We often view the troubadour through nostalgia-tinted glasses - as a traveling minstrel with a lute slung across his back, singing love songs and breaking hearts, a sort of old-timey rock star meets crooner. The reality was in some ways much more prosaic, and in others much messier. To begin with, the art of the troubadours and trobairitz (female troubadours) emanated from a highly refined and aristocratic society. Their complex syntheses of words and music, written by the elite for the elite, both codified and reinforced cultural tropes and norms. Together with expressions of love, joy (https://youtu.be/1SJd9gA2nk4), regret, and loss, their texts also frequently exhibit misogyny, racism, and violence which must be grappled with. In this program, we recount the lives and re-enact the art of the troubadours and trobairitz, both in the original Occitan and in English verse translations by modern poets Ezra Pound, W.D. Snodgrass (https://youtu.be/2x-KnrgqB44), and Robert Kehew. By setting these languages side by side, we capture both the beauty and craft of the original text and their immediacy and vitality through translation, simulating the two halves of their first audiences' experience.

Trobár is a small band of voices and instruments dedicated to bringing medieval music to modern audiences. The word trobar comes from Occitan, the language spoken in the middle ages in what is now southern France, and encompasses numerous meanings: to find, to meet, to create, to compose, to invent. This word encapsulates the spirit of discovery and invention that we bring to musical texts of the middle ages.