Raoul de Ferrières

Raoul de Ferrières (fl. 1200–10), originally de Ferier, was a Norman nobleman and trouvère. He was born in Ferrières in what is today the département of Eure. In 1209, Raoul was mentioned in a donation to the Abbey of Noé. A total of eleven chansons courtoises have been attributed to him in at least one manuscript, although several are attributed to other people in other copies, making the establishment of his corpus a fraught question. The most famous of Raoul’s songs seems to have been RS1559, Quant li rossignols jolis (“When the pretty nightingales”), which is probably the song Johannes de Grocheio (c.1300) describes as a cantus coronatus (‘crowned song’, meaning probably that it had received a prize in a competition). This widely copied song is also ascribed to the Chastelain de Couci in several manuscripts as well as being transmitted anonymously in yet others. It was used as a model for the anonymous Marian song L’autrier m’iere rendormis (RS1609). Musically, it starts at the upper octave, flows downwards, and establishes a centre on d. Most of Raoul’s melodies, including Quant li rossignols, were recorded in what is sometimes (anachronistically) called bar form and more corr