Jehan de Lescurel

Jehan de Lescurel (; also Jehannot de l’Escurel) was a composer-poet of late medieval music. Jehan’s extensive surviving oeuvre is an important and rare examples of the formes fixes before the time of Guillaume de Machaut; it consists of 34 works: 20 ballades, 12 rondeaus and two long narrative poems, diz entés. All but one of his compositions is monophonic, representing the end of the trouvère tradition and the beginning of the polyphonic ars nova style centered around the formes fixes. Identity and career Jehan de Lescurel is also known as Jehannot de l’Escurel. Very little is known of his life; the transmission, notation and circumstances of his works suggest he was active in the early 14th century, and his compositions’s textual references indicate he was active in Paris. It has also been inferred that Jehan was the son of a merchant and probably received his musical training at the Notre Dame de Paris. For many years, scholars assumed he was the ‘Jehan de Lescurel’ who had been hanged on 23 May 1304 along with three other young clerics of Notre Dame, including Oudinet Pisdoé, for “debauchery” and “crimes against women”. Recent research has shown that “Jehan de Lescurel” was a