Jehan de Nuevile was the second son of the Eustache de Nuevile, a minor nobleman with land in Neuville-Vitasse

Neuville-Vitasse

Neuville-Vitasse is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France.-Geography:Neuville-Vitasse situated southeast of Arras, at the junction of the D14 and D5 roads.-Population:-Places of interest:...

, near 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...

. Jehan succeeded to the patrimony on the death of his elder brother, Eustache. He himself was dead by 1254, when his younger brother, Gilles, appears as lord at Neuville. Jehan is better known as 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...

.

Colart le Boutellier

Colart le Boutellier

Colart le Boutellier was a well-connected trouvère from Arras. There are no references to him independent of his own and others' songs, found in the chansonniers. One of these depicts the known coat-of-arms used by the Boutillier family, one of the petty noble clans of Arras, and assigns it to...

 dedicated one of his songs to Jehan. The song L'autrier par un matinet, dedicated to Colart, may be a response from Jehan, although there are competing attributions. The Chansonnier du Roi (BnF

BNF

BNF may stand for:In science:*Biological nitrogen fixation, a process that converts nitrogen in the atmosphere to ammonia*British National Formulary, the standard drug reference manual**British National Formulary for Children...

 fr.844) ascribes sixteen chansons courtoises to Jehan in its table of contents, although six of these are attributed to two other poets, Gautier d'Espinal and Guiot de Dijon

Guiot de Dijon

Guiot de Dijon was a Burgundian trouvère. The seventeen chansons ascribed to him are found in two chansonniers: the Chansonnier du Roi and the less reliable Berne Chansonnier...

, in the rubric

Rubric

A rubric is a word or section of text which is traditionally written or printed in red ink to highlight it. The word derives from the , meaning red ochre or red chalk, and originates in Medieval illuminated manuscripts from the 13th century or earlier...

s. Only three of Jehan's pieces survive with melodies in the Chansonnier to Roi and these are his only pieces to appear in other manuscripts:

• Desoremais est raison
• Quant li boscages retentist
• L'autrier par un matinet

Jehan's chansons are generally heptasyllabic and 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....

. All are 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...

. Also surviving on Jehan's name is a complainte, an Old French

Old French

Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...

 variant of the Old Occitan planh

Planh

The planh or plaing is a funeral lament used by the troubadours, modeled on the medieval Latin planctus. It differed from the planctus in that it was intended for a secular audience...

, a form rare in northern France. Its music is lost.