Thibaut de Champagne, King of Navarre, left us some sixty songs —
a noteworthy fact for his era — from which it was not easy to
choose, so much do the poetry and melodies form miniatures that one
would like to bring them all back to life today.
Each song is a world to be recreated, in the service of the text and
melody that carries it, with a choice of instrumental accompaniment
— always improvised — that is in itself the vector and
adornment. I therefore attempted to weave a tapestry on the
troubadour’s web of words and notes, each song contributing its
tint to the shimmering colours. The thread is the prestigious
‘King’s manuscript’, containing all the compositions
heard on this.
A few touches have been added here and there: several refrains, noted
without melody in Chançon ferai, reconstructed from
various motets including Onques n’amai); a counterpoint
proposed on the song Seignor saichies (written in the style of
sacred compositions of the period) and the option of a rhythmic
interpretation for certain songs.
Love above all, but also allegory, politics, irony, and finally
spirituality, successively animate this imaginary picture of the work
of Thibaut de Champagne...
Brigitte Lesne
Thibaut de Champagne
(1201 – 1253)
The place and time of his birth locate Thibaut de Champagne, compte
de Champagne and roi de Navarre at the heart of a great artistic
ferment. Son of Thibaut III de Champagne and of Blanche de Navarre, he
was thus the grandson of Marie de Champagne and the great-grandson of
Eleanor of Aquitaine, both of whom were patrons of many
trouvères. The first, swept up by the erotic doctrine of courtly
love, counted among her protégés Guiot de Provins,
Chrétien de Troyes and Gace Brulé. The second,
granddaughter of the first known troubadour Guilhem IX
d’Aquitaine, included many troubadours in her entrourage, from
both France and England. Champagne was thus the heartland of the
poetic-literary movement of the langue d’oïl.
Under the influence of Gace Brulé, Thibaut came to know various
trouvères, among them Philippe de Nanteuil, Raoul de Soissons,
Thibaut de Blaison and perhaps Guillaume le Vinier. The number of his
compositions and indeed the number of sources in which they were
recorded (no less than thirty-two manuscripts) testify to his
popularity. And the great esteem in which he was held during his
lifetime is affirmed by many references to him and his art, from the Grandes
Chroniques de France to Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia,
where he is classified among the “illustrious poets.”
A virtuoso trouvère, he willingly tried his hand at every genre
of poetic lyric meant to be sung: courtly songs, song with refrains,
pastorals, jeux partis and tensons (poems in dialogue
form), lays, and songs dedicated to the Virgin Mary. He knew how to
exhibit his inventiveness in his writings, never hesitating to revisit
canonical models with a touch of humor. His unusual freedom of tone
together with the refinement of his rhetoric, the social condescension
that sometimes colors his verse, never allows us to forget his high
station, nor his role in politics, which he often—though
briefly—evokes.
The Songbook of the King
The manuscript from which all the songs here recorded were taken
(Paris, BnF, fr. 844) is in its present state the product of a long
history, begun in the second half of the thirteenth century. A
composite songbook, it includes mostly songs for one voice in the
langue d’oc and the langue d’oïl, but also polyphonic
works, songs in Latin, and instrumental dances. Three of its component
signatures constitute a separable entity, added later to the initial
manuscript by a copyist probably belonging to an Italian scriptorium:
sixty songs, all except the last by Thibaut de Champagne. The oldest
part of the manuscript dates at the earliest from the mid-thirteenth
century and would have been completed at the very latest around 1300.
It includes more than 450 songs by trouvères, 55 songs by
troubadours, 40 motets and 3 lays. Numerous works were added on blank
pages or parts of pages: about fifteen songs in the langue d’oc
and the langue d’oïl, twelve instrumental pieces, several
rondeaux and motets, five songs to the Virgin Mary in Latin, and a
poetic fragment dated 1494, which mentions the coronation of Charles
VIII ten years earlier.
The origin of the songbook is contested. According to some scholars, it
was copied out in Artois, like many other songbooks in the langue
d’oïl. According to others, it was destined for Guillaume de
Villehardouin, prince of the region of la Morée between 1245 and
1278, before being “revised” for Charles of Anjou. But
there is not enough evidence on either side: the manuscript certainly
resembles others from Artois—in particular the manuscript
entitled “De Noailles” (Paris, BnF, fr. 12615)—but it
also exhibits important differences in handwriting, decoration and even
subject matter. Richly decorated, it was vandalized, so that it has
lost most of its initial capital letters which included depictions of
the trouvères who were active between the fourteenth and the
eighteenth centuries. Purchased by Mazarin for his own library in 1640,
it was acquired by the Royal Library in 1668, when it gained the
appellation “Songbook of the King.”
