Early Music

doi:10.1093/earlyj/XXVIII.1.133 XXVIII:133-137, 2000. Early Music

Jeanice Brooks 16th-century French secular music

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wonder whether recordings of some of these songs with atreble might not be an interesting way to proceed. Is thereanyone who will take up the challenge7

Jeanice Brooks

16th-century French secular music

Among the most intriguing aspects of studying Renais-sance musical practice—at least for those of us who havesomething of the train-spotter in our characters—is track-ing musical material as it travels across generic boundariesand social milieux. Tunes provide the most obvious sub-jects for such games: a recognizable melody can show upin different metres as different dances; as material forimprovisation; as a timbre for singing new words; or as abasis for complex polyphonic compositions. Transforma-tions can work the other way too, as complicated poly-phony is reduced to produce simple dance pieces As fasci-nating as it is to follow such permutations through printedor manuscript sources, it is much more fun to follow themby ear This group of recordings allows this both betweendiscs and, in some cases, within individual recordings.Together they provide an excellent overview of Frenchsecular music of the 16th century.

Each ensemble navigates through this vast corpus ofmaterial by limiting the focus to the repertory of a printer,or to that associated with a particular city or court, or byselecting music according to more abstract concerns suchas the mingling of'high' and 'low' elements of Renaissanceculture. Le jardin des melodies: sixteenth-century Frenchdances and songs (Harmonia Mundi USA, HMU 907194,rec 1997) seems an impossibly broad rubric, but in fact thisdisc by The King's Noyse concentrates mainly on dancesand dance songs published only in the second half of thecentury. Directed by violinist David Douglass, theensemble is a violin band like those that supplied music forFrench court balls after about 1555, when the queenCatherine de M£dicis brought Balthazar de Beaujoyeuxand his group of Italian players from Piedmont to France.Some of the instruments used for this recording are mod-elled on surviving examples of Italian violins commis-sioned for the French court, such as the violin, viola andbass violin made by Andrea Amati for Catherine's son,Charles IX, and now in the Ashmolean Museum The discthus represents a particularly nice match between reper-

tory and performing forces, and it is good to see King'sNoyse (who before this disc had recorded music from justabout everywhere but France) turning to this music.

The results are generally excellent: the dances for theviolin band (with and without percussion and lute) areplayed with verve and panache. There is a good range ofdifferent kinds of pieces, from the mainstays of periodsocial dance—pavanes, galliards and branles —to newer ormore unusual dances such as the furlano. The dancesplayed by the full group are complemented by more inti-mate renditions of branles for lute solo, beautifullyexecuted by Paul O'Dette The connections between theinstrumental dance repertory and the chanson a danser areunderlined by the inclusion of pieces for voice and guitar,performed by O'Dette and soprano Ellen Hargis. Omadame pers-je mon temps (on a branle de Poitou) and Ocombien est heureuse (on a branle gay) are good examplesof strophic songs fitted to the tunes and rhythms of con-temporary dance forms. The practice of using timbres(singing one song to the tune of another, following arubric such as 'sur le chant de ...'), so prominent in thisrepertory, is represented by Ton amour ma matstresse(sung to the tune of a branle de Poitou, Mon seul bien) anda lament, Helas faut-d queje lamente (sung to the melodyof Dames d'honneur, je vous pne, a common timbre forlaments). The texts are delivered with conviction, thoughwith an inconsistent approach to pronunciation (the 01endings in particular sometimes delivered in old andsometimes modern pronunciation).

Though the lion's share of the disc goes to dances andstrophic songs, it also includes a few pieces with morecomplex contrapuntal workings. A set of polyphonicchansons from Le Roy & Ballard's 1572 Meslanges includes,for example, Claude Le Jeune's marvellous Je suis desher-itee, performed with a sung supenus and strings on otherlines. I do wonder, though, whether polyphonic chansonswould have been performed this way at the French court.Payment records of the second half of the century main-tain a complete separation between the Italian violinbands and king's normal chamber music group, whichincluded singers joined by no more than one or two violinplayers, mixed in with several lutenists, a couple oiepinetteplayers, viol and flute. It is dangerous to claim that pay-ment records always represent performing practice, butthe accounts do suggest that all-vocal performance ofchansons, or performances with voices and mixed consort,were more usual than violin band plus voice.

