1

European music, for thousands of years, sat under the influence of the Catholic Church.
Already well documented is the use of plainsong from the early beginnings of the church and up
to the 15th century; even today, the tradition of plainsong is kept alive by some. Having been
ubiquitous across the whole of Europe, all of todays Western music is in some way influenced
by the chants sung in both cathedrals and small parishes.
The same is true for the music of the 12th and 13th centuries. As can be gleaned from
extant manuscripts, sacred music dominated the landscape of the medieval era. Sung wholly in
Latin, the music kept a sure distance from whatever folk music existed at the time; sacred music
was patronized by the nobility, who maintained court chapels for their own personal worship and
entertainment. An anomaly sprung up in the 12th century, however; music performed not in Latin
and in the church, but in vernacular language and in the courts and castles of Provenal France.
The troubadours, both influenced by the sacred Latin chant and the Occitan literary tradition, are
the first example of vernacular music in Europe of which we.
The troubadours were the poets and composers of southern France during the 12th century
and into the 13th century; they moved in a class above common performers, becoming known by
name and hired into the courts of nobility. The earliest known troubadour was himself of
nobility: William IX, Duke of Aquitaine. Despite the societal stratum to which troubadour poetry
belonged, however, troubadours themselves were a social tapestry of individuals. Members of
society from both the poorest classes and the noble classes could be troubadours, recognition
stemming from talent alone. Bernart de Ventadorn, perhaps the most successful and well-known
troubadour, came from low social status, as found in his vida.

Bernart de Ventadorn was from Limousin, from the castle of Ventadour. He was
a man of humble origin, the son of a servant who was a baker, and who heated
the oven to bake the bread of the castle. And he became a handsome and an able
man, and he knew how to sing and how to invent poetry well, and he became
courtly and learned.1

Even the term troubadour came to be all inclusive, covering any man or woman who wrote
anything at all, whether it be lyric or narrative, with or without music.2 This expansive inclusion
exerted a wide cultural influence on French society which, along with northern Frances
particular receptiveness for Occitan poetry,3 led to the advent of the northern French trouvres
who were imitators of the troubadour style about 50 years into the 12th century.4
While the troubadours were the ones to formulate the wide-spread movement of
vernacular poetry and music in France, almost 2000 trouvre melodies have been preserved, their
repertory representing the largest known in secular medieval music, compared to only 259
troubadour melodies.5 This iniquity is potentially due to the later dates of the trouvre
composers, who were displaced from the troubadours by 50 years; however, the geographical
1 Qtd. In L. T. Topsfield, Troubadours and Love (London: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 112. This quotation
comes from the vida for Bernart de Ventadorn; a vida was a small introductory biography used to introduce songs
in anthologies of the late Medieval period.
2 L. M. Wright, "Misconceptions Concerning The Troubadours, Trouvres And Minstrels," Music and Letters 48, no.
1 (1967): 38-39. The discussion of how the troubadours and trouveres were named is an interesting one. The term
trouvere, almost certainly derived from the Old French trover, meaning to invent. The term troubadour is
somewhat more uncertain but can be connected to the Occitan trobar, meaning to find or invent. The terms, thus,
are potentially more synonymous to our modern idea of a general artist.
3 William D. Paden, Old Occitan as a Lyric Language: The Insertions from Occitan in Three Thirteenth-Century
French Romances, Speculum 68 (1993): 52.
4 Barbara Smythe, Troubadour Songs, Music and Letters 2, No. 3 (1921): 263.
5 Hans Tischler, Trouvere Songs: The Evolution of the Poetic and Musical Styles, The Musical Quarterly 72, no. 3
(1986): 329.

