TEXTUR 2026 - Beles, belles… / Der Busant by Peter Bichsel

Description

Beles, belles… In the heart of the 13th century, in the northern French region, a poetic corpus as rare as it is fascinating emerges: the chansons de toile, also called chansons d’histoire. These poems, written in Old French (langue d’oïl) and preserved in medieval manuscripts, give voice to a female “I” who demands the right to loving desire with surprising strength and great tenderness. Characteristic of these compositions is the close connection between narrative and everyday gesture: the young noble protagonist sings while she reads, weaves, or embroiders. The engagement with the toile, the fabric, is far more than mere framing – it becomes a metaphor for stretching time, waiting, and separation from the beloved. In an era when the courtly ideal begins to crumble, these female figures try to overcome boredom and despair through imagination and song, transforming domestic activity into a space of rêverie and inner self-assertion. Beauty and desire permeate these texts with almost ritual intensity: the adjective bele recurs like a leitmotif and conjures luminous figures like Bele Yolanz or Bele Doette. Female beauty here appears not as a passive object but as an active force that produces word, music, and narrative. Between archaizing epic poetry and love lyric, the chansons de toile trace diverse paths of love – marked by distance, obstacles, and states of suspension. From a musical perspective, these songs are true sonic gems. The sometimes richly ornamented melodic lines demand great interpretative subtlety and make the tension of extended time and unfulfilled desire particularly clear. Whether written by women or not: the voice that runs through them speaks of and for them – beyond the boundaries of the closed world assigned to them. The musical execution, oriented towards the medieval ideal of female beauty, thus becomes an integral part of the expression of amorous desire. Der Busant Peter Bichsel’s Der Busant, published in 1985 by Luchterhand, carries the subtitle “Of Drinkers, Policemen, and the Beautiful Magelone.” The novella plays with the material of a medieval love and adventure story and relocates it into a modern everyday world. Busant is the name of a wealthy homesick Solothurner, whose money is used to “beautify” Solothurn’s old town. Busant is also the name of the bird that triggered the medieval story of the beautiful Magelone and Count Peter of Provence, a story of lifelong love and search. And the beautiful Magelone is not only a princess from distant Naples but also an eternally drunk secretary or waitress from today’s Solothurn. Bichsel demystifies the medieval romance by placing its great motifs – loyalty, search, fate – into a petty-bourgeoisly managed modernity. The characters are no longer heroic but functional: secretaries, employees, travelers. Love is not prevented by dragons or forests but by routine, poverty of language, social roles, and institutional processes. The tragic is not misfortune but normality. Panel Discussion As part of a panel discussion, SRF moderator Eva Oertle leads the conversation with musicians from the festival. Different perspectives from practice, research, and mediation come together to illuminate the question of how we can experience and make early music accessible anew today. Participating artists: Ensemble Diabolus in musica / Désirée Meiser / Moderation: Eva Oertle