• Aboriginals in North America
  • Beast Literature
  • Canadiana.1
  • Dances & Music
  • Europe
  • Fables and Fairy Tales
  • Fables by Jean de La Fontaine
  • Feasts & Liturgy
  • Great Books Online
  • La Princesse de Clèves
  • Middle East
  • Molière
  • Nominations
  • Posts on Love Celebrated
  • Posts on the United States
  • The Art and Music of Russia
  • The French Revolution & Napoleon Bonaparte
  • Voyageurs Posts
  • Canadiana.2

Micheline's Blog

~ Art, music, books, history & current events

Micheline's Blog

Tag Archives: Charles IX.

Jean-Antoine du Baïf & l’Académie de poésie et de musique

04 Wednesday Jan 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Music

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Académie de Poésie et de Musique, Antoine de Baïf, Charles IX., Claude Le Jeune, Huguenot, Renaissance, St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, vers mesurés à l'antique

Huguenot Crest

This is probably my last post on the subject of the Pléiade, but there is one story I would like to share with you, that of the Académie de poésie et de musique founded, in 1570, by Jean-Antoine de Baïf and Joachim Thibault de Courville, under the auspices of Charles IX.  Royal patronage could explain why the Académie de poésie et de musique is considered the first Académie to be founded in France.

In theory, members of the Académie attempted to write verses measured in the same manner as Greek verses, vers mezurés à l’antique.* The Académie‘s endeavour was perfectly legitimate and encouraged by Ronsard himself.  However, members met in such secrecy that it would not be unreasonable to suspect a Huguenot connection.

*There was and may still be a Baïf font for Mac computers.

Jean-Antoine de Baïf

Jean-Antoine de Baïf (Venice, February 1532; Paris, 19 September 1589), the co-founded of the Académie, was the natural son of diplomat and Hellenist Lazare de Baïf.  We have no information on Jean-Antoine’s mother.  Jean-Antoine was raised by his father.

The Collège de Coqueret

Lazare was a good father.  He provided his son, at a very early age, with the best teachers he could hire.  In fact, in 1544, after Lazare had returned to Paris, he had his son and his secretary, Pierre de Ronsard, now nearly deaf, educated by Dorat or Doraut, who would become principal at the Collège de Coqueret and was later appointed as professor at the Collège de France, established in 1530.

Pierre de Ronsard was Jean-Antoine’s senior by eight years and at the Collège de Coqueret they met Joachim du Bellay and Pontus du Tyard, Dorat’s pupils and both future members of the Pléiade.  Ronsard, the “prince of poets,” and Du Bellay are the co-founders of the Pléiade.  Jean Dorat, one of Europe’s most prominent Hellenists, also became a member of the Pléiade and was, in fact, the group’s mentor.  The Pléiade consisted of seven members.

L’Académie de Musique et de Poésie

Among members of the Pléiade, Baïf was probably the only poet who was also a musician.  His goal in founding the short-lived Académie de poésie et de musique was, as mentioned above, the creation of poetry and music that would be measured in a manner resembling Greek versification.

Charles IX, by François Clouet*

The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre 

Catherine de Médicis’s incited her son, King Charles IX, to order the Massacre of the St. Bartholomew’s Day (August 24th [early morning], 1572).  In fact, she plotted the entire event.  The massacre lasted several days and spread to the provinces.  Thousands of Huguenots were slaughtered. Young Charles IX, then 22 years old, barely survived the atrocities.  He was emotionally devastated and physically weakened.  He died in 1774, probably of tuberculosis.

* * *

When Charles IX died, Ronsard, who was supportive of ‘vers mezurés,’ left his rooms at Court.  As for the Académie de Poésie et de Musique, members continued to meet and they received encouragement on the part of famed poet Agrippa d’Aubigné, a Protestant who had left France several years before the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, but the Académie had nevertheless entered a period of decline.  It was revived briefly as l’Académie du Palais, under Henri III, Charles IX’s brother.

Claude Le Jeune, Jacques Mauduit and, perhaps, Eustache Du Caurroy

Very little is known about Baïf’s Académie de poésie et de musique, except that its membership included prominent composers Claude Le Jeune, Jacques Mauduit and, probably, Eustache Du Caurroy.

