principles of his art from other poets who were well acquainted with the
conventions that had been formulated in course of time, conventions
which were collected and systematised in such treatises as the Leys
d'Amors during the period of the decadence.

The love song or _chanso_ was composed of five, six or seven stanzas
(_coblas_) with, one or two _tornadas_ or _envois_. The stanza varied in
length from two to forty-two lines, though these limits are, of course,
exceptional. An earlier form of the _chanso_ was known as the _vers_; it
seems to have been in closer relation to the popular poetry than the
more artificial _chanso_, and to have had shorter stanzas and lines; but
the distinction is not clear. As all poems were intended to be sung, the
poet was also a composer; the biography of Jaufre Rudel, for instance,
says that this troubadour "made many poems with good tunes but poor [24]
words." The tune known as _son_ (diminutive sonnet) was as much the
property of a troubadour as his poem, for it implied and would only suit
a special form of stanza; hence if another poet borrowed it,
acknowledgment was generally made. Dante, in his _De Vulgari
Eloquentia_, informs us concerning the structure of this musical
setting: it might be continuous without repetition or division; or it
might be in two parts, one repeating the other, in which case the stanza
was also divided into two parts, the division being termed by Dante the
_diesis_ or _volta_; of these two parts one might be subdivided into two
or even more parts, which parts, in the stanza, corresponded both in
rimes and in the arrangement of the lines. If the first part of the
stanza was thus divisible, the parts were called _pedes_, and the
musical theme or _oda_ of the first _pes_ was repeated for the second;
the rest of the stanza was known as the _syrma_ or _coda_, and had a
musical theme of its own. Again the first part of the stanza might be
indivisible, when it was called the _frons_, the divided parts of the