(b Arras, 1245-50; d Naples, ?1285-8, or ?England, after 1306). French poet andcomposer (trouvère). He probably studied in Paris, returning to Arras c1270. He later served Robert II, Count of Artois, and Charles of Anjou, both in Italy. A tribute of 1288 refers to his death, but he was also reported in England in 1306, among musicians at the knighting of Edward Prince of Wales (later Edward II). His musical and literary works encompass virtually all genres of the time and he is one of the few medieval musicians to be credited with both monophonic and polyphonic music There are monophonic chansons and jeux-partis, motets and polyphonic rondeaux as well as three plays with musical inserts. The monophonic works continue the tradition of the courtly lyric and chanson de geste, while the three-voice rondeaux and the dramatic works are more progressive. Of the plays, Le jeu de Robin et de Marion contains the most music, combining speech with extensive sung parts, some possibly borrowed from popular song, while the autobiographical Le jeu d′Adam includes allegory and social criticism.
Adam de la Halle (or Adam le Bossu). Professional jongleur and trouvère active in Arras from the 1260s to the 1280s. Autobiographical references in his works tell us that he spent most of his life in Arras, but went to Paris when young as a student (he was a clerc: Maistre Adam) and travelled with the count of Artois to Naples, where he probably died between 1285 and 1289. He married in the early 1270s, but experienced financial difficulties when the Pope withdrew certain fiscal privileges granted to married clergy; he may have returned to Paris at this point. Like Jehan Bodel, his fame rested on his prolific and varied output, but unlike Bodel he was not only a poet but a musician. He was the author of 36 chansons, 16 jeux partis, five motets, a congé, an incomplete chanson de geste (Le Roi de Sicile), and two plays, the Jeu de la Feuillée and the Jeu de Robin et Marion. He was a professional craftsman, and most of his works followed the conventions of the chosen genres; this is especially the case with the texts and music of the lyric poetry, though he was one of the few trouvères to have written music for three voices in his motets.
His three most substantial works, the congé and the two plays, though similar in some respects to Bodel's output, reject the latter's faith and sincerity in favour of irony and satire. In the congé, for example, Adam, as he takes leave of his friends, is not faced with imminent death; he is merely leaving to continue his studies interrupted by his marriage. His farewell to Arras includes a bitter attack on the dishonesty, coldness, and money-centredness of its inhabitants; and even his thanks to some friends and relations could be read as irony.
Adam's two plays could hardly be more different from each other (were they anonymous, no one would attribute them to the same author), but they have in common the fact that they are both dramatizations of lyric genres. The Jeu de la Feuillée (1100 lines, c.1276) is in effect a dramatized congé, in which Adam starts by declaring his intention to return to Paris to complete his education; he is fed up with life in Arras and disenchanted with marriage and his wife, whose youthful bloom has faded. This speech provokes an animated debate among his friends, his father Henri, and several successive passers-by. Their discussions touch on a number of Arras issues: greed, illness, sex, taxation, the morality of the higher clergy; Adam's problem is somewhat lost sight of. The passers-by include a doctor, a monk, a madman and his father, and a strange old witch, Dame Douche. The conversation is interrupted by nightfall and the arrival of three fairies, who discuss the prince du Puy and other Arrageois, including Adam. They depart and the other characters reassemble in the tavern before making their separate ways home. The play is unusual in several ways. It is the first completely secular play in French; it is a play in which the author and his friends are not only actors but also characters, who mingle with other stereotypical or supernatural characters; it is full of local references, most of which critics have been able to understand; it has no apparent plot. Its enigmatic and elusive nature has inspired many contradictory interpretations, from Freudian to folkloristic.
The Jeu de Robin et Marion (760 lines, c.1283) was composed in Naples to entertain the army of the count of Artois. It is a staging of the plots of two traditional lyric genres, the pastourelle and the pastoral bergerie. A knight Aubert meets the shepherdess Marion in a wood; he tries to seduce her, but she resists and Aubert leaves. Robin, her peasant lover, arrives bringing food and drink and then goes off to fetch his friends. Aubert returns and tries again to carry off Marion; Robin and his friends are too cowardly to intervene, but Marion manages to get rid of Aubert. Robin chases off a wolf, and the play ends with a series of rustic games and dances. The play begins and ends with songs, and there are several other sung passages, which explains why this play is sometimes called the first musical. A certain ambivalence hangs over this apparently simple play: who is laughing at whom? The knight (and the noble audience) at the peasants, or vice versa; or the author at them all?
[Graham Runnalls]
Bibliography
H. Guy, Adan de la Hale (1898)
D. H. Nelson, The Lyrics and Melodies of Adam de la Halle (1985)
J. Dufournet, Adam de la Halle: Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion (1989)
J. Dufournet, Adam de la Halle: Le Jeu de la Feuillée (1989)
Adam de la Halle occupies a unique position astride two trends in music history. On the one hand, he was the "last of the Trouvères," bringing to a close the brilliant early flowering of Old French lyric poetry; the large body of his facile and conventional courtly chansons stand perfectly in line with the traditions fostered by Eleanor of Aquitane; Thibault de Champagne, King of Navarre; and the eloquent Gace Brulé. On the other hand, Adam mingled this traditional monophonic composition with the more esoteric form of the thirteenth century motet, and performed the first experiments in polyphonic secular song. In this respect, he placed himself squarely in the middle of stylistic trends that would come to greatest fruition in the next century, with the Ars Nova of Philippe de Vitry and preeminently in the figure of Guillaume de Machaut.
