Peire d'Alvernhe

Peire d'Alvernhe or d'Alvernha[1] (Pèire in modern Occitan; b. c. 1130) was an Auvergnat troubadour (active 1149–1170) with twenty-one[2] or twenty-four[3][4] surviving works.

Said to be handsome, charming, wise, and learned, he was "the first good inventor of poetry to go beyond the mountains" (i.e. the Pyrenees) and travel in Spain.

[4] Peire appears to have cultivated the favour of the ruling family of the Crown of Aragon, and his poems contain allusions to the counts of Barcelona and Provence.

[12] He advocates gran sabers ni purs ("great and pure wisdom") through bon'amor ("good love").

[15] Peire's aesthetic philosophy esteemed the "whole song" (vers entiers), which is what he termed his completed pieces, denigrating all others' works as incomplete and imperfect.

[16] Nonetheless, from Marcabru Peire picked up a notion of the trobar braus as a legitimate format for "rough" themes.

"[18] By far, however, Peire's most famous work is Chantarai d'aquest trobadors, a sirventes written at Puivert (Puoich-vert) in which he ridicules twelve contemporary troubadours ("a poetical gallery") and praises himself.

[19] It has been conjectured that this piece was first performed in the presence of all twelve of the ridiculed poets in late Summer 1170 while an embassy bringing Eleanor, daughter of Henry II of England, to her Spanish groom Alfonso VIII of Castile sojourned at Puivert.

[21] Chantarai d'aquest trobadors is near universally regarded today as playful parody and not as a work of serious literary or artistic criticism.

[7][25] Peire's famous Chantarai d'aquest trobadors contains a final tornada indicating its musical nature, though its own melody has not survived: