TROUVRE

also spelled Trouveur, any of a school of poets that flourished in northern France from the 11th to the 14th century. The trouvre was the counterpart in the language of northern France (the langue d'ol) to the Provenal troubadour (q.v.), from whom the trouvres derived their highly stylized themes and metrical forms. The essence of trouvre rhetoric lies in the combination of traditional themes and the use of established forms in which to express them. The audience gained pleasure from familiarity with these clichs rather than from the poet's originality. It is thus perhaps the least characteristic trouvres, such as Rutebeuf (flourished 125080), generally considered the last and greatest of the trouvres, who are most appreciated today. Communication between northern and southern France was facilitated and encouraged by the Crusades, and a number of trouvres, such as the Chtelaine de Coucy and Conon de Bthune, took part in them. The trouvres, however, developed a lyric poetry distinct from that of the troubadours, and, unlike the latter, they did not prize obscurity of metaphor for its own sake. Their poetry is sometimes satirical and sometimes (as in the case of Colin Muset) concerned with the pleasures of the good life; but the basic theme remains that of courtly love, in which the poet describes his unrequited passion for an inaccessible lady. Trouvre lyrics were intended to be sung, probably by the poet alone or with instrumental accompaniment provided by a hired musician. Although originally connected with feudal courts, around which the trouvres traveled looking for patronage, their poetry was not just popular with aristocratic circles, and they tended increasingly to find their patrons in the middle classes. Half the extant trouvre lyrics are the work of a guild of citizen poets of Arras. Many of the trouvres, such as Gace Brl (late 12th century), were of aristocratic birth; Thibaut de Champagne (120153) was king of Navarre. But others, including Rutebeuf, were of humble origin. See also jongleurs. The songs of the trouvres were monophonic (consisting solely of melodic line). Their exact mode of performance is not known. The form of the instrumental accompaniment is unknown, but it almost certainly included preludes, postludes, and interludes. The trouvres used a variety of musical forms, some for any of several of the various poetic categories and some linked to the type of the verse. Four broad categories can be discerned: musical forms based on multiple repetitions of a short phrase, as in a litany; dance songs with refrains; songs based on pairs of repeated lines; and through-composed songs (i.e., using no repetition). Compositions with no repetition within the stanza include the vers and the chanson. In the chanson, however, a short initial section is repeated, and a piece of the opening section may recur at the end. Most surviving trouvre music is written in a notation that indicates the pitch of the notes but not their relative duration or accentuation, an omission that has given rise to much debate as to rhythmic interpretation in the edition of the songs for modern performance.