Jaques le Vinier was a 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...

 probably from the region around Arras

Arras

Arras is the capital of the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. The historic centre of the Artois region, its local speech is characterized as a Picard dialect...

 and associated with the trouvères of that city. He was a member of the Puy d'Arras

Puy d'Arras

The Puy d'Arras, called in its own day the Puy Notre-Dame, was a medieval poetical society formed in Arras for holding contests between trouvères and pour maintenir amour et joie . The term puy is Old French for "place of eminence", from Latin podium...

 and wrote a jeu parti

Jeu parti

Jeu parti [Fr.; Occitan joc partit, “partimen”]. A debate or dialogue in the form of a poem. According to Guilhem Molinier, the author of Las leys d'amors, a 13th-century treatise on how to write poetry in the style of the troubadours, there is a clear difference between a partimen and a tenso: in...

with Andrieu Contredit. His floruit

Floruit

Floruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...

dates are reconstructed on the basis of his reference to Jehan Bretel

Jehan Bretel

Jehan Bretel was a trouvère. Of his known oeuvre of probably 97 songs, 96 have survived. Judging by his contacts with other trouvères he was famous and popular...

 in his chanson d'amour

Grand chant

The gran chan or, in modern French, chanson courtoise or chanson d'amour, often abbreviated chanson, was a genre of Old French lyric poetry devised by the trouvères. It was adopted from the Occitan canso of the troubadours, but scholars stress that it was a distinct genre...

De loial amour. Besides chansons d'amour, Jaques also wrote chansons dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The main source preserving his work is the Vatican Chansonnier. Jaques wrote original melodies for his Marian songs, while most such works by other trouvères were contrafacta of pre-existing music. The plagal

Plagal mode

A Plagal mode may mean different church chanting modes, depending on the context.-In Western Practice:A plagal mode   is a musical mode, which is one of four Gregorian modes whose range includes the octave from the fourth below the tonic, or final, to the fifth above...

 melodies, all 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...

, are simple, but include both isometric

Isometre

Isometre is a music theory term describing the use of pulse without regular meter. See also: homorhythm. The music is currently used in the psalmsongs of the Orthodox Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, based on the rhythm made by Petrus Datheen , as well as some other churches....

 or heterometric tunes. Jaques's complete œuvre comprises:

• Ains que mi chant aient definement
• Bele dame bien aprise
• Chanter veul de la meillour
• De loial amour jolie
• Fine Amours, cui j'ai mon cuer done
• Je sui cieus qui tous jours foloie
• Loiaus amours qui en moi maint
• Vierge pucele roiaus

It is doubtful whether this last one is Jaques's. Unlike his other Marian chansons, it is a contrafactum of Lo clar tems vei brunezir by Raimon Jordan

Raimon Jordan

Raimon Jordan was a Toulousain troubadour and the viscount of Saint-Antonin in the Rouergue near the boundary with Quercy ....

.