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The Troubadors

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rockessence
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« on: March 05, 2007, 03:25:02 am »

Probably the most cheerful and picturesque figures of the age of chivalry were the troubadours who sang in southern France and northern Italy. There have been minstrels and strolling poets before and since them, from the time of Homer to something very like the present, but the troubadours are in many ways distinct. They were among the first indications of a return to culture and they bloomed like flowers in the midst of the darkness and ignorance of the Middle Ages, appearing first among the vine-clad hills and vales of lovely Provence in southern France. A hint of their charm lies in the very music of their name, which comes from the Provencal verb trobaire, to find or to invent, and refers to the finding of rhyme, in which they took delight, after the severe reign of the quantitative measure of classic Greece. North of the Loire, by a similar process with a similar French verb, they were called trouvères. They sang in the Provencal tongue, an ephemeral one founded on the decadent Latin, out of which grew the Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese languages, not to mention the influence it exerted in the formation of English, Chaucer using the minstrel-songs as his first models. The troubadours occupied much the same position in France and the south of Europe as did the Minnesingers in Germany and the minstrel bards of England.

The era of the troubadour was comparatively short, scarcely three hundred years, in fact, from the beginning of the Eleventh Century to the close of the Thirteenth. The troubadour spent his winters, when not engaged in war, in the castle, of which he was sometimes the lord, sometimes one of the many retainers. Here he busied himself composing verses, while his lieutenant, the jongleur, increased his proficiency in playing upon the various instruments needed for accompaniment, pre-eminently the lute and the harp in Provence and the guitar in Italy and Spain. No doubt the jongleurs spent some little time in perfectly memorizing the songs also, for many of the troubadours intrusted to their lieutenants the singing of them. In Burney's History of England an interesting jongleur's " largo al factotum " is given. Therein, the jongleur describes his ability to play upon the viol, the pipe, the syrinx, the harp, the gigue, the psaltery, the symphony and the rote. He refers to his stock of tales and fables, his satires, ditties and amusing pastorals, and more than hints of the value of his assistance in love-affairs.

It was incumbent upon the jongleur to display skill in the use of many instruments. One boasted that he could play upon no less than seventeen. In short, much credit is due to him for the popularization of purely instrumental music. It is also chronicled that the jongleurs, when singing in company, would have the most talented of their number improvise a free melody against which the others chanted. In this discant, so called, may be seen the foundation of the part-song. Very often it was left for the jongleur, he being frequently the better musician, to compose the melody for the verses of his master.

As soon as the first hint of spring was manifest, the troubadour, accompanied by his jongleurs, set forth with his new songs. They traveled from town to town and from castle to castle, wherever their fancy led them, and were always sure of a welcome, even in countries with which their own nation was at war. Every monarch and noble kept open house for the troubadours. The modern social system is not half as effective as was this older one, in bringing into association the flower of the land, and to the troubadours as much traveled men all questions of etiquette were referred. Sometimes a noble received at his castle as many as two hundred visits in the seasons when the troubadours sang.

The troubadour was a warrior, but more than the fame of his valor did he love the appreciation of his merits as a versifier. He was more often than otherwise a man of rank, many kings being glad to number themselves in the tuneful fraternity. It is pleasant to observe the wholesome spirit of democracy attendant, the proudest monarch being willing to measure his talents as a singer and a poet with the lowest-born of his followers. Of Bernard de Ventadour, one of the most celebrated practisers of the " gay science," as they were pleased to call it, a chronicler, Pierre d'Auvergne, quaintly tells, " He had for his father a servant who shot well with a wooden bow, and his mother heated ovens and collected firewood." If, perhaps, the troubadour looked upon a company of lords and ladies as rather more than his proper sphere, the jongleur was surely to be found at fairs and festivals and other merrymakings. A jongleur standing upon an elevated platform and jauntily singing a canto to the accompaniment of his guitar was sight and sound dear to the heart of the common people.

The favorite theme of the troubadour was love, and closely following in esteem were flowery meadows and blue skies, and such delights of springtime. Sad to say, the effusions were usually most stilted and conventional. How-ever, love and spring, topics which have lost no particle of favor with the poets of today, had sometimes set in rivalry with them recountals of brave deeds. Matfre Ermengen went down in the annals of his time as the author of a work of two thousand seven hundred verses containing, in essence, all the knowledge of the age; while Amanieu des Escas has coaxed into song most valuable and detailed advice in all matters of a young lady's deportment, ranging from suggestions as to the advisability of frequent manicuring to specifications for the most graceful manner of declining and accepting offers of marriage.

