Micrologus; The Art of Song: France

84-17 THE ART OF SONG: FRANCE

The territory comprising what we know today as France was, of course, the cradle of European song in the vernacular—that is, in a language other than Latin. And although the earliest of these songs were in Old Provençal rather than Old French, there is, in fact, a large repertory of medieval song in the language which eventually developed into French as we know it.

The Old Provençal songs were written mainly in the south of France by the troubadours: those who compose in verse. The people of Northern France who spoke Old French translated troubadour as trouvère, so that is the name by which we know the poet composers of Northern France in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Their activity seems to have begun in the latter part of the 12th century. Then, in the early 13th century, after the Albigensian Crusade had practically eradicated the culture of the troubadours, the trouvères led Europe in the production of secular song. In all, we have preserved 1,700 trouvère melodies, compared with only 250 for the troubadour repertory. And within that large group of pieces there is a remarkable variety of forms and melodic styles.

In general, the trouvères seemed to prefer narrative songs more than the troubadours did. One unique type of narrative song was the chanson de toile (picture song), which began with a description of a woman's situation, then launched into a complaint about her absent lover, jealous husband, or some such predicament. Among the most ornate and at the same time most beautiful songs in the entire trouvère repertory is the chanson de toile "Bele Doette." It describes the plight of "lovely Doette," whose lover would not be returning from the jousts. It is sung here, in part, by Sequentia's Barbara Thornton, assisted in the refrain by Benjamin Bagby.

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The next flowering of French songwriting after the trouvères was in the lyric song of the 14th century, exemplified by the works of the great poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut. Two things had radically shaped the song repertory by Machaut's time: the development of the mensural system and the rise of polyphony. The first allowed the notation of metrical melodies (rather than just rhythmically free ones, such as "Bele Doette”); and the second introduced multi-voiced writing from the sacred repertory into the chanson. And while he is perhaps most admired today for his magnificent polyphonic songs, he was really the last great master of monophonic song, as well. Here's one of his virelais, or chansons balladés, as he preferred to call them: "Comment qu'a moy lonteinne," a song about the pain of being apart. It is sung by Richard Levitt with an improvised accompaniment by the Early Music Quartet, directed by Thomas Binkley.

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For a century after Machaut, composers wrote songs in the same forms as he, virelais, ballades, and rondeaux, building especially on his work in the polyphonic genre. Guillaume Dufay was perhaps the finest chanson composer of the 15th century, even though, like Machaut, he was a priest and universally admired for his sacred works. In fact, much of Dufay's chanson composition seems to have taken place in Italy where the Franco-Flemish culture was particularly influential. Some of the "sweetness" of the current Italian style seems to have rubbed off on Dufay in return, so his works benefit from the sophistication of French counterpoint and the sweetness of Italian melody. The one drawback, if there is a drawback, is that Dufay's texts are not as good poetry as Machaut's. We do not know that Dufay is himself responsible for the texts, but we can be pretty certain that he did contribute a few of them, including this next example, "Craindre vous vueil." In typical medieval fashion, a message is embedded in the poem—an acrostic made from the initial letter of each line: Cateline Dufay. (His mother's name, by the way, was Marie). The text itself begins: "I want to fear you, sweet lady of worth, to love, to dread, to praise you in deeds and words for all my life, wherever I may be."

Here is Dufay's "Craindre vous vueil" sung by Andrea von Ramm with the Early Music Quartet, directed by Thomas Binkley.

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Already by Dufay's time, the trend was away from solo vocal lines with accompaniment towards a texture in which two and sometimes even all three parts in the chanson were similar in melodic character and equal in importance. Over the century following Dufay's death in 1474, this led to the highly imitative chansons for 4 or more voices as composed by Josquin Desprez and his followers, and c. 1520, to the more simply textured Parisian chansons. An offshoot of the latter, known as voix de ville (meaning, perhaps, "city songs," and, I might mention also, the origin of our word "vaudeville") seem to have been the first chansons to be published in arrangements for solo voice with lute accompaniment. But the earliest edition printed by the French Royal printer, Le roy, in 1551 has unfortunately not been preserved. So the earliest surviving collection of Renaissance chansons for solo voice and accompaniment is Le roy's collection of 1571; but by that time, the publisher notes, such pieces were beginning to be known, not as voix de ville or vau de ville, but as airs de cour (court songs), a designation that would survive for over a hundred years.

Some of the early airs de cour are simply arrangements of polyphonic chansons, although increasingly they were composed as idiomatic solos with accompaniment. And one of the earliest composers to have worked in the genre is Joachim Thibault de Courville, incidentally a co-founder with the poet Jean-Antoine de Baïf of the influential Academie de Poésie et Musique. The activities of the academy seem to have contained an element of secrecy, so we actually have very few of Courville's songs, most of those published after his death. If he had any others like this next piece, more's the pity. "Se je languis," a song about the torment of love, sung by Nigel Rogers with Anthony Bailes.

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The typical air de cour as practiced by such masters as Pierre Guédron, Antoine Boësset, and Michel Lambert, had two or three verses, and singers were expected to apply ornamentation to the later ones. In fact, it was not uncommon for composers or publishers to supply elegant diminutions, presumably for those unable to improvise them. Another major change in the 17th century air de cour was the replacement of the solo lute accompaniment with basso continuo in the 1640s.

From a collection published by the Royal printer, Ballard, in 1669, here is "Tristes enfans de mes désirs" by Joseph Chabanceau de la Barre, sung by René Jacobs with Concerto Vocale. ("Sad children of my desires, innocent witnesses of my ardor—unhappy and righteous sighs.")

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Such works towards the end of the 17th century began to be known as airs serieux, to distinguish them from the airs à boire (drinking songs), the other offshoot of the old air de cour.

But around 1700, the attention of French song composers was turned to the writing of cantates, or cantates françaises, as they more properly termed them. The formal scheme of these cantatas consisted usually of Recitative—Air, Recitative—Air, Recitative—Air. The recitatives were often animated and quite dramatic, and the airs tended to be based on dance rhythms, much like the airs in the contemporary French opera. And while the origin of the cantata was Italian, and while certain Italianisms, such as the arioso section towards the end of the recitative, were creeping in, the dance rhythms and the delicate and inimitable agréments (ornamental graces) managed to keep the cantate française "française."

One of the pioneers of the cantata in France was Michel Pignolet de Montéclair. We are going to listen to the last Recitative and Air from his Le Triomphe de la Constance (The Triumph of Constancy), in which Climène has been testing her lover Damon by flirting with other men. The performance is by Julianne Baird with Badinage.

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You’ve been listening to a program exploring the art of song in France from the 12th to the 18th century.