Trouver et partir: The meaning of structure in the Old French Jeu-parti

In their songs, trouvères referred to their own acts of composition in various ways, not least as ‘finding’ (trouver) or ‘dividing’ (partir). Both terms had a wide and varied usage in medieval French culture and carried meanings that shape the way that the melodic structure of trouvère songs might be analysed. Invention, and its sister art of memory, played a key role in rhetorical practices. The process of ‘finding’ a melody and adorning it with memorable musical figures is performed in the structure of some songs. Division was used for intellectual work, as found in the classificatory models of medieval encyclopaedic works, but it also signified socio-political animosity and strife. From close readings of text-music relationships in four jeux-partis, the cultural significance of the musical acts of invention and division in thirteenth-century Arras is discussed, in order to explore why trouvères performed acts of invention and division through their songs.