(b Bourney, nr Périgueux, c1140; d c1200). Troubadour. He was called by his contemporaries the ‘maestre del trobadors’. His vida (for sources, see Pillet and Carstens, p.203) states that he was born in modest circumstances but managed to acquire a good education, and that he was held in high esteem for the subtlety and perfection of his poems by ‘noblemen and by connoisseurs’. His songs show that he travelled widely, visiting virtually every court in southern France and northern Spain. This is confirmed in the vida, which reports that in winter he taught in school, and in summer he travelled from court to court accompanied by two singers who performed his songs. From references in two poems (PC 242.33 and 41), it seems likely that he was at some time a participant in the Third Crusade.
77 poems are attributed to Giraut, among them three tensos (including S’ie·us quier conseil) that are among the oldest examples of this genre. Three of Giraut’s poems were cited by Dante in his De vulgari eloquentia, indicating the high regard in which he was held even a century after his death. Only four poems have survived with music, of which the alba, Reis glorios, is probably the best known and justly admired of all troubadour songs in modern times. The distinctive opening and general shape of Reis glorios suggest its relation to such 1st-mode plainchant melodies as the hymn Ave Maris Stella. Of the remaining poems with music, S’ie·us quier conseil is of interest as one of the few surviving examples of the tenso with music: in it, Giraut addressed Alamanda, whom Rieger has identified as the trobairitz Alamanda Castelnau (1160–1223). Like Reis glorios, the melody for S'ie·us quier conseil must have been well known. Bertran de Born apparently used it for one of his poems (PC 80.13), calling it ‘el son de N'Alamanda’ (the tune of Lady Alamanda). Giraut's popularity is further attested by the fact that two of the surviving melodies later reappear as contrafacta. Musically, his surviving songs depart from the main troubadour tradition of through-composed melodies. Both Reis glorios and S’ie·us quier conseil are written in clear bar form, and the other two songs also employ melodies with internal repetitions.
Editions:Der musikalische Nachlass der Troubadours: I, ed. F. Gennrich, SMM, iii (1958) [complete edn]Las cançons dels trobadors, ed. I. Fernandez de la Cuesta and R. Lafont (Toulouse, 1979) [complete edn]The Extant Troubadour Melodies, H. van der Werf and G. Bond (Rochester, NY, 1984) [complete edn]The ‘Cansos’ and ‘Sirventes’ of the Troubadour Giraut de Borneil: a Critical Edition, ed. R.V. Sharman (Cambridge, 1989) [complete edn]
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Leu chansonet’e vil, PC 242.45 |
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Non posc sofrir qu’a la dolor, PC 242.51 [contrafactum: Peire Cardenal, ‘Ar mi posc eu lauzar d’amor’, PC 335.7] [facs. in MGG1] |
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Reis glorios, verais lums e clardatz, PC 242.64 [contrafactum: ‘Reis glorios, sener, per qu’hanc nasquei’, PC 461.215b] |
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S’ie·us quier conseil, bel’ amig’ Alamanda’, PC 242.69 (tenso) |
MGG1 (F. Gennrich)
A. Kolsen: Sämtliche Lieder des Trobadors Guiraut de Bornelh (Halle, 1910–35) [edn of texts]
J. Boutière and A.-H. Schutz: Biographies des troubadours (Paris, 1950, rev. 2/1964 by J. Boutière), 39
B. Stäblein: ‘Eine Hymnusmelodie als Vorlage einer provenzalischen Alba’, Miscelánea en homenaje a Monseñor Higinio Anglés (Barcelona, 1958–61), 889–94
H. van der Werf: The Chansons of the Troubadours and Trouvères: a Study of the Melodies and their Relation to the Poems (Utrecht, 1972), 96 [edn of Reis glorios]
W. Arlt: ‘Zur Interpretation zweier Lieder: A Madre de Deus und Reis glorios’, Basler Jb für historische Musikpraxis, i (1977), 117–30
R. Labaree: ‘Finding’ Troubadour Song: Melodic Variability and Melodic Idiom in Three Monophonic Traditions (diss., Wesleyan U., 1989), 168
A. Rieger: ‘Alamanda de Castelnau: une trobairitz dans l'entourage des comtes de Toulouse?’, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, cvii (1991), 47–57
M. Switten: ‘Modèle et variations: Saint-Martial de Limoges et les troubadours’, Contacts de langues, de civilisations et intertextualité: Congrès international de l'Association internationale d'études occitanes III [Montpellier 1990], ed. G. Gouiran (Montpellier, 1992), 679–96
M.T. Bruckner, L. Shepard and S. White: Songs of the Women Troubadours (New York, 1995), 42, 158 [trans. and commentary of PC 242.69]
For further bibliography see Troubadours, trouvères.
ROBERT FALCK/JOHN D. HAINES