Trobairitz or Women Troubadours

“All good things one could ask of a woman.”

The Trobairitz or women troubadours were the first known and named composers of Western secular music. Check out this YouTube page for many videos with Trobairitz music.

Castelloza, one of the most famous of the women troubadours or Trobairitz.
Castelloza, one of the most famous of the women troubadours or Trobairitz. More about the image.

The thirteenth-century Bietris de Romans addressed her chanson to Lady Maria. “[I]f it please you, lovely woman, then give me/ that which most hope and joy promises/ for in you lie my desire and my heart/ and from you stems all my happiness,/ and because of you I’m often sighing.”[i] This lovely tribute suggests that deep, abiding, and intimate friendships of same-sex love were documented in the Middle Ages. As Bietris wrote, Maria possessed within “All good things one could ask of a woman.”[ii]

[iMeg Bogin, ed. and trans. The Women Troubadours (NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1980), 133.

[ii] Bogin 133.