TROUBADOURS AND TROUV

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CHAPTER 6

• TROUBADOURS AND TROUVÈRES

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Countess Beatriz de Dia

• Around 1175 she composed the sole song by a
  trobairitz to survive today Chantar mer (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).

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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.

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The Angevin kingdom of which Eleanor of
Aquitaine was queen
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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.

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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)

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King Richard I of England (1157-1199)

• A monarch and trouvère, for he set music to
  poetry written in the langue doïl of the north
  of France. His beautiful chanson Ja nus hons
  pris ne dira (Truly, a captive doesnt 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.

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• 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.