BERNART DE VENTADORN: Can vei la lauzeta mover (MS Français 844) PDF SCORE

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Composed by Bernart de Ventadorn (c.1130-c.1200). From Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Français 844, f. 190v. Measured transcription by Felipe Dias.

Catherine Bott, soprano

“Can vei la lauzeta mover” is a locus classicus of desire in medieval literature. As one of the two most famous poems in the troubadour corpus, it is widely cited and anthologized not only for its exceptional accomplishment but also as a paradigmatic love lyric, standing near the beginning of a vernacular tradition that culminates in Dante and Petrarch.

In “Can vei,” the poet portrays his complete powerlessness in the face of desire, his loss of identity through love, and his metaphoric death and exile, which he attributes to his lady’s cruelty.

Bernart de Ventadorn was the first to employ, in a Western vernacular, the twin themes of Narcissus and the mirror to express the fatal allure of passion, where the desire for the unattainable Other reflects back upon the self. The mention of “Tristan” here may refer to the hero of “Tristan et Iseut,” or it could possibly be an unidentified senhal.

References:

Gaunt, S. (1998). Discourse desired: desire, subjectivity and mouvance in Can vei la lauzeta mover. In J.J. Paxson & C.A. Gravlee (Eds.), Desiring Discourse: the Literature of Love, Ovid through Chaucer (pp. 89-110). Sequehanna University Press.

Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres: An Anthology of Poems and Melodies. (2013). (n.p.): Taylor & Francis.