Trouveres

Collective designation for the 12- and 13th-century poet-musicians active in northern France, who imitated the movement initiated by the Provençal troubadours.  One of the most famous trouveres was Adam de la Halle.

Of more than 4000 trouvere poems, about 1400 are preserved with their melodies.  The main sources are listed under Chansonnier.  A large majority of the songs are love lyrics in the form of strophic poems.  Through-composed stanzas, which occur in the majority of troubadour songs, are relatively rare, whereas the form with initial repeat, a a b, is the most important form of trouvere music.  It may well be called ballade, analogous to the 14th-century ballade (Machaut) with the same structure.  The melodies of the trouveres are practically all notated without clear indication of rhythm.  Early attempts to apply the principles of mensural notation were abandoned in favor of a rhythmic interpretation based on the meter of the text.  Interpretation by means of rhythmic modes has been generally accepted for trouvere melodies, whereas its applicability to troubadour and minnesinger music is more open to question.