Tag Archives: song

Guillaume de Machaut, medieval composers, medieval French literature

New book on Machaut MS C

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My free copy reached me in the post yesterday, which alerted me to the fact that this new volume on Machaut’s earliest collected works manuscript has just been published. What I wasn’t prepared for is quite how beautiful the book is: not only is there a lovely colour cover with a tournament scene from the Remede de Fortune, but the other illustrations inside the book (and there are lots of them!) are in colour too. Not only that, but the paper is heavy, and the whole thing has the sort of appearance (as a book) that makes it a fitting commentary on MS C (Paris, fr.1586), a luxury manuscript from the mid-fourteenth century.

My essay in here is Chapter 1 and is a revised version of something with the same title I published in a volume I co-edited with Helen Deeming in 2015. The revisions, though, have made it a much stronger chapter than before, aided by the unrivalled knowledge and eagle eye of Earp’s editing.

While I know the price will be prohibitive for many, at only 85 EUR, this is a bargain for such a richly illustrated volume. And, as you’ll see from the table of contents, there are some great essays in here by prominent Machaut scholars in various disciplines. I haven’t yet read all of them (but will!), but I did read Anne Stone’s when the book was in press (and heard her give it as an amazingly compelling paper in Novacella in the summer of 2017) and I think it’s a really keen piece of deduction and reading that will make medievalists think more more about the relationship between making literary works and making books.

Douce 308 project, medieval French literature, publications

Article on Jeux-partis and demandes d’amours now out

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The jeu-parti is a lyric poem in which two individuals who usually name each other at the beginning of each stanza debate a ‘would you rather’-style question: would you rather see your lady naked from the waist up or from the waist down? would you rather have a husband who is great at jousting but is always away at tournaments or one who stays at home with you but is rubbish at a tourney? And so on. Some of the questions are racy, some silly, some fairly courtly, but the jeu-parti stages a medieval precursor of the rap battle for two poet-composers to thrash it out, complete with insults, ribbing, and boasting.

Less formally, the demande d’amour is, literally a Love Question, often similar to the sorts of dilemmas in the jeux-partis, but which is posed in prose and rather simpler in format. It clearly amused courtiers who wanted to play the game themselves rather than merely listen to two performers singing about it.

It has been assumed that the informal prose practice of Love Questions pre-dated the more formal practice of the jeu-parti, but the sources for the former are almost all later than the latter — with one exception: the Bodleian library manuscript Douce 308, which I’ve been working on for years now, has the oldest collection of Love Questions and some of the latest collections of jeux-partis. In this article, I examine what these can tell us about the relationship between these two kinds of courtly entertainment.

The lovely people at OUP have given me a link that I can post here on my blog which should take you to a free version of the text. The full reference is:

Elizabeth Eva Leach, “Which Came First, the Demandes d’amours Or the Jeu Parti? Evidence from Bodleian Library MS, Douce 308″, Music & Letters, 102/1 (2021): 1-29.

Douce 308 project, medieval French literature, medieval singers, speculative musicology

What can we know from ‘unnotated’ estampies?

My essay on the estampies of the Oxford manuscript Douce 308 has just been published in a collection entitled Music and Instruments of the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Christopher Page, Edited by Tess Knighton and David Skinner.

The estampie is usually thought of as an instrumental genre, but the ones in Douce 308 survive as extensive (and complicated) poetic texts. My essay attempts to glean what we can about their musical form from these unnotated and unique traces (none of the Douce 308 estampies has any concordances). I argue, ultimately, that these vocal estampies are closer to the surviving notated instrumental versions that people have previously believed.

A full listing of the other contents of the volume can be seen on the Boydell and Brewer site and there’s a discount available on order for a fixed period via the pdf below:

music-and-instruments-of-the-middle-agesDownload

medieval composers, medieval French literature, Teaching materials

Vernacular song (list A) lecture 5

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A brief overview of how medieval vernacular songs might inform and be informed by the social contexts that produced and consumed them.

