(b Riberác, ?1150–60; d c1200). Troubadour. Famed as a master of the difficult style, or trobar ric, he brought the poetic style of the troubadours to new heights. His most notable admirers have included Dante, Petrarch, and, much later, Ezra Pound. In canto xxvi of the Purgatorio, Dante not only rated Arnaut higher than Giraut de Bornelh (known as the ‘maestre del trobadors’), but paid him a supreme compliment by rendering his speech in Old Provençal. What little is known of Arnaut's life has been derived from his vida, his razo and a few references scattered throughout his poems. The vida refers to him as a man of letters who later became a joglar, or entertainer. One of Arnaut's poems (PC 29.8) alludes to his presence at the coronation of the ‘king of Estampes’, probably that of Philippe II Auguste in 1179 or 1180 (see Gouiran). Dante made him a contemporary of Count Raymond Berenger of Provence (1168–81).
Music survives for two of Arnaut's 18 poems, Chanzon do·l moz (PC 29.6) and Lo ferm voler (PC 29.14), both of which are found only in the manuscript I-Ma R. 71. In Lo ferm voler, poetry and music reveal subtle order despite apparent chaos (see Switten). The poem's six rhymes recur in an apparently random sequence in each of its six strophes and its tornada (final three-line strophe). Likewise, the melody, the same for each strophe, is not made up of repeated sections, but is through-composed. Yet the rhymes follow a precise pattern, and are paired thus in the tornada: ungla–uncle, verja–arma, chambra–intra. A similar pairing is found in the final note of each melodic line (G–G, F–F, C–C). Kropfinger has suggested that the static melody and fluctuating rhymes interact to reinforce the key word-pair chambra – intra. A further unifying device is the motif C–E–G–A, which opens and concludes the melody. The poetic form of Lo ferm voler, referred to by Arnaut as a chantar or canso, was later imitated by Dante; not until Petrarch did it receive the name by which it has become known – the sestina.
U.A. Canello: La vita e le opere del trovadore Arnaldo Daniello (Halle, 1883)
R. Lavaud: ‘Les poésies d’Arnaut Daniel; réédition critique d’après Canello, avec traduction française et notes’, Annales du Midi, xxii (1910), 17–55, 300–39
U. Sesini: Le melodie trobadoriche nel canzoniere provenzale della Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Turin,1942), 258
F. Gennrich: Der musikalische Nachlass der Troubadours, SMM (Darmstadt, 1958–60), iii–iv
G. Toja: Arnaut Daniel: Canzoni (Florence, 1960) [incl. one melody from Sesini and detailed bibliography]
J. Boutière and A.-H. Schutz: Biographies des troubadours (Paris, 1964), 59–63
M. Perugi: Le canzoni di Arnaut Daniel (Milan, 1978)
I. Fernandez de la Cuesta and R. Lafont: Las cançons dels trobadors (Toulouse, 1979), 229
G. Le Vot, P. Lusson and J. Roubaud: ‘La sextine d'Arnaut Daniel: essai de lecture rythmique’, Musique, littérature et société au Moyen Age, ed. D. Buschinger and A. Crépin (Paris, 1980), 123–57
J.J. Wilhelm, ed. and trans.: The Poetry of Arnaut Daniel (New York, 1981) [music ed. H. van der Werf]
H. van der Werf and G. Bond: The Extant Troubadour Melodies (Rochester, NY, 1984), 13–14
G. Gouiran: ‘La carrière poétique d'Arnaut Daniel a-t-elle commencé avant 1180?’, Studia in honorem Prof. M. de Riquier, iii (Barcelona, 1988), 443–51
K. Kropfinger: ‘Dante, die Kunst der Troubadours und Arnaut Daniels Sestine “Lo ferm voler”’, Neue Musik und Tradition: Festschrift Rudolf Stephan, ed. J. Kuckertz and others (Laaber, 1990), 25–53
M. Switten: ‘De la sextine: amour et musique chez Arnaut Daniel’, Mélanges de langue et de littérature occitanes en hommage à Pierre Bec (Poitiers, 1991), 549–65
For further bibliography see Troubadours, trouvères.
JOHN D. HAINES