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Tag Archives: La Pléiade

Clément Janequin’s “Le Chant des oyseaulx”

06 Saturday Oct 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Music, polyphony

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Canon, chanson, Clément Janequin, La Pléiade, Le Chant des oyseaulx, onomatopoia, Pierre de Ronsard, polyphony

Students of musicology smile or laugh when they hear the onomatopoeic effects of Clément Janequin‘s Le Chant des oyseaulx.

composer: Clément Janequin (c. 1485  – 1558)
work: Le Chant des oyseaulx
performers: Ensemble Clément Janequin
director: Dominique Visse
Dominique Visse (countertenor), Michel Laplénie (tenor), Philippe Cantor (baritone), Antoine Sicot (bass), Claude Debôves (lute)
 
 
1)
Reveillez vous, cueurs endormis/ Le dieu d’amour vous sonne.
À ce premier jour de may/ Oyseaulx feront merveilles/ Pour vous mettre hors d’esmay. / Destoupez vos oreilles./ Et farirariron, Et farirariron, Et farirarison,/
ferely, ioly, ioly, ioly, ioly, ioly,/ Et farirariron, farirariron, ferely, ioly/ Vous serez tous en joye mis,/ Car la saison est bonne. 

Awake, sleepy hearts,/ The god of love calls you./ On this first day of May,/ The birds will make you marvel./ To lift yourself from dismay,/ Unclog your ears./ And fa la la la la (etc…)/ You will be moved to joy,/ For the season is good.

2)
Vous orrez, à mon advis,/ Une doulce musique,/ Que fera le roy mauvis,/ D’une voix authentique :/Ti, ti, pi-ti (etc…)/ Rire et gaudir c’est mon devis,/ Chacun s’i habandonne.

You will hear, I advise you,/ A sweet music/ That the royal blackbird will sing/ In a pure voice./ Ti, ti, pi-ti (etc…)/ To laugh and rejoice is my device,/ Each with abandon.

3)
Rossignol du boys joly,/ À qui la voix resonne,/ Pour vous mettre hors d’ennuy
Votre gorge iargonne:/ Fuyez, regretz, pleurs et soucy,/ Car la saison l’ordonne.

Nightingale of the pretty woods,/ Whose voice resounds,/ So you don’t become bored,/ Your throat jabbers away:/ Frian, frian (etc…)/ Flee, regrets, tears and worries,/ For the season commands it.

4)
Arrière; maistre coucou,/ Sortez de no chapitre,/ Chacun vous donne au hibou /
Car vous n’estes qu’un traistre,/ Car vous n’estes qu’un traistre,
Coucou, coucou, coucou, coucou,/ Par tra-i-son,/ en chacun nid,/ Pondez sans qu’on vous sonne,/ Reveillez vous, cueurs endormiz, reveillez vous, / Le dieu d’amours vous sonne.

Turn around, master cuckoo/  Get out of our company./  Each of us gives you a ‘bye-bye’/  For you are nothing but a traitor./  Cuckoo, cuckoo (etc…) / Treacherously in others’ nests,/  You lay without being called./  Awake, sleepy hearts,/ The god of love is calling you.

—ooo—

There are several versions of Le Chant des oyseaulx. I used the lyrics provided by l’Ensemble Clément Janequin on YouTube. I believe our version has four stanzas. In order to look at various versions of Le Chant des oyseaulx, and translations into English, simply click on lyrics.*

* Retrieved from “http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php?title=Le_Chant_des_Oiseaux_(Cl%C3%A9ment_Janequin)&oldid=378489“

Clément Janequin

Clément Janequin (c. 1485  – 1558) was born in Châtellerault, near Poitiers, and was a French composer of the Renaissance. Clément Janequin’s music is programmatic[i] in that it has an extra-musical narrative, the singing of birds. Janequin’s main musical challenge was polyphony, mixing voices, an art that was developing in his era and was a challenge to all composers. At times, Le Chant des oyseaulx sounds like a canon and is just that, a canon.

