Early medieval secular music was propagated as an oral tradition and not notated or taught systematically. Thus, little is known about secular music until the advent of troubadours and trouvères during the latter Middle Ages.
Phramond lifted on a shield by the Franks | Pierre Révoil (1776–1842) | Romantic depiction of the troubadour-crusader class. |
Palace of Versailles
Secular Musicians
During the High Middle Ages, there were two classes of secular musicians in France: Jongleurs and Troubadour or Trouvères. These musicians served as models for the development of courtly secular music in other European countries.
The wandering minstrels of the Middle Ages were called Jongleurs, and worked as instrumentalists, comics, actors, story tellers and acrobats. They performed in taverns, town squares and royal courts, often assisting troubadours. Jongleurs were outcasts lacking civil rights and equivalent to slaves and prostitutes in social status. In an era of no printed or electronic media, and a largely illiterate population, jongleurs served an important function as propagators of news.
Enchanted Dance | Lancelot joins the enchanted dance with knights and ladies | Northern France, c. 1316 | British Library Collection
Trouvères and Troubadours
Troubadours from southern France and trouvères from northern France were male poet-musicians active during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The term trobairitz is used to refer to female troubadours. Most early French troubadours were noblemen, including princes and kings, with knights and commoners with clerical education filling out their ranks. Unlike jongleurs, troubadours were not wandering entertainers but courtly composers and poets.
Related movements soon appeared throughout Europe: Minnesang in Germany and trovadorismo in Galicia and Portugal. Many troubadours were also warriors and joined the Crusades, bloody wars sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church and supposedly aimed at rescuing the Holy Land from Islamic rule.
Trovadorismo | Royal court of Alfonso X, 1221-1284, depicted in Cantigas de Santa María (c. 13th century), p. 69 | Patrimonio Nacional
First Secular Song Tradition
Troubadours and Trouvères are credited with composing the first European secular songs in the vernacular. That is, they wrote nonreligious poems, songs and dances in the tongue of the general population. In contrast, songs written for the Catholic Church were in Latin, a language used only in Church and academia.
Guilhem IX or Guilhèm de Peitieus (1071-1127), the seventh count of Poitiers, in southern France (Provence), is the first known troubadour. Besides being a poet and composer, Guilhem was a warrior and renegade: a commander in the Crusade of 1101, fought to recapture Cordoba from the Moors, threatened the Bishop of Poitiers with a sword, and was excommunicated from the Church twice! Here is a translated excerpt by Peter Sirr from one of Guilhem's songs:
Nothing: great subject, fit for a poem.
Here’s one: not me, not anyone, not
love, youth, any
of that. Nothing at all.
I wrote it in my sleep riding home, my
horse-poem.
I don’t know when I was born.
I’m not cheerful, and not angry.
No stranger here, no native either.
If you ask me
I was carried off and roughly magicked
on a dark night.
Hard to know if I’m asleep or awake, please
knock on my door and tell me.
I know I’m in heart trouble,
afflicted, sore. There again, put
the pills back in the box: why
should I care?
Timor mortis does its trick.
They say (they always say)
the cure is on the way.
Call the doctor, call the nurse
give them the prize if I improve,
otherwise not.
I have a friend, I’ve never seen her,
a vision beheld, the purest dream.
She never pleased me, nor ever
let me down. No matter,
no Normans or Frenchmen
darken my door...
The subject matter of troubadour and trouvère poetry typically involved chivalry and courtly love. However, Guilhem's Nothing Song is personal, whimsical and introspective, providing a revealing peek into the mind of a larger than life character living eight centuries ago.
Rebab and Oud Players | Trovadorismo depicted in Cantigas de Santa María (c. 13th century), p. 335 | Patrimonio Nacional
Surviving Repertory
Manuscripts of 300 troubadour songs and 1400 trouvère songs survive. They are written in mensural notation, the notation used for Gregorian chant. Former members of the clergy were in demand at royal courts and used their skills and education to archive songs of troubadours and trouvères.
These pieces were notated as single line melodies, but performers improvised percussion accompaniment and doubled the melody with pipes, fiddles and other instruments. The monophonic texture, rhythmic complexity and lack of harmony makes this music more akin to Asian music than later European music.
La karole d'amours (The Dance of Love) | Medieval dancers with drum and bagpipes | Northern France, c. 1340 | British Library Collection
Estampie
The estampie (istampitta) was a popular dance during the latter middle ages and represented in both troubadour and trouvère manuscripts. Only the melodic line of the dance was notated. The accompaniment was expected to be improvised. Listen to this wonderful performance of two estampie dances by Hanneke van Proosdij, recorder, and Peter Maund, percussion (frame drum).
La Septime Estampie Real & Istampitta In Pro | Recorder and percussion
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Secular Musicians
France
Jongleurs
Trouvères and Troubadours
First Secular Song Tradition
Surviving Repertory
Estampie
