Airs from the Courts and Times of Henri IV and Louis XIII
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 มิ.ย. 2024
- 00:00 Voicy le verd et beau may (Jacques Mauduit, 1557-1627)
02:31 Eau vive, source d'amour (Mauduit)
05:08 Chambrière (Jehan Planson, c.1559-c.1611)
07:21 Courante (Jean Périchon, 1566-c.1600)
08:22 Doncques tu vas te mourant (Claude Le Jeune, c.1528-1600)
09:59 Qu'est devenu ce bel oeil? (Le Jeune)
12:26 Un satyre cornu (Gabriel Bataille, c.1574-1630)
14:52 Two airs for lute (Robert Ballard II, c.1572-c.1650)
16:41 Par un matin la belle s'est levée (Planson)
18:49 Le vertu d'un personnage (Pierre Bonnet, c.1538-c.1608)
20:55 Comme nous voyons la rose (Pierre Cerveau)
23:28 Variations ¨Les Pantalons¨ (Nicolas Vallet, c.1583-c.1642)
26:14 Que veut chasser une migraine (Bataille)
28:06 Beautés qui résidés (Bataille)
30:47 Amants qui vous plaignez (Charles Tessier, c.1550-c.1604)
33:11 Tombeau de Monsieur de Blancrocher (François Dufault, c.1600-c.1672)
36:23 Gigue (Dufault)
38:16 Un jour Amarille et Tirsis (Antoine Boesset, 1587-1643)
40:50 Amour est un plaisir si doux (Pierre Guédron, c.1570-c.1620)
43:32 C’est une demoiselle (Guédron)
Ensemble Vocal de Stéphane Caillat - Stéphane Caillat, director
Guy Robert, lute / Stéphane Caillat, harpsichord
Art: Elegants in the park of a classic palace, by Louis de Caullery (c.1580-1621)
Poets and musicians have rarely shown such elaborate and self-conscious concern for each others’ arts as they did in France and Italy during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Italians’ preoccupation with a more intimate relation between music and text produced first the madrigal, then accompanied monody, and finally Italian opera. In France, a similar impetus towards the marriage of words and music bore parallel, though not identical, results: the rhythmic experiments of ¨vers mesurée¨ and the chordal, strophic ¨air de cour¨.
As early as 1530, alongside the more elaborate and contrapuntal polyphonic ¨chanson¨, a new, simpler kind of secular vocal music began to develop in France. These stropic songs, in which the same melody was repeated for each successive verse of a given poem, were called ¨voix de ville¨, or ¨vaux de ville¨, or ¨chansons à danser¨. Understandably, this uncomplicated kind of music won quick approval from the leading poets of the day. In this musical style, nothing got in the way of their poems’ clear comprehensibility and audibility. Important composers, among them Arcadelt and Certon, experimented with the ¨chanson en forme de voix de ville¨.
But the most important attempts to unite poetry and music did not begin to be made until 1569, with the appearance of a poetic anthology by Ronsard and his circle, set to music by Nicolas de la Grotte. In transcribing these chansons for voice and solo lute in 1571, Adrian le Roy rebaptized them “Airs de cour” (courtly melodies); the new, somewhat precious-sounding name caught on, and quickly came to designate vocal compositions as well as transcriptions of the same pieces for voice and lute.
Around the same time, in 1570, Charles IX issued a letter of patent to the poet Jean-Antoine de Baif and to the court musician Joachim Thibault de Courville, acknowledging the efforts of these two to restore the poetic and musical forms of ancient Greece and Rome, and establishing an ¨Academie de poésie et musique¨ at whose meetings would attend “composers, singers, and instrumentalists, as well as honest auditors”. The Academy met every Sunday; its meetings lasted “two hours by the clock”; members were to be inscribed in a register, indicating their family name, surname, social ranks, and... the amount they had paid for membership privileges. “The auditors”, reads the rule book, “during the singing shall neither talk, nor listen to talk, nor make noise, but shall conduct themselves in as quiet a manner as possible, until the song in progress be finished; and during a song, shall not knock on the doors, which will be opened at the end of each song to admit waiting auditors”.
Thus admonished, the listener admitted to the salon of Baif’s own home, where the meetings were held, would have head a group of carefully rehearsed musicians performing the ¨vers mesurée à l'antique¨ which was central to Baif’s theories about music and poetry; perhaps he would even have heard the compositions of Jacques Mauduit and Claude Le Jeune included in this recording, ¨Eau vive, source d'amour¨, whose poem is by Baif, is a typical ¨vers mesurée¨ composition: the stressed syllables are set to long note values, the unstressed syllables to shorter ones, in the manner of classical Greek and Latin poetry.
Eau vive, source d'améur, de mon ardéur;
Nymphe, réfréchis là violénte chaléur;
Nymphe, je brûle d‘aimér.
The conventions of ¨vers mesurée¨ are obviously highly artificial ones, from both a literary and a musical standpoint. Since French was and is pronounced without strongly accentuated syllables, Baif’s system of quantitative stresses is in some degree an imposition upon the natural flow of the language, and his complicated rules of prosody a limitation as well upon the musical freedom of the composer. Yet these very restrictions seemed to strengthen a master like Claude Le Jeune, whose many compositions in ¨vers mesurée¨ style are of undisputed value. The intensity of expression of ¨Donques tu vas de mourant¨ and ¨Qu’est devenu ce bel oeil¨, two very serious airs, invites comparison with the madrigals of Marenzio or Monteverdi.