The title of a more recent disc by the Phalesius Project,directed by Peter Van Heyghen—Petrus Phalesius:

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Premier livre de danseries, Leuven 1571 (Vanguard Clas-sics 99725, rec 1998)—leaves little doubt about its contents.Sponsored by the city of Leuven, the recording honoursone of the town's illustrious sons, the printer known toEnglish and French speakers as Pierre Phalese. His Premierlivre de danseries was a compendium of dances largelydrawn from French sources, particularly a set of booksedited by the royal hautbois player Jean d'Estrees and pub-lished in Pans between 1559 and 1564; it is thus a good rep-resentative of French court dance traditions. This is theonly purely instrumental disc in the batch under review,with players in three groupings. Ensemble Braccio, a four-strong violin band; a large wind cohort of recorders,crumhorns, sackbut, bombards and curtals deployed invarious combinations; and a mixed soft consort ofrecorder, lute and harpsichord. Both the wind and stringgroups produce solid performances, though I found thestring playing more static than that of The King's Noyse,with less forward motion and less emphatic shaping ofphrases. Van Heyghen's liner note explains that no percus-sion instruments are used here because they are rarelymentioned in 16th-century dance sources. Yet ThoinotArbeau's 1589 Orchesographie, a source with considerableauthority for traditions of French dance, says that taborsor larger drums work particularly well with the combina-tion of shawms and sackbuts It is less clear whether drumswere played with violin bands, though Arbeau implies thatthis too may be usual.

Another printer and another city provide the materialfor the Ensemble Doulce M£moire's Jacques Moderne:fricassees lyonnaises (Audivis Astr6e E8567, rec 1995). Thegroup's director, Denis Raisin-Dadre, and the author ofthe informative liner notes, Laurent Guillo (who has writ-ten important studies of the printed music of the regionand city), are both Lyonnais, and the disc is a sustainedcelebration of the city's heritage: even its title evokesLyon's boast to be the epicentre of classic French cuisine.The recording was prepared in the context of the Festivalde Musique du Vieux Lyon, and sponsored not only by theMinistry of Culture and the region (the usual supportersof artistic endeavours in France) but by the giant bankCredit Lyonnais, reminding us of Lyon's other claim tofame as a centre for banking and commerce. The repertoryis drawn from the production of the Italian Jacques Mod-erne, who set up shop in Lyon and began producing musicprints c 1530 Several of the chanson texts are the work ofimportant Lyonnais poets such as Maurice Sceve and Per-nette Du Guillet; Sceve's lovely Le veoir, Vouyr, le parler,Vattoucher, for example, is here performed in an equally

lovely setting by Pierre de Villiers. Other texts, though notof the same literary calibre, are also connected to the cityElle est d'andoudlefriande, which refers to a type oicharcu-tene, a Lyonnais specialty (the text of this song is, however,inexplicably absent from the liner notes), and the pieceused to close the disc, En venant de Lyon Much of themusic has an Itahanate cast, representative not only ofModerne's own origins but of the complexion of the cityitself, a haven for Italian merchant communities. Itincludes pieces by and in honour of Moderne's compatriotFrancesco Layolle (including two of his settings of Italiantexts, Lassare il velo and Almafehce e lieta), organist at theFlorentine church of Notre-Dame de Confort.

The recording features a five-voice ensemble (usuallysinging unaccompanied); a soft instrumental consortincluding lute and harpsichord; and a group of shawms,cornetts, sackbut and percussion modelled after the Lyon-nais town wind ensemble of the period. The disc's strongpoint is the enthusiasm and dash of the instrumentalnumbers, particularly the wind band pieces. The profusediminutions are very cleanly executed but still retain awonderful sense of spontaneity; this is definitely the mostextrovert of this batch of recordings. The group's interestin extemporaneous performance practice is reflected inpieces featuring collective improvisation on a chord pat-tern or tune. One—track 20, Passemeze et gadlarde—winds up sounding somewhat like a 20th-century jazznumber, with each soloist stepping forward for his/herturn in the spotlight, though here the stars are cornett andrecorder rather than sax or electric guitar I found thesefascinating, and wish more groups were confident enoughto try this sort of experiments and bring it off with suchbrio. (The ensemble has recently released an entire discdevoted to the subject of Renaissance improvisation,which I haven't yet heard ) The exuberance of the windplaying here makes the very good Phalesius Project windssound rather polite and worthy in comparison.

