Audefroi le Bastart

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Audefroi le Bastart (modern French Bâtard) was a French trouvère from Artois, who flourished in the early thirteenth century.

Little is known about Audefroi's life beyond what can be inferred from his work. Two songs mention Jehan de Nesle, which Theodore Karp suggests dates them before 1200 when Jehan joined the Fourth Crusade.[1] Song 5 (Com esbahis) is addressed in its envoy to the Lord of Harnes, a town almost midway between Arras and Lille. Given Audefroi's potential dates, this could be Michel de Harnes, the so-called 'knight-trouvère', who features in Guillaume de Dole by Jean Renart.[2] Michel also joined the Fourth Crusade.[3] The first stanza of another song (RS77) is interpolated into the Roman de la violette (c.1225) by Gerbert de Montreuil. Karp suggests he is a native of Picardy, near the Artois border. The registre of the puy d'Arras notes the death of Audefroi's wife.[4]

Audefroi was the author of ten chansons d'amour, mainly found in the chansonnier du roi (Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 844 = TrouvM) and the chansonnier de Noailles (Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 12615 = TrouvT) and six narrative songs which modern scholars term chansons de toile or romances.[5] A few of the chansons occur in other sources: RS223 is in TrouvO (F-Pn fr.846) and with empty staves in TrouvC (CH-BEb 389); RS1436 is in TrouvR (F-Pn fr. 1591). The songs appear in the same order in both TrouvM and TrouvT, although in a different order in the index of the former. TrouvT lacks the last three of the six romances/chansons de toile. Three of the romances are in TrouvC and two in TrouvU (F-Pn fr.20050).

  1. ^ See Karp, Theodore, 'Audefroi le Bastart' in Grove Music Online
  2. ^ See http://www.mikesclark.com/genealogy/michel.html
  3. ^ See Warlop, Ernest (1975),The Flemish Nobility before 1300 (G. Desmet-Huysman, Kortrijk), 2 parts in 4 volumes.
  4. ^ See Karp, op.cit.
  5. ^ See Zink, Michel: 'Belle': essai sur les chansons de toile (Paris, 1978), which includes editions, translations, and music edited by G. Le Vot.