#Giraut de Bornelh

[queenvhagar]

Man, I loved Alicole in S1. The courtly love aspect really drew me in and the potential of both characters, individually and separately, made me excited for S2...only for it to fall apart completely. I wasn't expecting it to be The Princess Bride or anything, but damn. It felt like ridicule and even with Criston's speech to Gwayne in the "finale", I can't even muster enjoyment because it's so hollow after what we got in S2. I know it's supposed to be a tragedy but their characters have been written so weirdly that I cringe every time I see a picture or gif of them together.

At university I studied courtly love (l'amour courtois) as it existed in medieval French literature. Because in medieval times marriage, especially among nobility, was a political and economic affair, love was viewed oftentimes separate from marriage. One manifestation of this is courtly love, described as an experience between erotic desire and spiritual attainment, "a love at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent" (from The Meaning of Courtly Love).

Some suggest core tenets to courtly love: that the love is illegitimate, furtive, adulterous in nature; that the male lover holds an inferior position to the woman, who is often elevated in station; that the man completes quests, trials, challenges in his lady's name; that there are rules and subtleties to it, similar to chivalry or courtesy (from Études sur les romans de la Table Ronde). Devotion, piety, and gallantry were valued characteristics.

Many stories portray this love, like Tristan and Isolde and the tales of Lancelot and Guinevere, as well as songs, such as dawn songs, or albas / aubades, poems that spoke of lovers parting in the morning before rivals or spouses discovered them. One such song is Reis Glorios by the "master of troubadours" Giraut de Bornelh:

The potential for exploring courtly love in relation to the pairing of Alicent Hightower and the knight Ser Criston Cole is vast and could have been a fascinating expansion of the relationship between the two as it existed in Fire and Blood. Whether it resulted in a physically consummation of the love or existed as a romantic and spiritual devotion between a noble lady and her knight, there was so much that could have been explored: how does each view the other as the personification of chivalrous ideals of honor, duty, loyalty, piety? How do the rules of courtly love and its secret, private nature influence the interaction between these two? How does their courtly love influence their motivations and the actions they take in their journey? And, if physical, how might each view this in the context of their vows, responsibilities, and their ideals?

The least likely scenario of all of this, when it comes to this pairing, is a situation in which a decades-long mutual admiration somehow evolves / devolves into meaningless physical consummation of the relationship, especially considering not only the illicit nature of such an affair but also the ideals that both characters hold in relation to duty, honor, chivalry, and their own relationship to sex.

Yet once again this is the writers interpreting the story through a solely modern lens. With this tale, they focus on a solely physical experience in the context of Alicent finally "getting off" after being in a loveless marriage all her life, and its purpose is 1) to position her in contrast to the mourning of the main character ie "look how selfish and evil Alicent is, having sex with Rhaenyra's ex while Rhaenyra looks for her dead son" 2) portray her as hypocritical and paint the conflict between the two women as somehow solely the result of jealousy for sexual freedom / hypocrisy at hating sexually free women while wanting it / achieving it oneself (despite this clearly not being the crux of the issues between these two women) 3) set her up to be responsible for the death of her own grandson and lighten / distract the moment of Blood and Cheese with the purpose to mitigate the blame put upon the actual perpetrators by having them have sex during the sequence, pointing the blame at her and Cole for not preventing the act set in motion by the actual perpetrators, removing her role in the actual event as it was written in the source material.

By taking this stance of a solely physical, using each other for sex, modern lens of the relationship between the lady and her knight, it misses out on a more accurate exploration of what love and sex really looked like in a medieval setting. The story truly suffers for it, as do these characters. Instead of an exploration of feelings, motivations, or the development of this relationship across decades, it is reduced to a one dimensional plot device created solely to make the characters look worse in relation to others.

Unfortunately this pairing is not the only part of the show to suffer from this pattern. The result is the world and characters feel incomplete and hollow, divorced from the setting, the logic of the universe, and the humanity of these characters. Nowhere is the "human heart in conflict with itself" that GRRM explores with his characters and stories. And really, courtly love would have been a phenomenal way to build upon the themes GRRM loves to incorporate into his stories.

[whencyclopedia]

Medieval Song from Aristotle to Opera

This book is an interdisciplinary exploration of music and sound with a focus on medieval songs. In the introduction, the author explains how the new interdisciplinary field of sound studies along with her view of song as anachronic (something from a later time period that is transferred back to an earlier one) has led to the interesting title of the book. Its intended audience is scholars in the areas of musicology, sound studies, medieval music, and philosophy.

Sarah Kay is a prolific writer on medieval European literature and the arts. The concept of song as logos and phone (text plus music) is most apparent in medieval song, where not only the performance of the song but its presentation in the manuscript along with the specific musical notation and performance venues all intertwine to go beyond song into how imaginary animals and real animals presented in the songs might have sounded. Given that modern-day scholars can only guess at what and how medieval song may have actually sounded like in performance and how that performance would have been internalized or analyzed by those who heard it, the author explores many interesting threads in the book such as singing as the paradoxical conjunction of touch and thought, song’s association with animal breath and soul, and the specific example of the siren and siren song as presented in medieval song manuscripts. The anachronic exploration of reading medieval song operatically becomes a focus throughout the book as well. The section in the introduction called “Reading Medieval Song Operatically” is an example of this anachronic analysis.

Chapter One looks at the concept of touch and thought in Guillaume de Machaut’s "Remede de Fortune" and its description through music, text, and manuscript illustration, including how the concept of touch is exemplified in Boethius’s On the Consolation of Philosophy to the touch of the Muse in late antique society up to Hope’s touch and the touch of love in the songs of the troubadours and trouveres. Chapter Two examines the concept of the voice as light in such songs and texts as the alba “Reis glorios” by Giraut de Bornelh and the Marian hymn “Domna dels angels regina” of Peire de Corbian.