The vocal performances do not always live up to thestandard of the wind playing; at times the singing isnotably insecure, particularly in the tuning of the upperline. There are also some problems of balance, perhapsmost acutely audible in the ensemble's signature song,Pierre Sandrin's Doulce mimoire. Anne Quentin's supenuspart is almost inaudible, with the result that one of themost famous melodies of the 16th century is notablemainly for its absence. Nevertheless there are big advan-tages to be derived from singers who are native speakers, inboth clarity and expression of text. Another strength ofthis disc is the inclusion of multiple versions of some

134 EARLY MUSIC FEBRUARY 2000

pieces. In its simplest form this involves only a change inperforming practice, such as following an all-vocal perfor-mance of a chanson with an all-instrumental rendition ofsame piece (as for Plamdre I'ennui and Si les otseaux)More interesting still are vocal performances of chansonsfollowed by a basse dance, tourdion or galhard based onthe song's tune (as for Ta bonne grace, En lieu du bien andJe n'oserais lepenser).

These three discs have some overlap, which permits afew train-spotteresque compansons between them. ThePhalesius Project and King's Noyse both include Les Bouf-fons, a dance in which participants dressed as Amazons orsoldiers engaged in choreographed sword play. The Phale-sius Project uses the wind band, maintaining consistentinstrumentation and tempo through the repetitions; theinterest is generated by crisp ensemble playing and variedand nicely executed divisions added to the upper line. TheKing's Noyse, in contrast, produces a much more man-nered performance, starting the piece as a slow pavane,then doubling the tempo for subsequent strains, though asfar as I can tell there is no justification for the tempochange in the description of the dance in Arbeau. The finalstrains feature the addition of a sopranino recorder on thetop line (though as the instrument is not listed in the linernotes its sudden appearance comes as a bit of a surprise)Such very studied shifts are typical of much of theensemble music on this recording; similar effects areemployed for another 'battle' piece, the pavane and gal-liard based on Clement Janequin's famous programmaticchanson La bataille. Here The King's Noyse alternates soft,legato strains for strings alone with marcato sectionsaccompanied by percussion. I assume that the 'orchestra-tion' of the dances is motivated by a desire for variationbetween repetitions—presumably unnecessary when themusic is actually used for dancing. I find such constantchanges more wearing than repetition, though, and pre-ferred the more straightforward wind band renditions onthe Doulce M6moire and Phalesius Project discs. Partly forthis reason, one of the King's Noyse performances I foundthe most persuasive was not of a dance at all, but a Fanta-sia from the Ltvre de dansenes, where the group producessome fine singing lines (preferable, I think, to the Phale-sius Project's wind band interpretation of the same piece).

The two final recordings in the group under review aredevoted to more intimate performances. Virelai's Chan-sons nouvelles: Parisian chansons and dances, c. 1530-1550(Virgin Veritas 5 453132, rec 1996-7) features CatherineKing, mezzo-soprano, plus lute, viols, spinet and flute orrecorder in various combinations. This configuration is

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EARLY MUSIC FEBRUARY 2000 135

probably a good representation of the royal chambermusic ensemble through much of the period, and thecombination works especially well for the lyric chansonsby Sermisy on the disc. Sermisy's well-known Jouyssancevous donneray, for example, is particularly effective in theinstrumentation for voice, lute and transverse flute seen inthe famous painting by the Master of the Female HalfLengths reproduced on the recording's cover.

Like the Phalesius Project and Doulce M6moire record-ings, this disc too concentrates on the work of a singleprinter—here the Parisian Pierre Attaingnant. Thoughtfulliner notes by Jonathan Le Cocq point out the printer'srole in disseminating music and shaping taste, and alsoaddress the question of how the pnnter's choice of formatcan inform or mislead as to performance practice. Againthe connections between song and dance as well asbetween vocal music and the growing repertory of sepa-rately published instrumental music are emphasized. Thedisc includes performances of songs which figure both inprints of vocal polyphony and in lute and keyboard collec-tions in Attaingnant's output (one, Dolent depart, isincluded three times, in its vocal version and in lute andkeyboard arrangements). In other cases songs are includedalong with dances based on them; Content desir, forexample, appears as a song and as an instrumental bassedanse. (One branle by Claude Gervaise allows for a differ-ent kind of comparison—it is the basis for a dance in Fran-cis Poulenc's Suite francaise for piano.) Both in the chan-sons and in their various arrangements, the ensemblesucceeds in capturing the charm and grace of these pieces,often ruined by overly blunt performances which mistakesimplicity for easiness.

