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Ronsard, the Lyric Sonnet and the Late Sixteenth-Century Chanson*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Jeanice Brooks
Jeanice Brooks
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
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Extract

Music was an important metaphor for Ronsard, and references to music and musical instruments are frequently found in his poetry. His writings about music are few, however. In his article ‘Ut musica poesis: Music and Poetry in France in the Late Sixteenth Century’ Howard Brown has referred to two of the most explicit examples of such writing: the preface to Le Roy and Ballard's Livre de meslanges (1560) and the passage from Ronsard's Abbregé de l'art poëtique françois (1565) on the desirability of union between poetry and music. Such passages are important in illuminating poets' attitudes towards music and in demonstrating ways in which the relationship between text and music could be conceptualised in the sixteenth century. They are frustratingly vague, however, about how the poets' ideals should be achieved, and they leave many practical questions unanswered. Did poets have any influence on composers' choices of texts? Did movements in poetic circles ever affect the pitches or rhythms of musical settings – that is, could poets influence the way music sounded?

Type
Research Article
Information
Early Music History , Volume 13 , October 1994 , pp. 65 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 Sebillet, T., Art poétique françois, ed. Gaiffe, F., rev. F. Goyet (Paris, 1988), p. 147Google Scholar. The standard edition of Ronsard's poetry is the Oeuvres complètes, ed. Laumonier, P., rev. and completed by I. Silver and R. Lebègue, 20 vols. (Paris, 1914–1975)Google Scholar, hereafter referred to as L. This passage from the Abbregé is found in L xiv, p. 27.

2 L i, p. 44.

3 L i, p. 3. See also the facsimile of Peletier's collection in Les oeuvres poétiques de Jacques Peletier du Mans, ed. Françon, M. (Rochecorbon, 1958), pp. 258–60Google Scholar.

4 L'art poëtique, ed. Boulanger, A. (Paris, 1930), pp. 172–6Google Scholar. See also L i, pp. xxxviii–xxxix.

5 L I, p. xxix. Laumonier, discusses in detail Ronsard's adoption of strophic regularity and alternating rhyme in Ronsard poète lyrique, 2nd edn (Paris, 1923), pp. 673–85Google Scholar. I do not intend to discuss here the gendered discourse implied by the practice of alternating rhyme, except to mention that the combination of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ verse in equal parts meshes well with the androgynous ideal of the Platonist atmosphere in which Ronsard worked; the use of alternation in verse intended for music thus takes on a particular significance, as music was thought of as the sounding image of the ideal represented by the harmony of the spheres.

6 ‘Then, following the example of someone of our time, you will make your verses masculine and feminine as well as you can, so that they are more appropriate for music … If by chance you have made the first two verses masculine, you will make the next two feminine, and you will complete the rest of your elegy or chanson in the same measure, so that musicians can set them more easily.’ L xiv, p. 9.

7 ‘I will not fail to mention what I have observed in [the works of] Clément Marot. For in poems which he thought should not be sung, such as epistles, elegies, dialogues, pastorales, tombeaux, epigrams, complaintes, or his translation of the first two books of the Metamorphoses, he never kept the order of masculine and feminine rhyme. But in those poems which he thought should be, or might be, set to music, as in his chansons and psalms of David (which he translated into French), he was very careful to follow the pattern he established in the first strophe in all of the other strophes, even if the first strophe was entirely masculine or entirely feminine.’ Pasquier's statement that Marot sometimes followed the rule of strophic regularity without observing the alternation of rhyme is made in language implying that this is exceptional (‘voire que le premier couplet estant, ou tout masculin, ou tout feminin’; my emphasis). Recherckes de la France, in Oeuvres d'Estienne Pasquier (Amsterdam [Trévoux], 1723), i, col. 714Google Scholar. For information on the numerous earlier editions of the Recherches de la France see Thickett, D., Bibliographie des oeuvres d' Estienne Pasquier (Geneva, 1956), pp. 32–44Google Scholar.

8 ‘There are those who most scrupulously alternate the masculine and feminine verses, as may be seen in the psalm translations of Marot. He did this (I believe) so that the psalms could be sung more easily without varying the music, for the diversity of measures found at the ends of verses.’ du Bellay, J., La deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse, ed. Chamard, H. (Paris, 1948; repr. 1970), pp. 164–5Google Scholar.

9 ‘I have not (Reader) alternated scrupulously the masculine and feminine verses in the way one does for those vaudevilles and songs which use the same music for every strophe, fearing that the observation of such practices would constrain and inconvenience my diction.’ Oeuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, H. (Paris, 1912; repr. 1983), iii, p. 3Google Scholar.

10 Recherches, i, col. 713.

11 ‘La Parque si terrible’ is included in Chamard's edition of the Vers lyriques, pp. 37–9. On other settings of Du Bellay, see Dobbins, F., ‘Joachim Du Bellay et la musique de son temps’, Du Bellay: actes du Colloque international d'Angers du 26 au 29 mai 1989 (Angers, 1990), pp. 587–605Google Scholar. On Chardavoine's, Le recueil des plus belles et excellentes chansons en forme de voix de ville (Paris, 1576; facsimile, ed. Geneva, 1980)Google Scholar, see Verchaly, A., ‘Le recueil authentique des chansons de Jehan Chardavoine (1576)’, Revue de Musicologie, 49 (1963), pp. 203–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 On the absence of strophic regularity in earlier poems and the questions this raises in the context of the chanson and voix de ville, see Whang, J. O., ‘From Voix de ville to Air de cour: the Strophic Chanson, c. 1545– 1575’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1981), pp. 62–6Google Scholar.

13 L iv, p. xvii.

14 ‘which we have never seen done before by anyone engaging in this genre of writing’; L iv, p. 189. Laumonier reproduces the entire supplement in facsimile on pp. 189–250.

