THE CHANSONNIER D'ARRAS: A CRITICAL EDITION

Abstract

<p>The poetry and music of the trouveres flourished in the twelfth- and thirteenthcenturies. Trouvere works, found in collections called chansonniers, offer interesting challenges for researchers for many of these works as a whole still lie untranscribed. Existing in manuscript form in the Arras Municipal Library in France, the Chansonnier d'Arras consists of 42 chansons and 31 jeux partis (some with lacunae). A facsimile edition was published in 1925 by the Societe des Anciens Textes Francais under the editorship of Alfred Jeanroy.</p> <p>The following thesis is a transcription of the Arras chansonnier with an introduction that explores several facets of the critical approach taken. The first section places the manuscript historically in relation to other trouvere manuscripts. This is followed by a section which deals with the city of Arras and the impact this city had on the trouveres, Two analytical sections follow, one on mensural notation and the other on melodies. The section on mensural notation outlines the two opposing ideas concerning the application of rhythmic modes to these songs; the section on melodies focuses on the difficulty of analyzing these works using modal and tonal systems. A section on performance practice follows this, in which evidence from thirteenth- and fourteenth-century literature are used as resources for performance practice. The final section is the editorial policy, which explains I) the orthography of the manuscript and, 2) the approach taken in the transcription.</p>