placement of the trouvres may also have contributed, as the anthologies of troubadour and
trouvre songs were produced primarily in northern France. One would assume that Occitan,
being an important language in poetry and literature at the time, would have been the primary
language of the anthologies of troubadour and trouvre song, thus these being produced in
southern France. Unfortunately, by the time these anthologies were composed in the late 14th and
15th centuries, southern France was reeling from the invasive crusades against the resident
Catharssouth France was in no place to record the history of their own music effectively,
leaving it to the scholars of northern France to present the music of their neighbors. Certainly,
they were not unqualified for the task; Occitan was widely known in Europe as a language
influencing poetry and literature, and the trouvres displayed many similarities to the
troubadours, their music differing only in matters of form and language, while retaining the same
melodic and poetic structures, as well as the same performance practices.
Occitan was the native language of the troubadours, while trouvres wrote in Old French.
Colloquially, these two languages were known respectively as Langue dOc and Langue dOil;
the former was relegated mostly to southern France (the areas of Provence and Burgundy), while
the latter was spoken in northern France. Using mutually unintelligible languages, the trouvres
and troubadours may have employed a mischsprache, or a middle language, for creative
purposes; certainly, there was some sense of linguistic mixture between both sections of France.6
The two groups of French composers cultivated two distinct branches of poetrylove poetry,
demonstrated by the troubadour canso and the trouvre chanson damour; and half-lyrical, halfnarrative poetry, present in a multitude of genres like the pastorela, a poem about a knight and a
shepherdess.7
6 Paden, Occitan as a Lyric Language, 37-40.
7 Smythe, Troubadour Songs, 263.

The newer, more individualistic poetry of the late Medieval ages cultivated a sense of
craftsmanship in troubadours and trouvres. The early troubadours took a self-conscious stance
as creators in the metaphysical sense;8 this sort of confidence led to the potential of rather biting
social commentary. Mostly, however, both troubadour and trouvre poetry expressed the courtly
experience of the aristocratic social code. This courtly experience manifested itself in the concept
of fin amors.9 Originally a troubadour creation, fin amors was the sole topic of the canso: an
imperfect lover strives towards a perfect and unattainable lady who is separated from him by a
metaphysical distance. This view of love seems to be born of a few sources; at the surface, fin
amors is a purifying love, a love which can heal and make courtly, for the unattainable lady is
eternal and a reflection of courtly perfection. At a deeper, spiritual level, the poetry takes much
of its language and emotion from the churchs Christian love for a deity. In it, there is infinite
disproportion between the lover and the lady, and the lover rejoices in his bondage and suffering,
becoming nobler through the refinement of his cultish love.10 The poetry is, at its core, not about
the lady; these songs are about love more than celebrations of the physical and moral
qualities of a shadowy beloved, they are celebrations of the idea and nature of love itself.11 Both
the canso and chanson damour demonstrate this concept in their form; characteristically, the
song opens forcefully, with the composer standing outside his creation as creator, or stepping

8 Charlotte Gross, The Cosmology of Rhetoric in the Early Troubadour Lyric, Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of
Rhetoric 9, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 40.
9 Directly translated, fin amors, which is Occitan, means fine love but conceptually means courtly love. This
concept originated in southern France and maintained its integrity to such extent that the northern French did not
bother to translate the phrase into Old French, but rather kept it in the original Occitan.
10 Smythe, Troubadour Songs, 263-264.
11 John Stevens, La Grande Chanson Courtoise: The Chansons of Adam de la Halle, Proceedings of the Royal
Musical Association 101 (1974-1975): 14.

inside the song and marking the inception of season, love, and song; however, at its end, the
canso and chanson ends weakly, maintaining a love unresolved.12
The poetic form of the medieval period placed enormous emphasis on the numbering of
syllables and rhymes; while this may be foreign to a modern audience accustomed to euphony
and rhyme in poetry, the songs of both the troubadour and trouvre rely upon the count and meter
of syllables. As John Stevens says, we shall never accept medieval artistic creation unless we
can accept the overriding importance of convention.13 The troubadours and trouvres considered
themselves craftsman, and, in regard to how much attention is paid to syllables, there is an
absolute sense of poetic craftsmanship. In a study by John Stevens of poetic samples of the
trouvre Adam de la Halle, it was found that very rarely do accented syllables fall on weak beats,
or do unaccented syllables fall on stressed beats. As will be discussed, even melody, and perhaps
rhythm, rely wholly upon the count of syllables.
The most enlightening extant treatise on how the composers handled the form of poetry
in song comes from the contemporary Dante Alighieri, who took a keen interest in Occitanian
poetry. In the treatise De vulgari eloquentia, Dante gives a very detailed description of the form
of troubadour and trouvre songs.

