Music As We Know It

Early Medieval troubadour was a composer and performer of songs during the European High Middle Ages. During my research for web analytics company I found that the word Troubadour is derived from Occitan trobado, that literally means “finder”, the one who finds after a research. There is a theory that musical forms focused on the early troubadours love theme were first exported from Moorish Spain to Southern Europe. Some of the troubadours’ works have survived to our days. They are currently preserved in manuscripts known as chansonniers or songbooks.

Popular troubadours with surviving works include Bernart de Ventadorn, Arnaut Daniel and Jaufré Rudel. The earliest troubadour whose work survives is Guilhem de Peitieus (1071–1127). His name has been preserved because he was the Duke of Aquitaine, but his work plays with already established structures. So I definitely think, that he had predecessors, though none of their work survived. The first half of the 12th century, however, saw relatively little recorded troubadours. Only in the last decades of the century troubadour activity exploded. Almost half of all troubadour works survive from the period 1180–1220. A complementary role was filled at the same period by performers known as joglares in Occitan, jongleurs in French, or minstrels in English. Jongleurs are often addressed in troubadour lyrics. Their profession was that of popular entertainer. So jongleurs sometimes performed troubadour compositions but more often other genres, notably chansons de geste.

The troubadour tradition seems to have begun in western Aquitaine and Gascony. From there it spread over into eastern Aquitaine and Provence. At its height it had become popular in Languedoc and the regions of Rouergue, Toulouse, and Quercy. Finally, in the early thirteenth century it began to spread into Italy and then Catalonia, and then to the rest of Spain.

Troubadour songs were usually monophonic. Fewer than 300 melodies out of an estimated 2500 survive. Most were composed by the troubadours themselves. Other troubadours set their poems to unknown to us prevous pieces music. 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, chivalry, war, and nature. Most songs were metaphysical, intellectual, and formulaic. Some songs were humorous or vulgar satires. And, naturally, a lot of songs addressed a married lover, due to the prevalence of arranged marriages at the time. There were many genres, the most popular being the canso, sirventes, tenso, and alba.

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