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inventive in their versifications, 1 yet in general have left versification relatively unexplored in
favor of other research venues. 2 For example, most scholars who discuss Folquet’s songs list the
versifications, note that (like many troubadours) he created many new versifications for his
poems, but do not discuss them in detail. A few studies of other poets’ works, such as Switten’s
introduction to her edition of the songs of Raimon de Miraval and Ferrante’s study of one of
Bernart de Ventadorn’s songs, do examine the ways in which versification shapes the poem and
the poem’s interactions with the melody. 3 Most other studies of versification investigate the
relationships between a poem and later poets’ imitations of its versification and sometimes of its
melody. 4
Versification in troubadour songs includes two parameters: meter and rhyme. Meter is
determined by the numbers of syllables in each line and the arrangement of these lines into
stanzas. Rhyme identifies words that end with the same sounds and the patterning of those
words at the ends of verses. The main reference for troubadour versification, Istvan Frank’s
Répertoire métrique, 5 lists almost nine hundred different rhyme schemes and over thirteen
1For example, Switten, “Music and Versification,”143, describes the troubadours as
“virtuosic versifiers.”
2 Billy, L’Architecture lyrique médiéval, 17*.
3 Switten, Raimon de Miraval, 43-52. Ferrante, “‘Ab joi mou lo vers.’”
4 See, for example, Marshall, “Pour l’étude des contrafacta.”
5 Frank, Répertoire métrique. This invaluable tool catalogues all troubadour songs by their
rhyme-schemes, organized within each rhyme scheme by meter, then alphabetically by poet.
Each entry supplies the number of stanzas and tornadas, the type of song, rhyme sounds used,
and the relationships between the stanzas. Each song is given a two-part number, the first of
which indicates the rhyme scheme, the second indicates the number of the poem within that
scheme. A separate section classifies the songs by meter. This makes it easy to identify
potential imitations and see how frequently a particular versification was used by the
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