Folquet [Folc] de Marseille [Fulco Anfos]

(b ?Marseilles, c1150–60; d Toulouse, 25 Dec 1231). French troubadour. According to his vida he was born in Marseilles and was the son of a Genoese merchant named Amfos. His name first appears in a document in Marseilles dated 23 January 1178, where the reference is to ‘Fulco Anfos’; the possibility that he was born in Genoa, however, cannot be discredited. The vida states that after the death of his father Folquet was left a rich man, and he has been frequently referred to as a merchant.

His early career may be traced with some precision through allusions in his poems: it began in about 1180 at the court of Alfonso II of Aragon, continued in Nîmes and Montpellier until about 1187, and, according to songs related to the third crusade (1189), concluded in about 1195 (see Stronski's edn, pp.68–75). The vida states finally that he ‘abandoned the world and entered the Cistercian order with his wife and two sons’. He became abbot of Thoronet Abbey in Provence in about 1201 and was later Bishop of Toulouse from about 1205 until his death.

In spite of the scepticism with which the Provençal vidas must be regarded, the apparently inexplicable conversion from merchant and secular poet to prominent churchman in Folquet’s later life is supported by documentary evidence. The Chanson de la croisade contre les albigeois, for example, mentions ‘L’evesque de Tholosa Folquets, cel de Maselha’. Johannes de Garlandia’s De triumphis ecclesie is even more explicit, identifying ‘Fulco, presul’ as ‘civis et inde Marsilie’, but also as a ‘joculator’.

While Bishop of Toulouse, Folquet became protector of St Dominic and was a co-founder of the Dominican order in 1215. He also established the university in Toulouse in 1229, where Johannes de Garlandia taught for a brief period. He was apparently inactive as a poet for the last 35 years of his life. Although names of other troubadours occur in Dante’s La divina commedia (notably Bertran de Born and Arnaut Daniel), Folquet is the only one to appear in Paradiso (canto ix), where he recounts his early sinful life and subsequent conversion. He was certainly one of the most remarkable men of his time, and his poetic and musical output, though considerable, is only one facet of a long and richly varied career.

There are 29 poems extant bearing ascriptions to Folquet, 13 of them surviving with melodies. Folquet's songs obviously became well known since three served as models for later songs: En chantan m’aven a membrar, Greu feira nuls hom faillensa, Si tot me sui; and one, Tan m’abelis, was quoted at the beginning of a motet. Several (Amors merce no mueira, Ben an mort, S’al cor plagues, Si tot me sui, Us volers outra) also served as models of strophic construction and rhyme scheme for poems that survive without music.

The formulaic nature of troubadour melody may be seen with particular clarity in his works: eight begin with a melodic formula of two or more repetitions of the note a, moving most typically to b and then to g and cadencing finally at a lower pitch. The first lines of these songs are shown in ex.1, with the simplest and clearest version of the formula in first place. This formula is common to the works of other troubadours and, by way of contrafacta (e.g. Greu feira, Si tot me sui, Tan m’abelis), to other repertories as well; it dominates the melodies of Folquet, however, and may perhaps be a personal contribution of his to the stock of melodic phrases that make up medieval song. (There is no question of direct contrafactum relationships among any of the songs cited.)

WORKS

Editions: Le troubadour Folquet de Marseille, ed. S. Stronski (Kraków, 1910) [all datings are based on this source and Cabau] [complete edn]Las cançons dels trobadors, ed. I. Fernandez de la Cuesta and R. Lafont (Toulouse, 1979) [complete edn]The Extant Troubadour Melodies, ed. H. van der Werf and G. Bond (Rochester, NY, 1984) [complete edn]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

U. Sesini: ‘Folchetto da Marsiglia, poeta e musicista’, Convivium [Turin], x (1938), 75–84

U. Sesini: Le melodie trobadoriche nel canzoniere provenzale della Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Turin, 1942), 106–31

F. Gennrich: Der musikalische Nachlass der Troubadours: II, SMM, iv (1960)

J. Boutière and A.-H.Schutz: Biographies des troubadours (Paris, 1964), 470ff

J. Klobukowska: ‘Contribution à l'étude de la versification et du rythme dans les chansons de Folquet de Marseille’, Congrès international de langue & littérature d'Oc et d'études franco-provençales V: Nice 1967, ed. G. Moignet and R. Lassalle (Nice, 1974), 414–18

K. Schlager: ‘Annäherung an ein Troubadour-Lied: “Tant m'abellis l'amoros pessamens” von Folquet de Marseille’, Analysen: Beiträge zu einer Problemgeschichte des Komponierens: Festchrift für Hans Heinrich Eggbrecht, ed. W. Breig, R. Brinkmann and E. Budde (Wiesbaden, 1984), 1–13

P. Cabau: ‘Foulque, marchand et troubadour de Marseille, moine et abbé du Thoronet, évêque de Toulouse’, Les cisterciens de Languedoc (XIIIe–XIVe s.) (Toulouse, 1986), 151–79

R. Labaree: ‘Finding’ Troubadour Song: Melodic Variability and Melodic Idiom in Three Monophonic Traditions (diss., Wesleyan U., 1989), 204

G. Le Vot: ‘Intertextualité, métrique et composition mélodique dans les cansos du troubadour Folquet de Marseille’, Contacts de langues, de civilisations et intertextualité: Montpellier 1990, ed. G. Gouiran (Montpellier, 1992), 637–67

For further bibliography see Troubadours, trouvères.

ROBERT FALCK