7"--5 Early Music Alte Musik ,,,,pq MUSIC OF THE TROUBADOURS Ensemble Unicorn Oni Wytars Michael Posch Marco Ambrosini Music of the Troubadours The poems and songs of the troubadours pmvide a included. The latter is an olh[r. s composition that marks repenoire of early European secular song. It is i~sualto the paning of a couple at dawn (olhn). after a night distinguish the lxxts and musicians of the Occitanian together. perhaps observed by a thirtl party. a tradition of souther^^ France from those who flourished watchman. The music by Giraut is one ol' only two slightly later in the north, the first as nnrth~tclottrsand surviving musical examples, whilc thcrc are nine the second as rroitvi.rrs.The trouhadours themselves. in surviving examples of the texts. Giraut was born at the twelfth ant1 thirteenth centuries, were. in general. Excideuilh. near Wrigoeux in ;~hout 1140 ant1 tlicd at not the wandering minstrels of nineteenth-century the turn of the century. Of relatively In~mblcparellrage. imagin;~tion,hut often of high social position, kings, he rose to be respected as the master of the troobadours princes ant1 lords, however limited their domains. and quotations fmm his work arc incl~~tled.witli those Among these poets. however. there were individuals of of other troubadour poets, in Dantc's Dc, vrtlgctri lower social status. sons of shopkeepers and tradesmen. ebqrtet~ticr.evidence of his contemporary reputation. All. though, wcrc influcnced by a tradition and by Four of his 79 surviving poems arc preserved \\pith thcir coavc~~tiorisof the court and by courtly notions of music. No prresc sofiir consists of ten eight-syllable itlealiscd love, its joys and sorrows. Other subjects of all lines, rhyming ABABCDDCDD. The ~(n~frti~~cttrr~:II~ kinds occur. political. satirical. apologetic or bawdy. imitation, following current practice. follows the same The language of the troubadours. the Intrjirre d'oc, is pattern, using the same rhyme-sclic~~ieand same Provcnqal and closely related variants, to be greatly rhyming syllables, in a series of five stanzas (r.oh1fr.x). distorted by the rro~t)~l.res.The activities of the with a final three-line envoi (tornncln). This is by tlie tmtlbadours extended into Cntalonia and into Italy. A poet Peire Cardenal, probably born about the ycar I 180 large number of troubadour poems survive and a fairly at Le Puy-en-Velay in the Haate-Loire. Thrcc of his s~~hstantialbody of monodic music, offering a single surviving ninety poems are extant with thcir music and melodic line following the rhythm and pattern of the two of these are co~irrqfoc!o. Peire Cardenal livctl a verse set. remarkably long life and seems to have died at thc agc The present anthology of troubadour music and of nearly a hundred at Montpellier. whcrc Jacqucs I. verse opens wirh 7irrrret irhelis by Berenguier de Palou, Kil~gof Aragon had his resitlence until his death in who tlo~~rishedin the early twelfth century. His place of 1276. The verbal intricacies of the poem arc of binh seems to have been Palol, near Elne, in the district pariicular interest, with an excursion into s~lli~cr:~tionin or Ko~~sillon,at the modern border between France and each line of the final stanza. Spi~in.The son of an i~npoverishedknight, he is one of A bagpipe improvisation on the nietlieval hltjo is the earliest of the Calalx~ntroubadours. Toni nt'cthe1i.s followed by Raimon tle Miraval's Rcl 11r'cs fltt'i~rr co~isists01' five seven-line stanias, each line including chcr~rt.The Provenqal tro~~badoar,whose name ktals to ten syllables. These decasyllabic lines rhyme in the possible conti~sionwith his fhther. making the tla~tingof pattern ABRACDD. with the same rhymes continued in his birth difficult, flo~~rishedbetween I IXI) ant1 12 1.5. each stanza. There is a funher example of his work in Ai His castle at Miraval, to the north of Carc;~ssonne. held rol clotnno. a setting of an eight-line stanza of seven- by him together with his three hrothers. was seizctl hy syllable lines. rhyming ABABCCDD. There follows an the Albigcnsian cn~sadersin 1209 or 121 l sntl in tlie instrumental version of the anonymous twelfth-century present poem he looks fonvard to its recapture. Rainlon Do~nncr.p~s vos i:h~tifsi~lu. de Miraval's patrons inclutled Count K;~itnon\'I of No pitesc sfflir is the work of the troubadour Ciraut Touloose, defe;~tetlby the cmsatler Sinion dc 1Monlfort de Rornclh, whose esrcrrnpie. Reis glorios is also in 1213. and Raimon-Rogier of Reiiers. who appear 8.554257 2 under pseudonyms in his poems, as do other members Ventadorn, in Limousin, between about 1130 and 1140 of the nobility. 