The Songs
Lover, man of culture, politician, wit, pious Christian, soldier ...
The king-trouvère glitters with many different facets. Along
with many contemporaries, he sings about courtly love: most of his
songs are addressed to his lady, “the best there could be in all
the world,” according to “Chançon ferai”
(“A song I’ll make”). It is a canso (a song
whose first two melodic phrases are repeated) written in a ten-syllable
line, like most of Thibaut’s texts, with each of the stanzas
ending in a different refrain. While “Chançon ferai”
and “Pour conforter” (“To ease”) are enriched
by archaizing poetic references to Tristan and Jason, “Nus
hom” (“No one”) alludes to politics, and the envoi to
Philippe de Nanteuil probably dates the song to one of the periods of
revolt against the monarchy: 1226–27 or 1235–36. “De
fine amor” (“True love”) offers generalizing thoughts
about love in a syllabic line set to a melody: the poem served as a
model for another courtly song and was cited by Dante, incontestable
proof of its success.
Originally from Provence, the tenson was a fictional dialogue
about love: “Dame, merci” (“Lady, have mercy”)
offers a complex and sustained melody. Thibaut pokes fun at himself
there, slipping into the text an ironic allusion to his generous
waistline.
The two pastorals deal with love in a more frivolous way. In
“J’aloie l’autrier” (“I strayed the other
day”), a single word is often strung out over many notes (melism)
and the meter is irregular; in “L’autrier par la
matinee” (“One morning, just the other day”), each
word is sung on a different note (syllabism) and the ten-syllable line
is regular. Both poems present us with a rather pitiful knight, chased
away by threatening shepherds or by a mocking shepherdess.
The revival of the cult of the Virgin in the eleventh century
introduced a counterpoint to terrestrial love among the
trouvères. “Dou tres douz non” (“In the most
honored name”) treats one by one the letters that compose the
name “Maria.” The simple matching of note with word
(syllabism) in the song lets the complexity of the wordplay and the
poetic sonorities with their great symbolic richness, shine through.
The songs of the Crusade, “Au tans plain de felonie”
(“In an era full of wickedness”) and “Seignor,
saichiés” (“Know well, my lords”) depict a
lord in combat, at the end of a human and spiritual voyage which led
him, like many of his contemporaries, to defend the Holy Land. The
first unrolls a continuous musical form, unusual for Thibaut. The envoi
of the second, in the form of a prayer to the Virgin, echoes the pious
mariolatry of “Dou tres douz non.”
The personage described by Hue de la Ferté, an Angevin lord
allied with the barons who revolted against the monarchy during the
years 1226–1230, is someone else entirely. The text of “En
talent” (“I have the will”) crackles with an
extraordinary virulence against the count of Champagne, a sinner
“inflamed by passion,” and the regent Blanche de Castille,
whom he accuses of weakening the monarchy.
The instrumental pieces that have been chosen constitute a showcase for
the words of the poet. The motets are compositions that juxtapose one
or more voices over a melody whose origin is usually liturgical. The
use of many melisms combined with a tension created by the use of
intervals in “Onques n’amai” contrasts with the great
sobriety of “Qui loiaument.” The dances ultimately testify
to a courtly festivity. Late additions to the songbook, they constitute
the only recorded examples of instrumental music in the Middle Ages.
Formed from a succession of sections called puncta, they are
characterized by the variety of their internal repetitions. Each of the
sections concludes with a cadence, alternately held in suspense and
carried to a conclusion.
From poetic speech to instrumental song, the expression of medieval
“courtesy” is offered here under many aspects. The songs
give us access, beyond the opus of a poet who furnishes his own
personal history, to a part of the world he knew. And that world, while
enriched by an ancient poetic and musical heritage, draws as well on
the dances and diversions that characterized the festivals of the
nobility as well as the polyphonic music of the church.
Anne Ibos-Augé
Translated from the French by Emily Grosholz