Trouvères
Shortly after the troubadours began to compose, in the north of France came the trouvères who profited much from the music and poetry of their southern brothers.
However, the trouvères did not have the warm, lovely dialect of the southern troubadours. As they were closer to the Church, their songs were more religious, had less variety of subjects, and the melodies were like Church music.
Although the troubadours did much to shape the rhyming stanzas in poetry, the trouvères helped in the gradual forming of the later French and Flemish schools of music, as you will see.
The jongleurs played on an instrument called the vielee which was great-grandfather to our violin. The short pieces played before the songs and accompanied by dances, were the first pieces of instrumental music in the Middle Ages. The combination of song, instrument and dance was called balerie or ballada from which comes our dance ballet. There was also a piece called rounde, rota, or rondo, composed so that different voices and the instrument came in at different points, each singing or playing the same tune, but arranged so that the parts sounded well together. Perhaps you know Frère Jacques or Scotland’s Burning or Three Blind Mice. These are rounds.
One of the most beautiful rounds in existence is an English song which dates from 1250, the period of all this “gay science,” and it is looked upon as a masterpiece. It is supposed to have been written either by John Forsete, a monk, or by Walter Odington. It was written in the old square neumes on a six line staff. The name of this “Six Men’s Song” or round for six voices, is Summer is icumen In.
One of the best known trouvères was Adam de la Hale who wrote Robin et Marion, said to be the very first comic opera. It was performed at the court of Naples in 1285.
The trouvères collected tales of Normandy, Brittany, and of Charlemagne’s reign, and so preserved valuable musical and literary material.
So these troubadours and trouvères made the age of Chivalry romantic and beautiful to us who came long after them, in spite of much unpleasantness, prejudice, war, massacre and hardship.