The poetry and music of the trouvères in Northern France is the focus of Chapter 5. We explore the lives and music of Chrétien de Troyes, Adam de la Halle, Gautier de Coinci, Rutebeuf, and the female trouvère Gertrude of Dagsburg. We chart the ways in which the trouvères modelled themselves on the Occitan troubadours, translating their concept of courtly love, along with their song forms and genres, into an Old French linguistic context. We also consider some of the key differences between the two spheres, especially the increasingly urban - rather than courtly - environment in which the thirteenth-century trouvères worked, and their greater involvement in literary and musical production beyond songs, such as romances (romans) and other narrative poetry, and the French motet. The emergence of distinctive poetic-musical structures, known as the formes fixes, was another key feature of thirteenth-century French song, as was the phenomenon of refrains, or snippets of song, that were borrowed and quoted across a wide range of musical and literary genres.

This chapter introduces the two principal forms of polyphony practiced during the Renaissance: written and extemporized. The transition from manuscript to print culture is perhaps the most significant extramusical determinant for musical practice in the Renaissance period. Examples of manuscript and printed sources (including different kinds of written sources) are examined, and their implications for practice considered. Next, different forms of extemporized practices are introduced and described, including the surviving evidence for them; in turn, their implications for polyphony as a practice are considered. Finally, the two forms of practice are compared, and the relationship between the two. It is clear that most teachers of the time regarded them as interdependent, while viewing the relationship differently.