By and large, Janequin held positions that earned him a meagre income, a matter he mentions in his will. He was a clerk to Lancelot du Fau the future Bishop of Luçon until the bishop’s death in 1523. He then held a similar position with the Bishop of Bordeaux. During that period of his life, he also became a priest and held appointments in Anjou.

His lifestyle improved after he met Jean de Guise and Charles de Ronsard, Pierre de Ronsard‘s brother. Pierre de Ronsard (11 September 1542 – 28 December 1585), the “Prince of Poets,” was the leader of an informal académie known as La Pléiade, named after the Alexandrian Pleiad, 3rd century BCE.

Clément Janequin was a very prolific songwriter. Guise and Ronsard helped him secure a position as curate at Unverre, near Chartres. At that point, he started to live in Paris and his chansons were extremely popular. In fact, Pierre Attaingnant[ii] (c. 1494 – late 1551 or 1552) printed five volumes of Janequin’s chansons. In Paris, Janequin also became “singer ordinary” of the King’s Chapel and later “composer ordinary.” Janequin composed very few sacred works.

Clément Janequin is best-known for Le Chant des oyseaulx and La Bataille, but also composed love songs, some of which are quite explicit. In fact, Le Chant des oyseaulx is a love song.

RELATED ARTICLES

  • Pierre de Ronsard and the Carpe diem (Gather ye roses…)
  • La Pléiade: Du Bellay

Sources and Resources

As noted above, other versions of Le Chant des oyseaulx, and translations into English, can be found at http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php?title=Le_Chant_des_Oiseaux_(Cl%C3%A9ment_Janequin)&oldid=378489

_______________
 

[i] As opposed to “absolute” music, which is self-referential.
[ii]
 Significant figures in music printing are Ottaviano Petrucci, Pierre Attaingnant and, it would appear, John Rastell. In 1591, Petrucci  (18 June 1466 – 7 May 1539) published a book of chansons entitled Harmonice Musices Odhecaton.
Grigory Sokolov – Jean-Philippe Rameau ‘Le Rappel des oiseaux’ – YouTube

 
John James Audubon 1785 – 1851
Passenger Pidgeon
Musée de la Civilisation 2003 (QC) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
© Micheline Walker
6 October 2012
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Pierre de Ronsard & the Carpe diem

02 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Literature

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

carpe diem, La Pléiade, Pierre de Ronsard, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Sonnets pour Hélène, the alexandrine

Pierre-Joseph_Redouté_-_Rosa_Bifera_Macrocarpa_-_WGA19030

Pierre-Joseph Redouté (Photo credit: Envie d’ailleurs)

La Pléiade : an informal académie

Members of the Pléiade, a French informal Renaissance academy, had been thoroughly schooled in the texts and wisdom of Græco-Roman antiquity. Their mentor was Jean Dorat or Daurat, one of Europe’s most prominent Hellenist. So they had gleaned knowledge from the past.

Défense et illustration: The vernacular

Yet, in the Pléiade‘s manifesto, the Défense et illustration de la langue française, written by Joachim du Bellay, members of the Pléiade advocated the use of the French language, or the vernacular. Pléiade poets worked at making French richer and more colourful.

Pierre de Ronsard: l’alexandrin

Pierre de Ronsard, the Pléiade’s chief poet, was not a theorist, but he nevertheless contributed to a literary rebirth by perfecting the twelve-syllable French alexandrine, a verse borrowed from the Roman d’Alexandre, a French medieval romance written in the vernacular, of which there had been several versions beginning in the 3rd century: Middle Greek, Latin, Armenian, Syriac, Hebrew, and various European languages.

