Gauthier de Coincy (1177-1236); FRA   

Gauthier de Coincy is typically referred to as a trouvère, a French Medieval poet-composer, similar to a troubadour. De Coincy, like other trouvères, wrote his texts in a dialect from Northern France. He is best known for his huge work, Miracles de Nostre-Dame, which recounts miracles of the Blessed Virgin in a text of more than 30,000 lines.

De Coincy was born in Coincy-l'Abbaye, France in 1177 or 1178. He became a monk at Saint-Médard in Soissons in 1193, at the age of 15 or 16, according to documents. Details on his life are scant but rife with speculation, especially in the period ahead: because of his vast knowledge of secular music, some have conjectured that he attended the University of Paris in the early years of the thirteenth century, but no supporting evidence of this can be found. The year 1214 was a pivotal one in de Coincy's life: he was appointed Prior at the monastery in Vic-sur-Aisne (near Soissons) and also began work on Miracles de Nostre-Dame. De Coincy revealed that the source of the events recounted in his magnum opus came from a now-lost Latin manuscript.

The first of the work's two massive sections was completed at Vic-sur-Aisne in about 1222, with work on the second part commencing almost immediately and finally reaching completion in 1233. That year he returned to Saint-Médard to serve as abbot. He spent the remainder of his life there, still active in producing religious chansons. De Coincy's greatest significance may well be his efforts at bringing religious music into the vernacular realm: his output makes up the first substantial body of non-Latin sacred and Marian songs, many of which employed secular melodies.

© Robert Cummings, All Music Guide

Below are works by G.Coincy that every music lover should explore: