‘Auiaz qe di!’ Invention, Design, and Delivery in Marcabru’s vers del lavador

Composed against the backdrop of the Second Crusade, Marcabru’s song is rich in topical references and moral pronouncements. Like other troubadour songs, music is provided for the first stanza of text. It is carefully wrought, mirroring and articulating the complex design, syntax, rhetoric, and message of the stanza. When it delivers the other stanzas, I suggest, it refers the listener back to stanza 1, adding a layer of associations and commentary that a reading of the text alone might not reveal. I speculate on the nature of the musical text, on how a singer might have responded to the design and content of the different stanzas in the notationless milieu in which this song, like other early troubadour lyrics, doubtless originated.