Robert de Reins La Chievre

Robert de Reins (Rains, Reims) La Chievre was a trouvère from the Île de France, probably active in the thirteenth century. He is among those trouvères, like Richard de Fournival, who are associated with the early development of the motet and who may be more numerous than previously believed.

Robert may have belonged to the La Chievre family documented in Reims in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The ''Roman de Renart'' attributed a poem about Tristan to a certain ''Chievre de Reins'', who may be Robert. This attribution led Wilhelm Mann to conclude that he was active before 1300, though other scholars have argued on linguistic grounds that he must have been writing later.

Nine songs are attributed to Robert and "no fewer than four have their first stanza enhanced by a liturgical tenor in a motet appearing anonymously in a polyphonic source". These four are numbers 1-4 in the list below. Two of these motets (1-2) are preserved as liturgical clausulae. Three of the motets (2-4) have the same music and text as the song versions but one has the same music but transmits a contrafact Latin text. Provided by Wikipedia