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Ronsard, Belleau and Renvoisy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2008
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Howard Mayer Brown's stimulating paper pays greatest attention to the centrality of Ronsard as the fons et origo for musical settings. One often has the impression, reading the paper, that there was no substantial problem of imitation in these settings: the composers simply took the words supplied by Ronsard and set them to music. In the comments which follow, I want to suggest a different approach to this question of imitation within Renaissance poetry and to ask what effect the issue of imitation itself had in the dialogue between poetry and music in mid sixteenth-century France. The focus I shall be using is the Anacreon of 1554.
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References
1 Cf. Laumonier, P., Ronsard poète lyrique, 2nd edn (Paris, 1923), p. 121Google Scholar, repeated in his critical edition, L vi, p. 176, n. 1. Laumonier bases his evidence on the fact that Ronsard dedicates his ‘Odelette à Corydon’ (loc. cit.) to Panjas, who in April 1554 left for Rome in the retinue of the Cardinal d'Armagnac.
2 For the dating of the Anacreontea, see most recently West, M., Carmina anacreontea, 2nd edn (Leipzig and Stuttgart, 1993), pp. xvi–xviiiCrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘The Anacreontea’, Sympotica, ed. Murray, O. (Oxford, 1990), pp. 272–3Google Scholar. For a study of the Anacreontea, see Rosenmeyer, P., The Poetics of Imitation: Anacreon and the Anacreontic Tradition (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar, and for the fortunes of the Anacreontea in Renaissance France, O'Brien, J., Anacreon redivivus (Ann Arbor, forthcoming)Google Scholar.
3 See Robortello, F., De arte sive ratione corrigendi antiquorum libros disputatio (1557)Google Scholar in Schoppe, G., De arte criticâ (Amsterdam, 1662), p. 119Google Scholar, and Orsini, F., Carmina novem illustrium feminarum … et lyricorum (Antwerp, 1568), pp. 130 ffGoogle Scholar.
4 See Chamard, H., Histoire de la Pléiade (Paris, 1939), i, pp. 274–9Google Scholar, quoting Du Bellay's ‘A une dame’ from the second edition of the Recueil de poësie of 1553 and his critical edition of Bellay, Du, Oeuvres complètes, iv, pp. 205–15Google Scholar. This poem was remodelled and reappeared five years later in Divers jeux rustiques (1558) as ‘Contre les pétrarquistes’.
5 The turning point was the Livret de folastries of 1553, which cultivated a strong strain of Bacchic poetry. The distinctive sympotic themes of the Anacreontea reinforce this trend.
6 For the implications of these terms, see Laumonier, , Ronsard poète lyrique, pp. 170–1Google Scholar.
7 See Estienne, H., Anacreontis Teij odae (Paris, 1554), e.g. pp. 76–8Google Scholar on Ode xxxi (9 West), where there is an extensive analysis of the relationship between Horace, Alcaeus and Anacreon.
8 See Estienne, , Anacreontis Teij odae, e.g. p. 68Google Scholar (Ode xi [7 West], Palladas and ‘Anacreon’), p. 70 (Ode xx [22 West], Dionysius the Sophist, Theocritus and ‘Anacreon’), p. 80 (Ode xl [35 West], Theocritus and ‘Anacreon’).
9 See the valuable work of Hutton, J., The Greek Anthology in France and the Latin Writers of the Netherlands to the Year 1800 (Ithaca, NY, 1946)Google Scholar.
10 Cf. Laumonier, , Ronsard poète lyrique, p. 94Google Scholar: ‘on peut d'autre part considérer la plupart des épigrammes comme des odelettes monostrophiques’ and Couat, A., La poésie alexandrine sous les trois premiers Ptolémées (324–222 av. J.-C.) (Paris, 1882), p. 173Google Scholar: epigrams had become ‘des pièces lyriques analogues aux odes d'Anacréon’.
11 Odes xv and xvii (8 and 4 West) appear in the Greek Anthology as a.p. xi, 47 and 48 respectively. Moreover Ode xi (7 West) has a parallel in an epigram of Palladas, a.p. xi, 54.
12 On the vocabulary of mignardise, see Glatigny, M., Le vocabulaire galant dans les ‘Amours’ de Ronsard (Lille, 1976), i, p. 71Google Scholar, and for mignardise in Pléiade poetry, see most recently Joukovsky, F., Le bel objet: les paradis perdus de la Pléiade (Paris, 1991), pp. 163–8Google Scholar.
