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Troubadour
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A troubadour was a composer and performer of songs during the European High Middle Ages. The troubadour school or tradition began in the eleventh century in the Occitan language of southern France, but it subsequently spread throughout Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Simultaneous movements, those of the trouvère and minnesinger, sprang up in northern France and Germany. Though it lasted slightly longer in Italy and Spain than in France, the art of the troubadours declined in the late thirteenth century and died out in the thirteenth.
The texts of troubadour songs deal mainly with themes of chivalry and courtly love. Many songs addressed a married lover, perhaps due to the prevalence of arranged marriages at the time. Most were metaphysical, intellectual, and formulaic. Many were humorous or vulgar satires. Works could be grouped by three styles: the trobar leu, trobar ric, and trobar clus. Likewise there were many genres, the most popular being the canso, but also the sirventes, tenso, and aubade.
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The earliest troubadour whose work survives is Guilhem de Peitieus (1071–1127). Peter Dronke, author of The Medieval Lyric, however, believes that "[his] songs represent not the beginnings of a tradition but summits of achievement in that tradition."[1] His name has been preserved because he was the Duke of Aquitaine, but his work plays with already established structures; Eble II of Ventadorn is often credited as a predecessor, though none of his work survives. The first half of the twelfth century, however, saw relatively little recorded troubadours. Only in the last decades of the century did troubadour activity explode. Almost half of all troubadour works survive from the period 1180–1220.[2]
The troubadour tradition seems to have begun in western Aquitaine (Poitou and Saintonge) and Gascony, from there spreading over into eastern Aquitaine (Limousin and Auvergne) and Provence. At its height it had become popular in Languedoc and the regions of Rouergue, Toulouse, and Quercy (c. 1200). Finally, in the early thirteenth century it began to spread into first Italy and then Catalonia, whence to the rest of Spain. This development has been called the rayonnement des troubadours.[3]
The etymology of the word troubadour is disputed. In general, the argument breaks into two camps.
The literates in French argue that the root of the word can be found in the langue d'oc verb trobar, 'to compose, invent, or devise'. (see all French Dictionaries Académie Française, Larousse, Robert). Others posit an Arabic origin in the word tarrab, 'to sing' (see María Rosa Menocal: The culture of translation).
For the French linguists, Troubadour derived from Occitan trobador, literally means "finder", the one who finds after a research. The Occitan verb trobar comes from vulgar Latin tropare verbal form for tropus «rhetoric, figure of speech», itself built on the Greek τρόπος «turn, manner».[4] Defenders of a mediolatin origin of court poesy (Reto Bezzola, Peter Dronke) and musicologists (J. Chailley) support the idea that French verb trouver (English to find), properly means «inventing a trope». The trope is a speech where the words are used with a meaning different from their common signification, as a poetic use of metaphor and metonymy. This poem was originally inserted in a serial of modulations ending a liturgic song. Then the trope became an autonomous piece organized in stanza form.[5]
Some proponents of the second theory argue, on cultural grounds, that both etymologies may well be correct, and that there may have been a conscious poetic exploitation of the phonological coincidence between trobar and the triliteral Arabic root TRB when sacred Islamic (Sufi) musical forms focused on the love theme were first exported from Al-Andalus, i.e. Moorish (Islamic) Spain, to Southern Europe. It has also been pointed out that the concepts of "finding", "music", "love", "ardour", i.e. the precise semantic field attached to the word troubadour, are allied in Arabic under a single root (WJD) that plays a major role in sufic discussions of music, and that the word troubadour may in part reflect this.[6]
The word troubadour is used to designate poet-musicians who spoke the langue d'oc; their style spread to the trouvères in the north of France, who spoke langues d'oïl. This other form is really similar to the French verb trouver meaning to find, outpointing the relevance of the Latin etymology.
Some of the troubadours' works have survived, and are currently preserved in manuscripts known as chansonniers (songbooks). Popular troubadours with surviving works include Bernart de Ventadorn, Arnaut Daniel and Jaufré Rudel.
Troubadour songs were usually monophonic. Fewer than 300 melodies out of an estimated 2500[7] survive. Most were composed by the troubadours themselves. Other troubadours set their poems to pre-existing pieces music. Raimbaut de Vaqueyras wrote his Kalenda maya (The Calends of May) to music composed by jongleurs at Montferrat. Troubadours sing tales of bravery and stories about life and death. The most common kinds of songs they sang were: morning songs; political poems; dirges; and disputes. Their favorite kinds of songs were about courtly love, war, and nature.
Troubadours usually followed some form of "rules", illustrated in Leys d'amors (compiled in 1340). The commonly used verse form of the troubadours was the canso, consisting of five or six stanzas with an envoi. Other variances of verse form seen in surviving works include
- Dansa, or balada, a dance song with a refrain
- Pastorela, telling the tale of the love request by a knight to a shepherdess
- Alba (morning song), lovers are warned by a watchman that morning approaches and that their spouse may discover them.
- Escondig, a lover's apology
- Gap, a challenge, similar to sports teams chants today
- Planh (plank), a lament
- Sirventes, a satirical poem devised to a melody
- Descort, discordant in verse form or feeling
- Trobar clus, a cryptic poem
- Jeu parti, tenso, partimen or débat, a poem in the form of a debate (usually on love) between two poets
The poetical debate often extended beyond the confines of a single poem. A difficult question of love or social behaviour, raised by one poet, would frequently arouse replies and commentaries by others.
A complementary role was filled at the same period by performers known as joglares in Occitan, jongleurs in French (minstrels in English). Jongleurs are often addressed in troubadour lyrics. Their profession was that of popular entertainer; as such jongleurs sometimes performed troubadour compositions but more often other genres, notably chansons de geste (epic narratives).
Troubadou in Haitian culture, is a form of music that preceded Kompa and is currently going through a revival.
- Paden, William D. "Troubadours and History" (pp. 157–182). The World of Eleanor of Aquitaine: Literature and Society in Southern France between the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, edd. Marcus Bull and Catherine Léglu. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005. ISBN 1 84383 114 7.
- ^ Peter Dronke, The Medieval Lyric, Perennial Library, 1968. p. 111.
- ^ Paden, 161.
- ^ Paden, 163.
- ^ French Dictionnary, Petit Larrousse Illustré (1983)
- ^ Troubadour (Observatoire de terminologie littéraire, Université de Limoges, France).
- ^ See Idries Shah, The Sufis.
- ^ The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music edited by Stanley Sadie. Macmillan Press Ltd., London.
- Literary Encyclopedia: Troubadour.
- Said I. Abdelwahed. Troubadour Poetry: An Intercultural Experience.