Transcript CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 6
TROUBADOURS AND TROUVÈRES
Countess Beatriz de Dia
• Around 1175 she composed the sole song by a
trobairitz to survive today: Chantar m’er (I must
sing). It conveys the sentiment of disappointment
in love from the perspective of a woman. It also
exhibits a repetitive formal plan (ABABCDB).
Eleanor of Aquitaine (c1122-1204)
• Duchess of Aquitaine and successively queen of
France and then England was both a powerful
political figure and a great patroness of poets and
musicians. Late in her life her court was centered
at the castle of Chinon, on the border of the
Touraine and the Aquitaine in southwestern France.
The Angevin kingdom of which
Eleanor of Aquitaine was queen
Bernart de Ventadorn
• Among the troubadours patronized by Eleanor at
Chinon, and who composed songs about her, was
Bernart de Ventadorn (c1135-c1195).
• Wrote Can vei la lauzeta (When I see the lark) as
an embittered complaint against Eleanor, because
she had betrayed him.
• Ultimately, withdrew from Chinon and entered a
monastery. Similarly, Eleanor in her last years
entered the convent at Fontevraud near Chinon
where she died and was buried.
Tomb of Elanor of Aquitaine at
Fontevraud Abbey
Notice that Eleanor holds a book to symbolize that she is a
learned woman. Notice also that to her right is buried her
son King Richard (Lionheart)
King Richard I of England (1157-1199)
• A monarch and trouvère, for he set music to poetry
written in the langue d’oïl of the north of France.
His beautiful chanson Ja nus hons pris ne dira
(Truly, a captive doesn’t speak his mind) laments
the fact that he was captured returning from a
crusade and that his friends have failed to pay his
ransom. The chanson is composed in AAB form
and in what later music theorists will call Aeolian
mode.
• In addition to the troubadours and trouvères in
France, comparable songsters could be found in
Germany, where they were called Minnesingers, and
in Spain and Portugal. The court of Alfonso the Wise,
king of Castile, Spain, was a center for the cultivation
of the cantiga (a secular monophonic song in Spanish
or Portugese). At his court were compiled several
collections of cantigas, and these books are graced
with splendid illuminations showing musicians of the
day at work.