In 2025, Collectio Musicorum performed the complete works of Jaufre Rudel.
Here are videos of his four surviving songs, along with some commentary:
Click on the title to be taken to the video.
This is what the New York Times said about the concert:
Classical
‘Jaufré Rudel and the Lure of the
Orient’
May 9 at 7:30 p.m. at the Jacques
Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, 338 Lighthouse Avenue, Staten Island; tibetanmuseum.org.
When the 12th-century French troubadour Jaufré Rudel heard of the Countess of
Tripoli’s beauty, he joined the Second Crusade in hopes of meeting her, became
sick during the journey and died in her arms, or so the story goes. The songs
he wrote of his longing for her established a trope that would help define
romantic literature of the time: amor de lonh, which means “love from afar.”
The legend surrounding Rudel
has proved irresistible to artists as varied as the writer Algernon Charles
Swinburne and the composer Kaija Saariaho, but on Friday at the Jacques
Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, Rudel’s own works come to the fore. Collectio
Musicorum, an early music ensemble directed by Jeff Dailey, will play all of
Rudel’s extant music, along with pieces from Rudel’s contemporary Marcabru.
Rudel’s most famous song, “Lanquan li jorn,” is a seasonally relevant
encapsulation of his theme: The May birds are singing, but the singer’s
thoughts are far away.