As used by Ronsard, the alexandrine is the twelve-syllable vers noble, broken in two ‘hémistiches’ (six syllables), used by French dramatist Jean Racine (22 December 1639 – 21 April 1699). Here is an example of an alexandrine verse. It is Ronsard’s very own Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May, which I have divided into its twelve components called pieds or feet: « Cueil-lez -dès -au-jour-d’hui, / les -ro-ses -de -la -vie. »  (Sonnets pour Hélène [1578]).

Sonnets pour Hélène

In the Sonnets pour Hélène, Ronsard was emulating his sources, the writings of Horace (8 December 65 BCE – 27 November 8 CE), Decimius Magnus Ausonius (c. 310–395), born in Bordeaux, and Publius Vergilius Maro Virgil or Vergil (15 October  70 BCE – 21 September 19 BCE), the celebrated Roman poet and Italian-language poets. However, there is timelessness to “lieux communs,”  such as the Gather Ye Roses While Ye May. 

The Carpe diem: “Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May”

The Carpe diem, Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May is indeed a common-place theme, un lieu commun, but although the creative mind seeks newness and originality, the Carpe diem is about evanescence, and evanescence is the human condition. In a darker light, the Carpe diem constitutes an Ecce Homo, a poem about death, the great equalizer. Both Carpe diem and Ecce homo poems are forever timely.

Carpe diem sundial

Ronsard wrote several poems on the theme of the Carpe diem, but we cannot treat more than two to respect the limits of a blog:

  • an Ode entitled Mignonne, allons voir si la rose, published in 1552, and
  • a sonnet contained in the Sonnets pour Hélène, published in 1578.

Odes

In 1550, Ronsard published a four-book set of odes and, two years later, in 1552, a fifth book of odes as well as a collection, odes again, entitled Les Amours de Cassandre. The eventually folkloric « Mignonne, allons voir si la rose …, » a poem dedicated to 15-year-old Cassandre Salviati, dates back to that period and is not an anonymous work. However, although Pierre was not an ordained priest, he had taken minor orders, which precluded marriage. He was a “prieur tonsuré.”

After Cassandre, there was a Marie, Les Amours de Marie (1578), as well as an Hélène, Hélène de Surgères (1546-1618) who inspired the aging author to write « Quand vous serez bien vieille, » one of the Sonnets pour Hélène (1578).

Ronsard’s « Mignonne, allons voir… »  is modelled on the Pindaric ode that uses three stanzas (strope, antistrophe and epode). Ronsard’s poem is a three-stanza ode, each stanza containing six octosyllablic (8 syllables) lines divided as follows: « Mi-gnonne, -al-lons -voir -si -la -rose… »  As in all Carpe diem texts, the poet invites his lady-love to consider that the rose, newly-born on that very day, has wilted by night. The poem can be read in both French and English if you click on Mignonne.

Sonnets

As for the Sonnets pour Hélène, they are modelled mostly on the Petrarchan sonnet.  Ronsard’s sonnet consists of two four-line stanzas followed by two three-line stanzas.  This is the form French poets would adopt. But Ronsard’s « Quand vous serez bien vieille » is so melodious that it transcends both the alexandrine verse and the sonnet. It can be read in both French and English if you click on Hélène.

But I am including the French text, old French (II, 24 [1578]):

« Quand vous serez bien vieille »

Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,
Assise aupres du feu, devidant et filant,
Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous esmerveillant :
« Ronsard me celebroit du temps que j’estois belle. »

Lors, vous n’aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,
Desja sous le labeur à demy sommeillant,
Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s’aille resveillant,
Benissant vostre nom de louange immortelle.

Je seray sous la terre et fantaume sans os :
Par les ombres myrteux je prendray mon repos :
Vous serez au fouyer une vieille accroupie,

Regrettant mon amour et vostre fier desdain.
Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain :
Cueillez dés aujourd’huy les roses de la vie.

