbath and Philosophy, Mastering Reality, ed. W. Irwin, 20–30. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Halliwell, S. 1986. Aristotle’s Poetics. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Hardwick, P. 2007. If I Lay My Hands on the Grail: Arthurianism and Progressive Rock. Mass Market Medieval, Essays on the Middle Ages in Popular Culture, ed. D. Marshall, 28–41. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Kivy, P. 1980. The Corded Shell, Reflections on Musical Expression. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Knapp, T. 2002. Rambles. A Cultural Arts Magazine, 16 June, 7.
Kreutziger-Herr, A. 2015. Medievalism. In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.
Leech-Wilkinson, D. 2002. The Modern Invention of Medieval Music. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Littmann, G. 2012. The Art of Black Sabbath, Aristotle Joins the Band. In Black Sabbath and Philosophy, Mastering Reality, ed. W. Irwin, 63–75. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Macan, E. 1997. Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Marshall, M.L. 2015. Voce Bianca, Purity and Whiteness in British Early Music Vocality. Women and Music 19: 36–44.
Meyer, L.B. 1956. Emotion and Meaning in Music. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Meyer, S.C and K. Yri. 2019. Introduction. In Oxford Handbook on Music and Medievalism, eds. S.C. Meyer and K. Yri. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Rondellus. 1995a. Secular Music in France, XIVth–XVth Century, Machaut, Dufay, Binchois and Anonymous. RS Records, RS 9503.
Rondellus. 1995b. Sanctum Rosarium, Sacred Music from Middle Ages. RS 9502.
Rondellus. 1998. Carmina Sanctorum – Music from The Middle Ages in Praise of Saints. RS 9804.
Rondellus. 2002. Sabbatum. Beg the Bug 211200-002.
Scheer, M. 2012. Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (and Is That What Makes Them Have a History?): A Bourdieuian Approach to Understanding Emotion. History and Theory 51: 193–220.
Taruskin, R. 1995. Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Trafford, S. 2019. Viking Metal. In Oxford Handbook on Music and Medievalism, eds. S.C. Meyer and K. Yri. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Treitler, L. 1991. The Politics of Reception: Tailoring the Present as Fulfillment of a Desired Past. Journal of Royal Musical Association 116: 280–98.
Walser, R. 1993. Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Weinstein, D. 1991. Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology. New York: Lexington Books.
Welch, C. 1982. Black Sabbath. London: Proteus Books.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yri, K. Black Sabbath Purgatus: Medievalizing heavy metal. Postmedieval 10, 466–481 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-019-00146-8
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-019-00146-8