The ''Cançoner Gil'' (, ) is an Occitan

chansonnier A chansonnier ( ca, cançoner, oc, cançonièr, Galician and pt, cancioneiro, it, canzoniere or ''canzoniéro'', es, cancionero) is a manuscript or printed book which contains a collection of chansons, or polyphonic and monophonic settings o ...

produced in Catalonia in the middle of the 14th century. In the systematic nomenclature of Occitanists, it is typically named MS ''Sg'', but as ''Z'' in the reassignment of letter names by François Zufferey. It is numbered MS 146 in the Biblioteca de Catalunya in Barcelona where it now resides. The name of the chansonnier is not medieval. It is so-called after its last possessor before it was donated to the Biblioteca, Pablo Gil y Gil, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Zaragoza (c. 1910), owner of a valuable collection of ancient manuscripts.Gil y Gil, Pablo: "Los manuscritos aljamiados de mi colección." Zaragoza, Escar, 1904
/ref> It was donated at the request of a group of ten of the library's patrons: Isidre Bonsoms, Pere Grau Maristany, Eduard Sevilla, the Marquès de Maury, Josep Mansana, Jacinte Serra, Manuel Girona, Hug Herberg, Teresa Ametller, and Archer Milton Huntington. Part of the motive for donating the chansonnier was to have it rebound. It was given new red leather binding decorated with the

arms Arms or ARMS may refer to: *Arm or arms, the upper limbs of the body Arm, Arms, or ARMS may also refer to: People * Ida A. T. Arms (1856–1931), American missionary-educator, temperance leader Coat of arms or weapons *Armaments or weapons **Fi ...

of the provincial government (''diputació'') and the Cross of Saint James. Ramon Miquel i Planes, with the advice of Ernest Molinés i Brasés of the Escola de les Arts del Llibre, and the technical skill of J. Figuerola, restored the chansonnier with the new binding at the behest of the provincial government. The chansonnier is well preserved, made of high-quality parchment with clear, well-formed letters. The first third of it is decorated with initials and marginalia, but the latter folios are unfinished; the spaces left for ornamentation are unfilled. Also, no space is left for musical notation, and since some of the poems are known to have melodies, the chansonnier must have been produced to be read, not used (for musical performance). The chansonnier contains 285 poems. In the first section it contains almost all the lyric compositions of Cerverí de Girona, a late thirteenth-century Catalan troubadour and one of the most prolific. The second section contains the work of several twelfth-century troubadours from the classical era of their lyric art, namely Raimbaut de Vaqueiras,

Bertran de Born Bertran de Born (; 1140s – by 1215) was a baron from the Limousin in France, and one of the major Occitan troubadours of the 12th-13th century. He composed love songs (cansos) but was better known for his political songs (sirventes). He wa ...

, Guiraut de Bornelh, Arnaut Daniel,

Guilhem de Saint Leidier Guilhem de Saint-Leidier, also spelled Guilhem de Saint Deslier, Guillem de Saint Deidier and Guilhèm de Sant Leidier was a troubadour of the 12th century, composing in Occitan. He was lord of Saint Didier-en-Velay, was born at some date before 1 ...

Bernart de Ventadorn Bernart de Ventadorn (also Bernard de Ventadour or Bernat del Ventadorn; – ) was a French poet-composer troubadour of the classical age of troubadour poetry. Generally regarded as the most important troubadour in both poetry and music, his 1 ...

, Pons de Capduelh, Jaufre Rudel, and Guilhem de Berguedan. The final segment of the manuscript, completely without decoration, is devoted to the troubadours (many probably contemporary) of the "school of Toulouse", associated with the later Consistori del Gay Saber. These include Joan de Castellnou, Raimon de Cornet, and Gaston III of Foix-Béarn. Included towards the end of the manuscript is one Old French work: an excerpt of the '' Roman de Troie'' by Benoît de Sainte-Maure. The Gil is the only source for a number of Cerverí de Girona's poems. It offers a large number of variants of the well-known classical poems, perhaps because it is based on oral traditions and not on other texts. It is for this that it was lettered ''Sg'' and ''Z'', towards the end of the alphabet and among the (traditionally) less reliable chansonniers, though this system of classification is no longer considered a good guide to accuracy or reliability.

Sources

* Riquer, Martín de. ''Historia de la literatura catalana'', Vol. 1. Barcelona: Ariel, 1964. *Miriam Cabré et Sadurní Martí, "Le Chansonnier Sg au carrefour Occitano-Catalan", ''Romania'', vol. 128 (2010), pp. 92–134.

External links

Cançoner provençal (Cançoner Gil)
at the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
Cançoner Gil (ms. 146): un cançoner provençal d’origen català
at the Biblioteca de Catalunya
La Biblioteca de Catalunya (English)

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Canconer Gil Chansonniers (books) 14th-century books Occitan literature Catalan-language literature Music illuminated manuscripts 14th-century illuminated manuscripts