A brief overview of how medieval vernacular songs might inform and be informed by the social contexts that produced and consumed them.
Tag: song
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
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!
My article on three songs by Blondel de Nesle just appeared in Music Analysis.
My co-authored article with French literary scholar Jonathan Morton on the sonic aspects of Richard de Fournival’s Bestiary of Love has just appeared in the journal Romania.
Elizabeth Eva Leach 