Chansons de Toile: songs from women’s room in Middle Ages

Ensemble: Ligeriana, Dir. Katia Caré
Album: Chansons de Toile, tales of belles ‘Aiglentine, Beatris, Ysabiauz’ (XIIth et XIIIth centuries)
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In the late twelfth and early thirteenth century the trouvères, musicians and poets from the north of France, devise the Chanson de toile, a genre of narrative old French lyric poetry. Typically, the lyrics of the compositions tell the story of a young, often married woman pining for a lover, with a happy ending. The genre's name derives from toile; that is, they are supposed to have been sung by women who were weaving, and the female main characters also sew as they relate their stories. Some fifteen of them remain; five were written by Audefroi le Bastart, the others are anonymous, it also suggests that since the woman's voice in the chanson de toile is so prominent some of them may have been composed by women. Musically some of them are quite ornate, considering the relatively simple narrative.
In most cases, the song begins with a brief and sympathetic history of a woman: she is either absent from her lover or married unhappily to an older nobleman and in love with a knight. All but one end happily, the one exception is Bele Doette who learns that her lover has died and then founds a monastery into which she retreats. The women sometimes appear careless, but their charm and demeanor are attractive. The chansons de toile are considered some of the most beautiful poems produced in Old French, and their importance was such that some of them were included in romances, in which they were sung by the heroines.
Also known as "chansons d’histoire" or story songs, they are narrative pieces in the style of tragedy. These substantial epic poems relate love affairs or daydreams. Suffused with passion and romance, the stories give us an insight into the ‘private secrets’ of "Beles" heroines. Through their mediaeval rhetoric, they testify to the out-of-time existence of ‘eternal woman’. Ensemble Ligeriana offers the first ever complete illustration of the wealth of inspiration in these pieces, in a version for women’s voices only, in which the performers take turns to bring back to life the atmosphere of collective creation that went with the daily tasks in the "women’s room".
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1 En un vergier, lez une fontenelle (anonymus)
2 Bele Ysabiauz, pucele bien aprise (Audefrois le Batard )
3 Bele Aiglentine (the romance of Guillaume de Dôle)
4 Bele Doette as fenestres se siet (anonymus)
5 Oriolanz (anonymus)
6 Bele Beatris (Audefrois le Batard)
7 Bele Emmelos (Audefrois le Batard)
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Voices: Carole Matras, Estelle Nadau, Caroline Montier, Estelle Garreau-Boisnard,, Katia Caré Narrative voice: Evelyne Moser
Harp: Carole Matras
Viols, psaltery: Evelyne Moser
Mediaeval recorders: Florence Jacquemart
Mediaeval flute: Estelle Garreaud Boisnard
Recorded by Jean-Marc Laisné at The royal abbey of Fontevraud in July 2007
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Видео Chansons de Toile: songs from women’s room in Middle Ages канала Musica Medievale