Trobairitz
Encyclopedia
The trobairitz were Occitan
Occitania
Occitania , also sometimes lo País d'Òc, "the Oc Country"), is the region in southern Europe where Occitan was historically the main language spoken, and where it is sometimes still used, for the most part as a second language...
female 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....
s of the 12th and 13th centuries, active from around 1170 to approximately 1260. The word trobairitz was first used in the 13th-century romance
Romance (genre)
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
Flamenca
Romance of Flamenca
The Romance of Flamenca is a 13th century romance, written in the Occitan language in Occitania. A certain Sir Bernardet may have been the author, however the Bernardet mentioned may simply be the fictional narrator. Nothing is known for certain about the author; however, a number of things may be...
. It comes from the Provençal word trobar, the literal meaning of which is "to find", and the technical meaning of which is "to compose". The word trobairitz is used very rarely in medieval Occitan, as it does not occur in lyrical poetry, grammatical treatises, or in the biographies of the trobairitz or troubadours. Trobairitz composed, wrote verses, and performed for the Occitan noble court
Noble court
The court of a monarch, or at some periods an important nobleman, is a term for the extended household and all those who regularly attended on the ruler or central figure...
s. They are exceptional in musical history as the first known female composers of Western secular music; all earlier known female composers wrote sacred music. The trobairitz were part of courtly society, as opposed to their lower class counterparts the joglaressas
Minstrel
A minstrel was a medieval European bard who performed songs whose lyrics told stories of distant places or of existing or imaginary historical events. Although minstrels created their own tales, often they would memorize and embellish the works of others. Frequently they were retained by royalty...
. Although troubadours sometimes came from humble origins—Bernart de Ventadorn
Bernart de Ventadorn
Bernart de Ventadorn , also known as Bernard de Ventadour or Bernat del Ventadorn, was a prominent troubador of the classical age of troubadour poetry. Now thought of as "the Master Singer" he developed the cançons into a more formalized style which allowed for sudden turns...
may have been the son of a castle's baker—the trobairitz were nobly born. The most important trobairitz are Alamanda de Castelnau
Alamanda de Castelnau
Alamanda was a trobairitz whose only surviving work is a tenso with Giraut de Bornelh called S'ie.us qier conseill, bella amia Alamanda. In the past she was usually considered fictitious and the "tenso" was considered a piece of Giraut's writing...
, Azalais de Porcairagues
Azalais de Porcairagues
Azalais de Porcairagues or Alasais de Porcaragues was a trobairitz , composing in Occitan in the late 12th century....
, Maria de Ventadorn
Maria de Ventadorn
Maria de Ventadorn was a patron of troubadour poetry at the end of the 12th century.Maria was one of las tres de Torena, "the three of Turenne", the three daughters of viscount Raymond II of Turenne and of Elise de Séverac. These three, according to Bertran de Born, possessed tota beltat terrena,...
, Tibors, Castelloza
Castelloza
Na Castelloza was a noblewoman and trobairitz from Auvergne. According to her later vida, she was the wife of Turc de Mairona, probably the lord of Meyronne. Turc's ancestors had participated in a Crusade around 1210 or 1220, which was the origin of his name...
, Garsenda de Proença, Gormonda de Monpeslier
Gormonda de Monpeslier
Na Gormonda de Monpeslier or Montpelher was a trobairitz from Montpellier in Languedoc. Her lone surviving work, a sirventes, has been called "the first French political poem by a woman."...
, and the Comtessa de Diá.
Sources of information
There are very few extant sources of information on the individual trobairitz. Almost all information which exists about them come from their vidasVida (Occitan literary form)
Vida is the usual term for a brief prose biography, written in Old Occitan, of a troubadour or trobairitz.The word vida means "life" in Occitan languages. In the chansonniers, the manuscript collections of medieval troubadour poetry, the works of a particular author are often accompanied by a...
(biographies) and razós
Razó (Occitan literary form)
A razó or razo was a short piece of Occitan prose detailing the circumstances of a troubadour composition. A razó normally introduced an individual poem, acting as a prose preface and explanation; it might, however, share some of the characteristics of a vida and the boundary between the...
(contextual explanations of the songs), the brief descriptions that were assembled in song collections called 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 vidas are notoriously unreliable, since they frequently consisted of little more than romanticized extrapolations from the poems of the trobairitz themselves. The names of about twenty female poets from the 12th and 13th centuries survive, with an estimated thirty-two works attributed to the trobairitz. There are about 5 percent as many trobairitz as there are troubadours, and the number of surviving compositions by trobairitz amounts to around 1 percent of those we have by the troubadours. The earliest surviving lyric written by a trobairitz is that of Bels dous amics, written by Tibors around 1150. Only one survives with musical notation
Musical notation
Music notation or musical notation is any system that represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written symbols.-History:...
intact, "A chantar" by Comtessa de Diá (see below). Some works which are anonymous in the sources are ascribed by certain modern editors to women, as are some works which are attributed to men in the manuscripts. For comparison, of the 460 male troubadours, about 2600 of their poems survive. Of these, about one in 10 survive with musical notation intact. Only two trobairitz have left us with more than one song apiece. Those two women are Comtessa de Dia, who leaves us with four cansos, and Castelloza, with three cansos and a fourth that is anonymous.
The early chansonniers did not separate the works of the male troubadours from those of the trobairitz. It was only in later Italian and Catalan
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
chansonniers that the works of the trobairitz were found in different sections than those of their male counterparts.
Position in medieval society
Throughout the 13th century, women of the court were expected to be able to sing, play instruments, and write jocs partis, or partimenPartimen
The partimen is a genre of Occitan lyric poetry composed between two troubadours, a subgenre of the tenso or cobla exchange in which one poet presents a dilemma in the form of a question and the two debate the answer, each taking up a different side. It was especially popular in poetic contests....
(a debate or dialogue in the form of a poem). The cultivation of these womanly skills may have led to the writings of the trobairitz.
The trobairitz may also have arisen due the power women held in southern France during the 12th and 13th centuries. Women had far more control over land ownership, and Occitan society was far more accepting of women than were other societies of the time. During the Crusades many men were away, which left women with more administrative responsibility, and thus, power. Nevertheless, this society was not "feminist", nor was fin' amor, which exalted women while at the same time circumscribing many aspects of their lives and behavior.
There is difficulty in labeling the trobairitz as either amateurs or professionals. The distinction between these two roles was complicated in the medieval era, since professionals were generally lower class, and amateurs had as much time as professionals to devote to their craft. Joglaresse were lower class, professional composers far less respected than the trobairitz.
Both troubadours and trobairitz wrote of fin' amors, or courtly love
Courtly love
Courtly love was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration. Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility. It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife....
. Women were generally the subject of the writings of troubadours, however: "No other group of poets give women so exalted a definition within so tightly circumscribed a context of female suppression." The tension between the suppression of women present in the poetry of the troubadours and similar themes in the poetry of the trobairitz is a major source of discussion for modern commentators. The trobairitz wrote in the canso
Canso (song)
The canso is a song style used by the troubadours. It consists of three parts. The first stanza is the exordium, where the composer explains his purpose. The main body of the song occurs in the following stanzas, and usually draw out a variety of relationships with the exordium. The canso can end...
(strophic song) and tenso
Tenso
A tenso is a style of Occitan song favoured by the troubadours. It takes the form of a debate in which each voice defends a position on a topic relating to love or ethics. Closely related genres include the partimen and the cobla exchange...
(debate poem) genres. Besides cansos and tensos, trobairitz also wrote sirventes
Sirventes
The sirventes or serventes is a genre of Occitan lyric poetry used by the troubadours. In early Catalan it became a sirventesch and was imported into that language in the fourteenth century, where it developed into a unique didactic/moralistic type...
(political poems), 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...
(lament), salut d’ amor (a love letter not in strophic form), alba
Alba
Alba is the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland. It is cognate to Alba in Irish and Nalbin in Manx, the two other Goidelic Insular Celtic languages, as well as similar words in the Brythonic Insular Celtic languages of Cornish and Welsh also meaning Scotland.- Etymology :The term first appears in...
(dawn songs), and balada (dance songs). Judging by what survives today, the trobairitz wrote no pastorela
Pastorela
The pastorela was an Occitan lyric genre used by the troubadours. It gave rise to the Old French pastourelle. The central topic was always meeting of a knight with a shepherdess, which may lead to any of a number of possible conclusions. They are usually humorous pieces...
s or malmariee songs, unlike their troubadour counterparts. Furthermore, in keeping with the troubadour tradition, the trobairitz closely linked the action of the singing to the action of loving. Comtessa de Dia demonstrates this in her poem Fin ioi me don'alegranssa, stating that "Fin ioi me dona alegranssa/per qu'eu chan plus gaiamen," translated as "Happiness brings me pure joy/which makes me sing more cheerfully."
Attribution
The number of works attributed to the trobairitz is estimated at thirty-two songs, but ranges anywhere from 23 to 46. There are a number of reasons why an exact number is not known. In the courtly love tradition it was common for poems to be written as an exchange of letters, or a debate, as in a tenso. Some of these may have been originally written by one poet; however, some were originally an actual exchange of epistleEpistle
An epistle is a writing directed or sent to a person or group of people, usually an elegant and formal didactic letter. The epistle genre of letter-writing was common in ancient Egypt as part of the scribal-school writing curriculum. The letters in the New Testament from Apostles to Christians...
s, later gathered together in a manuscript. Some of these were between men, and some were between a man and a woman. Some modern editors attribute these solely to the man who originated the exchange, and some attribute them to both the man and the woman involved. There is a long history of attributing these solely to men, even when all evidence points to the contrary.
Since poetry was highly stylized, it is difficult to determine when a poet speaking as a woman actually was a woman, or a man speaking as a woman. This adds to the difficulty of attribution, especially of anonymous
Anonymity
Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning "without a name" or "namelessness". In colloquial use, anonymity typically refers to the state of an individual's personal identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown.There are many reasons why a...
writers. There is some debate as to whether or not the poems by the trobairitz represent genuine feminine voices, since they worked within the highly circumscribed conventions of the troubadours. Bruckner suggests that the trobairitz "spoke in her own voice as channeled through the voices of many others". By manipulating the strict constructs of troubadour lyric, the trobairitz were able to create their own "fictions of the female voice".
There is one notable instance where clear attribution is given to a woman, Bieiris de Romans
Bieiris de Romans
Bieiris de Roman was a trobairitz of the first half of the thirteenth century. Her birthplace was Romans near Montélimar. She left behind one canso, "Na Maria, pretz e fina valors" , addressed to another woman named Mary...
(also given as Beatritz), but the subject of the poem is another woman, Na Maria. In the poem "Na Maria" Beatritz expresses her love for Maria in the traditional fin' amors style, both in terms of physical longing and courtly admiration. This poem, if not clearly marked as by a woman, would be assumed to be by a man. Some controversy surrounds the works of the Bieiris de Romans, as scholars have suggested that her canso expresses "lesbian desire." The troubadour would typically speak to the domna (woman); the fact that the lyrical dialogue takes place exclusively between one woman and another is an extreme rarity.
Attributed
- Alais Iselda and Carenza: Na Carenza al bel cors avinen
- Alamanda de CastelnauAlamanda de CastelnauAlamanda was a trobairitz whose only surviving work is a tenso with Giraut de Bornelh called S'ie.us qier conseill, bella amia Alamanda. In the past she was usually considered fictitious and the "tenso" was considered a piece of Giraut's writing...
- Almucs de CastelnauAlmucs de CastelnauAlmucs de Castelnau or Castelnou was a trobairitz, that is a female troubadour, from a town near Avignon in Provence. Her name is also spelled Almuc, Amucs, Almois, Almurs, or Almirs....
and Iseut de CapioIseut de CapioNIseut de Capio or Capion was a noblewoman and trobairitz from Gévaudan. She was a neighbour of Almucs de Castelnau, with whom she composed a tenso, her only surviving piece of work....
: Domna n’Almucs, si-us plages - Azalais d'AltierAzalais d'AltierAzalais or Azalaïs d'Altier was an early-13th-century trobairitz. She was from Altier in the Gévaudan. She has sometimes been confused with Almucs de Castelnau....
- Azalais de PorcairaguesAzalais de PorcairaguesAzalais de Porcairagues or Alasais de Porcaragues was a trobairitz , composing in Occitan in the late 12th century....
- Beatriz de Diá
- CastellozaCastellozaNa Castelloza was a noblewoman and trobairitz from Auvergne. According to her later vida, she was the wife of Turc de Mairona, probably the lord of Meyronne. Turc's ancestors had participated in a Crusade around 1210 or 1220, which was the origin of his name...
- Clara d'AnduzaClara d'AnduzaClara d'Anduza was a trobairitz from the first third of the 13th century, probably born to the ruling family of Anduze. Her only surviving work is a canso beginning En greu esmay et en greu pessamen. She was mentioned in a long razo to a canso of Uc de Saint Circ and was probably the addressee of a...
- Beatritz de Romans: Na Maria, pretz e fina valors
- Felipa
- Garsenda de Proença: Vos qe’m semblatz dels corals amadors
- Gaudairença: Coblas e dansas (not extant)
- Gormonda de MonpeslierGormonda de MonpeslierNa Gormonda de Monpeslier or Montpelher was a trobairitz from Montpellier in Languedoc. Her lone surviving work, a sirventes, has been called "the first French political poem by a woman."...
- Guillelma de RosersGuillelma de RosersGuillelma de Rosers , also spelled Guilleuma, Guillielma, Guilielma, or Guilhelma, was a Provençal trobairitz of the mid-thirteenth century, one of the last known trobairitz. She was originally from Rougiers but lived in Genoa for a long time, where she met Lanfranc Cigala, who wrote about her in...
- Domna H.
- Lambarda
- Maria de VentadornMaria de VentadornMaria de Ventadorn was a patron of troubadour poetry at the end of the 12th century.Maria was one of las tres de Torena, "the three of Turenne", the three daughters of viscount Raymond II of Turenne and of Elise de Séverac. These three, according to Bertran de Born, possessed tota beltat terrena,...
: Gui d'Uisel, be.m pesa de vos - Tibors de SarenomTibors de SarenomTibors de Sarenom or Tiburge is the earliest attestable trobairitz, active during the classical period of medieval Occitan literature at the height of the popularity of the troubadours.-Biography:...
- YsabellaYsabella (trobairitz)Ysabel or Ysabella was a 13th-century trobairitz. Almost nothing is known about her with certainty, but many conjectures have been put forward...
See also
- List of troubadours and trobairitz
- Medieval musicMedieval musicMedieval music is Western music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century...
- Provençal literatureProvençal literatureOccitan literature — still sometimes called Provençal literature — is a body of texts written in Occitan in what is nowadays the South of France. It originated in the poetry of the 11th- and 12th-century troubadours, and inspired the rise of vernacular literature throughout medieval...
- List of medieval composers
- List of female composers