The aristocratic poet-musicians in Provence and Southern France in the 12th-13th centuries. Their music was passed down orally and it is all about chivalric ideals of the period (courtly love and the idealization of women). It spread to Northern France (trouveres) and to Germany (Minnesinger). There may have been an Arabic-Spanish influence in its origination. More than 300 troubadour poems are preserved with their melodies (chansonniers). The melodies are monophonic and the accompaniment is merely unison duplication of the melody sometimes with slight modification (see heterophony).