Marcabru was a musician and poet originally from Gascony, belonging to the first generation of troubadours. He is considered one of the most representative, his poetic corpus that has reached us today is composed of 43 compositions of which, however, only four melodies have survived.
He is credited of composing the first pastorela in provençal: “L’autrier, jost’una sebissa”. The pastorela is a poetic genre in which a knight approaches a shepherdess with varying results each time. The composition “A la fontana del vergier” is certainly less known today even because its music unfortunately has not survived. In our opinion, there are many points that make it an extremely interesting composition: it is considered one of the oldest lyrics of the pastorela poetic genre, but it presents some anomalies, first and foremost the presence of a noble lady, daughter of a castellan, instead of a shepherdess. Moreover, the setting is not the typical bucolic landscape, but a “vergier”, a garden that is one of the characteristic places for chivalric love adventures. Finally, there is no attempt at seduction by the poet or knight, but a sincere effort to try and console the desperate lady. We believe the genre of the pastorela at the time of this composition was not yet fully developed and it is of note that Marcabru, who was extremely avant-garde, in addition to laying the foundations of this poetic genre also inserted nuances of the nascent “chanson de toile”, another poetic genre that in those years was beginning to sprout in the North of France through the verses of trouvères. At the fountain of an orchard, our troubadour tries in vain to console a noble woman who is crying and cursing King Louis for having ordered the call to arms. The metre of this original composition matches the more famous pastorela “L'autrier jost'una sebissa” written by Marcabru too and handed down with music notation, hence our idea of creating a credible and plausible contrafactum, thus filling the gap left by the lack of notation in "A la fontana del vergier". This composition dates back to 1147 and it refers to the “second crusade”, the one in which King Louis VII of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine with all her ladies participated, where according to the Persian historian from the 12th century ʿImād al-Dīn: "Among the Franks were women knights, with armour and helmets, dressed like men, who distinguished themselves in the thick of battle and did acts of intelligent men while being gentlewomen. […] they were not known to be women until they were stripped of their arms and undressed."
“A la fontana del vergier” is one of the songs included in our new album “Make love, not crusades”.
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