Short introduction
After studying the structure of
Sîôn trûre I could figure out that the form the following way:
AABBCCA'
The last unit could be marked with
D, since there is a difference in the rhyming scheme, but only slight. For comaprison let's take a look at the first, second and the last unit:
Sîon, trûre
dîn burchmûre
hât von schûre
und von winde manigen stôz.
Darnach
weine
dem ortsteine
der alleine
dîne wende tzusamne slôz:
[...]
Noch wachent alle,
vur dem walle,
wachent wol,
da man wachen sol!
We can see that there is a slight difference in the rhyme scheme: withing the first and second units' first 3 lines in each are rhyming with each other creating a triplet, and the last lines of the the units (stôz-slôz). But as we can see the rhmye scheme changes in the last unit and every two line rhymes with each other: the first with the second, and the third with the fourth. The question may come up why could it be still called as A' instead of D? Well, the answer lies in comparing the number of the syllables:
Sîon, trûre 4
dîn burchmûre 4
hât von schûre 4
und von winde manigen stôz. 8
Darnach
weine 4
dem ortsteine 4
der alleine 4
dîne wende tzusamne slôz: 8
[...]
Noch wachent alle, 5
vur dem walle, 4
wachent wol, 3
da man wachen sol! 5
Although the number of the syllables of the very last line contains 3 syllables less, this kind of irregularity is not that unusual and also if we still suggest that Alexander bent the rules according to his taste the melody of the first two units can be easily applied (with the right adjustments) on the last structural unit.
On the other hand the difference is not that remarkable - in my opinion and for the sake of a decent melodic reconstruction.
Medieval sequentiae
In order to understand this poetic form I took a closer look on similar Medieval genres that would hold similar characteristics. There was a genre that begun to develop in the middle of the 9th-century in France and florished until the late Renaissance throughour whole Europe; it gave freedom to religious authors and composers for self-expression within the liturgy. Slightly after the development of tropes a new prose genre came into view: the Sequence. In its earlier form it was not that poetic as later, starting from the 11th-century. The early sequence was an appandage of the Alleluias (or other richly melismatic chants), and according to a monk in St Gall from the 9th-century, Notker Balbulus, the genre was born when as he found difficult to remember the long melismatic jubilus melodies. The one day a monk from another monastery came with an antiphonary in which some text were fitted to some of these extremely long melodies. Following this example Notker began to compose his own sequence texts so he could help on his "unstable little memory". (For extent version and more, see Hoppin, Medieval Music; Chapter VI: Expansion of the liturgy: Tropes and Sequences, p154-161)
Later on, starting from the 11th-century and also at the same time of the rise of poliphony in Paris, as we now know School of Notre Dame, sequences became rather poetic: their lines tended to rhyme more and more and also new sequences got metric characteristics. However prose and poetry was rather distinguished from each other step by step poetic genres (Hymns, for example) gained general acceptence and the reason for this was that the immediate and graduale usage of rhyming, poetic texts was distasteful for the conservative Church (we should not forget that beforehand poetry was the main characteristic of secular compositions, and prose was rather used for religious purpose).
But what is interesting in this genre that by the development of sequence from the mid-9th-century the basics of poetry had been settled down and it led naturally to the development of secular poetry. There are several collections of sequences remained for us from France, Germany and Italy, which suggests the usage of this florishing repertory. Music of the Church and outside the Church has been influenced each other in an interactive way and the poetic forms were used in both worlds.
Therefore by looking for similarities between the form of Sion trure and sequences forms helped me to see the relation between music and text. Normal sequences tend to use paired versicles (for example aa bb cc, etc.), which could apply for the structure of Sion trure as well. The melody works always in parallel with the textual features as well, and - ingeneral - you can repeat a as many times as you want and even standing alone in the end of the whole pattern (for example aa bb cc dd a), without a change or changing it according to the irregularities of the text.
In the music material (after studying a few sequences, such as Victimae paschali laudes, and Dies irae), the melody of a stays within the mode, while b very often exceeding the limits of the mode upwards, but then in c the melody either comes back or leads back to the original modus, and even in some cases its textual and musical material is shorter than the ones before.
In the remained melody lines of Sion trure we can see similar progressions in A and B: A identifies the modality which is could be Mode 5, and then B exceeds the limits of Mode 5 extremely therefore let's assume that Sion trure has a tritus tonality, by mixing Mode 5 and 6. The fact that Sion trure shows similarities with sequences gives a little bit of help to reconstruct the missing melody for unit C.
