The Cantus Firmus in Binchois's "Files a marier"Author(s): Martin PickerSource: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Summer, 1965), pp.235-236Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/830687 .

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- STUDIES AND ABSTRACTS +

THE CANTUS FIRMUS IN BINCHOIS'S FILES A MARIER

THE EXCEPTIONAL CHARACTER Of Gilles Binchois's Files a marier, which differs so strikingly from his other fifty-four chansons, has often been noted. Wolf-

gang Rehm, in his edition of Die Chansons von Gilles Binchois (Mainz, 1957), places it in a category all its own ("Freie Chansonform," No. 55). Its patter- like declamation in two highly imitative upper voices over two more slowly- moving lower voices, its conciseness, rhythmic regularity, and symmetrical, dance-like structure (AABB), are all some distance removed from the subtleties of the normal Burgundian style of the early i5th century, for which the rest of Binchois's chansons might serve as archetypes. In a recent study, Peter Giilke has noted the special position of Files a marier in Franco-Burgundian music, and surmises that it employs a folk melody as a structural foundation in the tenor, in a manner similar to Dufay's La belle se siet, which indeed it resembles.' Giilke is unable to identify the melody, although he notes that it is not related to the dance tune that appears in an anonymous Filles a marier of the Seville chansonnier.

Since its publication by Jeanne Marix in Les Musiciens de la cour de Bourgogne,2 Binchois's Files a marier has been often reprinted, performed, and recorded, enjoying a popularity perhaps greater than that of any other chanson from before the time of Josquin.3 Thus it is of more than passing interest that the melody employed by Binchois is also found in an anonymous triple- chanson, Robinet se veult marier / Se tu t'en marias / He'las pourquoy, stylistically of the mid-15th century, and contained in the late 15th-century MS Escorial IV.a.24. This latter work is listed as No. 154 in Howard M. Brown's "Catalogue of Theatrical Chansons" in his Music in the French Secular Theater (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), without reference to Binchois's setting, and is printed in Brown's volume of Theatrical Chansons of the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries.4 The tenor of this quodlibet-chanson, bearing the text Se tu t'en marias, contains two strophes of a melody which Brown recognizes as a cantus prius factus. It is combined with a second pre-existent tune in the contratenor, Helas pourquoy, which is used independently in a I5th-century farce (hence its inclusion in Brown's study), and with a newly-composed superius having a separate rondeau text. Giilke quotes the opening of this tenor in his article,5 but he does not relate it to Binchois's composition. He

1P. Giilke, "Das Volkslied in der bur- gundischen Polyphonie des 15. Jahr- hunderts," in Festschrift Heinrich Bes- seler (Leipzig, 1962), p. 179. Dufay's piece is printed in J. F. R. and C. Stainer, eds., Dufay and His Contemporaries (London, x898), pp. i22ff.

2 (Paris, 1937), pp. 46f. 3 It is familiar to students especially

through A. Davison and W. Apel, eds., Historical Anthology of Music, I (Cam- bridge, Mass., 1950), pp. 74f., and the re- cording in The History of Music in Sound, III, by the Brussels Pro Musica Antiqua under Safford Cape's direction.

4 (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), p. 168. 5 Ex. 8e, p. I86.

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236 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

cites its incorporation into a fricasee, Orsus, orsus, made up of many popular song incipits, thus testifying to the currency of the tune.6 Different meters and slight melodic variants do not obscure the identity of Binchois's tenor with that of the anonymous Escorial composition, as can be seen by comparing the two versions superimposed in the example below.

Binchois (after Rehm)

(strophe 2, mm. Se tu t'en ma- ri - as, tu t'en re-pen-ti - ras. Et

16-22)

quant? Et quant? a - vant qu'il soit ung an.

Identification of the melody on which Binchois based Files a marier thus brings to light its text, which is lacking in the only source containing Binchois's setting.' Perhaps this composition should henceforth be described as the double- chanson Files a marier / Se tu t'en marias. By using a popular tune as cantus firmus, Binchois parodies the polyphonic technique of the learned motet, while juxtaposition of two popular song-texts commenting on the inadvisability of marriage wittily serves to emphasize their point.

It is no discredit to Binchois that some of the most striking features of his little masterpiece are borrowed from popular music. It was just this infiltration of popular song elements into the hyper-refined polyphonic art of his time that, more than any other factor, led to the birth of a new melodic idiom in the 15th century. Despite its retrospective cantus firmus structure, this chanson remains one of Binchois's most forward-looking works.

Rutgers University College of Arts and Sciences

MARTIN PICKER

6Giilke, op. cit., p. 193, note 38. This work is found in Pavia, Bibl. Univ. MS Aldini 362.

7Biblioteca Vaticana MS Urb. lat. 1411. In this connection it should be re- marked that Dragan Plamenac has com- pleted a missing portion of the text for

the upper voices of Binchois's piece from the version in the Seville chansonnier. See his "A Reconstruction of the French Chansonnier in the Biblioteca Colombina, Seville, I," The Musical Quarterly XXXVII ('951), pp. 5x8f.

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