—ooo—

Biographical notes

Pierre de Ronsard [i] (11 September 1524 – 27 December 1585), the “prince of poets,” was born to a noble family and would probably have become a diplomat had he not fallen ill travelling with Lazare de Baïf (Antoine’s father) on a mission. His hearing was impaired and, as did Joachim du Bellay, who heard only intermittently, Ronsard chose to live a more private life, dedicated entirely to writing poetry, and, to this end, he became a pupil of Jean Dorat at the Collège de Coqueret

Ronsard was venerated in his own lifetime. He was, although unofficially, the Poet Laureate of France and, during Charles IX’s brief reign, he had his rooms at court.  Ronsard wrote abundantly:  Continuation des amours, Meslanges (1554), Nouvelles Continuations (1555), occasional verses (vers de circonstances), Hymnes, modelled on 3rd century-bce Greek poet Callimachus [ii], a second book of Meslanges (1559) etc.

However, within the scope of a blog, other than an ode and a sonnet, I will only mention briefly Ronsard’s Discours des misères de ce temps (1562; “Discourse on the Miseries of These Times.” As a Catholic, Ronsard had opponents, yet he helped Huguenot composer Claude Le Jeune escape probable torture and death. The religious wars truly saddened Ronsard.

When he died, Ronsard’s fame had earned him a state funeral during which Jacques Mauduit’s Requiem was played. The composer, Jacques Mauduit (16 September 1577 – 21 August 1627) had been a friend of Ronsard and an advocate of polyphony: the intertwining of voices.

—ooo—

In short, the poets of La Pléiade, Ronsard in particular, looked backwards but demonstrated that there is timelessness to most things human. Pierre de Ronsard went out of fashion in the 17th century, but he was rediscovered two centuries later and his Carpe diem poems retain the newness they possessed when they were first written.

A poem is not so much what is said as the manner in which it is said. So enjoy the day and look forward to even better days. “Le style, c’est l’homme même.” (Buffon)

_________________________

« Mignonne, allons voir si la rose », music by Guillaume Costeley                       Anonymous, The King’s Singers’, Madrigal History Tour, Anthony Rooley, Director

200px-rosa_eden_rose_j11© Micheline Walker
2 January 2012
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La Pléiade: Du Bellay

30 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Du Bellay, France, Literature, Vernacular

≈ 58 Comments

Tags

Défense et illustration..., Joachim du Bellay, La Pléiade, Les Regrets, Renaissance

 
Joachim du Bellay

Joachim du Bellay

In a post entitled The Renaissance: Galileo & Galilei, I spoke about Count Bardi’s Florentine Camerata, an informal academy, and focussed on Vincenzo Galilei, a scholar, an advocate of the use of equal temperament in music, and Galileo’s father.  I also wrote about Giulio Caccini, a composer who favoured monody, or one voice.

* * *

France: La Pléiade

However, we are now moving to Renaissance France where both formal and informal academies were also founded. The foremost of these academies was the Pléiade[i], an informal 16th-century (the French Renaissance) académie.  It was comprised of seven members: Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay, Jean-Antoine de Baïf, Rémy Belleau, Pontus de Tyard, Étienne Jodelle and Jean Dorat, their mentor.  But, with the exception of Antoine de Baïf, members of la Pléiade’s main interest was poetry, which is literature bordering on music.

A Word About Jean Dorat

As I wrote above, Jean Dorat (3 April 1508, in Limoges – 1st November 1588), a brilliant Hellenist, was the mentor among the seven members of the Pléiade.  He had in fact taught at the Collège de Coqueret and four of his pupils had been Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay, Pontus de Tyard and Antoine de Baïf, all members of the Pléiade.

Compared to Pierre de Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay, Dorat was the lesser poet.  But his fame as a scholar and Hellenist spread beyond France and, in 1556, he was appointed to the Collège Royal [ii] (French link), founded by Francis I, king of France, in 1530.  An appointment to the Collège Royal remains a French scholar’s highest recognition.