The songs of the troubadours took many forms, chief among them being these three : The love song or chanson, also referred to as the son or sonnet. To this division belong the serenade or evening song; the aubade or morning song; and the alba, somewhat similar to the watch-song of the Minnesingers. The sirvantes, sometimes of a satirical nature, otherwise designed to convey political or moral admonition. The tenzo, a contest of wit and cleverness between two or more poets.

The melodies were at first stiff and awkward, but they gradually developed until, at the height of the troubadour régime in the Thirteenth Century, they had assumed a peculiar piquancy and flowing grace. Generally speaking, however, the melodies used in the singing of the troubadour verse were entirely subservient to the words, acting simply as their vehicle.

Mention of tenzo brings us to the subject of the Courts of Love, whose exact nature is largely a matter of conjecture, but which seem to have been poetic trials with presiding judges in the persons of the wittiest of the noble dames who administered justice according to a written code of thirty-one articles. Some of the more important of these were as follows :

Marriage is not a legitimate excuse for not loving.
Who does not know how to keep a secret is no lover.
No one can have two attachments at the same time.
Love must always increase or diminish.
The lover who survives is bound to preserve widowhood for two years.
The genuine lover is always timid.

Before the tribunal such subtle questions as these were discussed :

Which is the greater, the joys or sufferings of love?
A husband is aware that his wife has a lover. The lady and her lover are acquainted with the fact. Which of the three is in the most difficult position?

It is singular that the passionate lays of the troubadours invariably were addressed to married women, the husbands being frequently cognizant of the fact and encouraging the devotions of the youths. Not one of the many chronicled stories had marriage either as its aim or its dénouement. In many instances, it almost appears as if the relation were purely Platonic, and rather of the understanding than of the heart. In the most reserved of terms does the troubadour address the gracious lady who condescends to smile upon him from her eminence. Evidently, the women of the nobility enjoyed great liberty at the time. They seldom married for love, their husbands being chosen for them by parents or feudal overlords. When scarcely out of girl-hood, they were taken to preside over some baronial court thronged with warriors and the gay troubadours and jongleurs whom their husbands maintained.

There were feminine troubadours, too, and the names of fourteen progressive Provencal ladies who sang their own poems to the lute and guitar have been preserved. One of these was the Countess Beatrice de Die, who was enamored of another troubadour, no other than the famous Rarnbaut of Orange (1150-1173) from whom the Dutch line of the House of Nassau derived its name. A portion of her works have been preserved with her sad story sad, for Rambaut proved unfaithful and unworthy. But in the hey-day of her happiness, Beatrice sang : " The joy you give me is such that a thousand doleful people would be made merry by my joy."

The first of all the troubadours of whom we have much account was William IX. of Poitiers (1087-1127). This dashing crusader and cavalier has left behind him nine poems and ground for grave suspicion of his moral code. Following in his footsteps as a troubadour, at least, was his son, William X., the father of one of the most illustrious women of her time, Eleanor, wife first of the ascetic Louis VII. of France, and later of Henry II. of England. This brilliant patroness of the troubadours has been convicted in history of flagrant unfaithfulness as a wife, and in fiction of the murder of her rival, Rosamund Clifford, but her evidently innocent connection with Bernard del Ventadour throws a happier light upon her career.

This sweetest of the troubadours, noted for his lovely metaphors, naively accounts for his superiority in this wise : " No wonder that I sing better than any other; for my heart is more disposed to love, and more submissive to its laws. Body and soul, spirit and knowledge, strength and power — I have devoted all to love. He is already dead who does not love. What is the use of him except to trouble others." In the case of Bernard, his liege lord, unfortunately, was jealous when he gained the lady's affections, and the troubadour was forced to flee to the Court of Henry II., where Eleanor welcomed and befriended him.

Bertram de Born is, perhaps, the best known of all the troubadours from the part he played in the struggle between Henry II. and his rebel sons. He became a monk before he died, exchanging the court for the cloister. Dante, himself, termed " the troubadour spiritualized," mentions him in his poems putting him, alas, in Hades.

