Eye, Mouth, and Heart: The Female-Voiced Contrafacta of Can vei la lauzeta mover

Meghan Quinlan

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Chapter 14 Eye, Mouth, and Heart: The Female-Voiced Contrafacta of Can vei la lauzeta mover

In: Female-Voice Song and Womenâs Musical Agency in the Middle Ages

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Meghan Quinlan

Meghan Quinlan
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 388â421

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004517035_016

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Abstract

The canso Can vei la lauzeta mover, attributed to the troubadour Bernart de Ventadorn, has a long and wide-ranging reception through contrafacture and interpolated lyric as an exemplum of male desire. Among the songâs contrafacta, however, are three female voices airing their own responses to desire and unrequited love. One voice, a female lover in the jeu-parti Amis ki est li meulz vaillanz, debates her male partner on the question of whether desire is more enjoyable when satisfied or when prolonged; another, the complainte Plaine dâire et de descomfort offers a sonically intricate account of unrequited love, rich in assonance; and a third, the voice of Saint Agnes in an Occitan play on her life, re-uses Bernartâs melody as a response to unwanted male desire. Noting the songsâ material transmission, this chapter engages in a combination of context-rich analysis and close musico-literary reading to consider how melody shapes, undercuts, and extends the desires expressed in these female-voiced lyrics, and how meaning arises when the same melody is applied to different texts. While clerical re-workings of Bernartâs song are transmitted alongside moralising and misogynistic texts, these female voiced contrafacta offer much more varied representations of women, so that the melody becomes a repository of associations on desiring women and on women desiring.

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Female-Voice Song and Womenâs Musical Agency in the Middle Ages

Series:Â Brill's Companions to the Musical Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Volume: 5

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004517035

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 10 Aug 2022

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Part 1 Ritual Discourse

Part 2 Materiality

Part 3 Subjectivity and Emotion

Part 4 Representation

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African Studies	Education	Media Studies
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Chapter 14 Eye, Mouth, and Heart: The Female-Voiced Contrafacta of Can vei la lauzeta mover

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Female-Voice Song and Womenâs Musical Agency in the Middle Ages

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Female-Voice Song and Womenâs Musical Agency in the Middle Ages