Guillem or Guilhem Magret (;

fl. ''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they flourished") denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indicatin ...

1195–1210) was a

troubadour A troubadour (, ; oc, trobador ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a '' trobair ...

and

jongleur A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. It originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist entertainer ...

from the Viennois. He left behind eight poems, of which survive a ''

sirventes The ''sirventes'' or ''serventes'' (), sometimes translated as "service song", was a genre of Old Occitan lyric poetry practiced by the troubadours. The name comes from ''sirvent'' ('serviceman'), from whose perspective the song is allegedly wr ...

'' and a '' canso'' with melodies. According to his '' vida'', he was a gambler and publican who could not keep the money he earned but spent it away gambling and frequenting taverns, and so he was always ill-equipped for riding. In ''Maigret, pujat m’es el cap'', a ''tenso'' with Guilhem Rainol d'Apt, he is despised by his debate partner as a ''joglar vielh, nesci, badoc'': "an old, silly, stupid jongleur". Despite this, his biographer notes that he was well liked and honoured and his songs were "good". Guillem travelled widely in Spain, sojourning at the courts of

Peter II of Aragon Peter II the Catholic (; ) (July 1178 – 12 September 1213) was the King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona from 1196 to 1213. Background Peter was born in Huesca, the son of Alfonso II of Aragon and Sancha of Castile. In 1205 he acknowle ...

and

Alfonso IX of León Alfonso IX (15 August 117123 or 24 September 1230) was King of León and Galicia from the death of his father Ferdinand II in 1188 until his own death. He took steps towards modernizing and democratizing his dominion and founded the Universit ...

. Eventually he entered a hospital in Spain, in the land of "Lord Roiz Peire dels Gambiaros" (probably

Pedro Ruiz de los Cameros Pedro is a masculine given name. Pedro is the Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician name for ''Peter''. Its French equivalent is Pierre while its English and Germanic form is Peter. The counterpart patronymic surname of the name Pedro, meaning ...

), and there ended his life. Among the dates which can be established for Guillem's life are 1196, when he composed a song on the death of Alfonso II and succession of Peter II in Aragon, and 1204, when he wrote a song to celebrate the November coronation of Peter by

Pope Innocent III Pope Innocent III ( la, Innocentius III; 1160 or 1161 – 16 July 1216), born Lotario dei Conti di Segni (anglicized as Lothar of Segni), was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 8 January 1198 to his death in 16 ...

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

. Guillem's music is rich, diverse, motivically-varied, and

neumatic A neume (; sometimes spelled neum) is the basic element of Western and Eastern systems of musical notation prior to the invention of five-line staff notation. The earliest neumes were inflective marks that indicated the general shape but not n ...

ally-textured. ''L'aigue puge contremont'' contains four unusual B– F leaps, which Guillem probably intended as a motive.

Sources

*Aubrey, Elizabeth. ''The Music of the Troubadours''. Indiana University Press, 1996. . *Egan, Margarita, ed. and trans. ''The Vidas of the Troubadours''. New York: Garland, 1984. .

External links

''Maigret, pujat m’es el cap''
at Rialto. {{authority control 13th-century French troubadours 12th-century births 13th-century deaths People from Vienne, Isère