Aimeric's first patron was Raimon V of Toulouse, followed by his son Raimon VI. However, he fled the region at the threat of the Albigensian Crusade and spent some ten years in Northern Italy. It is said that he had secretly loved a neighbour while living in Toulouse, and that it was for her that he returned.
Aimeric is known to have composed at least fifty works, the music for six of which survives:
There is one very late example of a lai, written to mourn the defeat of the French at the battle of Agincourt (1415), (Lay de la guerre, by Pierre de Nesson) but no music for it survives.
There are four lais in the Roman de Fauvel, all of them anonymous.
The lai reached its highest level of development as a musical and poetic form in the work of Guillaume de Machaut; 19 separate lais by this 14th-century ars nova composer survive, and they are among his most sophisticated and highly-developed secular compositions.
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