But there are some stanzas which admit of a diesis [division]: and there can be
no diesis [division] in our sense of the word unless a repetition of one ode
[melody] be made either before the diesis [division], or after, or both. If the
repetition be made before the diesis [division], we say that the stanza has feet
[pedes]; and it ought to have two, though sometimes there are three; very rarely,
12 Gross, The Cosmology of Rhetoric, 44-45, 47.
13 Stevens, La Grande Chanson, 14-15.

however. If the repetition be made after the diesis [division], then we say that the
stanza has verses [versus]. If no repetition be made before the diesis [division],
we say that the stanza has a Fronte [recte Frons]; if none be made after, we say
that it has a Sirma or coda [cauda]. 14

Robert H. Perrin assembles these forms into an outline of three formulae with respect to melodic
patterns. After, he gives a designation to each summarized structure and adds the oda continua.

1. a a btwo pedes, cauda.

2. a b bfrons, two versus.
3. a a b btwo pedes, two versus. 15

Again, these three formulae are designated in the literature as such:

1. Oda continua (through-composed)

2. Pedes cum caudaa a b
3. Frons cum versibusa b b
4. Pedes cum versibusa a b b 16

14 Dante Alighieri, The Latin Works of Dante, trans. A. G. Ferrers Howell (London: 1940), 100-101.
15 Robert H. Perrin, Some Notes on Troubadour Melodic Types, Journal of the American Musicological Society 9,
no. 1 (Spring 1956): 12.
16 Ibid., 12.

It is at this point where some differences between troubadours and trouvres begin to
become more apparent. First, for clarification: troubadors and trouvres wrote their poetry in
stanzas and composed their music to one of the stanzas. Each stanza was a repetition of the same
melody in almost every instance (there is one known deviation from this procedureQuant je
voi plus felon rire by Guiot de Dijon).17 To continue: the oda continua, a through composed
melody without repetition, was the preferred form for troubadours;18 it is rarely employed the
trouvres. Instead, they most often use the pedes cum cauda, an AAB form.19 Very little beyond
the two forms described by Dante were utilized by either troubadour or trouvre.
Form was completely unrelated from the genre of a song. Besides the love poetry of the
canso and the chanson damour, the troubadours and trouvres employed many different, though
parallel, genres (these are the half-lyrical, half-narrative genres mentioned earlier). Contrafacta20
was prominent in the 12th and 13th centuries; the sirventes was almost exclusively a contrafacta,
certainly a product of the satirical nature through which it commented on society and politics.
Other prominent genres in troubadour repertoire include the pastorella, about a knight and
shepherdess; the tenso, partimen, and joc-partit (jeu-partit in French), which were debate songs;
the planh, a dirge for a deceased dignitary; and the alba, a song about lovers parting at dawn. For
the trouvre repertoire, the rondet et carole was also popular; among the rest, the chanson de
toile, a song about work; the chanson de femme, a song sung from the womans perspective; the
chanson mal mariee, a song about an unhappy wife; and the rotrounge.21 Despite the wide range
17 Hans Tischler, A Unique and Remarkable Trouvere Song, The Journal of Musicology 10, no. 1 (Winter 1992):
106.
18 Smythe, Troubadour Songs, 273.
19 Stevens, La Grande Chanson, 19.
20 Contrafacta at this time involved taking the melody of anothers song and setting it with new words.
21 Ardis Butterfield, Vernacular poetry and music, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music, ed. Mark
Everist (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 215-216.

