Guillaume d'Amiens

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Guillaume d'Amiens or Guillaume le Peigneur (floruit late 13th century) was a trouvère and painter from Amiens. All his music is contained in one chansonnier (songbook) of Arras, now Latin 1490 in the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana. In it the rubrics accompanying the songs identify him as a paigneur, "painter", and he may have added the large illumination which precedes his songs himself. The preservation of his works in this manner is comparable to the cases of fellow trouvères Adam de la Halle and Jehannot de l'Escurel. The only reference to Guillaume (the French form of William) outside of the chansonnier is a list of taxpayers in Amiens in 1301, which mentions a "William the Painter" (Willelmi pictoris). Guillaume musical corpus consists in eight monophonic rondeaux, two chansons d'amour, and one virelai. He also wrote four other lyric poems which do not survive with music. Guillaume's rondeaux and the virelai are standard, although with slight variations in the refrains, perhaps representing how they were naturally performed. In Prendés i garde an irregularity in the prosody is reflected in an irregularity in the music. His melodies usually emphasise the perfect fifth from D to A. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

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