15 L iv, p. xvi.

16 Sebillet, , Art poétique, pp. 115–18Google Scholar.

17 Replique aux furieuses defenses de Louis Meigret (1550), cited in Du Bellay, Deffence, ed. Chamard, , p. 115n.Google Scholar.

18 ‘Sound for me those beautiful sonnets, no less learned than agreeable Italian invention, conforming to the ode in name, and differing from it only in that the sonnet has rules and limits on certain verses, and the ode may flow freely through all manner of verses’; Bellay, Du, Deffence, ed. Chamard, , pp. 120–1Google Scholar.

19 ‘And if they can be sounded to the lyre (as they are), they merit the name of lyric verses, more than the fruits of your Olive and the rest, which were never sung, or sounded, and scarcely could be either.’ See Bellay, Du, Deffence, ed. Chamard, , p. 115nGoogle Scholar. The entire text of the Quintil Horatien (Lyons, 1550)Google Scholar is reproduced in the notes of Chamard's edition.

20 Du Bellay is a notable exception; he seems to lean towards a more modern definition of ‘lyric’, separating a musical aesthetic (created by poetic style and subject matter) from the practice of singing poetry. Ronsard, like many of his contemporaries (see for example Sebillet's, Art poétique, pp. 146–52)Google Scholar, evokes the classical meaning of ‘lyric’ as describing poetry for singing. For a short outline of the changing meanings of ‘lyric’ see Myers, J. and Simms, M., The Longman Dictionary of Poetic Terms (New York and London, 1989), pp. 171–2Google Scholar.

21 Ouvrard, J.-P., ‘Le sonnet ronsardien en musique: du Supplément de 1552 à 1580’, Revue de Musicologie, 74 (1988), pp. 149–64, on pp. 158–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Ibid., pp. 149–50.

23 Thibault, G. and Perceau, L., Bibliographie des poésies de P. de Ronsard mises en musique au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1941)Google Scholar.

24 French poets had been experimenting with alternating rhyme since the fourteenth century, but as L. E. Kastner observes, it required a poet of Ronsard's authority to elevate what had been an option into a rule, not only for sonnets but for many other kinds of poetry as well. A History of French Versification (Oxford, 1903), pp. 63–5Google Scholar. See also Pasquier, , Recherches, i, cols. 713–14Google Scholar, and de Laudon, P., L'art poétique français (1597), ed. Dedieu, J. (Toulouse, 1909; repr. Geneva, 1969), pp. 95–6Google Scholar, for evidence of the influence of Ronsard's example.

25 L i, p. 48. Ronsard may have been using the lyre as a metaphor (as he does when referring to poetry ‘mesurée à la lire’) rather than referring to an actual instrument, however.

26 Caietain's, F. M. four-voice sonnet-singing formula was published in his collection Airs mis en musique à quatre parties (Paris, 1576)Google Scholar; interestingly, the sonnet used as a model (Hé, Dieu du ciel) is by Ronsard. On Pontoux's Gélodacrye (also 1576), see Ouvrard, ‘Le sonnet ronsardien’, p. 152.

27 ‘The Idea of Music in Ronsard's Poetry’, Ronsard the Poet, ed. Cave, T. (London, 1973), pp. 209–39, on p. 212Google Scholar.

28 Bar numbers refer to Janequin, C., Chansons polyphoniques, ed. Merritt, A. T. and Lesure, F., v (Monaco, 1969), pp. 191–5. Nature ornantGoogle Scholar is also included in La fleur des musiciens de P. de Ronsard, ed. Expert, H. (Paris, 1923; repr. New York, 1965), pp. 25–8Google Scholar. The former edition reduces the original note values by half; the latter retains the original note values but transposes the song up a third from its original tonality.

29 The closings discussed here are rhythmic, and need to be understood separately from the contrapuntal phenomenon of a cadence, since the harmonic resolution may not coincide with the pronunciation of the final syllable of a verse (particularly in verses with feminine endings). In some traditional common-practice harmony, ‘feminine cadences’ are those in which harmonic resolution occurs on a weak beat, and ‘masculine cadences’ resolve on a strong beat; using this sort of terminology the second variety of feminine-ending close I have described would often count as a ‘masculine cadence’ when harmonic resolution occurred in conjunction with the final syllable of the verse.

30 Rotola, A. C., S.J., ‘Gaspar Stoquerus, “De musica verbali”: Critical Edition, Translation and Commentary’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1984), pp. 252–8Google Scholar.

31 For evidence of similar concern on the part of Jean de Castro, see my article ‘Jean de Castro, the Pense Partbooks and Musical Culture in Sixteenth-Century Lyons’, Early Music History, 11 (1992), pp. 91–149, esp. pp. 124–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Text drawn from de Sermisy, C., Opera omnia, ed. Allaire, G. and Cazeaux, I., Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 52/iv (Rome, 1974), p. 99Google Scholar. In the same volume there are many other texts which feature long series of a single type of rhyme, by Marot as well as other poets; see, for example, Secourez moy, Si j'ay du bien and Rigueur me tient.

33 Bertrand's Nature ornant in modern edition can be found in Monuments de la Musique Française au Temps de la Renaissance, ed. H. Expert (Paris, 1924– 1930; repr. New York, n.d.), v, pp. 68–71. Son chef est d' or is included in Boni, Sonetz de P. de Ronsard, ed. Dobbins, F. (Paris, 1987), pp. 68–71Google Scholar.

34 Whang, , ‘From Voix de ville to Air de cour’, pp. 205–6Google Scholar. Clereau's music has been edited in J. A. Bernstein, The Sixteenth-Century Chanson 7 (New York, 1988).