ABSTRACT
Jacob de senleches, a French composer and harpist, represented in the Chantilly codex by four complex Ars Subtilior songs. Jacob spent a number of years at the court of Aragon and Castile. In 1383, he appears at Navarre, a harpist in the service of Cardinal Pedro de Luna, the future Pope Benedict XIII. His complex and virtuosic virelai Harpe de melodie, notated in one manuscript in the shape of a harp, features irregular canonic imitation in the upper voices. Performance instructions call for the singer to accompany himself on the harp. The Jacquerie, named for the peasants who led it (popularly termed Jacques), was the greatest of late-medieval French rebellions. The Jacquerie was said to have begun as a bloody quarrel between some stonecutters and noblemen, but antagonism soon fueled a rising noted for its cruelty and destruction. The Jacquerie has traditionally been labeled a "class war" or "social rebellion" because of the conflict between non-nobles and nobles.