Even fewer musicians feature on Villon to Rabelais:sixteenth century music of the streets, theatres, andcourts (Harmoma Mundi USA, HMU 907226, rec 1997),performed by The Newberry Consort under the directionof Mary Springfels. This disc concentrates on a substan-tially earlier repertory, the bulk of it from the late 15th andvery early 16th centuries. Though there are only three play-ers, the instrumentarium is large: vielle, rebec, viola dagamba, harp, recorders, transverse flutes, hurdy-gurdy,sackbut, bagpipes and percussion The players are joinedby two singers—countertenor Drew Minter and tenorWilliam Hite—and the versatile Tom Zajac (who playswinds as well as percussion on this disc) contributes athird vocal part to a few pieces. The recording is organizedaround the idea of the juxtaposition of'high' and 'low' ele-ments m Renaissance culture. The work of composerssuch as Compere, Busnoys and Fevin is compared to that

of Villon and Rabelais in literature; all are seen as havingborrowed popular idioms from 'le menu peuple' to add aburlesque, satiric or carnivalesque note to their produc-tion. There isn't space to develop the topic fully in the linernotes, so that the analogy comes off as superficial. It alsotends to beg questions of the origins of high and low styles,mapping them fairly simply onto 61ite and mass culture,when I don't think things are that simple in this period.But though I find the organizing principle somewhatproblematic, the resulting musical mix is an interestingone. The disc includes examples of complex polyphonicvocal works built around popularizing texts and tunes, aswell as dances constructed over and around similar mel-odies. These are contrasted with more straightforward,often monophonic, vocal renditions of songs in a popularidiom.

Combinative chansons account for six of the vocalpieces, and represent perhaps the most musically interest-ing repertory on the disc. These pieces have two or moresimultaneous texts, whose interplay often involves pun-ning or allegory, and they interweave quotations frompopular tunes with newly composed material in inge-nious ways. A good example is Soubz les branches/ En larousie/ Jolts mots (here attributed to Antoine de FeVin,though it is anonymous in the Dijon chansonnier fromwhich it is drawn), where a stunningly beautiful melis-matic melody unfolds over alternating statements fromtwo different popular songs in the texted lower parts.Drew Minter's rendition of the supenus and MarySpringfels's viol performance on the (untexted) con-tratenor are convincingly expressive (though Minter pro-duces some odd vowels in French, particularly noticeableon the 'e' and 'eu' sounds). The two inner parts come offas somewhat bland in comparison, but this effect is builtinto the music to a certain extent, as the syllabic decla-mation and restricted range of the popular songs contrastwith the more expansive melodic language of the newlycomposed lines. This piece and one other combinativechanson are given fully vocal performances; for Belle tenismoyl La tnquotie and Rolet/ La tncotie/ Maitre Piere onlyone of the texted parts (that carrying the popular song Latncotie) is sung. For Vostre beauti/ Vous marchez du boutdu pii, again only the lines carrying the popular tune aresung; the supenus, which mixes snippets of the popu-laresque song Vous marchez with new, more courtlymaterial, is played. As the liner notes include the missmgtexts in only one case, we largely lose the verbal counter-point, as important as that between the musical lines. InBelle tends moyl La tnquotie, for example, the upper line's

136 EARLY MUSIC FEBRUARY 2000

request to a lady to keep a promise (expressed in courtly

language and a more mellifluous melodic style) against

the account of the tenor of the 'belle tnquotee' (who goes

into the woods to make music in a popularesque dance

rhythm), suggests the nature of the promise.

The use of countertenor and tenor singers for solo per-

formances on this disc is not matched by any of the other

recordings. Women clearly did sing this repertory, and

when the singing is as accomplished as it is from Catherine

King or Ellen Hargis I certainly won't complain. But it is

also clear that lower male voices were regularly employed

as soloists and that male singers were responsible for much

of the development of vocal practice in France in this

period, at the French royal court the most celebrated solo

singers of the second half of the century, other than the

castrato Etienne Le Roy, were the bass Girard de Beauheu

and Thibault de Courville (whose voice type is never spec-

ified in court records, but who was not a castrato).

