Guiot de Dijon was a Burgundian trouvère

Trouvère

Trouvère , sometimes spelled trouveur , is the Northern French form of the word trobador . It refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France...

. The seventeen chansons ascribed to him are found in two chansonnier

Chansonnier

A chansonnier is a manuscript or printed book which contains a collection of chansons, or polyphonic and monophonic settings of songs, hence literally "song-books," although some manuscripts are so called even though they preserve the text but not the music A chansonnier is a manuscript or...

s: the Chansonnier du Roi and the less reliable Berne Chansonnier. According to the online edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, it is the largest single reference work on Western music. The dictionary has gone through several editions since the 19th century...

, Guiot was "technically fluent [and] successfully used a wide variety of poetic structures[, but] is seldom imaginative."

Guiot, presumably from Dijon

Dijon

Dijon is a city in eastern France, the capital of the Côte-d'Or département and of the Burgundy region.Dijon is the historical capital of the region of Burgundy. Population : 151,576 within the city limits; 250,516 for the greater Dijon area....

, was patronised by Erard II de Chassenay, who participated in the Fifth Crusade

Fifth Crusade

The Fifth Crusade was an attempt to reacquire Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land by first conquering the powerful Ayyubid state in Egypt....

 but was back in Europe in 1220.

Four of Guiot's songs—Amours m'a si enseignié, Quant je plus voi felon rire, Joie ne guerredon, and Quant li dous estés—have two distinct melodies in the chansonniers, and it is impossible to determined which, if either, is Guiot's invention. One late setting of Quant je plus is notable among trouvère melodies for being through-composed

Through-composed

Through-composed music is relatively continuous, non-sectional, and/or non-repetitive. A song is said to be through-composed if it has different music for each stanza of the lyrics. This is in contrast to strophic form, in which each stanza is set to the same music...

 and in Franconian notation. Overall, Guiot's melodies are usually identified as those appearing in bar form

Bar form

Bar form is a musical form of the pattern AAB.-Original Use:The term comes from the rigorous terminology of the Meistersinger guilds of the 15th to 18th century who used it to describe their songs and the songs of the predecessors, the minnesingers of the 12th to 14th century...

, which all end on the same note and have a common tessitura

Tessitura

In music, the term tessitura generally describes the most musically acceptable and comfortable range for a given singer or, less frequently, musical instrument; the range in which a given type of voice presents its best-sounding texture or timbre...

.

Guiot probably modelled Chanter m'estuet, coment que me destraigne after the Occitan song Si be·m sui loing et entre gent estraigna by the troubadour

Troubadour

A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....

 Peirol

Peirol

Peirol or PeiròlIn Occitan, peir means "stone" and -ol is a diminutive suffix, the name Peirol being understood as the equivalent of "Little Stone" but also "Petit Pierre" or "Pierrot" ; however, "peiròl" also meant a cauldron or a stove...

. The song Penser ne doit vilanie sometimes attributed to him served as a model for the anonymous De penser a vilanie.

List of songs

In only two cases is the ascription of a song to Guiot corroborated by a second source. Usually an ascription in a single source is contradicted by other ascriptions in other sources. The ascriptions of at least two songs without competing attributions have been doubted by modern scholars: Chanter m'estuet pour la plus bele and Chanterai por mon corage.

Generally attributed

• Amours m'a si enseignié
• Bien doi chanter quant fine Amour m'enseigne, no music
• Chanter m'estuet, coment que me destraigne
• Chanter m'estuet pour la plus bele, no music
• Chanterai por mon corage, unique setting in the Chansonnier Cangé
• Helas, qu'ai forfait a la gent
• Li dous tens noviaus qui revient, no music
• Quant je plus voi felon rire

Uncertain authorship

• De moi douloureus vos chant
• Joie ne guerredon d'amours
• Penser ne doit vilanie
• Quant li dous estés define
• Quant voi la flor botoner, no music
• Uns maus k'ainc mes ne senti