Podlecture 5: Songs, singers, and society

Suggested select reading on political and religious organisation and conflict

  • Coss, Peter. “The Origins and Diffusion of Chivalry.” In A Companion to Chivalry, edited by Robert W. Jones and Peter Coss. 7-38. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2019.
  • Galvez, Marisa. The Subject of Crusade: Lyric, Romance, and Materials, 1150-1500. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2020.
  • Harvey, Ruth E. “Joglars and the Professional Status of the Early Troubadours.” Medium Aevum 62 (1993): 221-41.
  • Lee, Charmaine. “Richard the Lionheart: The Background to Ja nus homs pris.” Chap. 8 In Literature of the Crusades, edited by Simon Thomas Parsons and Linda M. Paterson. 134-50. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2018.
  • O’Sullivan, Daniel E. Marian Devotion in Thirteenth-Century French Lyric. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.
  • Paterson, Linda M. The World of the Troubadours: Medieval Occitan Society, c.1100-c.1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
  • Paterson, Linda. Singing the Crusades: French and Occitan Lyric Responses to the Crusading Movements, 1137-1336. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2018.
  • Reynolds, Susan. Fiefs and Vassals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

On gender, desire, and subjectivity

  • Bloch, R. Howard. Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
  • Boynton, Susan, ‘Women’s Performance of the Lyric Before 1500’. In Medieval Woman’s Song. Anne L. Klinck and Anne Marie Rasmussen, eds., 47-65; 219-23. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.
  • Bruckner, Matilda Tomaryn. ‘Fictions of the Female Voice: The Women Troubadours’, Speculum, 67/4 (1992), 865-91.
  • Bruckner, Matilda, Laurie Shepard, and Sarah White, eds. and trans. Songs of the Women Troubadours. New York: Garland: 2000.
  • Coldwell, Maria V. ‘Jongleuresses and Trobairitz: Secular Musicians in Medieval France’. In Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950. Jane Bowers and Judith Tick, eds., 39-61. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
  • Dell, Helen. Desire by Gender and Genre in Trouvère Song. Gallica. Vol. 10, Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008.
  • Doss-Quinby, Eglal, et al., eds. Songs of the Women Trouvères. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. [See especially the Introduction]
  • Gaunt, Simon. Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
  • Gravdal, Kathryn. ‘Metaphor, Metonymy, and the Medieval Women Trobairitz’, Romanic Review, 83 (1992), 411-26.
  • Green, D. H. Women and Marriage in German Medieval Romance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
  • Jackson, William E. Reinmar’s Women: A Study of the Woman’s Song (“Frauenlied” and “Frauenstrophe”) of Reinmar Der Alte. German Language and Literature Monographs. Vol. 9, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1981.
  • Kay, Sarah. “Desire and Subjectivity.” In The Troubadours: An Introduction, edited by Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay. 212-27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
  • Paden, William D., ed. The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.
  • Peraino, Judith Ann. Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig. Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2005.

TEST YOURSELF

Check you know what the following are:

  1. Albigensian crusade
  2. vassal
  3. banal lordship
  4. appanage
  5. hypergamy
  6. the outremer
  7. chivalry
  8. feudalism
  9. symbolic order
  10. imaginary

GO TO LECTURE 6

medieval composers, medieval French literature, Teaching materials

Vernacular song (list A) lecture 3

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A brief introduction to the trouvères.

Podlecture 3: The Trouvères

General reading

Read the Grove Music Online entries on:

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:

https://eeleach.blog/2012/01/17/the-wonders-of-gallica-some-troubadour-and-trouvere-sources/

Some important trouvères:

  1. Thibaut de Champagne, or use your Grove Online login
  2. Gace Brulé, or use your Grove Online login
  3. Blondel de Nesle, or use your Grove Online login
  4. Richard de Fournival, or use your Grove Online login
  5. Gautier d’Espinal, or use your Grove Online login
  6. Gautier de Coinci, or use your Grove Online login and see a list of his MSS here
  7. Moniot d’Arras, or use your Grove Online login
  8. Jehan Bretel, or use your Grove Online login
  9. Audefroi le Bastart, or use your Grove Online login
  10. Adam de la Halle, or use your Grove Online login

CONTINUE TO LECTURE 4


medieval composers, medieval French literature, medieval singers, Teaching materials

Vernacular Song (list A) lecture 2

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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):

TEST YOURSELF

Check you know who or what the following are:

  1. Fin’ amors or courtly love
  2. Andreas Capellanus and his The Art of Courtly Love
  3. Chrétien de Troyes
  4. vassalage
  5. canso
  6. sirventes
  7. joc-partit / partimen
  8. pastorela
  9. coblas doblas
  10. Ovid on Love

CONTINUE TO LECTURE 3