Uc Brunet

Huc Brunets, as he is called in the manuscript, is depicted as a tonsured cleric and man of letters.

Uc Brunet, Brunec, or Brunenc (English: Hugh, Latin: Ugo; fl. 1190–1220)^[1] was a nobleman and troubadour from Rodez in the Rouergue. Six of his works survive.^[1]

Outside of his own works and those of other troubadours, including a vida, Uc is mentioned in only one document dated to around 1190. The document relates the settlement between Uc and the abbey of , from which Uc had demanded free lodging for himself, five of his knights, and a servant.^[1] Uc's career can be extended as late as the c. 1220 by the planh (lament) written on his death by Daude de Pradas, who was only active from about that time.^[1] Among Uc's patrons were Hugh II of Rodez, his suzerain; Alfonso II of Aragon; Raymond VI of Toulouse; ; and Dalfi d'Alvernha.^[1][2]

The author of Uc's vida (biography), whose reliability is difficult to ascertain, states that Uc was a cleric well-versed in letters with a natural wit.^[2] From this background he became a jongleur and then a troubadour, but he never, according to his vida, composed any music.^[2] Nonetheless, one of his songs is accompanied by a melody in one manuscript; the melody may be Uc's or somebody else's.^[1]

Uc's vida provides an interesting story which cannot be verified that Uc fell in love with a bourgeois women named Galiana, from Aurillac.^[2] She dismissed him, however, and took Hugh of Rodez as her lover. In his pain Uc Brunet entered the "order of Cartosa" (probably an unidentified charterhouse) and there died.^[2]

One of Hugh's datable works is a sirventes, "Conplidas razos novelas e plazens", which mentions the death of los comtes, evidently the count of Rodez, in 1208.^[3] It is the only work of Uc's to survive with a melody. The melody is melismatic and tonal with its centre generally on F, though it ends on D.^[4]

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