Songs of War: The Voice of Bertran de Born

Abstract

The sirventes or political songs composed by the troubadour Bertran de Born in the second half of the twelfth century in order to foment strife among the political leaders of his day provide the springboard for an enquiry into the relationship between “music” and “noise” undertaken in the light of psychoanalytic theory. Jacque Lacan’s concept of “voice” situates both “noise” and “music” in relation to the traumatic scream and silence of a newborn baby. Bertran’s explicit themes of love and war may seem more responsive to the notion of “intimate revolt” put forward by Julia Kristeva, which would locate them at some distance from this originary trauma, and yet the sonic dimension of the troubadour’s songs mediates between noise and music in such a way as to threaten the opposition with collapse, while the superimposition of love and war and the threat of death make it possible to envisage performances of these songs in which the singing voice might also evoke the primary, traumatic experiences of silence and the scream