The quaintest figure of them all was the Italian, Piere Vidal, whom someone has aptly described as a combination of Don Quixote and Malvolio. This erratic fellow was the most susceptible of mortals, but he fell in love once too often and had his tongue slit for singing too sweet verses. We cannot but rejoice to know that it healed full well enough for him to woo another woman successfully. One of the critics of the day thus sums him up; " He was the best singer in the world and a good finder; but he was the most foolish man in the world, because he thought every-thing tiresome except verse."

What schoolboy but knows the story of those two famous troubadours, Richard Coeur de Lion and Blondel, his faithful squire? And what heart has not warmed at the thought of Blondel wandering over all Europe and singing his master's songs under each castle and fortress, and thrilled when at last the king's voice answered with the familiar refrain from the narrow window of the prison of the Duke of Austria, thus ending Blondel's quest. Blondel was the author of thirty manuscripts which still exist.

Châtelain de Coucy has left behind him some of the best verses and certainly the most gruesome story. When mortally wounded in the Holy Wars, he charged his squire to carry his heart to his lady-love, Dame Fayel, and having preserved the token in spices, this the retainer did. But it was intercepted by the husband, who so contrived that the lady ate it. She learned this horrid thing upon her lord's sardonic questioning as to how she liked the flavor of the meat, and answered, " It was so good and savory that never other meat or drink shall take from my mouth the sweetness which the heart of Guillam has left there," and, as the tale concludes, " so died hunger-starved."

One is inclined to dwell on many tempting tales, such as that of Jaufre Rudel, who fell in love with the Countess of Tripoli, whom he had never seen, but the fame of whose beauty and many fair gifts of mind and heart had come to him across the seas. How he embarked for Tripoli and, stricken with illness on the voyage, arrived dying, and how the Countess, who had heard of his devotion, came to him that he might die in her arms — surely that is a love-story poetical enough for even a troubadour.

It is not until the Thirteenth Century that we hear of troubadours in Italy. Then Raymond Berenger, Count of Provence, visited Emperor Frederick II. at Milan bringing troubadours and jongleurs in his train. Thus taught, Italy soon produced her own trovatori and the influence of Provencal poetry was felt in the land for many years.

The Italian jongleurs frequently brought for the diversion of their patrons sleight-of-hand tricks and monkeys, camels and dancing bears, as well as the popular songs of the day, their performances amounting to a sort of crude vaudeville. From this we may see the evolution of the modern " juggler " from the jongleur. These itinerant mountebanks for a while enjoyed the church's favor and were allowed to take part in the passion plays and mysteries.

The Spaniards had their trobadores or decideres, who flourished in the Fourteenth Century. Towards its end, John I. of Aragon, sent troubadours from the college of Toulouse to Barcelona, where they founded a consistory for their favorite art, which remained until the death of Martin, John's successor. Famous among the Spanish singers was Don Jorge Sainte Jorde. The trobadores and jogleurs, as they were known in Spain, were chiefly to be found in Aragon and Castile, and women as well as men roamed through the provinces, singing and improvising for their bread.

But the troubadour's was a dainty art which could flourish only under smiles and fair-weather skies. In France, the poverty and hardship incident upon the Albigensian wars in the Thirteenth Century drove the few who survived to Italy and Castile, and in the latter country, Alphonso X. gave them shelter. Later, in Italy, the frowns of several austere popes who cared not a whit for a love-chanson or the praise of spring, discouraged them until the songs died on their lips and their harps were mute.

Innocent IV. went to such lengths as to issue a bull interdicting the Provencal language as heretical and for-bidding its use by students. Perhaps the Holy Father remembered some such as Guillaume Figueira, who had called Rome the source of all decay.

Though the troubadours died in the Fourteenth Century, they left their lasting impress upon literature, notably upon Italian poetry. Dante and Petrarch, Tasso and Ariosto, received inspiration from them. Only from the heart of one at least a troubadour in spirit could have issued those songs addressed by Dante to Beatrice and by Petrarch to Laura. The troubadours not only filled the place of modern light literature and the theatre, but also constituted in themselves an unconscious civilizing agency, through the songs and customs which they carried with them in their progress through different lands. Even though the troubadour poetry was not at all times valuable in itself, in it have been caught and imprisoned many invaluable glimpses of the customs and theories of the period. Although the influence was largely literary, the troubadours were the most effectual of agencies for the dissemination of the musical knowledge of the day, meager though it may have been. In their travels they carried from country to country what they knew of its theory, as well as the various musical instruments in the use of which they were proficient.

http://www.tribalsmile.com/music/article_26.shtml
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ILLIGITIMI NON CARBORUNDUM

Thus ye may find in thy mental and spiritual self, ye can make thyself just as happy or just as miserable as ye like. How miserable do ye want to be?......For you GROW to heaven, you don't GO to heaven. It is within thine own conscience that ye grow there.

Edgar Cayce

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rockessence
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« Reply #1 on: March 05, 2007, 03:41:34 am »

Poet Bill Merwin wrote this on Piere Vidal, the subject of a favorite book of my youth:

PEIRE VIDAL

I saw the wolf in winter watching on the raw hill
I stood all night on top of the black tower and sang
I saw my mouth in spring float away on the river
I was a child in rooms where the furs were climbing
and each was alone and they had no eyes no faces
nothing inside them moved but the stories
they never breathed as they waved in their dreams of grass
and I sang the best songs that were sung in the world
as long as a song lasts they came by themselves to me
and I loved blades and boasting and shouting as I rode
as though I was the bright light flashing from everything
I loved being with women and their breath and their skin
and the thought of them that carried me like a wind
I uttered terrible things about other men
in a time when tongues were cut out to pay for kissing
but I set my sails for the island of Venus
and a niece of the Emperor in Constantinople
and I could have become the Emperor myself
I won and I won and all the women in the world
were in love with me and they wanted what I wanted
so I thought and every one of them deceived me
I was the greatest fool in the world I was the world's fool
I have been forgiven and I've come home as I dreamed
and seen them all dancing and singing as the ship came in
and I have watched friends die and have worn black and cut off
the tails and ears of all my horses in mourning
and have shaven my head and the heads of my followers
I have been a poor man living in a rich man's house
and I have gone to the mountains and for one woman
I have worn the fur of a wolf and the shepherds' dogs have run me to earth and I have been left for dead
and have come back hearing them laughing and the furs
were hanging in the same places and I have seen
what is not there I have sung its song I have breathed
its day and it was nothing to  you where you were you

(the following was with the poem, not my writing)
and still no period? Okay, I agree; none is needed. And I apologize for the short lines, and the line spacing for so narrow a column width, but it is a great poem, and the poem comes through beautifully, with no loss of meaning or intent because of this formatting situation.

Not many poems would.

Anybody wonder who Piere Vidal was? I looked him up on Google and found he was a Twelfth Century troubadour. Google asked me if I wanted a translation from the French, and it  had been a long time since I took the graduate reading exam in this language, so I said, "Yes."

What I got was curiously interesting. I repeat it, verbatim:

"Peire Vidal ( ... 1183-1204 ... ) 
"Peire Vidal is the most original troubadour of this period. It accepts and is made pass itself for a little insane. It is a large traveler. Its poems inform us about itself, thanks to allusions of which it has sparse its work. He left the lower middle class of Toulouse. The monk of Montaudon says to us that he was "a pellicier" (furrier).

"THE COUNT, THE VISCOUNT AND THE KING

"He began his career from poet near the count Raymond V the court of Toulouse was then one of the most snuffed literary centers South of France. The count appears among ten song of Peire Vidal, sometimes under the senhal of "Castiat" - that which is morigéné-.

"At the same time, it had a powerful guard in the person of the king Alphonse II of Aragon (1162-1196), count de Barcelone and of Provence. He was practically his appointed poet. He could even the morigéner without the king taking shade of it: reproach for making the war with vassal, carelessness with respect to Provence, for missing with its duties of king. Never this king will be annoyed against him, never it will not express bad mood.

"However, it also addresses to its guard praises and praises, and considers its generosity and its valiancy. Until his death and even after, Alphonse II of Aragon, occupies a place of choice in the work of Peire Vidal.

"Concurrently to these powerful lords, there is a third of less political importance certainly, but of greater emotional importance: the Barral Viscount of Marseilles known under the senhal of "Rainier de Marselha". For this one, Peire Vidal tests a real and sincere friendship. To speak about his friend, it finds the accents of a true tenderness"

Nice, eh?

(end of piece)
WOW! 

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ILLIGITIMI NON CARBORUNDUM

Thus ye may find in thy mental and spiritual self, ye can make thyself just as happy or just as miserable as ye like. How miserable do ye want to be?......For you GROW to heaven, you don't GO to heaven. It is within thine own conscience that ye grow there.

Edgar Cayce
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