All three composed musique mezurée à l’antique, but the better-known of the group is Claude Le Jeune (born c. 1527, Valenciennes, Burgundian Hainaut [now in France]—died c. 1600, Paris).  Claude Le Jeune, a Franco-Flemish composer who died a Huguenot, was choirmaster to Henri III, Charles IX’s brother and successor, and music teacher to Henri de Navarre, a Huguenot and the future King of France, Henri IV.

Le Jeune wrote ‘Parisian’ songs, using metrical verses, but also composed madrigals and motets.  Moreover, as a Huguenot, he contributed metrical psalms to the Genevan Psalter, published after his death in 1600.

As for Jacques Mauduit, he is the composer of the masterful Requiem (please click to hear) played at Pierre de Ronsard’s state funeral in 1585.  Mauduit and Du Caurroy were composers of polyphonic music, or music using many voices.

Massacre of the St. Bartholemew’s Day

Vers mezurés and Music

It remains nevertheless that the premature death of Charles IX, dealt a nearly-fatal blow to the Académie.  Moreover, members were not particularly successful at producing vers mesurés in poetry.  Set to music, however, vers mesurés or metrical psalms were quite pleasant.  So, there is a sense in which Antoine de Baïf experiment was successful, but not for long.  The air de cour became fashionable.

As for Antoine de Baïf, in 1574, he published his Etrénes de poezie fransoèze en vers mezurés (“Gifts of French Poetry in Quantitative Verse”).  As well, in 1586, he composed the lyrics of songs in Greek metrics: Chansonnettes mesurées. The music was written by the above-mentioned Jacques Mauduit, a member of Baïf’s Académie de Poésie et de Musique, the Académie’s foremost musician, and, as I mentioned above, the composer of the Requiem played at Ronsard’s state funeral.

Given its secrecy, the Académie may have been a refuge for Huguenots, but we may never know for certain.  We know, however, that Baïf wrote a long poem commemorating the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and that, although he had taken minor orders, Ronsard saved Claude Le Jeune’s life, as did Antoine de Baïf.  But most eloquent of all, is Ronsard’s Discours des misères de ce temps (1562), Discourse on the Miseries of These Times.

In poetry the “vers mezurés” were not very successful.  French is a “flat” language. Stressing syllables other than the last sounded syllable of a word made poems sound unnatural.  But vers mezurés à l’antique had their moment of grace in the history of music.

Henri IV, by François Clouet

Henri IV, by François Clouet (spenceralley.blogspot.com)

*François Clouet

* * *

  • Le Jeune, Claude: Revecy venir du printemps
  • Le Jeune, Claude: Psaumes pour le culte protestant

_________________________

[i] “Jean-Antoine de Baïf.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 04 Jan. 2012.             <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/49170/Jean-Antoine-de-Baif>.            

0.000000 0.000000

Micheline's Blog

  • Print
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

Like this:

Like Loading...

Catherine de Médicis & the Huguenots

20 Thursday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in History

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Catherine de Médicis, Charles IX., Henri IV of France, Huguenot, John Everett Millais, Paris, St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, WordPress

Huguenot Lovers on St. Bartholomew’s Day

In my last blog, I wrote that a daughter, Caterina (13 April 1519 – 5 January 1589), was born to Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici (September 12, 1492 – May 4, 1519) and Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne (c. 1501 – 28 April 1519).  Both died in 1519, shortly after the birth of Caterina who married Henri II of France and became Catherine de Médicis, Queen consort of France.

As Queen consort of France, Catherine incited her son, Charles IX (27 June 1550 – 30 May 1574), to massacre Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants). This massacre called the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre (Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy in French) took place during the night of the 23-24 August 1572.

In my blog on Machiavelli and Reynard the Fox, I pointed to the ruthlessness of the Medici family, but left aside Caterina deʼ Mediciʼs hatred of French Protestants and her Machiavellian behaviour.  The St. Bartholomewʼs Day massacre was Catherineʼs idea, but only her son, King Charles IX, could and did order it.  When he witnessed the bloodshed, his already fragile mental health suffered such a blow that he did not recover and died two years later, in 1574.  The St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre claimed at least 5,000 lives in Paris.  But it also claimed lives outside Paris.

This is the kind of actions, though on a smaller scale, that Machiavelli was aware of, and saw, hence his praise of the zoomorphic, half human, half beast, Centaur.  The Centaurʼs beastial half could be useful to his prince as could the crafty Fox, born as Reinardus in Nivard de Gandʼs Ysengrimus a lenghty Latin beast epic (1149).

However, we will concentrate on Reynard in a future blog.  At the moment, it would suffice to focus on the Huguenots, or French Calvinist Protestants.  The French were beginning to consolidate their monarchy to make it an absolute monarchy.  Richelieu would be its main architect, but absolutism meant one king, one language, one religion, a concept embraced by Catherine de Médicis.

Henri IV, who sympathised with the Huguenots, had to convert to Catholicism to become the King of France.  He is remembered for saying that Paris (kingship) was well worth a mass:  “Paris vaut bien une messe.” Henri was an excellent king, but he was murdered in 1610, when his son, the future Louis XIII was still a child.

A few years earlier, in 1598, Henri IV had signed the Edict of Nantes, which gave the Huguenots a respite, but one that did not truly survive the assassination of Henri IV.  In theory, the Huguenots were safe and inhabited safe places, such as La Rochelle.  But we know about the Siege of La Rochelle.  It reaped the lives of approximately 24,000 Huguenots who were simply starved to death by Richelieu, a regent during the Louis XIII’s childhood but who remained a ruler during part of the reign of Louis XIII.

Mazarin, who was a ruler, also a regent, during the reign of Louis XIII, and Louis XIV were tolerant of Huguenots, but ended up revoking the Edict of Nantes, in 1685

The Révocation de l’Édit de Nantes led to an exodus.  Huguenots fled to the Low Countries, England, the future Germany and elsewhere.  However, as they fled, those who were caught were tortured in the cruellest of manners.

The Huguenots had constituted the cream of France’s middle-class, including Nouvelle-France’s middle-class.  Where Nouvelle-France is concerned, it was so weakened by the departure of the Huguenots that the Révocation may help explain the future vulnerability of the colony.

* * *

It was an important chapter in the history of my family.  However, my sister Diane, an excellent genealogist, tells me that three Bourbeaus left France, which means that Suzor-Côté’s* Bourbeau paintings depict the home and surroundings of a third Bourbeau, my maternal grandfather’s father whose ancestry Diane has sent me, but it remains unexplored, but who was a Huguenot who converted to Roman Catholicism in order to remain in Canada.

* This is a French-language Wikipedia site, surrounded by English-language sites.

* * *

Among Huguenots slaughtered on St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre was composer Claude Goudimel, an innocent man.  All were innocent persons.  Many Huguenots settled along the St. John’s River, in the United States.  I must find out a little more.

I have never understood cruelty, especially cruelty perpetrated in the name of a religion.

P.S.  Millais (Sir John Everett Millais)

0.000000 0.000000

Micheline's Blog

  • Print
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

Like this:

Like Loading...

Europa

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 2,477 other followers

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Categories

Recent Posts

  • Language Laws in Quebec: Bill 96
  • From the Rurik Dynasty to the first Romanov
  • Uvalde: Analysis Paralysis
  • The Second Amendment to the American Constitution: a Misunderstanding
  • The Rurikid Princes & the Tsardom of Russia
  • The Decline of Kievan Rus’
  • Ilya Repin, Ivan IV and his son Ivan on 16 November 1581, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
  • Ukraine’s Varangian Princes, its Primary Chronicle, the Russkaya Pravda …
  • Bohdan Khmelnytsky, a Cossack Hetman
  • Ruthenia vs Ukraine

Archives

Calendar

June 2022
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930  
« May    

Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • WordPress.org

micheline.walker@videotron.ca

Micheline Walker

Micheline Walker

Social

Social

  • View belaud44’s profile on Facebook
  • View Follow @mouchette_02’s profile on Twitter
  • View Micheline Walker’s profile on LinkedIn
  • View belaud44’s profile on YouTube
  • View Miicheline Walker’s profile on Google+
  • View michelinewalker’s profile on WordPress.org

Micheline Walker

Micheline Walker
Follow Micheline's Blog on WordPress.com

A WordPress.com Website.

  • Follow Following
    • Micheline's Blog
    • Join 2,477 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Micheline's Blog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: