Between Sequence and Sirventes

Aspects of the Parody in the Troubadour Lyric

Catherine Leglu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351198295
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Critica letteraria antica e classica

"Parody marks the troubadour lyric from the outset, informing composition, performance and reception. This ground breaking study moves away from courtliness, the focus of most previous studies, and places troubadour parodic preactice int he context of the social and spiritual debates of 12th and 13th century Occitania. Leglu analyses the complex relationship between troubadour verse and the Aquitanian para-liturgical Latin corpus. She charts the development of a chain of texts linked by a common formal mode derived from this Latin sequence and traces patterns of rewriting, ranging from scurrilous attacks, through playful competition, to recuperation of the sacred content in serious parody."

Chapter 1
Parodic Sequences and Peire Cardenal

In a scurrilous song attacking clergues, the troubadour Peire Cardenal criticizes their disruption of the office of Matins and specifically of its liturgical chant:

E en loc de matinas an us ordes trobatz

Que jazon ab putanas tro.l solelhs es levatz, Enans canton baladas e prozels trasgitatz.

(PC 335, 64, Lavaud, XXXIV, vv. 19–21)

[And in place of Matins, they have composed an order [of service]: that they should lie with whores until the sun has risen, and sing baladas and travestied prosae instead.]

A prosa or prosula, 'small prose', is a form of trope inserted into the liturgy of the Mass, in addition to the existing chant. Connections between these forms of sacred chant and troubadour melodies have long been attested. The corpus of hymns and para-liturgical material found in the manuscripts housed in Saint-Martial-de-Limoges was disseminated over the Occitan and Northern Spanish regions, and shares some melodies with troubadour songs.¹ When Peire Cardenal speaks of monks, friars or clerks singing prosae they have twisted or altered, the reference may be to a tradition in which he, a former canon, may have been trained. Peire Cardenal's vida states that he was born into a noble family of the town of Le Puy-en-Vélay and became a canon at an early age. He trained to become a cleric, but fell into the secular life instead (BS, L):

E cant era petitz, sos paires lo mes per quanorgue en la quanorgia major del Puei; et apres letras, e saup ben lezer e chantar. E quant fo vengutz en etat d'ome, el s'azautet de la vanetat d'aquest mon, quar el se sentit gais e bels e joves. E molt trobet de bellas razos e de bels chanz.

[And when he was little, his father placed him in the greater canonry of Le Puy, to become a canon; and he learned letters, and knew how to read and sing well. And when he came to manhood, he acquired a taste for the vanity of this world, for he felt himself to be joyful, handsome and young. And he composed many good razos and good songs.]

Peire Cardenal is presented as a cathedral canon, trained in the cathedral school of Le Puy-en-Vélay, who later turned away from his spiritual training, and used his knowledge of music and letters to compose secular songs, especially sirventes. His devotional song to the Virgin, 'Vera vergena Maria' (PC 335, 70, XXXVIII), was linked by Lavaud to the 'Salve Regina', composed in Le Puy in the eleventh century. Despite his continued use of elements of his original training, Peire Cardenal's surviving corpus of songs is satirical, and markedly anti-clerical.

Peire Cardenal's career path is not unusual. The troubadour vidas are of debatable historical value, but indicate the expectations of readers and scribes about the social origins of poets. The troubadour Gausbert de Poicibot is said to have been an oblate in the monastery of Saint-Léonard-des-Chaumes, led into the secular life by his desire for women (BS, XXIX). Uc de Saint-Circ's vida states that he was sent to study in Montpellier by his brothers, but spent his time studying the poems and lives of the troubadours and eventually left to become a joglar (BS, XXXIII). The canon Daude de Pradas, on the other hand, remained in regular orders (BS, XXX), as did the Monk of Montaudon (BS, XLVI). In the twelfth century, the troubadour Arnaut Daniel is said to have left off his learning in order to become a poet (BS, IX). Giraut de Bornelh is said to have spent bis summers touring as a troubadour, accompanied by two joglars, and his winters studying in escola (BS, VIII). He was reluctant to marry and donated all his wealth to his relatives and his local church (VIII, 6). His contemporary Arnaut de Marueil was a clerk of low birth who found it impossible to earn a living from his learning, so turned to a peripatetic career (BS, VII).²

Peire travelled around courts with a joglar who performed his songs, and seems to have preserved his texts in written form. The vida is signed by a scribe, Miquel de la Tor, who states that he compiled a collection of Peire's texts in the city of Nîmes around the time of the death of the poet, who lived to be nearly 100. This anthology has not survived, and was probably related to another lost manuscript, a collection of troubadour songs compiled by Miquel de la Tor in Montpellier around 1300.³ While this indicates that Peire was less careful with the transmission of his songs than his near-contemporary Guiraut Riquier, who left a collection of songs complete with their date of composition and notes on performance, it also suggests a poet who used his book learning to create an accessible archive of songs.

According to Peire Cardenal, the monks he attacks are performing prosae they have altered in some way. The term trasgitatz, the past participle of trasgitar, may be translated in a variety of ways. Levy and Raynouard suggest 'bateler, jongler, barioler', 'travestir' or 'entremêler'.⁴ The clerks described in this song are the composers and performers of songs that may, according to the range of possible definitions available, be burlesqued or merely entertaining; the sense of 'entremêler' is seductive, in its connotations of generic admIXture. 'Bateler, jongler' also imply an idea of travesty and of jongleuresque public performance.

What evidence there is of vernacular prozels trasgitatz that may have been sung by monks is slight. One possible example may be the anonymous song 'Ara lausatz', which expresses the bawdy desires of a monastic community through a parodic song of praise:

Ara lausatz, lausat, lausat
Li comandament l'abat.
Bela, si vos eravatz
Monja de nostra maison,
A profiech de totz los monges
Vos prendriatz liurason.
Mas vos non estaretz, Bela,
Si totzjorns enversa non

Ço ditz l'abat.

[Now sing praises! Praised, praised be the commandment of the abbot. Lovely girl, were you a nun in our house, you would receive tribute to the benefit of all the monks. You will not spend a day there, lovely girl, unless you are on your back. So says the abbot.]

Peter Linehan's account of the riotous disturbances at the Dominican convent of Las Dueñas in Zamora in the year 1279 provides ample evidence of the uses to which liturgical and secular song could be put. The nuns attacked their prioress by singing and composing 'cantilenas malas et turpas' against her, while others chanted insults. The Te Deum was sung in the chapel to signal triumphant rebellion, and, on one occasion, a group of nuns who had taken friars as lovers seem to have enacted a parody of a liturgical ritual: '[W]hen the friars had gone away, they processed solemnly through the cloister, attributing the names of friars to each other and singing a chant as though they were accompanying a corpse to its grave.'⁵

Such parodic treatments of liturgical material have been inferred rather than identified in the relationship between the tropes and versus of the Aquitainian corpus and the troubadour vers, which were initially composed in the Limousin dialect. In his study L'Ecole musicale de Saint Martial-de-Limoges, Jacques Chailley established an etymological connection between Latin para-liturgical versus and Occitan vers which has proved enduring. The corpus of tropes, prosae and versus collected in the abbey of Saint-Martial-de-Limoges probably gives an accurate sample of music as it was produced and experienced in Aquitainian monasteries. James Grier has noted that there is only circumstantial evidence for their exclusively monastic origin, but that the versus corpus in particular suggests that around 1100, a number of regular clergy who had sophisticated tastes in music, Latin poetry and questions of doctrine began to produce songs destined for 'less formal, but still sacred, occasions'.⁶ According to Grier, the manuscripts that made their way to the library of Saint-Martial-de-Limoges were probably produced in other major abbeys, or houses assocated with them; he cites Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, Saint-YrieIX and Aurillac, as well as religious houses in Toulouse. However, there is evidence that the trope corpus was sung outside the immediate confines of the cloister. For example, the chronicler and composer Adémar de Chabannes notes that the cathedral canons of Saint-Etienne and the monks of Saint-Martial-de-Limoges would perform tropes and lauds together on occasion.⁷

Outside the field of formal and metrical borrowing, which has been the most studied aspect of the question, little has come to light that may prove a direct connection between the composers of Latin prosae and of vernacular vers. One outstanding exception does exist, in the form of the thirteenth-century troubadour Peire de Corbiac (Courbian).⁸ Peire de Courbian's only surviving troubadour song is a devotional canso to the Virgin (PC 338, 1); he also left a long text, Lo Thezaur, in which, in addition to a demonstration of doctrine, he lists the material he knows from the trivium, quadrivium and a selection of vernacular romances and histories. At the end of this extended display of expertise, Peire de Courbian turns his attention to singing:

Senhors, encar sai ieu molt be vezadamens
Chantar en sancta glieiza per ponhs e per accens,
Triplar Sanctus et Agnus e contraponchamens,
Entonar seculorum que nol faill us amens,
E far douz chantz et orgues e contrapointamens,
E sai be mo mestier aperceubudamens,
Tot caresme carnal, quatre temps et avens.
Eu sai be cansonetas e vers bos e valens,
Pastorelas apres amorozas, plazens,
Retroenchas et dansas, gent e cortesamens.

(vv. 496–505)

[My lords, I also know well how to sing visibly [from sight?] in holy church with punctum and accentum, to do a triplum of sanctus et agnus, to intone the seculorum contrapuntally so that the Amen won't be missing, and to do sweet singing, organum and contra-punctamentum; and I know my craft very obviously: all Lent, the four seasons and Advent. And I know well [how to perform] little cansos and good and worthy vers, learned, loving and pleasing pastorelas, retroenchas and dansas nobly and in courtly style.]

Organum is early polyphony, as opposed to contrapunctamentum, its sophisticated development. The punctum is the simplest neume form of a dot or dash and accentus is the simplest form of chant. Triplum is the third voice-part of a motet, above the duplum, the voice above the tenor, the lowest part of the motet. Peire is boasting of a sophisticated set of musical skills for a clerk active c. 1230—50, with evident experience of the northern French motet corpus.⁹

This section of the Thezaur makes an explicit link between the form of church singing practised by this learned clerk, and the performance of light vernacular material. This is consistent with the skil...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Parodic Sequences and Peire Cardenal
• 2 Metrical Structures and Formal Recognition
• 3 Recognition and Recollection of Form and Content
• 4 Rewriting and the Role of Serious Parody
• 5 Between Preacher and Jester: Singing a Sermon
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index