The “golden age” of the ¨air de cour¨, at least in terms of the quantity of music written in this genre, begins some years later, during the reign of Henri IV, and ends with the reign of Louis XIII. According to French musicologist André Verchaly, more than a thousand ¨airs de cour¨ were printed between 1603 and 1643. The composers of this later generation - Bataille, Bonnet, Boesset, Guedron, and others - employ certain of the conventions of ¨vers mesurée¨ without, however, subjecting themselves to the discipline of the system developed by Baif. Many of the airs included in this recording, in fact, have little to do with the world of aesthetic research and self-conscious mannerism, and are, quite simply, entertainment music, closer to the dance and the ¨vaux de ville¨ than to the pretentious world of the Academie. The ribald texts of Jehan Planson's compositions, for example, are set to folk-like melodies, easily retained by the money. A similar melodic simplicity is also very effective in Boesset’s ¨Un jour Amarille et Tirsis¨; of the many, many settings of shepherd’s complaints, this is one of the most beautiful.
The lute, favorite instrument of the Renaissance gentleman, became the object of a veritable cult in seventeenth century France. Eulogized by poets, portrayed in paintings and engravings as the household instrument of the gods on Parnassus, its delicate, evanescent tone was much in demand, both for accompaniments in the ¨air de cour¨ and in solo. The compositions for solo lute of Ballard, Vallet, and Dufault, like the ¨airs de cour¨, characterize their epoch: graceful, somewhat mannered and artificial, yet lyrical, delicate, and full of pleasant surprises for the attentive listener.
JOEL ISRAEL COHEN
Turnabout (TV-S 34316)
Voicy le verd et beau may: Jacques Mauduit
Behold the green and pleasant May; all now is happy and smiling. Come and make flower chains; let us celebrate the new season. The snows have gone, the sea is calm, everywhere the birds fly and sing.
Eau vive, source d'amour: Jacques Mauduit
Fair fountain, wellspring of love and of my passion; Nymph, cool this violent heat, for I burn with love. The water flows, but my thirst remains; the water flows, but I see not to the bottom.
Chambriére: Jehan Planson
“Chambermaid, chambermaid, run to my lover and tell him my husband is no longer at home!” The chambermaid, wearing her best hat, delivers the message: “Sir, my lady
informs you that her husband is no longer at home”. “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”, he says, taking the bird in hand. “What the devil are you doing,” cries the indignant mistress; “Hush”, replies the maid, “I didn’t see you, and you didn't see me”.
Doncques tu vas te mourant: Claude Le Jeune
Thus, flower, you go dying; you wither, your leaves dry up, your sweet smell fades. I would help you, but I too am old and near death. All I can offer are my tears, and those are too bitter to be nourishing.
Qu'est devenu ce bel oeil?: Claude Le Jeune
Where now are those fair eyes whose looks once lit up my soul, those eyes where love rediscovered his arrows, his flame? Where is that mouth, that wining smile, that speech so enticing? O Fate, who conceals these treasures within a tomb, prevent the world from ever seeing such beauty again.
Un satyre cornu: Gabriel Bataille
A horned satyr, rather maladroit, fell in love with a beautiful girl. He had her there in the woods, and he tought to have laid her down on the grass; but he had so little courage that the girl got away with her virginity intact. True, he did place his hand under her dress: but to what avail, since he failed to pluck the maiden flower?
Par un matin la belle s’est levée: Jehan Planson
One fine morning a maiden did walking go, swinging her wash from side to side; by the river her lover she did meet, who swung her wash until it dried. “My aprons they once did swing low”, cries the maid, “but my aprons they now do swing high. Were it not for the one who got into my wash, I'd be married and safe bye and bye”.
La vertu d'un personnage: Pierre Bonnet
Neither virtue nor beauty nor fine speech will help a man faced with a worldly woman. When Cupid chose pale wealth as his mistress, he swore ever after to remain the same color as she; since greed and love are thus linked, I must seek, with Fortune’s help, the riches which alone can grant me my desire.
Comme nous voyons la rose: Pierre Cerveau
As the rose, fresh in the morning, withers in so little time, so does our life fade in the prime of spring. A lie, a dream, it vanishes faster than the wind, pursued by death.
Que veut chasser une migraine: Gabriel Bataille
He would chase away a headache has only to eat well and drink good wine. Old Lot drinking in a cave made his daughters’ bellies swell, which only shows what a good
tonic his wine must have been. After all, what can water do but rot the lungs?
Beautés qui résidés: Gabriel Bataille
Fair women, dwelling in this solitary place, permit me to pass the rest of my days in this monastery, dwelling among you and your chaste devotions.
Amants qui vous plaignez: Charles Tessier (A dialogue)
-Lovers, who complain that love has enslaved you,
-Well may love take away your freedom.
-Now kiss me, fair Phyllis. - No, I shan’t - Yes you shall.
-Yet nothing should by force be conquered.
-I'd rather die than dishonoured be.
-Now kiss me, etc.
Un jour Amarille et Tirsis: Antoine Boesset
One day, Amaryllis and Thyrsis, seated by the Loire, sang while guarding their flock: “Ah Lord, how beautiful is my shepherd swain”. Regarding their faces reflected in the water, they swore each other eternal love and fidelity.
Amour est un plaisir si doux: Pierre Guédron
Love’s pleasure is so sweet, that to be even without its blows and torment is sheer misery. Let they who will do without, I needs must live as a lover, and if die I must, I fain would die of love.
C’est une demoiselle: Pierre Guédron
A lady (who shall remain nameless) was standing at her door one day when a passing gentleman made an amorous greeting. She led him to her room, he threw her on the
bed and lifted her skirt. But when it came time to deliver her left her there, which shows that in these matters you must either do better or do without.
English translations by JOEL ISRAEL COHEN
musica maravillosa
Beautiful!
❤
Most beautiful
❤