(Fr.).
A spinning or weaving song. Both names appear in 13th-century sources referring to a small and clearly delineated group of French poems. They are narratives, with a substantial refrain breaking the metre at the end of each of the short monorhyme stanzas. The story is normally of a noble young lady waiting, often spinning, in the absence of her noble love.
There are some 20 known poems (ed. in Saba and Zink), which must be seen in three categories: (1) six known only from their inclusion in longer works, five of them in Jean Renart’s Roman de Guillaume de Dole (c1210); (2) nine known only from the chansonnier of St Germain-des-Prés (F-Pn fr.20050, ff.64v–66v and 69v–70v); and (3) five ascribed to Audefroi le Bastart, more widely distributed but grouped together as a unit in the Manuscrit du Roi (F-Pn fr.844, ff.148–151v). Apart from the work of Audefroi, everything is anonymous. Melodies survive for all the Audefroi poems but for only four of the poems in fr.20050 – though the others in that manuscript have empty staves or spaces above them for music that was never added.
Given that Audefroi was active in the first quarter of the 13th century and that fr.20050 cannot be much later, Faral (strongly supported by Zink) proposed that the anonymous poems are also from the early 13th century and conceivably all by a single poet, albeit one writing in a pastiche of an earlier style. Moreover, as Zink observes, two of the Audefroi poems appear anonymously alongside the others in fr. 20050. But it remains true (as stressed by Beck, 1938, and Bec, 1977) that Audefroi’s chansons de toile differ significantly from the remaining repertory: in having enormously more stanzas, in favouring 12-syllable lines as against the eight and six syllables in the anonymous repertory, in having more melismatic melodies, and in preferring the major mode to the minor mode of the anonymous works. While this dispute will doubtless continue, the unusual nature of fr.20050 and its repertory could well support the hypothesis of a much earlier date for these remarkable melodies, the mere process of recopying in such an informal manuscript perhaps bringing in certain 13th-century elements. If so, Audefroi would have taken over the old form and recast it in his own way.
K. Bartsch, ed.: Romances et pastourelles françaises des XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Leipzig, 1870/R)
C.B. Lewis: ‘The Origin of the Weaving Songs and the Theme of the Girl at the Fountain’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, xxxvii (1922), 141–81
H. Spanke: Beziehungen zwischen romanischer und mittellateinischer Lyrik mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Metrik und Musik (Berlin, 1936/R)
J. and L. Beck, eds.: Le manuscrit du roi: fonds français no.844 de la Bibliothèque nationale, Corpus cantilenarum medii aevi, 1st ser., ii (London and Philadelphia, 1938/R)
C. Cremonesi: ‘“Chansons de geste” e “chansons de toile”’, Studi romanzi, xxx (1943), 55–203
E. Faral: ‘Les chansons de toile ou chansons d’histoire’, Romania, lxix (1946–7), 433–62
G. Saba, ed.: Le ‘chansons de toile’ o ‘chansons d’histoire’ (Modena, 1955)
R. Joly: ‘Les chansons d'histoire’, Romanistisches Jb, xii (1961), 51–66
P. Zumthor: ‘La chanson de Bele Aiglentine’, Mélanges linguistiques de philologie et de littérature, viii (1970), 325–37
P. Jonin: ‘Le refrain dans les chansons de toile’, Romania, xcvi (1975), 209–44
B. Stäblein: Schriftbild der einstimmigen Musik, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, iii/4 (Leipzig, 1975)
P. Bec: La lyrique française au Moyen-Age (XIIe–XIIIe siècles): contribution à une typologie des genres poétiques médiévaux, i (Paris, 1977), 107–19
M. Zink: Les chansons de toile (Paris, 1977) [incl. edn]
H. Tischler, ed.: Trouvère Lyrics with Melodies, CMM, cvii (1997)
For further bibliography see Troubadours, trouvères.
DAVID FALLOWS