Jehan Bretel

Jehan Bretel (c. 1210 – Arras, 1272) was a French trouvère active in Arras, a city in northern France where much of his life was spent. His significance lies above all in the genre of the jeu-parti, a poetic-musical debate between two poets, of which a considerable number of examples associated with his name survive.

His family was tied to the abbey of Saint-Vaast in Arras. His grandfather, Jacques, served as sergent héréditaire, an official responsible for overseeing the water rights of the River Scarpe within the abbey's domain. This post was later held by his father, also named Jehan, at least between 1241 and 1244, the year of his death. The poet is mentioned among the river sergeants in a document of 1256, and he is cautiously described as a man of comfortable means, together with his brother.

Of his output, seven survive from an original series of eight chansons courtoises, all preserved in the Vatican manuscript Reg.lat.1490, but his principal contribution is the jeux-partis. Some 89 are attributed to him, almost half of those that survive. In many of them no rubrics appear, and it is the poems themselves that reveal the participants. The attribution of certain pieces addressed only to "Sire" or "Sire Jehan" is probable, though not certain. In this Arras circle, around the middle of the thirteenth century, some forty poets were active, among them Adam de la Halle, Jehan de Grieviler, Cuvelier d'Arras and Lambert Ferri, who took part either as participants or as judges. The works that Bretel shared with Adam de la Halle are often catalogued among the latter's, although for the most part it was Bretel who proposed them.

The metrical form of his poems deserves attention. Most employ heterometric stanzas, combining chiefly lines of seven and ten syllables, and in some cases a scheme of pedes followed by cauda that begins with a line of eleven syllables appears. Isometric stanzas are almost always of seven or ten syllables. Bretel showed a clear inclination to extend his rhymes in series of pairs, a trait that characterises four of the five unusual rhyme schemes he employs.

The study of his musical style is difficult, because most of his pieces survive in a single source and, where several versions exist, they are usually melodies unrelated to one another. Nor can it be ascertained which melodies are his without confirmation in two sources. The songs and most of the jeux-partis bearing his name are written in authentic modes, with a strong sense of tonal centre. No melody survives in mensural notation.

Bretel is today a key figure for understanding the poetic life of Arras in the thirteenth century. His work, above all his debates with Adam de la Halle and with other trouvères of the city, documents a collective practice of composition in which the exchange between poets was as important as individual authorship.