Repetition as Rebirth: A Sung Epitaph for Gautier De Coinci

Abstract

Abstract The thirteenth-century prior and poet-musician Gautier de Coinci is known for his extravagant wordplay, which relies on the recursive patterning of verbal sound. This article considers Gautier’s penchant for sonic repetition in the light of the music that frames his book of miracles, focusing on the song Por mon chief reconforter, a chanson à refrain written in the voice of an aging Gautier coming to terms with his imminent death. The song’s exclusion from Frederic Koenig’s standard edition of the Miracles means it has received little scholarly attention, yet its earliest source is linked with Gautier’s original exemplar. The article examines how repeated musico-poetic forms—within the stanza, between stanzas, and in the more temporally extended repetition of contrafacture—interact with notions of temporality and mortality voiced in the song’s texts and contexts, suggesting that such structures reshape the experience of time into one that is less linear, and therefore less final.