(b 22 Oct 1071; d 10 Feb 1126). French ruler and troubadour. He is the earliest troubadour whose works have survived. In 1086 he inherited from his father a domain larger than that ruled by the King of France; he was thus a powerful political figure. In the course of an adventurous life he mounted an unsuccessful crusade, twice attempted to seize Toulouse by force, and was excommunicated for adultery. His vida tells that ‘he knew how to invent poetry and sing very well’; according to the contemporary historian Orderic Vitalis ‘he could outdo even the wittiest minstrels with his many jests’. Of 11 poems attributed to him, only Pos de chantar m’es pres talens (PC 183.10) has survived with music, although indirectly and incomplete: a later song, Bel seiner Dieus, tu sias grasiz from the 14th-century liturgical play Mystery of St Agnes, has been identified in I-Rvat Chigi C.V.151, f.81v as a contrafactum of Guillaume’s song (described as a planctus); only two of the four lines were set to music. According to Gennrich (SMM, iv, 1965, p.23), the original was written in 1111 or 1112.
A. Jeanroy: Les chansons de Guillaume IX, duc d’Aquitaine (Paris, 1913)
H. Spanke: ‘Zur Formenkunst des ältesten Troubadours’, Studi medievali, vii (1934), 72–84
J. Storost: ‘“Pos de chantar m’es pres talentz”: Deutung und Datierung des Bussliedes des Grafen von Poitiers’, Zeitschrift für franzözische Sprache und Literatur, lxiii (1939–40), 356–68
J. Boutière and A.-H. Schutz: Biographies des troubadours (Paris, 1950, 2/1964), 7–8
P. Dronke: The Medieval Lyric (London, 1968, 3/1996), 109–18
M. Chibnall, ed. and trans.: The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, v (Oxford, 1975), 324
I. Fernandez de la Cuesta and R. Lafont, eds.: Las cançons dels trobadors (Toulouse, 1979), 45–8
G.A. Bond, ed.: The Poetry of William VII, Count of Poitiers, IX Duke of Aquitaine (New York, 1982) [with musical appx by H. van der Werf]
M. Egan, trans.: The Vidas of the Troubadours (New York, 1984), 45
H. van der Werf and G. Bond: The Extant Troubadour Melodies (Rochester, NY, 1984), 151
M.H. Fernandez: ‘Une réminiscence hébraïque dans la musique du troubadour Guillaume IX’, Studia occitanica in memoriam Paul Rémy, i, ed. H.-E. Keller and others (Kalamazoo, MI, 1986), 81–6
For further bibliography see Troubadours, trouvères.
ROBERT FALCK/JOHN HAINES