13 See McFarlane, I. D., ‘Pierre de Ronsard and the Neo-Latin Poetry of his Time’, Res Publica Litterarum, 1 (1978), pp. 177–205Google Scholar, especially p. 181 on participles and diminutives.
14 Brown, , ‘Ut musica poesis’, pp. 26–7Google Scholar and particularly note 60.
15 Notably in Odes i and xlviii (23 and 2 West).
16 Brown, , ‘Ut musica poesis’, p. 8Google Scholar.
17 All references to Ronsard's poetry in the text are to the Oeuvres complètes, ed. Laumonier, P., revised and completed by R. Lebègue and I. Silver, 20 vols. (Paris, 1914–1975)Google Scholar; abbreviation: L, followed by volume number.
18 See Laumonier, , Ronsard poète lyrique, pp. 450–3 and 602–3Google Scholar.
19 The controversy is too well known to require special treatment here. See Cave, T., The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford, 1980), pp. 60 ffGoogle Scholar., and Norton, G., The Ideology and Language of Translation in Renaissance France and their Humanist Antecedents (Geneva, 1984), pp. 290–302Google Scholar.
20 See Greene, T. M., The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven, 1982), pp. 189 ffGoogle Scholar., Ferguson, M. W., Trials of Desire: Renaissance Defences of Poetry (New Haven, 1983), pp. 18–53Google Scholar, and Norton, , The Ideology and Language of Translation, pp. 292 ffGoogle Scholar.
21 Aneau wrote a critique of Du Bellay's Deffence under the pen name ‘le Quintil Horatien’: extracts from it are included in Chamard's standard edition of the Deffence. For Des Autelz's criticisms of Du Bellay, see Replique de Guillaume des Autelz, aux furieuses defenses de Louis Meigret (Lyons, 1551), pp. 58–9Google Scholar.
22 The Neo-Latin translations are a partial translation by Estienne himself, included in his editio princeps, and a full translation by Elie André (Helias Andreas).
23 On Belleau as a translator of Anacreon, consult Chamard, , Histoire de la Pléiade, ii, pp. 87–95Google Scholar, and Eckhardt, A., Remy Belleau: sa vie – sa ‘Bergerie’: étude historique et critique (Budapest, 1917), pp. 164–8Google Scholar. References in the text are to the new edition of Belleau's, Odes d'Anacréon by K. Cameron and J. O'Brien (Paris, forthcoming)Google Scholar; abbreviation: COB, followed by Ode number.
24 All references in the text are to the first edition, Quelques odes d'Anacreon poete ancien, nouuellement mises en francoys apres le grec, les nombres gardez: et depuis mises en musique par maistre Richard Renuoysy, maistre des enfans, et chanoyne de la saincte chapelle du roy à Dijon (Paris, 1559). I am grateful to Frank Dobbins for lending me his photocopy of this edition.
25 The poems in the order followed by Renvoisy's 1559 edition are these: ‘Sus le delicat arbrisseau’ (Ode iv [32 West]), ‘La rose que les Dieux’ (Ode v [44 West]), ‘En ceste premiere saison’ (Ode liii [55 West]), ‘Trop amer est il de n'aymer’ (Ode xlvi [29, 29A West]), ‘De Giges de Sarde prince’ (Ode xv [8 West]), ‘Attendu que suis nay’ (Ode xxiv [40 West]), ‘Quand du bon vin ie boy’ (Ode xxv [45 West]), ‘Vulcan fondz dedans ton four’ (Ode xvii [4 West]), ‘Quand Bacchus entre en moy’ (Ode xxvi [48 West]), ‘Mignarde colombelle’ (Ode ix [15 West]), ‘Un matin qu'amour cuidoit’ (Ode xl [35 West]), ‘Un soir enuiron la minuict’ (Ode iii [33 West]), ‘Si la vie nous venoit’ (Ode xxiii [36 West]).
26 See the information contained in Dobbins, F., ‘Renvoisy, Richard de’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Sadie, S., 20 vols. (London, 1980), xv, pp. 744–5Google Scholar.
27 Dobbins notes that the order of the pieces was altered, and the rhythm and spelling occasionally modified. Most important of all was the omission of the short preface in which Renvoisy disclaimed in his own life any of the ‘lubricité’ of Anacreon.
28 See Brooks, J., ‘French Chanson Collections on the Texts of Pierre de Ronsard, 1570–1580’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1990)Google Scholar, chapter 1, ‘Ronsard Settings in the late Sixteenth Century’, pp. 5–61. I am grateful to Jeanice Brooks for allowing me to have sight of this material. The information which follows in my paper is indebted to her.