8001 Troubadour & Trouvere

(LEMS 8001) Troubadour & Trouvere Songs Music of the Middle Ages Vol. 1 The 12th & 13th Centuries - Six Chansons Courtoise Russell Oberlin, Countertenor Seymour Barab, Viol "A, fayre lady, who love I the? For thou art fayrst of all othir, and as yet sheudyst thou never love to nother bounte. Parde, and yet, alas! must I love the. And I may not blame the, fayre lady, for myne eyen caused me. And yet to love the I am but a foole..." This quotation from SIr Thomas Mallory's "Mort d'Arthur" illustrated the medieval theory of poetry, or at least of lyric poetry, and lyric poetry in the middle ages was generally synonymous with song. It was believed that only under such conditions of love could true song originate; and likewise, the poet was thought of as a man who suffered from love in spite of himself. The theory is the basis of troubadour poetry and music, perhaps the greatest repertory of secular song ever produced in Europe. It is an intensely humane literature concerned almost exclusively with love, and with the refinement, through love, of human sensibilities. It is important to understand these songs in this way. For, since the 1 troubadours conceived of love as the greatest force in the perfection of human sensibility, of the poet as a man suffering through love, and of lyric poetry as a love complaint, so then these songs are part of a serious pursuit, and, at their best, a profound expression of deeply humane beliefs underlies them. They are not, as is sometimes stated, the conventional frivolous pastime of a leisure class. The earliest troubadour of whom we have any record, Guilehm, VII Count of Poitiers and IX Duke of Aquitaine, was born in 1071; the last, Guiraut Riquier died in 1294. So we may say that the troubadour period lasted some two hundred years, from the end of the 11th century to the end of the 13th centuries. The movement began in southern France, in the language of Provencal. During the first century of this activity, it was centered around the great courts of that area. Later troubadours lived at the courts of northern France and England, Italy, Pain, and Sicily. But always troubadour activity centered around a court - the troubadours were either nobles themselves or men attached to a noble's court and under his protection - for only the court at that time could provide the conditions necessary for these men to conduct such an experiment in humane art and thought. With the gradual collapse of these courts the troubadours first scattered throughout Europe, and finally the movement came to an end altogether. The principal cause of this collapse was the series of crusades, beginning in 1209, against the Albigensian heretics, a religious party to which most of the southern French nobility belonged. With the final defeat of the Albigensians, that particular social structure in southern France on which the troubadours depended and which they sought to perfect came to an end. The trouveres are, generally speaking, the northern French counterpart to the southern troubadours. Their poetry is written in the langue d'oil, and begins to appear about half a century after the troubadours. The crusades to the Holy Land in the early 12th century brought the northern French into contact with the culture of southern France; and it is probable that through this contact (as well as general commerce) the trouvere movement began. And quite possibly the personal influence of Eleanor of Aquitaine, granddaughter of Guilehm IX (the first of the troubadours) aided in the movement of these ideas northward. Eleanor married Louis VEE, King of France, in 1137 and invited troubadours to her court in Paris; and again in 1152, when she divorced Louis and married Henry, Duke of Anjou, troubadours were welcomed at her court. Further, Henry became King of England in 1154, and once more troubadours were invited to follow this remarkable lady. Her son, Richard the Lion-Hearted, practiced the troubadour art himself, and her daughter, Marie Countess of Champagne, became a notable patroness of trouveres. The trouveres did not become as 2 intimately connected with northern French life in the way that the troubadours had become in southern France, and when, toward the end of the 13 century, interest in these forms began to decline and the forms to change, the movement died out, and quite suddenly, around the year 1280, though it did persist somewhat longer under different circumstances at the Norman French court in Sicily. The music of both the troubadours and trouveres derives from liturgical chant and the popular song of the time, but differs from chant in its adherence to poetic metrics and from popular song in the quality and sublety of its organization. Each song has one melody which is repeated for each stanza of the text, the form of the melody being determined by the form of the stanza, as regards length of line and placement of cadence. The use of repetition and refrain in the melodic structure varies from song to song, and in some cases does not appear at all, the stanza being "composed through". The earliest song of this record, "Can vei la lauzeta mover", (Track 4) by Bernard de Ventadour, is a case of a "composed through" stanza. Bernard was born in 1145, the son of servants at the castle of Elbe II, Viscount of Ventadour. His Provencal biography tells us that he was raised to be a poet and musician by the Viscount, but was exiled from Ventadour when Elbe discovered that his wife and Bernard were lovers. Bernard went to the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine in Anjou, and then went to the court of Raymond, Count of Toulouse, where he remained until the count's death. He spent the last years of his life in the monastery of Dalon where he died in 1195. He was the most famous troubadour of his time, though only 45 of his poems and 19 of the melodies for these have survived. "Can vie la lauzeta mover", perhaps the most celebrated of his songs, receives this tribute by way of paraphrase from Dante: Like the small lark who wantons free in air, First singing and then silent, as possessed By the sweetness that contented her, So seemed to me the image, deep impressed With the Eternal Pleasure, by whose will Each thing in its own nature is expressed. (Paradiso: Canto XX, lines 73-78 - Binyon) The exact dates of Arnaut Daniel ("Chanson do.ill mot son plan e prim", (Track 3) are not known, but he was writing in the late 12th century. Born at Ribeyrac in Perigord, he "forsook his learning and became a jongleur"-so says his Provencal biographer. (A jongleur was a professional itinerant singer.) He is known to have visited the courts of Paris and Aragon, and was for an extended period a member of the 3 court of Richard I of England. In the Purgatorio Dante"finds" Arnaut in the Seventh Circle, among the lustful. Nevertheless he says of him: 'O brother, said he, 'He who is singled by My finger (he pointed to a spirit in front) Wrought better in the mother-tongue than I. Whether in verses of love or in prose romaunt He surpassed all; and let the fools contend Who make him of Limoges of more account. (Purgatorio: XXVI, 188-123) The gentleman of Limoges Dante is anxious to discredit here is Guiraut de Borneil ("Reis glorios, verais lums e clartatz", (Track 1), called by his contemporaries, "master of the troubadours". He was born in Limousin at the castle of the viscount of Limoges around 1150, and is known to have visited the Spanish court of Alfonso VIII, and to have participated in the third Crusade as a member of the court of Richard I. He is said to have remained for a year in Antioch at the court of Boemund III. His Provencal biography tells us he passed the winters in schools and the summers in travelin from court with two jongleurs to sing his songs. He died about 1220. There are 80 of his poems extant, but only 4 have melodies. The "Reis Glorios" recorded here is an aubade, or morning song, sung at dawn to two lovers who have spent the night together to warn them of the daybreak. It is perhaps the most famous of all medieval aubades. Guiraut Riquier ("Ples de tristor, marritz e doloiros", (Track 2), the last of the troubadours, was born about 1230 in Narbonne, and died in 1297. He spent much of his life Spain, partly at the court of Alfonso the learned who compiled the magnificent collection of 13th century Spanish Cantiglias to the Virgin Mary. Guiraut laments in his songs the of an era, saying that the times had turned barbarous and that he had been born too late. The recorded here is a planh, a funeral elegy, written on the death of the Viscount Amalric of Narbonne. Of Guiraut's work we have 89 poems - 48 with their melodies. The two trouveres on this record, Gace Brule ("Cil qui d'amor me conseille", Track 6), and Gautier d' Epinal ("Commencements de dolce saison bele", Track 5) were both active in the late 12th century, though their exact dates are not known. Gace was from Champagne, and is spoken of by his contemporaries as a knight as well as a trouvere; Gautier lived at the court of Philip of Alsace, Count of Flanders. Little information other than these few details of their lives had come to us.

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