Adam de la Halle

Adam de la Halle was a thirteenth-century French poet and composer of the trouvère tradition and a member of the Confrérie des jongleurs et bourgeois d'Arras, a fraternity of entertainers in that town. His dates are uncertain: Open Library gives them only approximately, from around 1235 to around 1288, while other reference works place his birth between 1245 and 1250. He wrote chansons and jeux-partis, which are poetic debates, as well as polyphonic rondels and motets, and the musical play Jeu de Robin et Marion, composed around 1282 to 1283 and considered the earliest surviving secular French play with music. A second play, Le jeu de la feuillée, is also recorded under his name. He is unusual among medieval composers for writing both single-line and polyphonic music.