Gautier d'Espinal

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Gautier d'Espinal (also d'Epinal, d’Épinal or d'Espinau) (active before 1231).^[1] Grove states that while details of his life are lacking, some documents of the time mention a Gautier d'Espinal active between 1232 and 1272, but it is uncertain if this is the trouvère, as some of the songs attributed to him suggest an earlier date. Most likely Gautier was one of the seigneurs of the city of Epinal.^[2] However, Robert Lug's more recent (2007) study of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés chansonnier (Trouvère MS U) shows that Gautier is not the person in the mentions cited by Grove, but was in fact a cleric, a nephew of the bishop of Metz. As Gautier's songs are contained in the oldest part of Trouvère MS U, they must have been composed before 1231–32.^{[3][better source needed]}

His work was popular and widely distributed, with some of his compositions appearing in over a dozen separate source documents. Grove lists fourteen songs with reliable attribution to Gautier, eleven of them with extant melodies.^[2] The list below relies instead on Spanke's revision of Raynaud's catalogue, and gives greater detail than Grove. The total listing below gives 21 songs, 13 with surviving melodies, plus a further four songs, all with surviving melodies, of which three are probably by other trouvères.