48 chansons survive, 22 of them with and was influenced by the example of Eble I1 and his their music, an unusually large number. The four successor, both Viscounts of Ventadom and proponents stanzas of Be1 m'es qu'ieu chant consist of nine seven- of the traditional courtly traditions of troubadour poetry. syllable lines, with a repeated rhyme scheme for each It appears, from various allusions elsewhere and from stanza, ABBACDDCC, reflected in the music. the usual surviving vida, the customary and sometimes Cantahen els ocells is the work of Ramon Llull imaginative biographical notice of the lives of (Raymond Lull), distinguished as a Catalan troubadours, that he was the son of a baker or a foot- philosopher, theologian, poet and mystic. Born about soldier. Whatever his origins, he left Ventadorn to enter the year 1232, he died in 1315. A prolific writer, he left the service of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who married the some 243 works, in Latin and in Catalan, to the second future Henry 11 of England. He was later in the service of which he gave scholarly respectability. His passing of Raimon V, Count of Toulouse, and after the latter's and varied references to music have a distinct bearing death in 1194 is said to have entered a monastery in the on contemporary practice. From a land-owning Dordogne, where he died in the last decade of the Barcelona family, he was bom in Palma de Mallorca, century. 45 poems survive, with music to eighteen of possibly in 1235, but at the age of thirty turned away them. Quan vei la lauzeta mover is not only the most from secular poetry to a life religious activity urging the famous of Bernart de Ventadom's songs, but among the foundation of colleges to study other religions. A figure most widely known in troubadour repertoire, variously of the greatest importance in Catholic Europe, Ramon imitated and a possible influence on the northern French Llull devoted much of his life to missionary activity, the trouvere repertoire, deriving from the troubadours. The cause of his death in 1315. His short poem is recited to a poem consists of seven eight-syllable eight-line stanzas, characteristic musical accompaniment. with a rhyming scheme ABABCDCD. The final four Ara lausatz, lausat, lausat is an anonymous work of lines form an envoi. bawdy suggestion from the Monastery of Sant Joan de Jaufre Rudel, who flourished in the mid-twelfth les Abadesses in Catalonia, its collegiate church century, is known in particular for his poems to his founded in 887 by Count Wilfred the Hairy (el Velloso), distant love. He took part in the second crusade in 1147 whose daughter was the first of the abbesses. and it has been suggested that the distant love was the A native of Narbonne, where he was born about the Countess of Tripoli or even, metaphorically, Jerusalem year 1230, Guiraut Riquier is regarded as the last of the itself. The derivative and imaginative vida repeats the troubadours. His 89 surviving poems can be dated story of Rudel, described as prince of Blaye, and his through frequent topical references and fall between the infatuation with the Countess, seemingly known only years 1254 and 1292. He was in the service of by repute. As a pilgrim, he set out to see her but was Amalrich IV, Viscount of Narbonne, and then of taken ill on the ship, to die in the arms of the Countess, Alfonso X of Castile. In 1279 he entered the service of once he had reached Tripoli. At his death she took the Henry 11, Count of Rodez, and died at the turn of the veil. Of seven poems attributed to Rudel, four survive century. 48 of the poems survive with their music, an with their music. Lanquan li jorn has a particular unusually large number. Humils, forfaitz, repres e interest in that it was imitated by the German penedens consists of two eight-line stanzas with a final Minnesinger Walther vou der Vogelweide in his three-line envoi. The rhyme-scheme is ABBACCD, Palastinalied (Naxos 8.553442). The poem itself with the final three rhymes echoed in the envoi, consists of seven eight-syllable seven-line stanzas, matched by the repeated melodic formula, with its followed by a three-line envoi. The rhyme-scheme is ornamentation. ABABCCD, with the word loing (distant) ending the Bernart de Ventadorn was born in the castle of second and fourth lines of each stanza. 3 8.554257 The Interpretation The music and language of the troubadours, this music is part of a living tradition has come a together with their content have, over the centuries, in confluence, in interpretation, of elements from the field no way lost their importance. Still in our own time, of early music with the continuing traditions of particularly in the field of folk-music, their effects can Mediterranean music.