Ménétriers is a heterogeneous work, divided into two non-chronological parts: The Ignorant Minstrels and The Learned Minstrels. This concept stems from the two principal modes of transmitting the art of sound: oral tradition and musical notation. Today it is essential to engage with the issues surrounding the interpretation of early music, also in light of musical anthropology, which allows for more nuanced and informed assessments.
Devising his system for printing musical notation in 1501, Ottaviano Petrucci opened access to written music to categories of musicians who had previously been excluded from it: dance minstrels, viole da braccio bands, municipal piffari, trumpeters. Until then, literacy in notation had been almost exclusively the domain of church and court singers. At least until the eighteenth century, minstrels learned new compositions through notation, while relying on oral transmission for the practical knowledge of their craft—the very skills that enabled them to improve their social standing by adapting, case by case, to the dance-loving merchant, the noble in his private chambers, or the broader public of dancers. The minstrel tradition thus continued uninterrupted, performing the most fashionable music—whether cultivated, urban, or popular—shaping repertories according to circumstances and the economic demands of the profession.
Music historiography up to the end of the sixteenth century is necessarily founded on repertories transmitted in notation, which embody a refined and elite culture characteristic of church and court singer-composers. While it is true that orally transmitted instrumental repertories have been irretrievably lost, it remains legitimate to attempt a reconstruction of early soundscapes on the basis of notated sources, moving toward a performance practice grounded in the processes of oral transmission—that is, according to a logic of mnemonic re-elaboration that may be defined, in the noblest sense of the term, as parody.
Listening to an instrumentalist trained in the oral tradition reveals a style intimately connected to the sonic structure of the instrument itself: a true “pronunciation” that may be described as a solo instrumental idiom. Learned European music, by contrast, gradually standardized its conventions through notation, codifying over the centuries a series of prescriptions—forte, piano, accento, legato, pizzicato, trillo, and so forth. Written composition increasingly distanced itself from idiomatic practice, partly due to its growing subordination to the composer’s instructions. Oral tradition—and with it a substantial portion of the music of the past—remained far more deeply connected to instrumental idioms than is commonly acknowledged today.
In France, the term ménétrier still designates a fiddler who plays for dancing. Until the late seventeenth century, the flute was known as “le violon des pauvres” since it represented an affordable alternative to the more prestigious violin.
The modern addition of newly composed polyphonic parts or the instrumental performance of originally vocal works can amount to anachronistic versions, potentially compromising the integrity of compositions from the past. Only occasionally have we adopted such solutions, always clearly indicating them, insofar as they resemble certain practices of oral tradition. In every case, however, the collection Ménétriers includes, in each recording track, a version without additions or cuts.
Marco Ferrari © 2026