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Geometry and Rhetoric in Anthoine de Bertrand's Troisiesme livre de chansons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Jean-Michel Vaccaro
Jean-Michel Vaccaro
Affiliation:
Centre d'Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours
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Extract

Howard Mayer Brown was correct in his understanding that a complete knowledge of the French chanson from the second half of the sixteenth century must take in the provincial activity in this genre and its rapports with Paris, for it is essential to study the ties that connected the centre with its periphery. During the 1570s in Toulouse, the Auvergne-born Anthoine de Bertrand and his ‘friends’ formed one such provincial school, which was strongly attached to the personality of Pierre de Ronsard and to the poetic ideals of the Pléiade. Complementing the praise given to the composer by Henry Expert, who believed as early as 1926 that his works merited a complete edition, Howard Brown considered Bertrand ‘one of the very best composers’ of this music.

Type
Research Article
Information
Early Music History , Volume 13 , October 1994 , pp. 217 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 I have borrowed this term from Geneviève Thibault, who employed it in her study of the prefatory material to Bertrand's collections published by Le Roy, Adrian and Ballard, Robert, in ‘Anthoine de Bertrand, musicien de Ronsard, et ses amis toulousains’, Mélanges offerts à M. Abel Lefranc (Paris, 1936), pp. 282–300Google Scholar.

2 ‘Today forgotten and unknown, Anthoine de Bertrand will undoubtedly be viewed tomorrow as one of the most personal, lively, and seductive master-musicians of our [ French] Renaissance’. See Expert's prefatory Avertissement in his edition of the Premier livre des Amours de Pierre de Ronsard, Monuments de la Musique Française au Temps de la Renaissance (Paris, 1927).

3 ‘Musique et poésie à l'époque de la Pléiade, Anthoine de Bertrand (ca. 1540–1581)’ (diploma thesis, Centre d'Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours, 1965).

4 Such as his attempts at composing works based on the chromatic and enharmonic genera along the lines of Vicentino, implying vocal performance in quarter-tones.

5 On this subject, see Vaccaro, J.-M., ‘Les préfaces d'Anthoine de Bertrand’, Revue de Musicologie, 74 (1988), pp. 221–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This issue contains studies on the theme of the ‘Musiciens de Ronsard’ by members of the musicology department at the Centre d'Études Supérieures de la Renaissance at Tours.

6 According to Père Michel Coyssard, Bertrand owned several farms in the Toulouse area. Indeed, this famous Jesuit and author of the Traicté du profit qu'on tire de chanter les hymnes et chansons spirituelles en vulgaire (1608), in writing about the violent death of the composer, caused by ‘the cruelty of those who disliked those ecclesiastical hymns’, specifies: ‘Thus they massacred Anthoine Bertrand as he was leaving Toulouse to go to one of his farms.’

7 Second livre des Amours de P. de Ronsard (Paris: Le Roy and Ballard, 1578)Google Scholar: ‘l'auteur à Monsieur de Ronsard’, a dizain by the composer among the introductory pieces in this collection.

8 This information comes down to us from a sentence pronounced by the parliament of Toulouse, dated 5 July 1583, and condemning ‘Anne Carrière, veufve a feu Anthoine Bertrand, mere et legitime administraresse de ses enfants, filz et héritiers dudit feu Bertrand’ (Archives Départementales de Haute Garonne B.88, fols. 204 ff.).

9 This term is used by Dobbins, Frank in his article ‘Les madrigalistes français et la Pléiade’, La chanson à la Renaissance, ed. Vaccaro, J.-M. (Tours, 1981), pp. 157–71Google Scholar.

10 The publication history of Bertrand's books by Le Roy and Ballard is as follows: Premier livre des Amours de Pierre de Ronsard (1576, 1578, 1587); Second livre des Amours … (1578, 1587); Troisiesme livre de chansons (1578, 1587).

11 In this article ‘quantitative’ is used in referring to the quantity and type of metrical units (e.g. 24 minims), while ‘quality’ or ‘qualitative’ refers to the particular way in which these larger units are grouped (8 × 3).

12 For a transcription and analysis of the first two sections of this piece, see Vaccaro, J.-M., ‘Las! Pour vous trop aymer’, Models of Musical Analysis: Music before 1600, ed. Everist, M. (Oxford, 1992), pp. 175–207Google Scholar.

13 Compendium musices (1537). See Clercx, S., ‘D'une ardoise aux partitions du XVIème siècle’, Mélanges d'histoire et d'esthétique musicales offerts à Paul-Marie Masson (Paris, 1955), pp. 157–70Google Scholar, and Lowinsky, E., ‘On the Use of Scores by 16th-Century Musicians’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 1 (1948), pp. 17–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.