A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Hale, Adam de la

by William Rockstro

HALE, Adam de la (Le bossu or boiteux d'Arras), one of the most prominent figures in the long line of Trouvères who contributed to the formation of the French language in the 12th and 13th centuries, was born at Arras about 1240. Tradition asserts that he owed his surname, Le Bossu, to a personal deformity; but he himself writes, 'On m'appelle bochu, mais je ne le suis mie.' His father, Maître Henri, a well-to-do burgher, sent him to the Abbey of Vauxcelles, near Cambrai, to be educated for Holy Orders; but, falling desperately in love with a 'jeune demoiselle' named Marie, he evaded the tonsure and made her his wife. At first the lady seemed to him to unite 'all the agrémens of her sex'; but he soon regarded her with so great aversion that he effected a separation and retired, in 1263, to Douai,^[1] where he appears to have resumed the ecclesiastical habit. After this, we hear little more of him, until the year 1282, when, by command of Philippe le Hardi, Robert II. Comte d'Artois, accompanied the Due d'Alençon to Naples, to aid the Duc d'Anjou in taking revenge for the Vêpres Siciliennes. Adam de la Hale, having entered Count Robert's service, accompanied him on this expedition, and wrote some of his most important works for the entertainment of the French Court in the Two Sicilies. The story of his death, at Naples, in 1285, is told by his contemporary, Jean Bodel d'Arras, in 'Le Gieus du Pelerin': the statement in the Dict. Hist. of Prudhomme, that he returned to France and became a monk at Vauxcelles, is therefore incorrect.

Adam de la Hale's most interesting work was a Dramatic Pastoral, entitled, 'Le jeu de Robin et de Marion,' written for the French Court at Naples, and first performed in 1285. Eleven personages appear in the piece, which is written in dialogue, divided into scenes, and interspersed—after the manner of an Opéra Comique—with airs, couplets, and duos dialogués, or pieces in which two voices sing alternately, but never together. The work was first printed by the Société des Bibliophiles de Paris, in 1822 (30 copies only), from a MS. in the Paris Library; and one of the airs is given in Kiesewetter's 'Schicksal und Beschaffenheit des weltlichen Gesanges' (Leipzig, 1841).

Adam de la Hale was a distinguished master of the Chanson, of which he usually wrote both the words and the music. A MS. of the 14th century, in the Paris Library, contains 16 of his Chansons a 3, in Rondeau form; and 6 Latin Motets, written on a Canto fermo, with Florid Counterpoint in the other parts. Fétis, not knowing that the Reading Rota was composed twelve or fourteen years at least before Adam de la Hale was born, erroneously describes these Chansons as the oldest known secular compositions in more than two parts. Kiesewetter has printed one of them, and also one of the Motets a 3, in the work mentioned.

[ W. S. R. ]

1. Fétis says to Paris.