Poets of the South
The troubadours were poets and composers who wrote in Occitan, the language of southern France (the region sometimes called Occitania), from around the end of the eleventh century through the thirteenth. The word comes from an Occitan verb related to finding or composing, and it describes someone who invents songs, not a mere performer. Many were poets first and singers second; some had performers, called jongleurs, deliver their work.
The earliest troubadour known by name is traditionally William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, who ruled in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Historians disagree about how the tradition began and where its ideas came from. Proposed influences include Latin church song, local popular traditions and contact with the Arabic-speaking world through Spain, but none of these explanations is settled, and the topic of Andalusian music shows how contested it is.
Who They Were
Troubadours came from varied backgrounds. A few were great lords, such as William IX. Others were knights, clergy, merchants’ sons or people who rose from modest origins and depended on patrons. Short prose biographies, called vidas, were written about many of them in the thirteenth century, but these are partly fictionalized and should not be taken as reliable biography.
Women poets also appear. Known as trobairitz, they composed songs in the same tradition. Only a small number of names survive, and the best known is a countess associated with the name Beatriz de Dia. The survival of so few works means any conclusions about them must be cautious.
Patrons included regional lords and courts across southern France, northern Spain and Italy. Courts valued poets for entertainment, prestige and praise, so the relationship between poet and patron was often economic.
What They Sang About
The most famous theme is love, and the troubadours are central to the story of courtly love. Their love songs typically address a lady of high rank in terms of devoted service, longing and praise, often borrowing the vocabulary of feudal loyalty. How far this reflected real behavior is debated; many scholars read the poems as literary conventions and social play rather than confessions.
Other themes were also common:
- the canso, the classic love song, usually built from several matching stanzas
- the sirventes, a song about politics, morals or satire, sometimes a sharp attack on a rival or a ruler
- the tenso, a debate between two poets, sometimes in alternating verses
- the alba, a dawn song in which lovers part at daybreak
- songs connected with crusading, which urged or criticized campaigns
The style ranged from open and simple to dense and difficult. Some poets, such as Arnaut Daniel, were admired for intricate rhyme and verbal skill, and Dante Alighieri praised him in his writings. Others, such as Bernart de Ventadorn, are remembered for a more direct emotional tone.
How the Songs Worked
Troubadour songs were poems set to melody, and the same verse form repeated for each stanza. The poetry was often highly structured, with exact patterns of rhyme and line length, and poets took pride in inventing new patterns. Songs circulated through performance, copying and memory, and many were reshaped as they passed from singer to singer.
Written records come mostly from later songbooks, called chansonniers, compiled in the thirteenth century and after. They preserve a large body of texts, but melodies survive for only a minority of the poems, so we know the words far better than the music. Where melodies do exist, the way they were notated gives limited information about rhythm, which is part of why modern performances differ. The key point is that early notation recorded pitch more reliably than timing.
The Trouveres of the North
Poets who wrote in the northern French dialects, known as the language of oil, are called trouveres, a word that is the northern equivalent of troubadour. They flourished from the twelfth into the thirteenth century and took up many of the same forms and themes, often adapting them. Their court connections were extensive, and traditional accounts link the spread of southern fashions to marriages between southern and northern noble families, including the household of Eleanor of Aquitaine, though how directly she shaped the northern tradition is debated.
A larger share of trouvere melodies survives than of troubadour ones, so the northern repertoire is better documented musically. Trouveres also wrote narrative romances and other genres, and the same cultural world produced stories of chivalry that fed into medieval literature more broadly. Some were nobles who composed for themselves and their peers, while others were professionals attached to courts.
Decline
The southern tradition faded during the thirteenth century. Historians point to several factors, including political upheaval in the south, notably the violent conflict known as the Albigensian Crusade, which changed the region’s courts and patronage, as well as shifts in literary taste. The effect of any one cause is debated, and the tradition did continue in some places, notably in the Iberian world and Italy, where Italian vernacular poetry developed with some debt to the troubadours.
Why They Matter
Troubadours and trouveres helped shape ideas about vernacular lyric poetry in Europe and about how love could be talked about in verse. Their influence on later poets is generally accepted, even if the details are disputed. For a reader, the most useful points are that the songs were composed and often highly crafted, that the voices were varied, and that we are working with incomplete evidence: plenty of words, fewer melodies and a good deal of later invention in the biographies.