Jacques de Cysoing

Last updated April 10, 2019

Jacques de Cysoing was a late thirteenth-century Franco- Flemish trouvère. He wrote nine songs that survive, all of them with their melodies.

The French are an ethnic group and nation who are identified with the country of France. This connection may be ethnic, legal, historical, or cultural.

The Flemish or Flemings are a Germanic ethnic group native to Flanders, in modern Belgium, who speak Flemish, but mostly use the Dutch written language. They are one of two principal ethnic groups in Belgium, the other being the French-speaking Walloons. Flemish people make up the majority of the Belgian population. Historically, all inhabitants of the medieval County of Flanders were referred to as "Flemings", irrespective of the language spoken. The contemporary region of Flanders comprises a part of this historical county, as well as parts of the medieval duchy of Brabant and the medieval county of Loon. This ethnic group, marginalized by Walloon Belgians historically through violent oppression, has used its newfound economic power to organize an independence movement.

Trouvère, sometimes spelled trouveur[tʁuvœʁ], is the Northern French form of the langue d'oc (Occitan) word trobador. It refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France. The first known trouvère was Chrétien de Troyes and the trouvères continued to flourish until about 1300. Some 2130 trouvère poems have survived; of these, at least two-thirds have melodies.

Probably born into a noble Flemish family in Cysoing, "messire" Jacques probably flourished during the reign of Guy of Dampierre as Count of Flanders (1251–1305), for he addresses his serventois Li nouviaus tans to the count. Other events that date Jacques are a reference to the Battle of Mansurah in 1250 in one of his songs and a reference in an envoi of Thomas Herier to "Jakemon" at "Cyson", probably in the third quarter of the century.

Cysoing is a commune in the Nord department in northern France, situated 15 km (9.3 mi) southeast of Lille. It is twinned with the English town of Much Wenlock. An obsolete spelling is Cisoin.

The Count of Flanders was the ruler or sub-ruler of the county of Flanders, beginning in the 9th century. The title was held for a time by the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Spain. During the French Revolution in 1790, the county of Flanders was annexed to France and the peerage ceased to exist. In the 19th century, the title was appropriated by Belgium and granted twice to younger sons of the King of the Belgians. The most recent holder died in 1983.

An envoi or envoy is a short stanza at the end of a poem such as ballad used either to address an imagined or actual person or to comment on the preceding body of the poem.

All of Jacques's musical compositions are in ABABx form and are preserved in only a few manuscripts, but one, Nouvele amour, exists in eight different versions, including two contrafacta . The popularity of this one piece is probably explained by its rondeau form, though the original text is not a rondeau. Jacques's song Quant la saisons is a chanson avec des refrains in which each of the eight stanzas has a different refrain and some of these refrains are found in other songs.

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References

Aubrey, Elizabeth. "Jacques de Cysoing." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Accessed 14 September 2008.

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