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gathering.22 If William himself was not the commissioner, then the alternative
must be that the work was in some sense commissioned for him, perhaps as a
gift, and most probably by Charles of Anjou. This has most recently been sug-
gested by John Haines; drawing attention to the striking similarities between
the Chansonnier and roughly contemporaneous work by the Sicilian school,
he suggests that the songbook could be the Angevin’s competitive response
to the literary success nurtured at the court of his rival Manfred.23 While the
exact circumstances of its commissioning must remain obscure, the key facts
remain, firstly, that this collection is strongly and explicitly associated with the
Morea, and, secondly, that the Villehardouin prince is himself included in its
repertoire.
There can be no certainty about where the Chansonnier was created.
Parts of the core manuscript—notably the motet section—are so similar to
another slightly later chansonnier (Paris, BnF fonds. fr. 12615, trouvère ms. T)
that the two songbooks certainly shared at least one written exemplar.24 This
has led to the theory that the Chansonnier was created, like its peer T, in the
Artois region of north-west France. This was a major centre for the produc-
tion of music manuscripts at the relevant time, and Artesian origin is the most
likely; the Chansonnier also contains a wealth of Artesian material. However,
Peloponnesian or southern Italian origins are also possible. The similarities
with T strictly show only shared exemplars, and these could conceivably have
been sent to the East. Again, Theodore Karp has shown that musically at least
the relationship between this Chansonnier and the Artesian T is not as close
as has hitherto been thought on analysis of the text, and Haines has argued
that—beyond the clear shared source material—the Chansonnier is so dif-
ferent from other chansonniers as to argue for “a scriptorium removed from
the French mainstream”.25 Nothing is known about such scriptoria in Frankish
Greece, but writing was certainly going on in the principality, so fabrication in
the Morea should not be ruled out, though all the evidence nevertheless points
to the employment of scribes and illuminators brought in from Artois. One
22 Haines, “Songbook,” pp. 90–91 and “Transformations,” pp. 12–16.
23 Haines, “Songbook,” pp. 72–73, 98, 100.
24 On geographical origin, see Haines, “Transformations,” p. 18 and “Songbook,” pp. 46–48;
Mark Everist, Polyphonic Music in 13th-century France: Aspects of Sources and Distribution
(New York, 1989), pp. 186–88; for a good summary, Judith A Peraino, Giving Voice, pp. 155–
56, n. 92.
25 On music and T: Theodore Karp, “The Trouvère ms Tradition,” in The Twenty-Fifth
Anniversary Festschrift (1937–1962): Queens College of the City University of New York
Department of Music, ed. Albert Mell (New York, 1964) pp. 37–39; Haines (quotation):
“Transformations,” p. 18; Haines now favours Artesian origins however: “Songbook,”
pp. 93–97.