This lecture looks at the reception of monophonic medieval vernacular song, from the earliest manuscript copies to modern performances.
Tag: 13thC
A brief overview of how medieval vernacular songs might inform and be informed by the social contexts that produced and consumed them.
A brief introduction to the trouvères.
Podlecture 3: The Trouvères
Radio3 programme giving an introduction to the trouvères.
General reading
Read the Grove Music Online entries on:
- ‘Troubadours, trouvères’ and then section II: Trouvère poetry.
- ‘Sources’ then go to Section III.4: French
For further reading and an overview of the secondary literature, see:
- Doss-Quinby, Eglal. The Lyrics of the Trouvères: A Research Guide (1970-1990). Garland Medieval Bibliographies. New York and London: Garland, 1994.
Edition
- Tischler, Hans. Trouvère Lyrics with Melodies: Complete Comparative Edition. Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae. 15 vols Neuhausen: American Institute of Musicology and Hänssler-Verlag, 1997.
On the music of the Trouvères
- Epstein, Marcia Jeneth, ed. “Prions en chantant”: Devotional Songs of the Trouvères. Vol. 11, Toronto Medieval Texts and Translations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.
- Leach, Elizabeth Eva. “Do Trouvère Melodies Mean Anything?”. Music Analysis 38, no. 1-2 (2019): 3-46.
- Leach, Elizabeth Eva. “Imagining the Un-Encoded: Staging Affect in Blondel de Nesle’s Mes cuers me fait conmencier.” Early Music 48, no. 1 (2020): 29–40.
- Mason, Joseph W. “Structure and Process in the Old French jeu-parti.” Music Analysis 38, no. 1-2 (2019): 47-79.
- O’Neill, Mary. Courtly Love Songs of Medieval France: Transmission and Style in the Trouvère Repertoire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
- O’Sullivan, Daniel E. “Editing Melodic Variance in Trouvère Song.” Textual Cultures 3, no. 2 (2008): 54-70.
- Page, Christopher. “Listening to the Trouvères.” Early Music 25 (1997): 638-59.
- Quinlan, Meghan. “Can Melodies be Signs? Contrafacture and Representation in Two Trouvère Songs.” Early Music 48, no. 1 (2020): 13-27.
- Saltzstein, Jennifer. “Cleric-Trouvères and the Jeux-Partis of Medieval Arras.” Viator 43 (2012): 147-64.
On manuscripts:
- Haines, John. “Aristocratic Patronage and the Cosmopolitan Vernacular Songbook: The Chansonnier du Roi (M-trouv.) and the French Mediterranean.” Chap. 4 In Musical Culture in the World of Adam de la Halle, edited by Jennifer Saltzstein. Brill’s Companions to the Musical Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 95-120. Leiden: Brill, 2019.
- Huot, Sylvia. From Song to Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987, chapter 2.
For digital images, see:
Some important trouvères:
- Thibaut de Champagne, or use your Grove Online login
- Gace Brulé, or use your Grove Online login
- Blondel de Nesle, or use your Grove Online login
- Richard de Fournival, or use your Grove Online login
- Gautier d’Espinal, or use your Grove Online login
- Gautier de Coinci, or use your Grove Online login and see a list of his MSS here
- Moniot d’Arras, or use your Grove Online login
- Jehan Bretel, or use your Grove Online login
- Audefroi le Bastart, or use your Grove Online login
- Adam de la Halle, or use your Grove Online login
This podlecture continues a discussion of the troubadours, looking at song themes and genres.
Podlecture 2: The Troubadours 2
Good general reading
- Cheyette, Fredric L. Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.
- Paterson, Linda M. The World of the Troubadours: Medieval Occitan Society, c.1100-c.1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
- Schulman, Nicole M. Where Troubadours Were Bishops: The Occitania of Folc of Marseille (1150-1231). London: Routledge, 2001.
Definitions of courtly love
- Bloch, R. Howard. Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
- Kay, Sarah. Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
- Some history of the term ‘Courtly Love’ via Wikipedia, which has some useful links.
- Lewis, C. S. The Allegory of Love. 1936. NY: Oxford University Press, 1958.
