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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2008
The legacy of Pierre Attaingnant, Royal Printer of Music, has done much to clarify our knowledge of the French polyphonic chanson during the first half of the sixteenth century. The great Parisian printer's invention and introduction of music printing with movable type in 1528 contributed to an increasing coalescence in the style of the chansons composed in France between 1530 and 1550. By midcentury, composers at the French royal court and throughout the provinces, too, routinely composed what came to be known as Parisian chansons, the genre most clearly exemplified in the works of Claudin de Sermisy.
1 On Attaingnant's impact both as inventor and as ‘arbiter of taste’, see Heartz, D., Pierre Attaingnant, Royal Printer of Music: A Historical Study and Bibliographical Catalogue (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969), chap. 3Google Scholar. For a study of the stylistic diversity of the French chanson before Attaingnant's influence was fully felt, see Bernstein, L. F., ‘The “Parisian Chanson”: Problems of Style and Terminology’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 31 (1978), pp. 193–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 An important methodological approach to this question is set forth in Boorman, S., ‘Petrucci's Type-Setters and the Process of Stemmatics’, Quellenstudien zur Musik der Renaissance, i, ed. Finscher, L., Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 6 (Munich, 1981), pp. 245–80.Google Scholar
3 For a survey of different views of the nascency of the Parisian chanson and a new interpretation, see Bernstein, L. F., ‘Notes on the Origin of the Parisian Chanson’, The Journal of Musicology, 1 (1982), pp. 275–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 On the chansonniers of the French royal court, see Litterick, L., ‘The Manuscript Roval 20.a.xvi of the British Library’ (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1976). pp. 39–82Google Scholar; Rifkin, J., ‘Scribal Concordances for Some Renaissance Manuscripts in Florentine Libraries’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 26 (1973), pp. 318–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Pietrequin Bonnel and Ms. 2794 of the Biblioteca Riccardiana’, ibid., 29 (1976), pp. 284–96; and Fenlon, I., ‘La diffusion de la chanson continentale dans les manuscrits anglais entre 1509–1570’, La chanson à; la renaissance, ed. Vaccaro, J.-M., Actes du xxe Colloque d'Études Humanistes du Centre d'Études Supérieures de la Renaissance de l'Université de Tours, juillet 1977 (Tours, 1981), pp. 172–81.Google Scholar
Two chansonniers prepared at the court of Marguerite of Austria are provided with scholarly editions and ample commentary in Picker, M., ed., The Chanson Albums of Marguerite of Austria (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1965)Google Scholar. And the chansons written down in Paris by a Swiss humanist in 1510 are discussed and edited in Das Liederbuch des Johannes Heer von Glarus, ed. Geering, A. and Trümpy, H., Schweizerische Musikdenkmäler 5 (Basel, 1967).Google Scholar
An extremely important chansonnier from provincial France in the collection of the University Library at Uppsala was recently introduced by H. M. Brown in his paper, ‘A New French Chansonnier of the Early Sixteenth Century’, read at the forty-sixth annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, held at Denver in 1980, and to be published in Musica Disciplina. I am grateful to Prof. Brown for sending me the typescript of this article prior to its publication.
5 For a brief description of the manuscript and a somewhat faulty list of its contents, see Becherini, B., Catalogo dei manoscritti musicali della Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze (Kassel, 1959), pp. 51–2.Google Scholar
6 See, for example, the reproductions of Italian Renaissance bindings from Naples, Urbino and Venice in De Marinis, T., La legatura artistica in Italia net secoli XVe XVI (Florence, 1960)Google Scholar, i, pls. xi and C5; ii, pl. C15, respectively.
7 Not every one of these attributions is absolutely secure, however; see below p. 76 and esp. n. 91.
8 See Becherini, Catalogo, p. 51; and Heartz, D., ‘Les goûts réunis: Or the Worlds of the Madrigal and the Chanson Confronted’, Chanson & Madrigal, 1480–1530: Studies in Comparison and Contrast, ed. Haar, J. (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), p. 113.Google Scholar
9 D'Accone, F., ‘Alessandro Coppini and Bartolomeo degli Organi: Two Florentine Composers of the Renaissance’, Analecta Musicologica, 4 (1967), pp. 55–6.Google Scholar
10 The excerpts from the madrigal texts appear on fols. (22r), (33r), (46v) and (62v); the names on fol. (32v) and on the end paper. (Here and throughout this study parentheses are used to designate folio numbers not present in the manuscript; square brackets denote missing folios.)
11 Atlas, A., The Cappella Giulia Chansonnier (Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, C.G. XIII.27), Musicological Studies 27 (Brooklyn, 1975–1976), i, p. 244.Google Scholar More detailed information on the fascicle structure of the manuscript is given below (pp. 32–5).
