"You will be treasurer of my heart, / Although my body must depart / Learning and science to attain, / And be more worth, so you shall gain."
— Adam De La Halle (from his Farewell to Arras)
Adam De La Halle (1250-1306) was a French troubadour—a poet-composer who played music as part of the aristocratic courtly tradition. He was a poet, musician, and innovator of the earliest French secular drama.
De La Halle was born in Arras in northern France (Picardy) and was educated in Paris. He also had the name of Adam “the Hunchback”, though strangely enough, there is no direct evidence that he actually was a hunchback.
He wrote one of the earliest recorded secular dramas in French, which was a 1,099-line satiric play—possibly intended for performance at a local festival. Some of the manuscripts of this work include music, as songs were an integral part of the play.
Sometime after 1276, De La Halle entered into the service of the Count d’Artois in Naples as a court poet and musician. In Naples, De La Halle became celebrated as a singer as well as a poet-composer. His compositions include works both in the traditional monophonic style of the troubadours. He also became famous for his polyphonic style, which was newly emerging at that time. His other productions are considered the predecessors of the comic opera.
De La Halle's Jeu de Robin et de Marion is regarded as his most recognizable composition. This was a dramatization of the pastoral theme of a knight wooing a pretty shepherdess. It included dances and peasants’ dialogue. He also wrote Jeu de la feuillée which was a satirical fantasy based on his own life. It was written to amuse his friends in Arras upon his departure for Paris. Le Congé is one that expresses his sorrow for having to leave his wife and native Arras upon going to Naples to serve the Count d’Artois. And finally, Jeu du pélérin mocks his friends who later forgot him.
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