On the role of music
- Aubrey, Elizabeth. ‘References to Music in Old Occitan Literature’, Acta Musicologica 61/2 (1989): 110–149.
- Levitsky, Ann. ‘Song Personified: The Tornadas of Raimon de Miraval’, Mediaevalia 39 (2018): 17–57.
- McAlpine, Fiona. ‘Authenticity and the “Auteur”: The Songs of Hugues de Berzé’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 4 (1995), 1-12.
- Peraino, Judith A. Giving Voice to Love: Song and Self-Expression from the Troubadours to Guillaume De Machaut. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
As before (in podlecture 1):
- handy access to poems and translations: http://www.trobar.org/troubadours/
- information about recordings: http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/composers/trobador/
- information about manuscript images online: https://eeleach.blog/2012/01/17/the-wonders-of-gallica-some-troubadour-and-trouvere-sources/
TEST YOURSELF
Check you know who or what the following are:
- Fin’ amors or courtly love
- Andreas Capellanus and his The Art of Courtly Love
- Chrétien de Troyes
- vassalage
- canso
- sirventes
- joc-partit / partimen
- pastorela
- coblas doblas
- Ovid on Love
This page hosts the audio for the first of my six ‘podlectures’ on Vernacular Song for List A Compulsory Topics (final year exams) at Oxford, delivered in this form because of ongoing restrictions caused by the current pandemic. It also gives links to some further reading and things mentioned in the audio.
NB: These podlectures form only part of the Vernacular Song topic as taught at Oxford, which is significantly supplemented by additional teaching in tutorials that demand extensive reading, essays, and presentations.
Podlecture 1: The Troubadours 1
Good general reading
- Akehurst, F. R. P. and Judith M. Davis, eds. A Handbook of the Troubadours. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
- Gaunt, Simon and Sarah Kay, eds. The Troubadours: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
- Rosenberg, Samuel N., Margaret Switten, and Gérard Le Vot, eds. Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères: An Anthology of Poems and Melodies. New York and London: Garland, 1998 [book contains a CD of some of the music].
- Stevens, Butterfield and Karp, ‘Troubadours, Trouvères’, Grove Music Online (2001), https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.28468.
Referring to individual troubadour songs
- Pillet, Alfred, and Henry Carstens. Bibliographie der Troubadours. Halle (Saale): Max Niemeyer, 1933.
On the music
- Aubrey, Elizabeth. The Music of the Troubadours. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996.
- Switten, Margaret, ed. The Cansos of Raimon de Miraval: a Study of Poems and Melodies. Cambridge, MA, 1985.
Handy access to poems and translations
http://www.trobar.org/troubadours/
Information about recordings
http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/composers/trobador/
Information about manuscript images online
https://eeleach.blog/2012/01/17/the-wonders-of-gallica-some-troubadour-and-trouvere-sources/
TEST YOURSELF
Check you know what, who, or where these are:
- vida
- razo
- coblas dobla
- Occitan
- Jaufre Rudel, or, if you have a subscription, try Grove online
- Bernart de Ventadorn, or, if you have a subscription, try Grove online
- senhal, and, if you have good Italian and are feeling generous, why not translate this page for English Wikipedia as the best thing in English is paywalled on Grove Music Online.
- PC numbers
- Eleanor of Aquitaine
- Beaumont Palace, Oxford
Long-gestating co-editing project finally published as part of 700-page book.
This clerihew didn’t make it into my review of this new volume of essays on Adam de la Halle:
My article treating a ‘boring’ song by Blondel de Nesle has just been published by Early Music.
My article on a two-stanza pastourelle in Douce 308 has just appeared in Plainsong and Medieval Music. Here with added sound files!
Last month (June 2019), I took part in a two-day performance workshop organised by Joseph W. Mason and attended by various other people I’ve worked with over the past decade or so. I introduced and advised on performances of a song by Blondel de Nesle (people who have heard me sing will be happy to hear that I delegated that task to others far better qualified!). Joe has written an excellent account of the entire event, obviating the need for me to do so here. I refer you enthusiastically to his blogpost, which has embedded audio-visual footage of the public concert that resulted. Enjoy!
Elizabeth Eva Leach 