Sadly, for a poet and musician of such versatility and prowess, not a single piece of datable documentation for his life survives. The form of his name (and later manuscript attributions) tell of his birth in the city of Arras -- a positive hotbed of literary culture -- 80 miles north of Paris. (Another form of his name, "le Boscu," suggests a handicap or even a hunchback, but Adam in a late poem denies this disability!) His father Henri was well educated, and probably a cleric and civic employee who died in 1290; Adam's wife, named Maroie, may have died in Arras in 1287.
Adam himself is often described as "Maistre," indicating his completion of some advanced studies; these took place either at Vauchelles Abbey, or more likely, in Paris. Adam also certainly participated in the lively activities of Arras' literary societies, the Confrérie des jongleurs (Guild of Artesian Jongleurs) and the renowned Puy d'Arras. This latter association chose a king who would judge poetic competitions among the members; God Himself was rumored to attend the festivities to hear their poetry. In 1282, Adam apparently traveled as poet and musician in the retinue of Robert II, Count of Artois, on a campaign to Naples to aid his uncle Charles d'Anjou after the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers. Adam died in Italy, sometime between 1285 (the death of Charles and the occasion for his poem Le roi de Secile) and 1289.
As noted above, Adam de la Halle produced a remarkably versatile body of works. And unlike the majority of the Trouvère poets, whose songs survive in large anthologies, several manuscripts attempt to collect music only of his; one manuscript in Paris even presages Machaut by sorting Adam's "collected works" by genre. He composed 36 chansons in the Trouvère tradition -- a comparatively prolific number. Seventeen jeux-partis (stanzaic dialogues between two poets) contain his wittily phrased (if conventional) contributions on the subject of courtly love. His longer works include an epic Chanson de geste about the King of Sicily, a satiric drama (Le jeu de la Feuillée), and a pastoral drama with music -- Le jeu de Robin et de Marion -- which is often dubbed the "first comic opera."
In addition, he completed at least five essays in the genre of the polytextual French motet, and a set of 16 dance-based refrain songs of various forms called Rondeaux. This last set, called Le Rondel Adam in a manuscript copy of his works, contains probably the first polyphonic settings of vernacular song in Europe. ~ Timothy Dickey, All Music Guide
Adam de la Halle, also known as Adam le Bossu (Adam the Hunchback) (1237?-1288) was a French-born trouvère, poet and musician, whose literary and musical works include chansons and jeux-partis (poetic debates)in the style of the trouveres, polyphonic rondel and motets in the style of early liturgical polyphony, and a musical play, "The Play of Robin and Marion," which is considered the earliest surviving secular French play with music. He was a member of the Confrérie des jongleurs et bourgeois d'Arras.
Adam's other nicknames, "le Bossu d'Arras" and "Adam d'Arras", suggest that he came from Arras, France. The sobriquet "the Hunchback" was probably a family name; Adam himself points out that he was not one.[1] His father, Henri de le Hale, was a well-known Citizen of Arras, and Adam studied grammar, theology, and music at the Cistercianabbey of Vaucelles, near Cambrai. Father and son had their share in the civil discords in Arras, and for a short time took refuge in Douai. Adam had been destined for the church, but renounced this intention, and married a certain Marie, who figures in many of his songs, rondeaux, motets and jeux-partis. Afterwards he joined the household of Robert II, Count of Artois; and then was attached to Charles of Anjou, brother of Charles IX, whose fortunes he followed in Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Italy.
At the court of Charles, after Charles became king of Naples, Adam wrote his Jeu de Robin et Marion, the most famous of his works. Adam's shorter pieces are accompanied by music, of which a transcript in modern notation, with the original score, is given in Coussemaker's edition. His Jeu de Robin et Marion is cited as the earliest French play with music on a secular subject. The pastoral, which tells how Marion resisted the knight, and remained faithful to Robert the shepherd, is based on an old chanson, Robin m'aime, Robin m'a. It consists of dialogue varied by refrains already current in popular song. The melodies to which these are set have the character of folk music, and are more spontaneous and melodious than the more elaborate music of his songs and motets. Fétis considered Le Jeu de Robin et Marion and Le Jeu de la feuillée forerunners of the comic opera.[2] An adaptation of Le Jeu Robin et Marion, by Julien Tiersot, was played at Arras by a company from the Paris Opéra-Comique on the occasion of a festival in 1896 in honour of Adam de le Hale.
His other play, Le jeu Adan or Le jeu de la Feuillee (ca. 1262), is a satirical drama in which he introduces himself, his father and the citizens of Arras with their peculiarities. His works include a conge, or satirical farewell to the city of Arras, and an unfinished chanson de geste in honour of Charles of Anjou, Le roi de Sicile, begun in 1282; another short piece, Le jeu du pelerin, is sometimes attributed to him.
His known works include thirty-six chansons (literally, "songs"), forty-six rondets de carole, eighteen jeux-partis, fourteen rondeaux, five motets, one rondeau-virelai, one ballette, one dit d'amour, and one congé.
The manuscript which contains almost all of Adam's work is the La Valliere manuscript. (No. 25,566) in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, dating from the latter half of the 13th century.
Many of his pieces are also contained in Douce manuscript 308, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
