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A chantar m'er

I have created a vocal interpretation of the Comtessa de Dia’s “a chantar m’er” as my final project. I had originally intended to create an instrumental piece but ultimately decided that the words were too essentially what I had been drawn to in the song, so instead of looking at the music in a chansonnier and not including the actual text in the final production, I decided to instead ignore the chansonnier and have my own interpretation of how the melody should sound.In her essay on the trobairitz, Sankovitch calls them “nothing less than subversive” (115) because of their outspokenness in a time when their male counterparts were doing all of the talking. Playing off of these themes of the trobairitz using troubadour tropes and being subversive with them, I decided to alternate between having a lilting melody and a harsh one, having the sound of the song turn around quickly. My third verse is the highest in pitch since this is the stanza wherein the Comtessa de Dia mentions other women he may be seeing. I thought that the high-pitched, almost fragile sound would contrast nicely with my strong pronunciation of the harsh consonants in this verse to show how assertive the Comtessa de Dia’s language is.As I was thinking about how to adapt the melody, I was particularly in conversation with Switten’s text, “Music and versification.” I tried to pay careful attention to how the rhythm fell and where rhymes were while still ensuring that the inflection gave meaning to the lyrics. Inspired by her discussion of cadence on page 147, I often decided to give similar end-rhymes trills that landed in opposite directions to better draw attention to them and the words they were trying to connect. Sankovitch, Tilde. “The trobairitz.” The Troubadours: An Introduction. Ed. Simone Gaunt & Sarah Kay. Cambridge University Press. 113-126. Print. Switten, Margaret. “Music and versification.” The Troubadours: An Introduction. Ed. Simone Gaunt & Sarah Kay. Cambridge University Press. 141-163. Print.

Course: 
Songs of Love and War: Gender, Crusade, Politics (Sp16-FEMGEN-205-01/FRENCH-205-01)
Project type: