Ce fut en mai is a mid-13th century trouvere

Trouvère

Trouvère , sometimes spelled trouveur , is the Northern French form of the word trobador . It refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France...

 song, by Moniot d'Arras

Moniot d'Arras

Moniot d'Arras was a French composer and poet of the trouvère tradition. He was a monk of the abbey of Arras in northern France; the area was at the time a center of trouvère activity, and his contemporaries included Adam de la Halle and Colin Muset. His songs were all monophonic in the tradition...

. It is a monophonic French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 song, with improvised accompaniment. The setting of the song is strophic, with 5 verses, each with the internal form of AABB. The rhythm scheme of each internal form is aabaaabccbccb. An instrumental interlude, quite brief, is improvised between each verse. The form of the song is in fact a pastourelle

Pastourelle

The pastourelle is a typically Old French lyric form concerning the romance of a shepherdess. In most of the early pastourelles, the poet knight meets a shepherdess who bests him in a wit battle and who displays general coyness. The narrator usually has sexual relations, either consensual or...

, and the subject is pastoral

Pastoral

The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...

, a tale of a maiden being wooed by a knight.. The song is in the northern speech

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...

 of the trouvère

Trouvère

Trouvère , sometimes spelled trouveur , is the Northern French form of the word trobador . It refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France...

s rather than the southern language of the troubadors, although this distinction is sometimes neglected in contemporary usage.

Performances

The song has been recorded by many early music

Early music

Early music is generally understood as comprising all music from the earliest times up to the Renaissance. However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises,...

 performers, including St. George's Canzona (on their album Ce Fut En Mai), and the Folger Consort, on their album A Medieval Tapestry: Instrumental and Vocal Music From the 12th Through 14th Centuries, and Paul Hillier

Paul Hillier

Paul Douglas Hillier is a conductor, music director and baritone. He specializes in early music and contemporary art music, especially that by composers Steve Reich and Arvo Pärt. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford and the Guildhall School of Music, beginning his professional career while a...

, on French Troubadour Songs. A number of contemporary performers have also performed the song, including Samhradh, on the album Ag Cur Na Samhradh.