Cançoner Gil
Encyclopedia
Chansonnier
A chansonnier is a manuscript or printed book which contains a collection of chansons, or polyphonic and monophonic settings of songs, hence literally "song-books," although some manuscripts are so called even though they preserve the text but not the music A chansonnier is a manuscript or...
produced in Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
in the middle of the 14th century. In the systematic nomenclature of Occitanists, it is typically named MS
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
Sg, but as Z in the reassignment of letter names by François Zufferey. It is numbered MS 146 in the Biblioteca de Catalunya in Barcelona where it now resides.
The name of the chansonnier is not medieval. It is so-called after its last possessor before it was donated to the Biblioteca, Pablo Gil y Gil, a professor of the University of Zaragoza
University of Zaragoza
The University of Zaragoza or sometimes Saragossa University is a university located in Zaragoza, in the Aragon region of Spain...
(c. 1910). It was donated at the request of a group of ten of the library's patrons: Isidre Bonsoms, Pere Grau Maristany, Eduard Sevilla, the Marquès de Maury, Josep Mansana, Jacinte Serra, Manuel Girona, Hug Herberg, Teresa Ametller, and Archer Milton Huntington. Part of the motive for donating the chansonnier was to have it rebound. It was given new red leather binding decorated with the arms
Coat of arms
A coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield or escutcheon or on a surcoat or tabard used to cover and protect armour and to identify the wearer. Thus the term is often stated as "coat-armour", because it was anciently displayed on the front of a coat of cloth...
of the provincial government (diputació) and the Cross of Saint James. Ramon Miquel i Planes, with the advice of Ernest Molinés i Brasés of the Escola de les Arts del Llibre, and the technical skill of J. Figuerola, restored the chansonnier with the new binding at the behest of the provincial government.
The chansonnier is well-preserved, made of high-quality parchment
Parchment
Parchment is a thin material made from calfskin, sheepskin or goatskin, often split. Its most common use was as a material for writing on, for documents, notes, or the pages of a book, codex or manuscript. It is distinct from leather in that parchment is limed but not tanned; therefore, it is very...
with clear, well-formed letters. The first third of it is decorated with initials and marginalia, but the latter folios are unfinished; the spaces left for ornamentaion are unfilled. Also, no space is left for musical notation, and since some of the poems are known to have melodies, the chansonnier must have been produced to be read, not used (for musical performance).
The chansonnier contains 285 poems. In the first section it contains almost all the lyric compositions of Cerverí de Girona
Cerverí de Girona
Cerverí de Girona was a Catalan troubadour born Guillem de Cervera in Girona. He was the most prolific troubadour, leaving behind some 114 lyric poems among other works, including an ensenhamen of proverbs for his son, totaling about 130. He was a court poet to James the Conqueror and Peter the...
, a late thirteenth-century Catalan troubadour and one of the most prolific. The second section contains the work of several twelfth-century troubadours from the classical era of their lyric art, namely Raimbaut de Vaqueiras
Raimbaut de Vaqueiras
Raimbaut de Vaqueiras was a Provençal troubadour and, later in his life, knight. His life was spent mainly in Italian courts until 1203, when he joined the Fourth Crusade....
, Bertran de Born
Bertran de Born
Bertran de Born was a baron from the Limousin in France, and one of the major Occitan troubadours of the twelfth century.-Life and works:...
, Guiraut de Bornelh, Arnaut Daniel
Arnaut Daniel
Arnaut Daniel de Riberac was an Occitan troubadour of the 12th century, praised by Dante as "il miglior fabbro" and called "Grand Master of Love" by Petrarch...
, Guilhem de Saint Leidier, Bernart de Ventadorn
Bernart de Ventadorn
Bernart de Ventadorn , also known as Bernard de Ventadour or Bernat del Ventadorn, was a prominent troubador of the classical age of troubadour poetry. Now thought of as "the Master Singer" he developed the cançons into a more formalized style which allowed for sudden turns...
, Pons de Capduelh
Pons de Capduelh
Pons de Capduelh, Capduell, Capdveyll, Capdveill, Capduoill, Capdoill, Capdolh, or Chapteuil was a troubadour. His songs were known for their great gaiety...
, Jaufre Rudel
Jaufré Rudel
Jaufre Rudel was the Prince of Blaye and a troubadour of the early–mid 12th century, who probably died during the Second Crusade, in or after 1147...
, and Guillem de Berguedan. The final segment of the manuscript, completely without decoration, is devoted to the troubadours (many probably contemporary) of the "school of Toulouse
Toulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
", associated with the later Consistori del Gay Saber
Consistori del Gay Saber
The Consistori del Gay Saber , commonly called the Consistori de Tolosa today, was a poetic academy founded at Toulouse in 1323 to revive and perpetuate the lyric school of the troubadours.-Foundation:...
. These include Joan de Castellnou
Joan de Castellnou
Joan de Castellnou was a troubadour of the Consistori del Gay Saber active in Toulouse. He left behind five or six cansos, three vers, a dansa, a conselh, and a sirventes...
, Raimon de Cornet
Raimon de Cornet
Raimon de Cornet was a fourteenth-century Toulousain priest, friar, grammarian, poet, and troubadour. He was a prolific author of verse; more than forty of his poems survive, most in Occitan but two in Latin. He also wrote letters, a didactic poem , a grammar, and some treatises on computation...
, and Gaston III of Foix-Béarn
Gaston III of Foix-Béarn
Gaston III/X of Foix-Béarn, also Gaston Fébus or Gaston Phoebus was the 11th count of Foix, and viscount of Béarn . Officially, he was Gaston III of Foix and Gaston X of Béarn.-Early life:...
. Included towards the end of the manuscript is one Old French
Old French
Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...
work: an excerpt of the Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure
Benoît de Sainte-Maure
Benoît de Sainte-Maure was a 12th century French poet, most probably from Sainte-Maure de Touraine near Tours, France. The Plantagenets' administrative center was located in Chinon - west of Tours....
.
The Gil is the only source for a number of Cerverí de Girona's poems. It offers a large number of variants of the well-known classical poems, perhaps because it is based on oral traditions and not on other texts. It is for this that it was lettered Sg and Z, towards the end of the alphabet and among the (traditionally) less reliable chansonniers, though this system of classification is no longer considered a good guide to accuracy or reliability.
Sources
Bibliography- Riquer, Martín de. Historia de la literatura catalana, Vol. 1. Barcelona: Ariel, 1964.
- Miriam Cabré et Sadurní Martí, "Le Chansonnier Sg au carrefour Occitano-Catalan", Romania, vol. 128 (2010), pp. 92-134.
External links
- Cançoner provençal (Cançoner Gil) at the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
- Cançoner Gil (ms. 146): un cançoner provençal d’origen català at the Biblioteca de Catalunya
- La Biblioteca de Catalunya (English)