Essay on “Music in Courtly Life” by Guillaume de Lorris
The aim of this paper is to summarize the article “Music in Courtly Life” written by Guillaume de Lorris and translated by Harry W. Robbins. Troubadours’ songs were predominantly singing about certain life values like idealized love and dedication of the crusades. The relationship between music and real life was very close. Songs of that time gave the possibility to get to know more about the way people lived, traditions and customs they followed.
The troubadours were traveling musicians. The major themes of their songs were courtly love and chivalry. Besides, any news was spread thanks to traveling troubadours. Therefore, they played a role of mass media of the Medieval period. The manuscripts called chansonniers contained songs of knighthood (Robbins 47). These songs were hardly ever performed by musicians at that time. Many of them were sung by troubadours. Most interesting fact is that the songs usually reflected troubadour’s life events. Often, the main theme of such songs was love, but the real name of a lady was changed because, as a rule, “she was someone else’s wife” (Robbins 47).
The article discusses one of the representatives of troubadours of that time, his name is Raimbaut. The story also unfolds and the audience gets to know the love story of Raimbaut. The name of a lady in the story becomes Beatrice. Likewise, there was a great variety of similar songs, but few of them found written refection. Thus, there is no need to look for other sources to get to know the medieval era because of troubadours or traveling musicians. Some people underestimate their role and think they were simply entertainers. However, this is not the case with troubadours. Also, it becomes clear that even though people lived differently then, their feelings and strivings were very similar to a modern …