—ooo—

Défense et illustration de la langue française

Défense et illustration de la langue française 

Joachim Du Bellay is the eloquent author of a manifesto in which he advocated the use of French instead of Latin, his Défense & Illustration de la langue française.  Had the Défense & illustration de la langue française been his only work, Du Bellay would occupy a prominent place in the history of French literature.  His sentiments with respect to the French language echoed those of all seven members of the Pléiade, which makes the Défense & illustration de la langue française the group’s manifesto.

I have mentioned Joachim du Bellay in my blog on the Petrarchan Movement. You may remember that, not unlike Du Bellay, Pietro Bembo had encouraged Italian-language composers to set their music to texts by Petrarch, Torquato Tasso, Dante, etc.  In his eyes, Italian had come of age.  In this respect, Pietro Bembo is a precursor to Joachim du Bellay, except that Du Bellay was and remains one of France’s most celebrated poets.

Poetry

Du Bellay’s poetry was influenced by Italian poetry.  He was especially fond of the Petrarchan sonnet and encouraged members of La Pléiade to model their poetry on the works produced in Italian-language lands: sonnets, odes, etc.  His most famous collection of poems, Les Regrets, was written between 1553 and 1557, during a long and unhappy stay in Rome.  In 1553, Joachim had travelled to Rome with his cousin Jean du Bellay, a cardinal and diplomat who was going on a mission to Rome.  The collection, Les Regrets, was published in 1558.

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, when in Rome, Du Bellay “had started to write on religious themes, but his experience of court life in the Vatican seems to have disillusioned him.”[iii]  He therefore turned to meditative poetry and to the sonnet.  He was home sick.  In fact, Du Bellay so missed his country, “la douceur angevine,” (the softness of Anjou), and his “petit Lyré,” his small castle, that he wrote his celebrated “Heureux qui comme Ulysse a fait un beau voyage,” (click to read poem, in French [Wikipedia]), a sonnet known to every student of French literature.

Earlier, in 1549, Du Bellay had written a collection of 50 sonnets entitled l’Olive.  However, when l’Olive was published by Corrozet et L’Angelier, in 1550, 100 sonnets had been added to the original collection.  During his stay in Rome, he also wrote Les Antiquités de Rome, a collection of 32 sonnets edited in 1558.  And he is  the author of long “consolation” or “déploration” (a eulogy) on the death of his cat Belaud, a chartreux.  “Sur la mort de Belaud” is a beautiful poem in which Du Bellay reveals his exceptional mastery of the French language.

Du Bellay’s health was fragile.  He suffered bouts of deafness and died of apoplexie, a cardio-vascular accident, on 1 January 1660.

So let this blog be a “déploration” or “tombeau” on the premature death, at the age of 37, of Joachim du Bellay.

I wish to thank Wikipedia for including in its entry on Du Bellay, the complete list of his works and the text of Du Bellay’s “Heureux qui comme Ulysse.”  The music (below) is Josquin des Prez‘s Déploration sur la mort d’Ockeghem, a very famous late fifteenth-century piece.

  • Défense et illustration de la langue française (1549)
  • L’Olive (1549)
  • Vers lyriques (1549)
  • Recueil de poesie, presente à tres illustre princesse Madame Marguerite, seur unique du Roy […] (1549)
  • Le Quatriesme livre de l’Eneide, traduict en vers françoys (1552)
  • La Complainte de Didon à Enée, prince d’Ovide (1552)
  • Œuvres de l’invention de l’Auteur (1552)
  • Divers Jeux Rustiques (1558)
  • Les Regrets (1558) dont
  • Les Antiquités de Rome (1558)
  • Poésies latines, (1558)
  • Le Poète courtisan (1559)

Josquin des Prez: Déploration sur la mort de Johannes Ockeghem (just click on title)

 _________________________

[i] “La Pléiade.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2011. Web. 30 Dec. 2011.             <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/464546/La-Pleiade>.

[ii] Wikipedia

[iii] “Joachim du Bellay.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2011. Web. 30 Dec. 2011.             <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/59760/Joachim-du-Bellay>.

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