of genres available to both troubadours and trouvres, melodic pattern was not governed by the
type of type of lyric to which it was joined;22 however, just as today we relate melodic events to
major and minor tonality, it is entirely possible that 12th and 13th century audiences heard melodic
events in relation to modality, though a pattern has not yet been found to say what this may have
sounded like.23
Like plainchant, the movement of troubadour and trouvre melodies is essentially by step
and like plainchant, the eight ecclesiastical modes were used exclusively; however, that is
where the similarity ends. In using the eight modes, the troubadours and trouvres did not pay
attention to any of the liturgical rules for modes.24 Modulation and transposition are ubiquitous in
the secular songs; modal mixture and unusual cadences are found in hundreds of melodies.25 As
Hans Tischler notes, the modality depends on several ingredients: the overall range, the
structural tones heard in each phrase, in particular the final tones of the phrases, and the
accidentals.26 Modality in troubadour and trouvre song is not as simple as finding the final
tone; the variety of cadences and phrases within a melody cause the mode to shift around,
intermingling between various flavors and sounds. The only identifiers on which we can grasp
the modality are final notes in verse phrases, metric emphasis on certain notes, and certain
figures like triadic motion or cadential formula.
Hans Tischler, in an analysis of trouvre songs, provides the following generalizations
about modality:
22 Perrin, Some Notes on Troubadour, 13.
23 Hans Tischler, Mode, Modulation, and Transposition in Medieval Songs, The Journal of Musicology 12, no. 3
(Summer 1995): 278.
24 Smythe, Troubadour Songs, 271.
25 Tischler, Mode, Modulation, and Transposition, 277.
26 Hans Tischler, Trouvere Songs: The Evolution, 333.

1.

Manneriae27 1 and 3 are closely related and often alternate in a melody.

2.

Manneria 2 is very rarely employed.

3.

Manneriae 3 and 4 are far more often used than manneriae 1 and 2.

4.

In many melodies the modal octave is expanded, and the authentic and

plagal ranges may be combined.

5.

Many trouvre melodies modulate, i. e. move from one mode to another,

often more than once in a tune.

6.

All modes appear on different pitch levels, transposed particularly often

by a 4th or 5th (up or down), but also sometimes by a 2nd, 7th, or octave.28

The same generalizations are similar for troubadour melody. Beyond modality, the troubadour
and trouvre songs are governed by few rules, though maintain some similarities throughout the
12th and 13th centuries. Due to the syllabic aspect of the poetry, the number of notes or note
groups in the melodies of troubadours and trouvres must always correspond to the number of
syllables; these musical units are between one to four notes. Two other undisputed aspects of
troubadour and trouvre melody are that the musical phrase must be the line length and that lines
with weak poetic endings must have weak cadences.29
Another difference between the troubadours and trouvres arises at this point; while
troubadours had freedom with a melodic pattern, the trouvres utilized a great deal of common
27 Manneriae refers to the classfications of ecclesiastical modes used at this time. Eight manneriae were used,
roughly equivalent to four of the modern modes: in order, the dorian and hypodorian, the phrygian and
hypophrygian, the lydian and hypophrygian, and the mixolydian and hypomixolydian.
28 Hans Tischler, On Modality in Trouvere Melodies, Acta Musicologica 71 (Jan. Jun. 1999): 76.
29 Stevens, La Grande Chanson, 18.

motives and formulae in their writing. Just as medieval writers made use of stereotyped motives,
the trouvre composers drew heavily from a series of melodic formulae.30 This has been a point
of debate amongst scholars recently; the initial view that trouvre composers commonly
borrowed music from one another is eroding. Instead, the idea has come to be that melodic
formulae, potentially drawn from Gregorian chant, were used judiciously. Jan LaRue
encapsulates the predominating thought among scholars at this point.

Where family resemblances are more rule that the exception, the fact of melodic
similarity clearly declines in importance. A coincidence does not necessarily
imply a relationship.31

There are truly only two unmistakable examples of musical borrowing in trouvre
repertoire, according to Theodore Karp: two chansons by Moniot dArras, Amours nest pas, que
con die and Amours, sonque en ma vie. The other is two chansons, La douce vois du rossignol
salvage by Chatelain de Covey, and Loiaus amours et desiriers de joie by Colart de Boutellier.32
Otherwise, what was once seen to be musical borrowing is now viewed as melodic formulae.
Some common examples of these formulae include a conjunct ascent through the interval of a 4th
(F-G-Bb), single note rising scales of 3-6 notes, recitation figures akin to plainchant, and seven
syllable lines which alternate single notes and groups of notes.

30 Theodore Karp, Borrowed Material in Trouvere Music, Acta Musicologica 34, fasc. 3 (Jul. Sept. 1962): 94.
Pages 95-97 contain an abundance of musical samples demonstrating these motives and formulae.
31 Jan Larue, Significant and Coincidental Resemblances between Classical Themes, Journal of the American
Musicological Society 14, no. 2 (Summer 1961): 224, as discussed in Karp, Borrowed Materials.
32 Karp, Borrowed Materials, 99-101.

