Sunday 17 January 2010

A Song About Absolutely Nothing

So, who and what do I mean by the term troubador?

I'm not going to go into a long description of their historical context, the political and military power broking in which they lived and worked, as much of that material bores me, and I think it might well bore you too, but I think it's important to set the scene a little - so to speak.

Back in the C11th and C12th, the political shape of Europe was very different to how it is now, and France, as we know it today, did not really exist. The lands we now think of as the south of France, was in reality a separate country, with a separate culture and a separate language. This language was Occitan, and this whole region has been termed Occitania by modern historians.

The word occitan comes about as oc is their word for yes, instead of the Northern French qui. The modern word for this general area in modern day France is Languedoc - or ‘place of the language of oc’.

But the first troubador didn't come from this region of southern France, and probably didn't speak Occitan as his first language - although he did choose to compose songs in it. He was Guillaume (William) IX, 9th Duke of Aquitaine and 7th Count of Poitou (Poitiers in Central France). Guillaume lived between 1071-1127, was the grandfather of Eleanor of Aquitaine, and is generally considered to be the first troubador.

The word troubador means a ‘doer of the hidden’, or ‘he who finds that which is hidden.’ They were poets and song writers, who were considered the first in Europe to write in the language of the people (rather than in Latin), composing (and sometimes performing) songs on a wide range of subjects.

It is really not an exaggeration to say that every song-writing development since, from the lute songs of the high Renaissance, to the lieder of Schumann, to the songs sung by Frank Sinatra and other crooners, to those of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Sex Pistols, Patti Smith, Radiohead or Elbow can trace their ancestral DNA right back to Guillaume IX, the Count of Poitou.

Guillaume, from all accounts was quite a character. His medieval vida - a short life story presented alongside of his songs in a book from the C14th – describes him as ‘one of the most courtly men in the world and one of the greatest deceivers of women. He was a fine knight at arms, liberal in his womanising, and a fine composer and singer of songs. He travelled much through the world, seducing women.’ The picture of Guillaume above comes from the same vida.

Only eleven of his songs survive down to our age, and none of them have their melodies, so when they are performed today a form of musical theft, practiced widely in medieval times, has to be used – pinching another melody to fit the words – a practice called
contrafactum.

I think my favourite song by Guillaume is a strange, almost mystical song called ‘A song about absolutely nothing’ (Farai un vers de dreyt nien)

‘Here’s a song about absolutely nothing.
It’s not about me, not about anyone else,
Not about love, not about being young,
And not about anything else either.
It came to me while I was asleep,
Riding along on my horse.
I don’t know exactly when I was born,
I’m not happy, I’m not angry,
I’m not a stranger here, I don’t belong here.
I cant help being like this,
I was made like it by a spirit upon a mountain top.
I don’t know if I’m a sleep or awake
unless someone tells me…

He also wrote love songs such as this short extract

‘She is whiter than ivory, and so I love no other,
But if soon I receive no help in knowing
whether my good lady loves me I shall die.’

And bawdy songs too, such as the tale of two women who capture a knight for their pleasure. The knight acts dumb and the two women set a wild cat upon him to test his dumbness –

‘When we had drunk and eaten,
at their request I undressed.
Upon my back they put the wicked,
treacherous cat
and one of them pulled it
all down from my ribs to my heels.
Holding it by the tail she pulled the cat,
which scratched me, opening
more than a hundred wounds…

‘Sister’, said Agnes to Ermessen,
‘he is dumb, it is obvious.’

‘Sister, let us prepare the bath

and take advantage of his presence’.

Eighy days and more

I spent in that furnace,

I fucked them so much,

as you will hear

one hundred and eighty eight times,

That I almost broke

my reins and my harness…


But where did Guillaume really gain his art from? Surely there must have been others before him who sang songs. Workers in the fields would have had work songs in the language of the people and there must have been other songs around too, dance songs perhaps and tales of war and honour.


It is probable that the flowering of the troubador art song came out of these and also out of the Moorish musical tradition that was flourishing over the border in Islamic Spain.

Many of the troubadour poetic structures bare great similarities to Islamic poetic forms and certainly almost all of the musical instruments of medieval Europe came from the Arabs of North Africa and Spain – but that is a subject for a later blog entry.

But where ever Guillaume came by the idea for his songs, he was the right man at the right point in history, and like a flame touching dry kindling, a great artistic fire grew which was to have ramifications that stretch right down to you and I and our hi-fi, our
ipods, our MP3 files and our CDs.






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