Guiot de Dijon

Guiot de Dijon (fl. 1215–25) was a Burgundian trouvère. The seventeen chansons ascribed to him in the standard listing of Raynaud-Spanke are found in fifteen chansonniers, some without attribution or with conflicting attributions where they occur in multiple sources.[1]

Of Guiot's life, little is known. His name suggests he was from Dijon. The mention of three names in two songs gives further indication of his milieu: an envoi naming 'Erard a Chassenay' has been assumed to refer to one of the three individuals called Érart who were barons of Chassenay in Champagne.[2]

Several Guiot's songs survive with more than one distinct melody. The version of Quant je plus voi felon rire in the Chansonnier du roi, the melody of which was added later, is unusual in being through-composed and in Franconian notation. Overall, Guiot's melodies are usually identified as those appearing in bar form, which all end on the same pitch class.

Guiot probably modelled Chanter m'estuet, coment que me destraigne (RS117) after the Occitan song Si be·m sui loing et entre gent estraigna by the troubadour Peirol, although this is based on assumptions from shared versification and cannot be confirmed, since no melody survives for RS117. The song Penser ne doit vilanie (RS1240), sometimes attributed to him, served as a model for the anonymous Marian song De penser a vilanie (RS1239), which survives uniquely in the Chansonnier Clairambault, i.e. TrouvX.[3]

  1. ^ See Elisabeth Nissen, ed., Les chansons attribuées à Guiot de Dijon et Jocelin (Paris: Champion, 1929), pp.iii-iv.
  2. ^ See Elisabeth Nissen, ed., Les chansons attribuées à Guiot de Dijon et Jocelin (Paris: Champion, 1929), pp.ix
  3. ^ The sigla used here are the standard trouvère sigla given in Edouard Schwan, Die altfranzösische Liederhandschriften: ihr Verhältnis, ihre Entstehung und ihre Bestimmung (Berlin: Weidmann, 1886).