12 Atlas, The Cappella Giulia Chansonnier, I, p. 244.
13 Hamm, C. and Kellman, H., eds., Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music, 1400–1550, Renaissance Manuscript Studies 1 (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1979–), i, p. 226.Google Scholar
14 The fascicle structure of the manuscript serves as the basis for this reconstruction. See below, pp. 32–5 and Figure 10.
15 On the provenance and chronology of Florence 178, see Atlas, , The Cappella Giulia Chansonnier, i, p. 247.Google Scholar
16 Compare, for example, the capital Js of the tabula with the initial of Josquin's name (fol. 39v), or the G of ‘Gentilgalans’ in the tabula with the initial ofGaspart (fol. 72v). Similarly, note in the incipit ‘Sempre giro piangendo per aspre selve forte’ (fol. 21v) the juncture of the letters asp in the fifth word, and compare it to their appearance in ‘Maspenses’ in the tabula. Numerous additional examples could be cited.
17 The eight ‘openings’ are fols. (22v–23r), (26v–27r), (27v–32r), (32v–33r), 42v/(45r), (45v– 46r), (46v/62r) and (62v–63r).
18 A folio number does appear over the work of one of the scribblers in the one instance in which the scribbling shares an opening with a ‘formal’ copy of a piece of music (fols. 66v–67r). It is clear, however, that the main scribe added the number here because of the presence of the formal copying (fol. 66v). Prioris's brief Consumo la mia vita appears in its entirety on this verso. It is the only place in the manuscript where a full composition occupies only one side of an opening. Although the music appears on the verso, and the scribbling on the facing recto, the appropriate place for the folio number is. of course, the recto, which probably was blank when the folio number was written.
19 Rifkin, , ‘Scribal Concordances’, pp. 309–12Google Scholar. For the four Spanish pieces, see Haberkamp, G., Die weltliche Vokalmusik in Spanien um 1500, Münchner Veröffentlichungen zur Musikgeschichte 12 (Tutzing, 1968), pp. 335–9.Google Scholar The anonymous Italian composition seems to be unique in Florence 107bis.
20 For evidence in support of the Florentine provenance of Florence 107bis, see Atlas, The Cappella Giulia Chansonnier, i, p. 243. His convincing proof rests upon filiation of the musical readings, watermarks and repertorial considerations.
21 For the identification of the incipit and attribution, see Rifkin, , ‘Scribal Concordances’, pp. 309–12 and n. 24.Google Scholar The music to which the incipit and attribution were added was copied by the scribe designated the ‘Layolle’ scribe below.
22 It will be demonstrated presently that several of the other scribes made their contributions to our manuscript in Florence.
23 The identification of Josquin's Plus nulz regretz appears in Rifkin, , ‘Scribal Concordances’, pp. 309–12, n. 24.Google Scholar
24 Fols. 17 and 85 are among those bearing works executed by the Layolle scribe, and neither appears to carry a folio number. Inspection of the manuscript under ultraviolet light, however, shows that the first of these once did clearly show the number ‘17’ in the same hand as the rest of the folio numbers. Either the number was erased, or it wore out. Fol. 85 is damaged, and the corner where the folio number would appear is torn off. All surrounding folios are numbered, however, and we can presume that this one was, too.
25 Fol. 18, which contains the piece in the hand of the Baccio scribe, also seems at first to lack a folio number, but the foliation can be seen under ultraviolet light.
26 The first three pieces executed by this scribe are for three voices; the fourth, on fols. 24v– (26r), is a 4. A first attempt at copying the latter piece on fols. 21v–(22r) was abandoned by the scribe before it was completed. For the reasons why this first attempt was aborted, see below, pp. 25–6.
27 Johannes Wolf included Amy, soufré in the supplement to his edition of the secular works of Isaac. See Nachtrag zu den weltlichen Werken von Heinrich Isaac, Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich 32, Jg. xvi, 1 (Vienna, 1909; repr. Graz, 1959), pp. 204–5.Google Scholar Cf. Bernstein, , ‘Notes on the Origin of the Parisian Chanson’, pp. 318–22.Google Scholar Most often in Florentine music manuscripts Isaac's name is spelled Yzac (as it appears later in Florence 117) or Yçac (the form used in Florence 229, among other sources).
28 I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to identify Madame Lanydin.
29 Of the many settings of J'ay mis mon cueur, most of which descend from the monophonic tune preserved in the Bayeux chansonnier, the one closest to the unique version in Florence 117 is the three-voice chanson in Attaingnant's Quarante et deux chansons of 1529. A modern edition of the latter piece appears in Thirty Chansons (1529) for Three Instruments or Voices, ed. Thomas, B., The Parisian Chanson 10 (London, 1977), p. 21.Google Scholar For the monophonic tune, see Géroid, T., ed., Le manuscrit de Bayeux: texte et musique d'un recueil de chansons du XVe siècle (Strasbourg, 1921), p. 24.Google Scholar
The identification of Ces facheux sotz appears in Adams, C., ‘The Three-part Chanson during the Sixteenth Century: Changes in its Style and Importance’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1974), p. 367.Google Scholar For a modern edition of this work, see Thirty Chansons (1529), p. 18.
30 D'Accone, F., ‘Francesco de Layolle’. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Sadie, S., 20 vols. (London, 1980), x, p. 568.Google Scholar
31 Francesco de Layolle: Collected Secular Works for 2, 3, 4. and 5 Voices, vol. iii of Music of the Florentine Renaissance, ed. D'Accone, F.. Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 32 (1969), pp. xii–xiii.Google Scholar
32 For a modern edition of Isaac's chanson, see Hewitt, H., ed., Harmonice musices odhecaton A, Mediaeval Academy of America: Studies and Documents 5 (Cambridge, Mass., 1942; repr. New York, 1978), pp. 242–3.Google Scholar
33 Fols. (22v–23r), however, separate the work of the Izagha scribe from that of the concluding folio of the fascicle in the hand of ‘Northern 2’, and these leaves bear the jottings of one of the very late scribblers. Obviously, the Izagha scribe left these folios blank. It might be argued, therefore, that he never intended to extend his entries right up to the work of the second northern scribe on fols. (23v)–24r. We shall see presently, however, that this was indeed the intention of the Izagha scribe until a copying error prevented him from carrying it out.
34 The motet is incomplete in Florence 117: the contratenor and bassus parts of the end of the piece are missing.
35 See, for example, Florence 99–102, Florence 107bis, Florence 111, Florence 112, Florence 121, Florence 122–5, Florence 125bis, Florence 164–7 and Florence 178.
36 Examples are Cambridge 1760, Copenhagen 1848, Florence 2794, London 1070, London 5242, London 20.A.XVI, Paris 1596, Paris 1597, Paris 2245, Uppsala 76a and Uppsala 76b.
37 Further on these manuscripts and their dimensions, see Hamm and Kellman, eds., Census-Catalogue, passim.
38 A detailed and sophisticated study of the use of rastra appears in J., and Wolf, E., ‘Rastrology and its Use in Eighteenth-Century Manuscript Studies’, Studies in Musical Sources and Style: Essays in Honor of Jan LaRue, ed. Roesner, E. and Wolf, E. (Madison, 1987)Google Scholar, forthcoming. I am very grateful to the authors of this study for making it available to me prior to its publication.
39 Samples of the variation in distance between the second and third staves, for example, may be reported as follows: fol. (1r) (10.5mm), fol. 4r (11.7mm), fol. 15r (10mm), fol. (25r) (11.2mm), fol. 37r (10.1 mm), fol. 67r (9.3 mm). (These measurements were taken with a comparator, a lens that provides six-power magnification through a transparent template (called a reticle), onto which are etched measurements calibrated in tenths of millimetres.)
40 On the Florentine provenance of this manuscript, see Hamm, and Kellman, , eds., Census-Catalogue, i, pp. 224–5.Google Scholar
41 The characteristic use of quinternions in Florentine music manuscripts from about 1500 was first pointed out by Jeppesen, K., ‘The Manuscript Florence, Biblioteca Nazionalc Centrale, Banco Rari 230: An Attempt at a Diplomatic Reconstruction’, Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: A Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. LaRue, J. et al. (New York, 1966), p. 446.Google Scholar On the use of quaternions in northern chansonniers, see idem, Der Kopenhagener Chansonnier (Copenhagen and Leipzig, 1927), pp. xxiv–xxv: and Litterick. ‘The Manuscript Royal 20.a.xvi of the British Library’, chap. 2. passim.
42 Martini, G., La bottega di un cartolaio fiorentino della seconda metà del quatrocento, suppl. to La Bibliofilia, 58 (1956), pp. 45–50Google Scholar; 75, n. 4; 77, n. 21; quoted in Brown, H. M., A Florentine Chansonnier from the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Monuments of Renaissance Music 7 (Chicago, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, text vol., p. 6 and n. 7.
43 The so-called ‘Strozzi chansonnier’ (Florence 2442), for example, is the work of a northern scribe, and that manuscript, which was gathered in quaternions, was surely written in Florence. On this important source of chansons, see Brown, H. M., ‘Chansons for the Pleasure of a Florentine Patrician: Florence, Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Musica. MS Basevi 2442’, Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music, pp. 56–66Google Scholar; and idem, ‘The Music of the Strozzi Chansonnier (Florence, Biblioteca del Conservatorio de Musica, MS Basevi 2442)’, Acta Musicologica, 40 (1968), pp. 115–29.
Joshua Rifkin has taken issue with the suggested Florentine provenance of this manuscript (in the discussion following Brown, H. M., ‘Words and Music in Early 16th-Century Chansons: Text Underlay in Florence, Biblioteca del Conservatorio, Ms Basevi 2442’, Quellenstudien zur Musik der Renaissance, i, p. 122)Google Scholar, but cf. Bernstein, , ‘Notes on the Origin of the Parisian Chanson’, pp. 286–7 and n. 28.Google Scholar
44 See Brown, , A Florentine Chansonnier, text vol., p. 6. n. 7.Google Scholar and the data quoted there from Martini, La bottega. Further on inconsistencíes in scribal practice with respect to the size of gatherings, see Blackburn, B., ‘Two “Carnival Songs” Unmasked: A Commentary on MS Florence Magi. xix. 121’, Musica Disciplina, 35 (1981), pp. 121–2. n. 2.Google Scholar
45 Even the mixture of quinternions with gatherings of other sizes that we encounter in Florence 117 is not unknown in other manuscripts of unquestioned Florentine provenance. Cf, for example, Florence 99–102 (gatherings of 3, 4 and 5 folded sheets), Florence 107bis (4 and 5 folded sheets), and Florence 164–7 (4, 5 and 6 folded sheets).
46 On texting practices in both northern and Italian chansonniers, see Litterick, L., ‘Performing Franco-Netherlandish Secular Music of the Late 15th Century: Texted and Untexted Parts in the Sources’, Early Music, 8 (1980), pp. 474–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
47 The three chansons a 3 in the hand of the second northern scribe are Compère's Vive le noble roy de France (fols. 13v–14r), Févin's Adyeu soullas (fols. 14v–15r), and an anonymous D'amour je suis desheritée (fols. 15v– 16r).
48 For a study of this manuscript, see the paper by H. M. Brown cited in n. 4, above.
49 Other variants could be cited in which Cambridge 1760 is jointly contradicted by Florence 117 and Uppsala 76a. The close affinity between the readings in the latter two manuscripts was first suggested by Louise Litterick in her response to Howard Brown's paper on the Uppsala chansonnier, read at the forty-sixth annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, held at Denver in 1980.
50 It should be noted, however, that the poetry of D'amour je suis desheritée is transmitted rather differently in Florence 117 and Uppsala 76a. In the former manuscript the music is provided with no more text than that which fits beneath the music, whereas the latter source contains additional lines of poetry. In fact, Uppsala 76a presents the chanson as a rondeau, as Howard Brown points out in his study of this manuscript.
51 Brown (‘A New French Chansonnier’) cites the use of Gascon dialect in the poetic section of Uppsala 76a, the presence in its paper of watermarks found in papers used at Toulouse, and a reference to Bordeaux in one of its poems. He concludes that the manuscript seems to have been compiled in south-western France.
52 Cf. Paris, G. and Gevaert, A., eds., Chansons du XVe siècle (Paris, 1875), pp. 18–19Google Scholar, and music section, p. 9; and Géroid, , ed., Le manuscrit de Bayeux, p. 39.Google Scholar
53 Only two variants separate the readings of this piece in the two manuscripts: the version in Uppsala divides the breve in the superius just before the return of the opening polyphony and mistakenly provides a semibreve instead of a minim for the g eight notes earlier. Otherwise, the musical readings in Florence 117 and Uppsala 76a are precisely the same.
54 The alterations in the repeat of the opening passage may be listed as follows:
For a modern edition of this chanson, see Clinkscale, E., ‘The Complete Works of Antoine de Févin’ (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1965), ii, pp. 451–4.Google Scholar
55 See the textual variants noted at the bottom of Table 9.
56 On the chronology of Florence 117, see below, pp. 52–4.
57 These eight variants are reported below. For the reading in Paris 2245, see Loyset Compère: Opera omnia, ed. L. Finscher, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 15 (1958–72), v, p. 58. A number of these variants (those marked with an asterisk) appear only in Florence 107bis and Florence 117; a few others (those marked with a dagger) can be found elsewhere only in the Savoyard manuscript, Brussels 11239, a source that was compiled in a region rather closer to Italy than were the French or Netherlandish sources of this chanson:
58 This unique poetic variant in Florence 117 is also noteworthy for further distinguishing the reading of Va t'en regretz in the latter manuscript from those in the northern sources.
59 Cf. Table 10 on p. 48.
60 Ludwig Finscher includes Va t'en regretz among a group of ‘perfect examples of the Burgundian song idiom’ and assigns the work to the period of Compère's ‘larger Burgundian works’, c. 1485–90. Finscher, L., Loyset Compère (c 1450–1518): Life and Works, Musicological Studies and Documents 12 (1964), p. 235.Google Scholar
61 On the chronology of Florence 117, see below, pp. 52–4.
For the sake of completeness, one might wish to entertain the possibility that, for some unknown reason, the main scribe, although working in the north, copied Va t'en regretz from an exemplar that embodied the Italian transmission of the work. Indeed, Allan Atlas has recently initiated the investigation of the possible influence of Italian redactions upon manuscripts copied in the north. He alludes to significant concordances that link Copenhagen 1848 – a Lyonnaise chansonnier of the 1520s – to several manuscripts of the central Florentine tradition of the late fifteenth century (Florence 229 and Vatican City C.G. XIII.27). And he suggests that in the transmission of Robert Morton's Le souvenir de vous me tue two late, French provincial chansonniers (Uppsala 76a and Copenhagen 1848) follow a number of earlier Italian manuscripts (Bologna Q 16, Florence 176 and Paris 15123) in contradicting the readings of various Franco-Burgundian sources of this composition.
The evidence Atlas cites is necessarily of a preliminary nature, and it gives rise to a number of questions. Copenhagen 1848 does, indeed, share unique concordances with two Florentine chansonniers, but, as Atlas himself points out, the readings of the French source lack significant agreement with those of its Florentine counterparts. Which evidence ought to weigh more heavily upon our consideration of this matter, that of significant concordances or that of significant disagreement among the respective readings?
The redaction of Morton's Le souvenir in the two French chansonniers is analogous in some ways to the transmission of Hayne's Allés regretz, to which we referred earlier, and it raises problems similar to those we cited in connection with that composition. That is, the late French sources preserve readings that were introduced near the end of a transmission that continued for about half a century. How can we be certain that the reading in these sources that seems to reflect the influence of an Italian tradition is not, in reality, the result of an ‘internalionalisation’ of a redaction of Morton's chanson made much earlier in the history of its transmission?
Finally, Atlas's case for Italian influence on the transmission of Morton's Le souvenir in the two French chansonniers rests principally upon the evidence of a single significant variant. The difference that distinguishes the older Franco-Burgundian reading of this passage from that of the later French chansonniers together with their putative Italian models consists essentially in the manner in which the contratenor approaches the final cadence of the chanson. The two readings, however, are equally conventional among the various cadential formulas of the day, and their location but a few tacti before the end of the piece is one that is highly amenable to the introduction of scribal improvisation. Can we ignore altogether the possibility that this particular variant may conceivably be the result of scribal conjecture?
These questions notwithstanding, Prof. Atlas has raised a serious methodological issue concerning the regional character of the redaction of musical sources. It is a subject most worthy of further investigation. As far as Va t'en regretz is concerned, however, we still lack any serious reason to assume that its Italian redaction would have had an impact within French musical circles.
On the significant concordances between Copenhagen 1848 and the Florentine manuscripts, cf. Atlas, A.. ‘Conflicting Attributions in Italian Sources of the Franco-Netherlandish Chanson. C. 1465– C. 1505: A Progress Report on a New Hypothesis’, Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Patronage, Sources and Texts, ed. Fenlon, I. (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 251–2, esp. n. 7Google Scholar; and idem, The Cappella Giulia Chansonnier, i, pp. 221–2, 228. The case for Italian influence on late French readings of Morton's chanson appears in Robert Morton: The Collected Works, ed. Atlas, A., Masters and Monuments of the Renaissance 2 (New York, 1981), pp. xxx. 71–2.Google Scholar
62 On the date of this chanson, see Picker, M., ‘Josquin and Jean Lemaire: Four Chansons Re-examined’, Essays Presented to Myron P. Gilmore, ed. Bertelli, S. and Ramakus, G. (Florence, 1978), ii, pp. 448 and 453, n. 5;Google Scholar and Kellman, H., ‘Josquin and the Courts of the Netherlands and France: The Evidence of the Sources’, Josquin des Prez: Proceedings of the International Josquin Festival-Conference, ed. Lowinsky, E. E. in collaboration with B.J. Blackburn (London, 1976), pp. 182–3.Google Scholar
63 See Figure 10 on p. 33.
64 See above, p. 13.
65 The principal French sources of this repertory of chansons are Cambridge 1760 and London 5242, both of which can be dated c. 1509–14. On the dating of these two manuscripts, see Litterick, , ‘The Manuscript Royal 20.a.xvi of the British Library’, pp. 54–5 and 45Google Scholar, respectively.
66 Noteworthy, too, is the fact, alluded to earlier, that the scribe who added the foliation to our manuscript was the Florentine copyist who served as the principal scribe of Florence 178, a manuscript that can be dated c. 1492–4 on the basis of its paper and repertorial ties. Admittedly, it is possible that this artisan remained active in Florence for, say, thirty years, in which case he could have foliated Florence 117 as late as c. 1524. A tenure that long would have been most unusual, however, particularly in the light of the vicissitudes of Florentine politics about the turn of the century. A maximum of twenty years seems a more realistic estimate of the scribe's tenure at Florence, and this would place the terminus ante quern for his involvement with Florence 117 at c. 1515, a date more or less the same as that suggested by the range of concordances for the music in our manuscript.
67 If the foliation was added to our manuscript no later than c. 1515, then almost all of the music in the source would have been in place by that time. Only the entry of the last scribe, the work a 4 of the Izagha scribe, and the jottings of the scribblers appear without foliation and would seem, therefore, to have been later additions.
68 Brown, H. M., ‘The Chanson rustique: Popular Elements in the 15th- and 16th-Century Chanson’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 12 (1959), pp. 16–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘The Genesis of a Style: The Parisian Chanson, 1500–1530’, Chanson & Madrigal, 1480–1530, pp. 21–5.
69 For a detailed account of Charles's futile military adventures in Italy, see Guicciardini, F., La historia d'Italia (Venice, 1567), pp. 35–113Google Scholar; trans. S. Alexander (London, 1969), pp. 43–109.
70 See the letter published in Lockwood, L., ‘Music at Ferrarain the Period of Ercole i d'Este’, Studi Musicali, 1 (1972), pp. 115–16, 129–30.Google Scholar
71 Compère's chanson is brief, essentially homorhythmic, and largely syllabic See the modern edition in Loyset Compère: Opera omnia, v, p. 60. Further on the historical occasion for which this chanson was composed, see Winn, M. B., ‘Some Texts for Chansons by Loyset Compere’, Musica Disciplina, 33 (1979), pp. 48–50Google Scholar. Dr Winn offers convincing evidence that this text is explicitly linked to the battle of Fornovo, despite its anomalous inclusion of the Florentines, who were Charles's allies, among those reportedly vanquished by the French king. The battle of Fornovo, itself, is characterised by Dr Winn as a decisive victory for France, in line with the views of such French chroniclers as Phillipe de Commynes. A different perspective on the outcome of the battle may be read in Guicciardini's account of it (see the citation in n. 69, above).
72 On the likelihood that the main scribe added this piece to a blank opening that preceded the ‘real’ beginning of his second layer, see above, p. 35.
73 Rabelais, however, uses ‘mirelaridaine’ to denote imaginary articles of food. See Huguet, E., Dictionnaire de la langue française du seizième siècle (Paris, 1925–1967), v, p. 281.Google Scholar
74 On Ninot's biography, see Ninot Le Petit: Collected Works, ed. Hudson, B., Corpus Mensurabilis Musicac 87 (Neuhausen–Stuttgart, 1979), pp. xi–xiii.Google Scholar The chanson in question, En chevauchantpres d'ung molin, appears ibid., pp. 1–4. On the date of Florence 2442, see my article. ‘Notes on the Origin of the Parisian Chanson’, pp. 286–7, n. 28.
75 On Le Heurteur, see Bernstein, L. F.. ‘Le Heurteur. Guillaume’. The New drove Dictionary, x, pp. 622–3.Google Scholar The refrain under consideration opens Le Heurteur's Mirelaridon don don don daine, which appeared in Attaingnant 15331.
76 The authorship of this chanson has been the subject of a great deal of controversy, which has most recently been summarised in Christoffersen, P., ‘“Or sus vousdormez trop”: The Singing of the Lark in French Chansons of the Early Sixteenth Century’, Festskrift Henrik Glahn, ed. Müller, M. (Copenhagen, 1979), pp. 35–67.Google Scholar
The controversy arises because none of the five sources that contain the three-voice Chant de l'alouette bears an attribution. The suggestion that Janequin composed the work is generally made because Attaingnant printed a four-voice setting of the text that is securely attributed to Janequin; three of its parts are close to, but not identical with, the polyphony contained in the version a3.
Dr Christoffersen believes that Janequin wrote the four-voice setting, but not the one a 3. He offers the following evidence: (1) The three-voice Chant de l'alouette is not as unique stylistically as has been heretofore maintained. It combines elements of several established techniques of chanson composition: the three-part arrangement and the use of such onomatopoeic devices as may be characteristically found as early as the fourteenth-century virelais. (2) The contratenor part in the four-voice setting seems to have been composed last and tends to produce textural ‘friction’ with the superius in a manner uncharacteristic of Janequin. (3) A later edition of the version a4 substitutes a more felicitous contratenor part. Dr Christoffersen concludes that, in his four-part Chant de l'alouette, Janequin ‘resorted to making an arrangement of the widely known three-part chanson’ (p. 52).
Because no source for the three-voice setting names any composer, however, Christof-fersen admits that Janequin could be its composer. That seems to me by far the more attractive option. The lengthy onomatopoeic section of the three-voice Chant de l'alouette reflects precisely the same highly idiosyncratic style we find in Janequin's other programme chansons. In scope and intensity, it would seem to be without precedent in the chanson literature of the early sixteenth century. Surely, it is more natural to view Janequin as the composer of both versions of the Chant de l'alouette than to suggest that his extremely individual style was anticipated in a single work by an unknown composer, to which he then added a new contratenor part. I believe we may safely conclude that Janequin is the likely composer of the Chant de l'alouette found in Florence 117.
77 Brown, H. M., ‘Janequin, Clément’, The New Grove Dictionary, ix, pp. 491–2.Google Scholar
78 See above, pp. 41–5.
79 For modern editions of this chanson, see Pierre Attaingnant: Transcriptions of Chansons for Keyboard, ed. Seay, A., Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 20 (1961), pp. 155–6Google Scholar (attributed to Moulu): Bernstein, , ‘Notes on the Origin of the Parisian Chanson’, p. 319Google Scholar (attributed to Do. Izagha); Music at the Court of Henry VIII, ed. Stevens, J., Musica Britannica 18 (London, 1962), pp. 64–5Google Scholar (anonymous); Nachtrag zu den weltlichen Werken von Heinrich Isaac, ed.J. Wolf, pp. 204–5; Claudin de Sermisy: Opera omnia, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 52/iii–iv, Chansons, ed. I. Cazeaux (1974), iii, p. 14; Thirty Chansons (1529) for Three Instruments or Voices, ed. Thomas, B., p. 22Google Scholar (attributed to Moulu).
80 Bernstein, , ‘Notes on the Origin of the Parisian Chanson’, pp. 318–22.Google Scholar
81 Two other works may also be four-voice chansons. The unidentified textless piece a 4 in the hand of the Izagha scribe on fols. 24v–(26r) could originally have had a French text, as do two of the other compositions copied without text by this scribe. The last work copied by the main scribe (fols. 81v–82r), as we have seen, has only two voices, and all that is supplied by way of text is a calligraphic initial ‘I’. As we indicated above, however, it is easy to tell that voices are missing from this work. It, too, could have been a chanson for four voices.
82 A modern edition of Josquin's chanson appears in Josquin des Prés: Wereldlijke Werken, ed. Smijers, A., Afl. viii, Bund, iii (Amsterdam, 1925), no. 29, pp. 74–5.Google Scholar
83 For a modern edition of Févin's chanson, see Clinkscale, ‘The Complete Works of Antoine de Févin’, ii, pp. 470–3.
84 Plus nulz regretz was composed while Josquin was at Condé; Fevin, of course, was in the service of Louis xii. The biographical evidence about Moulu is very sparse, but the occasions for which he composed motets and the nature of his music suggest close ties with the royal court of France. On Josquin at Condé, see the communication by Kellman, H. in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, 27 (1974), p. 367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On Moulu, see Lowinsky, E., ed., The Medici Codex of 1518, Monuments of Renaissance Music 3–5 (Chicago, 1968), iii, pp. 68–9. 72–4.Google Scholar
85 Further on the melody for La jeusne dame and the tradition from which the poem descends, see Bernstein, L. F., ed., La couronne et fleur des chansons a troys, Masters and Monuments of the Renaissance 3 (New York, 1984), Part 2, pp. 102–8, 21, 5–16.Google Scholar
86 On the presence of these stylistic traits in Milanese motets, see Finscher, L., ‘Zum Verhältnis von Imitationstechnik und Textbehandlung im Zeitalter Josquins’, Renais-sance-Studien: Helmuth Osthoff zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. Finscher, L. (Tutzing, 1979), p. 64.Google Scholar
Examples of carnival songs in this style appear in the Collected Works of Alessandro Coppini, Bartolomeo degli Organi, Giovanni Serragli, and Three Anonymous Works, vol. ii of Music of the Florentine Renaissance, ed. F. D'Accone, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 32 (1967), pp. 1–3, 8–9, 11–13, 14–16, 42–4, 44–6.Google Scholar
For examples of the application of these techniques to Florentine descriptive music, see Brenet, M., ‘Essai sur les origines de la musique descriptive’, Rivista Musicale Italiana, 14 (1907), pp. 649–51Google Scholar; and Nachtrag zu den weltlichen Werken von Heinrich Isaac, ed. Wolf, J., pp. 221–4.Google Scholar
For Isaac's use of the same devices in an isolated Credo, see Heinrich Isaac: Opera omnia, ed. Lerner, E., Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 65 (1974–). v, pp. 112–19.Google Scholar
87 Brown, , ‘The Genesis of a Style’, pp. 24–5Google Scholar; idem, ‘The Transformation of the Chanson at the End of the Fifteenth Century’, International Musicological Society: Report of the Tenth Congress – Ljubljana, 1967, ed. D. Cvetko (Kassel, 1970), pp. 78–94; idem, ‘The Music of the Strozzi Chansonnier’, pp. 118–29.
88 Brown, , ‘The Genesis of a Style’, pp. 24–5, 32–4.Google Scholar
89 Bernstein, , ‘.Notes on the Origin of the Parisian Chanson’, pp. 284–301.Google Scholar
90 One four-part arrangement in the hand of the Layolle scribe, Mouton's Rejuissés vous borgeses, would seem to impair somewhat the case for the Italian provenance of this type of chanson. At the time we believe Florence 117 was compiled (c. 1515). Mouton, of course, was maître de chapelle of the French royal court. Indeed, another chanson by this master, Jamais, jamais, jamais, is clearly in the style we are considering, and it appeared in the Odhecaton – that is, long before there is any record of Mouton's presence in Italy. Mouton's biography, however, is problematical. We lack any traces of the composer from the last record of his service as maître de chapelle at Nesle in 1483 to his appointment as maître des enfans at Amiens in 1500. This seventeen-year period may well have provided Mouton with an opportunity to travel to Italy.
In addition, it is perhaps worth recalling that Mouton was in Italy at just about the time we suggested for the compilation of Florence 117 (i.e. he visited there in the autumn of 1515) and may thus have been personally responsible for the transmission of Rejuissés vous. On Mouton's travels to Italy, see Lockwood, L., ‘Jean Mouton and Jean Michel: New Evidence on French Music and Musicians in Italy. 1501–1520’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 32 (1979), pp. 204–7, 211–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
91 [N']a tu point veu la viscontine is given to Richafort in Paris 4599, but I believe that attribution is wrong. Stylistically, the chanson is unlike any of the other four-voice chansons reliably assigned to this master. In Antico's La couronne et fleur des chansons a troys of 1536, moreover, another setting of the same poem was also mistakenly assigned to Richafort in the table of contents, instead of to Willaert, whose name appears over the music in all three partbooks as well as in all subsequent editions of the piece and who surely composed the chanson. La couronne contains a genuine work of Richafort the poem of which begins similarly: N'avés point veu mal assenée. Undoubtedly, it is this similarity that gave rise to the misattribution in the table of contents of La couronne, and I suggest that the same confusion with respect to [N']a tu point veu la viscontine may have been perpetuated by Jean Michel, the Ferrarese scribe of Paris 4599. Further, on the problem of this misattribution and on possible connections between Jean Michel and the Antico print, see Bernstein, , ed. La couronne et fleur des chansons, part 2, pp. 101–2.Google Scholar
92 The three compositions are Compère's Alons, ferons barbe (Odhecaton. Florence 107bis. Florence 164–7). the same composer's Et d'ont revenis vous (Canti B), and Ninot Le Petit's Hélas. hélas, hélas. hélas (Canti B. Florence 2442 and several later German sources).
For modern editions of these chansons see. respectively, Hewitt, , ed., Odhecaton, pp. 275–6Google Scholar; and Hewitt, H., ed.. Ottaciano Petrucci: Canti B, Numero cinquanta. Monuments of Renaissance Music 2 (Chicago, 1967). pp. 171–3, 150–2.Google Scholar
93 See Ninot Le Petit: Collected Works, pp. 1–4. 5–7, 21–2.
94 Further on this complex of works, see Bernstein, , ed. La couronne et fleur des chansons. part 2. pp. 99–102. 222–3.Google Scholar
95 Lockwood, , ‘Jean Mouton and Jean Michel’, p. 222.Google Scholar Conceivably, Jean de La Fage came from Lafarge, a little hamlet not far from St Yrieix, on the road from Limoges to Périgueux. If so, he would not have wandered far from his place of origin to the site of his post in Gascony, for Lafarge is only about ninety miles north-east of Bordeaux.
96 His motets, for example, appear in the Medici Codex, Casale Monferrato D(F). London 19583, Modena IX, Padua A 17 and Verona 760 – all of which are of Italian provenance – as well as in such Italian prints as Petrucci 15191, Antico 15202 and Antico 15215.
97 See, for example, La Fage's Videns Dominus and Elizabeth zacharie in Lowinsky, , ed., The Medici Codex, iv, pp. 90–4, 100–6Google Scholar, respectively. On the presence of this style in the Milanese motet, see the article by Ludwig Finscher cited in n. 86, above.
98 A similarly mature example of Parisian chanson style, it will be recalled, appears elsewhere in our manuscript with indications of its possible Florentine provenance: the three-voice Amy, soufré, apparently attributed to ‘Do. Izagha’. For additional early examples of this style in Italy, see Bernstein, , ‘Motes on the Origin of the Parisian Chanson’, pp. 309–18.Google Scholar
99 On the Florentine musical chapels, see D'Accone, F., ‘The Musical Chapels at the Florentine Cathedral and Baptistry during the First Half of the 16th Century’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 24 (1971), pp. 1–50, esp. pp. 4, 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘The Performance of Sacred Music in Italy during Josquin's Time, c. 1475–1525’, Josquin des Prez, pp. 601–18, esp. pp. 608–9.
100 On the appearance of this name in Florence 117, see above, p. 4. For documentation of Giovanantonio di Jacopo's presence at the Florentine baptistery, see D'Accone, ‘Musical Chapels’, p. 15.
101 Note, in particular, the tendency to keep letters separate; the thin, undotted i; and the wide-angled, y-like r.
102 The information on the provenance of Uppsala 76a is drawn from Brown, ‘A New French Chansonnier’.
103 With pleasure, respect and affection, I acknowledge a debt of thanks to Martin L. Bernstein, my teacher at New York University. His influence remains a potent force in my work and may be traced in the pages of this study, too. Celebremus: 1984. xii. 14.