11

In regards to the rhythm of these melodic lines, no scholar has fully synthesized a
satisfactory explanation. There are some mensurally notated songs extant, though those may be
rhythmic transcriptions added in later dates. Some have suggested that the rhythm is related to
the declamation of the poetry. Others have put forth the notion that the ecclesiastical rhythmic
modes were used. This idea has an issue, however, for the rhythmic modes were very likely not
in existence at the time of the earliest troubadours. 33 At the very least, it is unlikely the songs
were sung in free unmeasured rhythm, as rhythm had been a staple of Western music for
centuries before.34
The rhythmic question aside, performance of troubadour and trouvre songs has been a
long discussed topic. Manuscripts are often written with no regard to rhythm and no mention of
instrumentation. It is likely that both troubadours and trouvres ornamented and departed from
the melody.35 It is also likely that the songs of troubadours and trouvres were accompanied by a
vielle;36 the most direct confirmation of the use of a vielle comes from a German source, Wirnt
von Gravenbaeres Wigaloise.

sehs fidlaere
Die wolden im sine swaere
Mit ir videlen vertriben
Do begunden sie es riben
33 H. van der Werf, The Chansons of the troubadours and trouveres: a study of the melodies and their relation to
the poems (Utrecht, 1972): 43, as discussed in Ian Parker, The Performance of Troubadour and Trouvere Songs:
Some Facts and Conjectures, Early Music 5, no. 2 (Apr. 1997): 185.
34 Smythe, Troubadour Songs, 266.
35 Parker, Performance of Troubadour, 205.
36 Smythe, Troubadour Songs, 266.

Mit kunsterlichen griffen

Biz im was gar entflissen
Diu swaere von dem herzen sin.37

If instruments did participate in the performance of songs, they would have likely provided
improvised preludes, interludes, and codas, as well as playing drones or doubling the voice part.
Not many other instruments would have been suitable for these tasks; due to the modulatory
nature of troubadour and trouvre songs, any instrument with a fixed drone would have been
terribly dissonant at certain times. Haut instruments would have been far too loud for songs. Not
only would the voice have been drowned out, but the haut instruments would have been
inappropriate for the indoor setting of troubadour and trouvre songs; the songs were intended to
be sung as entertainment inside the courts and castles of nobility. Despite the various influences
from the lower classes, troubadour and trouvre song remained a noble pursuit, aiding in its
transmission across the boundaries of the medieval era. Surely, had it been true folk music, we
would not have the anthologies of song which exist today.

37 Wirnt von Gravenbaere in Wigaloise (V 7425), quoted in Parker, Performance of Troubadours, 187. The epic
poem explains that a Vielle player must be able to either hold up his own tune or join his sound to that of a song.

13

Bibliography
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Journal of the History of Rhetoric 9, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 39-53.
Karp, Theodore. Borrowed Material in Trouvere Music. Acta Musicologica 34, fasc. 3 (Jul.
Sept. 1962): 87-101.
Larue, Jan. Significant and Coincidental Resemblances between Classical Themes, Journal of
the American Musicological Society 14, no. 2 (Summer 1961): 224-234.
Paden, William D. Old Occitan as a Lyric Language: The Insertions from Occitan in Three
Thirteenth-Century French Romances, Speculum 68 (1993): 36-53.
Parker, Ian. The Performance of Troubadour and Trouvere Songs: Some Facts and
Conjectures, Early Music 5, no. 2 (Apr. 1997): 184-207.
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Smythe, Barbara. Troubadour Songs. Music and Letters 2, No. 3 (1921): 263-273.

Stevens, John. La Grande Chanson Courtoise: The Chansons of Adam de la Halle,

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(Winter 1992): 106-112.
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Musicology 12, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 277-283.
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76-81.
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Quarterly 72, no. 3 (1986): 329-340.
Topsfield, L. T. Troubadours and Love. London: Cambridge University Press, 1971.
Van der Werf, H. The Chansons of the troubadours and trouveres: a study of the melodies and
their relation to the poems. Utrecht, 1972.
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and Letters 48, no. 1 (1967): 35-39.

15