Another bass, Antoine Subject, enjoyed a long career as a

chamber singer from the time of Francois I into the 1570s

(Francois's grandson Charles IX admired Subject's voice

so much he made him bishop of Montpellier.) I would

occasionally like to hear lower male voices not just in vocal

polyphony but also as soloists for music from the later 16th

century. This is a fairly minor complaint, though. In gen-

eral it is wonderful to see such a large slice of this music—

more than 150 pieces in total—available in performances

of such good quality; and this group of recordings has

much to offer anyone interested in the enormous variety

of French secular music of the period.

PostscriptTwo other recent recordings of slightly later music deserve amention here, both of them among the most compelling Ihave head all year Eustache du Caurroy's Requiem appearedrecently on the now-defunct Collins Classics label, with theChoir of New College, Oxford under Higginbottom (seeMane-Alexis Colin's review in EM, xxvn (May 1999),PP-339-40). A new version, Du Caurroy: Requiem des rois deFrance (Auvidis Astre>, E8660, rec 1998), followed swiftlyfrom the French ensemble Doulce Memoire, directed byDenis Raisin-Dadre This presents the work in the context ofthe funeral of Henry IV, who died by an assassin's hand in1610 The ceremony and the tragic events leading up to it aremeticulously detailed in the accompanying booklet The per-formance itself combines voices and wind band, as to the pro-gramme, the main work is complemented by psalm-settingsby Goudimel and, most strikingly, the recitation (or better,declamation) of excerpts from the funeral oration pro-

nounced upon the body by Cospeau, bishop of Aire. This is aremarkably moving moment, and an enterprising bit of pro-gramming. So is the final proclamation, 'Le roy est mort; vivele roy1' Head-on comparison with the rival recording mightseem pointless, so different are they in approach and inten-tion, for what it's worth, my personal preference probablygoes to Raisin-Dadre's more contextualized approach His-torical reconstructions often strike me as contrived or faddish,but not this one As to my continuing campaign in favour ofsensible (and attractive) packaging, I am delighted to reportthat Astree have made a useful contribution to the search: ahard cardboard booklet with plastic mounting for the CD,and a booklet solidly glued on the inside, opposite the discThe design is beautiful too- details (head on the front, feet onthe back) of the king's funeral at Saint-Denis.

The secular repertory discussed above by Jeanice Brooks iscontinued in the air de cour, a genre which has long fascinatedme for its disarmingly sophisticated simplicity. For a longtime, my favourite recording of this repertory was NigelRogers's on EMI Reflexe (expertly accompanied by AnthonyBailes) Here at last is one to match it: Airs de cour (Linn CKD089, rec 1997), on which Catherine King and Charles Danielsare accompanied by lutenist Jacob Henngman The recitalincludes a fair sprinkling of the dialogues, a portion of thisrepertory all too often neglected in previous recitals (includ-ing Rogers's), which have tended to include only soloists. Therather effete charm of the lyrics comes across very naturallyhere, so much so that the necessary suspension of disbelief (onthe part of this listener, at any rate) is nearly unconsciousHenngman is given a few solo spots, but his contributionthroughout is sensitive and well judged. Of the two singers,Daniels impresses more with his command of pronunciationand clarity of diction (one never has to reach for the booklet),and he steals the show on his own, in what must be one of themost beautiful songs ever written, Etienne Moulime's Enfin labeaute que /adore I always thought that Rogers and Baileswould be unsurpassable here, and though I'm not sure thatthey will ever be bested, Daniels finds even more effortlessornaments, and a seemingly unstudied elegance- the olderversion retains a special place in my affections, but maybeDaniels has achieved the impossible after all. The only things Imissed are the more extroverted chansons a bom and 'rustic'tales of naughtiness among the glades and shrubbery. It issupnsing how recent recordings have tended to overlook thislighter side of the repertory But these days it's a rare thingthat I listen to a disc more than the few times it takes to reviewit; and I've been playing this recording again and again

FABRICE FITCH

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