(Provençal: ‘dawn’). A minor genre of troubadour lyric, of which 19 examples survive. Several are anonymous or of uncertain attribution; of those whose authorship is reasonably secure, only Reis glorios, by Giraut de Bornelh (PC 242.64), is the work of a poet of the first rank. Few can be dated with any precision, but the period of composition appears to extend from the last quarter of the 12th century to the end of the 13th. Most have a refrain – a rare feature in the troubadour lyric – and this normally includes the word ‘alba’.
The dawn plays a number of different roles in these pieces. Six of the poems are religious, and use the dawn as a symbol of redemption or awakening from sin. The remainder are amorous, and most of these are concerned with the parting of lovers at daybreak, though in two cases the lover is looking forward to the dawn. The surviving poems include the unique serena (evening song) by Guiraut Riquier (PC 248.4), which can reasonably be counted as a variant of the alba; here it is an evening assignation that is eagerly anticipated. Modern commentators have tended to assume that the dawn-parting scenario represents the original form of the alba, and that the other varieties arose later, but there is little evidence for this.
Most of the poems have what may loosely be called a dramatic element, in that the words are placed in the mouth of one of the protagonists: the lover himself, the castle watchman or occasionally the lady. Sometimes more than one character speaks, each delivering a separate monologue; true dialogue, in which the speakers actually answer one another, is not a feature of the genre. The watchman is a particularly important figure, and it is his presence more than anything else that distinguishes the alba and its derivatives from the dawn-parting songs that are so widespread in the literature of other cultures. As well as announcing the coming of day, he often takes it upon himself to dispense practical or moral advice to the lovers; in the religious pieces he exhorts the faithful to arise from their spiritual torpor, and expounds the allegorical content of the poem.
Only two albas survive with music, both in the troubadour manuscript R (F-Pn fr.22543). These are Giraut de Bornelh's Reis glorios and the piece by Cadenet which begins in some sources Eu sui tant cortesa gaita and in others S'anc fuy bela ni prezada (PC 106.14). Although Cadenet's tune is longer and more florid than Giraut's and the two poems are entirely unlike in metrical form, the close resemblance between the two melodies is unmistakable (ex.1). Almost every phrase in Cadenet's tune corresponds closely to one of Giraut's; lines 5 and 6, which extend the compass up to d', are the only exceptions. It seems clear that one of these tunes, probably Cadenet's, is a deliberate imitation of the other. (There have been unconvincing attempts to identify a liturgical source for Giraut's tune.)
Contrafacta of both these tunes are known. In a 14th-century Provençal play of St Agnes, the saint's mother and sister sing ‘in sonu albe rei glorios verai lums e clardat’, with close textual imitation of Giraut's poem. Cadenet's tune is used for Virgen madre groriosa, no.340 (also no.2 ‘de loor’) of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, which uses the refrain word alva as an epithet for the Virgin. This may imply that the alba was better known than the small number of surviving examples may suggest.
Modern writers have coined the term ‘aube’ to refer to a handful of Old French lyrics whose subject matter recalls that of the secular alba, but whose overall character is usually closer to that of the Old French chanson de femme or Chanson de toile. The only one with extant music is Gaite de la tor (Linker, 265–722; F-Pn fn.20050), in which a watchman is exhorted to ensure that the lovers are not disturbed by intruders. The tune bears no resemblance to the two alba melodies. Music also survives, in unstaved neumes, to a rather mysterious piece from the 10th or 11th century, Phebi claro (I-Rvat Reg.lat.1462), which has become known as the ‘aube de Fleury’. This consists of three three-line stanzas in Latin, with a refrain that appears to be Provençal but whose meaning is somewhat obscure. The poem features a watchman or herald exhorting slothful people to rise up against an enemy at daybreak, and the refrain resembles that of Raimon de las Salas' 13th-century alba Dieus, aydatz (PC 409.2), but its relationship to the later repertory is highly controversial. The German Tagelied is a related form.
See also Troubadours, trouvères, §I, 5.
A. Jeanroy and T. Gérold: Le Jeu de Ste Agnès: drame provençal du XIVe siècle (Paris, 1931)
H. Anglés: La música de las Cantigas de Santa Maria del rey Alfonso el Sabio: facsímil, transcripción y estudio crítico (Barcelona, 1943–64)
M. de Riquer: Las albas provenzales (Barcelona, 1944)
A.T. Hatto, ed.: Eos: an Enquiry into the Theme of Lovers' Meetings and Partings at Dawn in Poetry (The Hague, 1965)
F.J. Oroz Arizcuren: La lírica religiosa en la literatura provenzal antigua (Pamplona, 1972)
P. Bec: La lyrique française au moyen-age (XIIe–XIIIe siècles: contribution à une typologie des genres poétiques médiévaux (Paris, 1977–8)
J. Zemp: Les poésies du troubadour Cadenet: édition critique avec introduction, traduction, notes et glossaire (Berne, 1978)
I. Fernandez de la Cuesta: Las cançons dels trobadors (Toulouse, 1979)
R.W. Linker: A Bibliography of Old French Lyrics (Jackson, MS, 1979)
H. van der Werf: The Extant Troubadour Melodies: Transcriptions and Essays (Rochester, NY, 1984)
P. Zumthor: ‘Un trompe-l'oeil linguistique? Le refrain de l'aube bilingue de Fleury’, Romania, cv (1984), 173–92
S.P. Haynes: ‘Music and Genre in the Alba’, Third British Conference on Medieval Occitan Language and Literature: Warwick 1985 (Coventry, 1985), 122–38
E.W. Poe: ‘La transmission de l'alba en ancien provençal’, Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale, xxxi (1988), 323–45
R.V. Sharman: The ‘Cansos’ and ‘Sirventes’ of the Troubadour Giraut de Borneil: a Critical Edition (Cambridge, 1989)
For further bibliography see Troubadours, trouvères.
STEPHEN HAYNES