(b c1175; d c1230). Provençal troubadour. According to his vida, he was the son of a Toulouse cloth merchant (Peguilhan is a village in the Haute Garonne, near Saint Gaudens). He was apparently a wanderer who was received at many courts in southern France, Spain and northern Italy. Raimon V of Toulouse may have been his first patron, while others may have included Guilhem de Bergadan, Gaston VI of Béarn, Bernard IV of Comminges, Pedro II of Aragon, Alfonso VIII of Castile, Guillaume IV of Montferrat, Marquis Guilhem of Malaspina and Azzo VI and Beatrice d'Este. Aimeric's poetry, which includes chansons, sirventes, chansons de croisade, tensos, planhs and partimens, was admired and cited by such writers as Matfre Ermengaut, Jaufré de Foixa, Berenguier de Noia, and by Dante (in De vulgari eloquentia). Modern evaluations vary widely, some considering the poet to be of great distinction, while others view him as technically competent though neither profound nor original.
Among approximately 50 surviving poems attributable to Aimeric, only six survive with music. Four of these have isometric, decasyllabic strophes. Only one melody, En Amor, is cast in bar form. This is a setting, curiously, of a strophe whose first four lines have the same masculine rhyme while the last four have a related feminine rhyme. Literal repetition of phrases is not present in other works, although Per solatz does embody a varied repeat of the fifth phrase. However, Aimeric occasionally presented a melodic outline in multiple guises by regrouping various notes and adding or omitting embellishments; motivic play is also a factor in formal design. All melodies except the two settings of Qui la vi use authentic modes, Atressi·m pren and En greu pantais employing the seldom-used finals e and B respectively. The melodies tend to begin in the upper register (En greu pantais opening a 9th above the final) and to introduce the final cadentially only in the latter half of the strophe. Most are relatively florid, and only one displays clear elements of rhythmic symmetry. Qui la vi, considered a descort by some and a chanson by others, is built of extremely lengthy, tripartite strophes. The setting in F-Pn fr.22543 has the repetition structure characteristic of the lai, but gives music for the first strophe only, while that in the Manuscrit du Roi (F-Pn fr.844) is a late addition in mensural notation, which presents new textual material and treats the four strophes in through-composed fashion.
Editions: Der musikalische Nachlass der Troubadours, ed. F. Gennrich, SMM, iii–iv, xv (1958–65) [G]Las cançons dels trobadors, ed. I. Fernandez de La Cuesta (Toulouse, 1979) [FC]The Extant Troubadour Melodies, ed. H. van der Werf (Rochester, NY, 1984) [W]
|
Atressi·m pren com fai al jogador, PC 10.12, G iii, 177, FC 391, W 4 |
|
Cel que s'irais ni guerre' ab amor, PC 10.15, G iii, 178, FC 393, W 5 |
|
En Amor trop alques en que ·m refraing, PC 10.25, G iii, 179, FC 395, W 6 |
|
En greu pantais m'atengut longamen, PC 10.27, G iii, 180, FC 398, W 8 |
|
Per solatz d’autrui chan soven, PC 10.41, G iii, 181, FC 400, W 9 |
|
Qui la vi en ditz, PC 10.45, G iii, 182, FC 402 |
H. Anglès: La música a Catalunya fins al segle XIII (Barcelona, 1935/R)
W.P. Shephard and F.M. Chambers: The Poems of Aimeric de Peguillan (Evanston, IL, 1950)
G. Le Vot: ‘Notation, mesure et rythme dans la canso troubadouresque’, L'amour et la musique … troubadours et trouvères: Poitiers 1982 [Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, xxv/3–4 (1982)], 205–18
J. Maillard: ‘Descort, que me veux-tu?’, ibid., 219–23
E. Aubrey: The Music of the Troubadours (Bloomington, IN, 1996)
For further bibliography see Troubadours, trouvères.
THEODORE KARP