Chapter Three focuses on the breath of beasts and the ecologies of inspiration in troubadour lyrics and songs such as Nicole de Margival’s "Dit de la Panthere" and Machaut’s "Dit dou Lyon," where the panther and the lion and the concept of the pneuma in medieval philosophy are discussed. The author brings her expertise in ancient and medieval philosophy, depictions of these concepts in medieval illuminated manuscripts, and concepts of air and breath along with colored plates and charts to illustrate her train of thought on these interesting threads, tangents, and trails which bring all these concepts and examples together. Chapter Five discusses a specific imaginary creature, the siren, and its death-luring song, using Machaut’s "Jugement dou roy de Navarre" as an introduction, moving to sirens in medieval singing and operatic representations, up to their depictions in medieval illuminated manuscripts such as the Queen Mary Psalter, Troubadour Book M, and various other medieval songs. In Chapter Six, on imagining hearing song, there is more examination of various troubadour and trouvere medieval songs related to sound and its performance, reception, sensing, and imagining. A short essay on the loss, retrieval, and future of medieval song in scholarship today closes the book.

Kay is Emerita Professor of French Literature, Thought, and Culture at New York University. Some of her previous books include Animal Skins and the Reading Self in Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries (2017) and Parrots and Nightingales: Troubadour Quotations and the Development of European Poetry (2013). One of the most exciting additions to Medieval Song from Aristotle to Opera is its companion website, which contains audio and some video recordings of the songs in the book with complete texts and translations, performance scores, and chapter-by-chapter performance reflections. It is a must for readers to go through this companion website in order to hear and see how the author’s concepts and impressions of these medieval songs are imagined and performed. This book is definitely aimed at experienced scholars; readers unfamiliar with this topic would benefit from learning some fundamental knowledge about this field before preceding.

Continue reading...

[pourpasserlamelancholie]

I could regale with some stanzas of 12th century trobador songs (Bernart de Ventadorn and Giraut de Bornelh) lol

please do look it up if you dont know the date bc there may be at least an approximate answer and otherwise the last option will completely dominate and this poll will be boring.

and dont be like 'but i cant sing'... just answer the earliest tune you know well enough that you COULD sing it

periods of western classical music provided only for reference

[funkqs]

Reis glorios | Giraut de Bornelh

[sivavakkiyar]

[yt]

[mayolfederico]

Guillem de Cabestany ~ Ora vedo, s'allungan le giornate

Guillem de Cabestany ~ Ora vedo, s’allungan le giornate

  Il male m’è dolce e saporoso

e il poco bene manna che mi nutre.

    [Ora, vedo, s’allungan le giornate ]  I   Ora, vedo, s’allungan le giornate e i fiori trovano posto sugli steli; per l’aie odo canti e cinguettii degli uccelli, che ha tenuto rauchi il freddo; ma sulle cime più alte, fra i fiori e primi virgulti, ora s’allietano, ognuno a suo modo.     II   E io…

[avvoltoio]

THE VOICE OF MAGDALENE || [8TRACKS] [PLAYMOSS] [SPOTIFY] 

A newly re-edited playlist of mine featuring music composed and performed by women in the medieval era. The mix contains both religious and secular music from Western Europe, Armenia, Byzantium, and Al-Andalus. All pieces date between the 8th and 15th centuries.

Zarmani e Ints  |  Khosrovidukht (8th Century) Avgoustou Monarchisantos  |  Kassia (810-865) O Vis Aeternitatis  |  Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) Mout M'abelist Quant le Voi  |  Maroie de Dregnau de Lille (13th Century) Kharjas: Non Me Mordas Ya Habibi  |  Andalusian Anon. (13th Century) Sol Oritur Occasus Nescius  |  Herrad of Landsberg (1130-1198) A Chantar M’er de So Qu'eu no Volria  |  Comtessa de Dia (1140-1212) Saltarello: “La Regina”  |  Italian Anon. (14th Century) Amours, ou Trop Tart me Sui Pris  |  Attributed to Blanche of Castile (1188-1252) Na Maria  |  Bieiris de Romans (early 13th Century) Conductus: Ave Maris Stella  |  From the “Las Huelgas Codex” (13th Century) Kharjas: Adir la-na Akwab  |  Andalusian Anon. (13th Century) Si'us Qu'er Conselh Bela Amia Alamanda  |  Giraut de Bornelh (1138-1215) and  Alamanda de Castelnau (1160?-1223) Mout Avetz Fach  |  Castelloza (early 13th Century) Deuil Angoisseus  |  Christine de Pizan (1364-1430) and Giles Binchois (1400-1460) Antiphon: Caritas Habundant in Omnia  |  Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) Mon Chevalier, mon Gracieux Servant  |  Christine de Pizan (1364-1430) 

Image: Sculpture of Mary Magdalene by Gregor Ernhart (c.1502), The Louvre.

[ffatman]

Giraut de Bornelh: Non puesc sofrir https://t.co/Gbs6eBEigG przez @YouTube

Giraut de Bornelh: Non puesc sofrir https://t.co/Gbs6eBEigG przez @YouTube

— Jacek Jankowski (@ffamousffatman) November 1, 2017

via Twitter https://twitter.com/ffamousffatman November 01, 2017 at 07:39PM

[shihlun]

眼睛是心的斥候 / 眼睛尋尋覓覓 / 找尋形象以舉薦心

So through the eyes love attains the heart: For the eyes are the scouts of the heart, And the eyes go reconnoitering For what it would please the heart to possess.

-- Giraut de Bornelh

[outdarethenight]

Reis Glorios, Giraut de Bornelh (c. 1138 – 1215) Ars Antiqua de Paris