Troubadour

A **troubadour** (English: /ˈtruːbədʊər, -dɔːr/, French: [tʁubaduʁ]; Occitan: *trobador* [tɾuβaˈðu] (listen)) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word *troubadour* is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz.

The troubadour school or tradition began in the late 11th century in Occitania, but it subsequently spread to Italy and Spain. Under the influence of the troubadours, related movements sprang up throughout Europe: the Minnesang in Germany, *trovadorismo* in Galicia and Portugal, and that of the trouvères in northern France. Dante Alighieri in his *De vulgari eloquentia* defined the troubadour lyric as *fictio rethorica musicaque poita*: rhetorical, musical, and poetical fiction. After the "classical" period around the turn of the 13th century and a mid-century resurgence, the art of the troubadours declined in the 14th century and around the time of the Black Death (1348) it died out.

The texts of troubadour songs deal mainly with themes of chivalry and courtly love. Most were metaphysical, intellectual, and formulaic. Many were humorous or vulgar satires. Works can be grouped into three styles: the *trobar leu* (light), *trobar ric* (rich), and *trobar clus* (closed). Likewise there were many genres, the most popular being the *canso*, but *sirventes* and *tensos* were especially popular in the post-classical period.

The oldest mention of the word *troubadour* as *trobadors* is found in a 12th-century Occitan text by Cercamon.[1]

The English word *troubadour* is an exact rendition from a French word first recorded in 1575 in an historical context to mean "langue d'oc poet at the court in the 12th and 13th century" (Jean de Nostredame, *Vies des anciens Poètes provençaux*, p. 14 in Gdf. Compl.).[2]

The French word is borrowed itself from the Occitan word *trobador*. It is the oblique case of the nominative *trobaire* “composer", related to *trobar* “to compose, to discuss, to invent" (Wace, *Brut*, editions I. Arnold, 3342) It may come from the hypothetical Late Latin \**tropāre* “to compose, to invent a poem" by regular phonetic change. This recreated form is deduced from the Latin root *tropus*, meaning a trope and the various meanings of the Old Occitan related words. In turn, the Latin word derives ultimately from Greek *τρόπος* (*tropos*), meaning "turn, manner".[3] B Intervocal Latin [p] shifted regularly to [b] in Occitan (cf. Latin *sapere* > Occitan *saber* “to know") (cf. Latin *sapere* > *savoir*). The Latin suffix *-ātor*, *-atōris* explains the Occitan suffix, according to its declension and accentuation : Gallo-Romance \*TROPĀTOR[4] > Occitan *trobaire* (subject case) and \*TROPATŌRE[5] > Occitan *trobador* « troubadour » (oblique case).

There is an alternative theory to explain the meaning of *trobar* as “to compose, to discuss, to invent". It has the support of some historians, specialists of literature and musicologists to justify of the troubadours' origins in Arabic Andalusian musical practices. According to them, the Arabic word *ṭaraba* “music" (from the triliteral root Ṭ-R-B (طرب) “provoke emotion, excitement, agitation; make music, entertain by singing") could partly be the etymon of the verb *trobar*.[6][7] Another Arabic root had already been proposed before : Ḍ-R-B (ضرب) “strike", by extension “play a musical instrument".[8] They entertain the possibility that the nearly homophonous Ḍ-R-B root may have contributed to the sense of the newly coined Romance verb *trobar*.

Some proponents of this theory argue, only on cultural grounds, that both etymologies may well be correct, and that there may have been a conscious poetic exploitation of the phonological coincidence between *trobar* and the triliteral Arabic root Ṭ-R-B when Sufi Islamic musical forms with a love theme first spread from Al-Andalus to southern France. It has also been pointed out that the concepts of "finding", "music", "love", and "ardour" — the precise semantic field attached to the word troubadour — are allied in Arabic under a single root W-J-D (وجد) that plays a major role in Sufic discussions of music, and that the word troubadour may in part reflect this.[9] Nevertheless, the linguistic facts do not support a hypothetical theory : the word *trover* is mentioned in French as soon as the 10th century before *trobar* in Occitan (see above) and the word *trovere* > *trouvère* appears almost simultaneously in French as *trobador* in Occitan (see above).

## Links:

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubadour

-https://www.britannica.com/art/troubadour-lyric-artist

-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ6ykg0TYug

-http://www.medieval-life-and-times.info/medieval-music/troubadours.htm

-https://www.thefinertimes.com/troubadours-in-the-middle-ages