The granting of a fief created the relationship of lord (or suzerain) and vassal. The bond thus created
was solemnized downright liturgically, in a ritual of homage whereby the vassal, placing his hands in the
lord’s, swore an oath of fealty that obliged him to perform certain specified acts and services, including
military service. The suzerain, in turn, bound himself to protect the vassal from incursions. The feudal
nobility was thus primarily a military caste system, a hierarchy of knights or warriors-in-service. These
military bonds were at first envisioned as a system of mutual defense (although in reality disruptive
conflict among lords was common), but in the period of the Crusades the knightly armies went on the
offensive. William IX of Aquitaine, our first troubadour, led a Crusade himself in 1101; his unlucky army
never reached the Holy Land.
Several genres of troubadour verse celebrated feudal ideals. A sirventes was a song from vassal to
lord about knightly service or about some theme of political alliance; such a song could be either serious
or satirical. An enueg (compare the French ennui) was a complaint about infractions of knightly decorum.
A gap (compare jape or gibe) was a bluster-song, glorifying one’s own exploits or issuing a challenge.
The most serious of such types was the planh (compare the French plainte), a eulogy on the death of a
lord. There were also many songs about crusading zeal.
The true heart of the troubadour legacy, however, was the canso, which means a love poem—or
better, perhaps, a poem about love. For the love celebrated by knightly singers was just as “high,” just as
formalized and ritualized, as any other publicly enunciated theme. And the poems of the troubadours were
always meant for public performance—hence the music!—not for private reading; theirs was still an
eminently oral tradition. Modern scholars have christened the subject of the canso “courtly love” (amour
courtoise); the troubadours themselves called it fin’ amors, “refined love,” defined by one modern
authority as “a great imaginative and spiritual superstructure built on the foundation of sexual attraction.”
It is widely thought that Arabic sung poetry—known in southern Europe from the ninth century, and
also emphasizing secret love and the spiritualization of the erotic (including the homoerotic)—had a
formative influence on the concept of fin’ amors. Its main genre is the nawba (or nuba), a lengthy vocal
performance accompanied by the oud (literally “wood”), a gourd-shaped plucked-string instrument from
which the European lute had been adapted by the thirteenth century. It consisted of several stanzas (some
in Arabic and some in Persian), connected with improvisatory instrumental interludes. No musical
relationship between the nawba and the troubadour repertory has as yet been definitely established, but
some modern performers of early music have experimented effectively with performance practices
derived from those of present-day Arab musicians.
The love songs of the troubadours were like their knightly songs in that they emphasized service and
the idolization of those above, as the lady was invariably held to be. The style was self-consciously lofty,
as exemplified by the imagery of the most famous of all cansos, Can vei la lauzeta mover by Bernart de
Ventadorn (d. ca. 1200), which begins with an unforgettable metaphor comparing the joy of love to the
soaring and swooping of a lark in flight. This is contrasted with the lovesick poet’s unhappy state,
condemned to adore a cold and unresponsive lady from afar.
Fin’ amors was furtive and hopeless as a matter of course, because the lady was always held to
outrank her lover. She was married into the bargain, as a rule, though often left alone for long periods
while her husband was out on campaigns or Crusades. At such times she was the effective ruler of his
domain, as the Occitan word for lady—domna—already suggests (compare the Latin domina and the
Italian donna). Her identity is always concealed behind a code name (senhal; in Bernart’s song it is
Tristan), supposedly known only to the lady and her lover.