Chansons des Trouvères for alto (or mezzo-soprano), 2 flutes and cello (1963)

The work was commissioned by the National Philharmonic in Warsaw for a production with archaising music staged by Teatr Klasyczny in Warsaw. The man behind the commission was the then director of the National Philharmonic, to whom the composition was dedicated: “To the outstanding Trouvère Zdzisław Śliwiński”. The work consists of seven parts:

I. Prelude, II. Canto I, III. Intermezzo I, IV. Canto II, V. Intermezzo II, VI. Canto III, VII. Postlude.

Each of them is rooted in the secular lyric poetry of the Middle Ages, an effect the composer achieved by using melodies from Pierre Aubry’s collection Trouvères et Troubadours. Baird used three 13th century melodies together with their lyrics: [1] an anonymous chanson dramatique (Canto I); [2] a pastourelles tune by the troubadour Marcabru (Canto II); [3] a song about parting of lovers at dawn, attributed to the troubadour Guiraut de Borneilh (Canto III). They became the basis for Baird’s vocal-instrumental parts. In four instrumental fragments the composer referred to two other melodies – the song Robert, veez de Perron (Prelude, Postlude) and the first part of a song by the trouvère Colin Muset, Sire cuens, j’ai vielé (Intermezzo I, II).

The whole cycle stresses the beauty of life associated with the love-theme of the original texts. The composition is an example of the composer’s creative approach to early music, which can be seen in the preservation of its basic features (scales, rhythm and character) clothed in subtle attributes of later music (instrumentation, signalled major-minor tonality, homophonic texture). This was an opinion expressed, for example, by Henryk Schiller, who said that Songs of the Trouvères

in its highly subtle stylisation of medieval polyphony, in its beautiful sound and warmth of expression is on a par with the popular Love Sonnets and Colas Breugnon, with which it makes up a triptych of Baird’s stylisations.

A ballet version of the Songs of the Trouvères was staged at Teatr Wielki in Warsaw. The production was directed by Jan Kulczyński and choreographed by Witold Gruca (1972).