La dimension musicale des textes des troubadours

Complementary essay to the French translation of the great anthology of Troubadour texts edited in 1975 by Martin de Riquer. It is an introduction to the musical tradition of the troubadours in which we try to integrate the musicological perspective with the philological-literary one. The essay is divided into three sections: 1. "Philologists and musicologists", in which the different positions of the two disciplinary areas concerning the melodies of the troubadours are discussed; 2. "Written tradition of the melodies", which illustrates the methods of transmission of musical texts with particular regard to the extravagant and indirect tradition of troubadour melodies; 3. "Musical types, poetic genres, generations of authors", in which a typological interpretation of melodies is proposed, in historical perspective and in relation to the content of the texts.