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Sait d'Ail Stainglit
Spoof entry from the spoof article "The New Grove," listing entries that would NOT appear in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, from The Musical Times (Vol. 122, No. 1656, February 1981).
Stainglit (Nevers), Sait d'Ail (fl Middle Ages). Trouvere, possibly English, not identifiable with SATAN- LES-EDIT. According to the vida by Jéré Mine Eau-bleu he studied at the University of Pont de Cam, gaining degrees in music and philosophy. None of his music survives (according to an unpublished vida 'he sang poorly but wrote fine melodies'), but his annotations and amendments to the texts of over 2500 contemporaries fill no fewer than 20 volumes.
Formally, his works were said at the time to have been remarkable for the avoidance of coblas - something which could be characteristic of a writer who is reputed to have shown such a marked preference for the lai. On the other hand he was famous for the searching criticism expressed in his sirventes: many of these appear in the polemical anthology of random jottings by various scribes under the collective title D'eux t'ahimes, of which a few copies survive in various British libraries.
Stainglit is remembered mainly, however, for the aforementioned magnum opus, Selva nuova (modelled on Georges Sieur de Bosquet), for the compilation of which he gathered in the mid-70s a bevy of belles dames who fell to their labours sans merci. During this period, the peak of the Middle Ages, he was engaged in many jeux-partis, notably with NIGUNE LE FORT, BENDIANT and Louis SERRURE DE BOIS. His voluminous correspondence (now in GB-Lgm) attests to his wide-ranging sympathies and interests, including a passionate concern for the verification of all sauces sighted. To the perennial lament 'Quand sera-t-il fini?' he supplied the infectious refrain 'Nevers Sait d'Ail', which became so well known that it was universally adopted as Stainglit's sobriquet; the negative implications were later dropped, and the 20 volumes stand as testimony to his endurance and the affectionate esteem in which he will always be held.
A. G. ROVER
