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Rabelais and the Chanson
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
French musical art during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries found one of its highest forms of expression in the chanson, in musical settings of poems of a popular nature, much closer to the heart of the people than the complicated and refined poetry of the grands rhétori-queurs. With composers of the Burgundian School—Binchois (d. 1467), Dufay (d. 1474), and other musicians connected with the Burgundian Court—the chanson, usually in one of the formes fixes (rondeau, virelai, ballade), reached a height hardly surpassed since: simple, elegant settings for one or two voices with instrumental accompaniment, in marked on‐trast to the complex and recondite ars nova of the preceding century. Even in their sacred music, composers of the Burgundian School made frequent use of the secular song, building their motets and masses upon popular melodies as cantus firmi (tenor melodies upon which a polyphonic structure was erected). With the rise of the Netherlandish School in the latter half of the fifteenth century and with its trend toward a more vocal style, chiefly under the influence of Ockeghem, Buynois, and Obrecht, polyphonic settings of the chanson became popular. In these, music and poetry alike were characterized by greater flexibility in composition: the formes fixes gradually gave way to free forms, generally light, graceful, and spirited in tone; and the music, although adhering to the imitative style of the motet, achieved a similar lightness and grace through the use of quick rhythmic patterns, short phrases with many repeated sections, and a leaning toward homophonic techniques. Most of the great Flemish composers, headed by Josquin des Prés, included music of this type among their productions; but it is perhaps Clément Janequin who best exemplifies the chanson at its gayest, its lightest, and its most frivolous. The popularity of the chanson is witnessed, further, not only by many chansonniers in MS from the late fifteenth century but also by the publication of nearly 600 chansons during the short space of twenty years (1529-49) by two editors alone—Pierre Attaingnant at Paris and Jacques Moderne at Lyons.
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References
1 For a brief introduction to the chanson, see Thédore Gérold, Chansons populaires des XVe et XVIe siècles (Strasbourg, 1913), pp. v-lii. See also Julien Tiersot, Histoire de la chanson populaire (Paris, 1889). For additional bibliography, see the Harvard Dictionary of Music, ed. Willi Apel (Cambridge, Mass., 1947), p. 131.
2 I have discussed technical references to singing under other aspects of Rabelais' musical erudition: see “Rabelais and Musical Ideas”, Romanic Review, xli (1950), 16-18.
3 All quotations from Gargantua et Pantagruel are taken from the Œuvres complètes de Rabelais, 5 vols., ed. Jean Plattard (Paris, 1929).
4 See definitions in Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London, 1611).
6 According to Lazare Sainéan, La Langue de Rabelais (Paris, 1922-23), i, 269: “Chanson de ricochet, c'est-à-dire à ritournelle, où le motif initial revient sans cesse, renforcé par de nouveaux details.” M. Sainéan gives a detailed explanation of the origin and use of this phrase, pp. 269-273.
6 Journal d'tm bourgeois de Paris, 1405-1449, ed. Alexandre Tuetey (Paris, 1881), p. 49.
7 See the Edition critique of Abel Lefranc et al. (Paris, 1913-31), iv, 229, n. 3.
8 Pierre Champion, “Pièces joyeuses du XVe siècle”, Revue de philologie française et de littérature, xxi (1907), 176. According to Champion (p. 165): “Les plaisanteries sur cela, de cela, faire cela sont connues. Il en est de même des mots moustarde et mortier.”
9 Edition critique, iv, 273, n. 2.
10 See Wilhelm Schmid and Otto Stählin, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur (München, 1929-34), i, 348 and 499 ff. See also E. Norman Gardiner, Athletics of the Ancient World (Oxford, 1930), pp. 68-69.
11 See Curt Sachs, The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, East and West (New York, 1943), p. 267.
12 Francesco Colonna, Poliphili hypnerotomachia (Venice, 1499), facsimile ed. (London, 1904), fol. liiii verso: “… Nymphei … Cymbalistrie & Tibiclarie, faceuão le sacre Orgie, c clamori uociferãdo, & thyasi, qle negli Trieterici. …” Cf. the English translation, The Strife of Love in a Dream, tr. R. D. (London, 1592), ed. Andrew Lang (London, 1890), p. 220: “… Nymphs … with tymbrels and flutes, making a most pleasaunt noise, as in the daunce called Thiasus, in the trieterie of Bacchus....”
13 See Michel Psichari, “Les Jeux de Gargantua”, Revue des études rabelaisiennes, vu (1909), 61-62. Janequin's setting, first published in Attaingnant's Trente et une chansons musicales (Paris, 1529), may be found in a modern edition of this volume, Les Maîtres musiciens de la renaissance française, ed. Henry Expert, v (Paris, 1897), 82-88.
14 Langue de Rabelais, i, 276. Words and music apparently no longer exist.
15 The entire chanson is quoted by Prosper Tarbé, Romancero de Champagne (Reims, 1863-64), iii, 57-61.
16 See Marcel Schwob, “Notes pour le commentaire”, Revue des études rabelaisiennes, ii (1904), 140.
17 Sainéan, Langue de Rabelais, i, 268.
18 Plattard, Œuvres de Rabelais, v, 206-207.
19 Tiersot, Histoire de la chanson populaire, pp. 469-470. Tiersot gives words and melodies (of which there are several, appearing in various MS collections) of “Faulte d'argent”, p. 233.
20 Josquin des Prés, Weredlijke Werken, ed. A. Smijers (Amsterdam and Leipzig, 1925), pp. 38-40. Josquin's setting of “Faulte d'argent” may also be found in the Historical Anthology of Music, ed. Archibald T. Davison and Willi Apel (Cambridge, Mass., 1946), no. 91, pp. 93-95. Included in the same anthology is “Faite d'argens” arranged as an organ canzona by Girolamo Cavazzoni, no. 118, pp. 126-127.
21 See Henri-Léonard Bordier, ed. Le Chansonnier Huguenot du XVI' siècle (Paris, 1870), ii, 424-425 and 436.
22 See “Un Index du XVIe siècle”, Bulletin de la société de l'histoire du protestantisme français, ii (1854), 16.
23 Gaston Paris, Chansons du XVe siècle (Paris, 1875), pp. 69-70 (words) and pp. 39-40 (music); and Gérold, Chansons populaires, pp. 40-41.
24 Claudio Sartori, Bibliografia délie opère musicale stampate da Otlaviano Petrucci (Fi-renze, 1948), p. 43.
25 Available in a modem edition: Clément Janequin, Chansons (Paris, 1529?), ed. Expert, Maîtres musiciens de la renaissance française, vii (Paris, 1898), 31-61.
26 There exists in MS an interesting poem by Guy Lef èvre de la Borderie, praising several musicians but extoling Janequin especially for his colorful settings, and mentioning two of his best known chansons—“Les Oiseaux” and “La Guerre”:
Mais Janequin subtil remist sus la pratique
Du genre coloré, ornant la Diatonique,
Et par l'humaine voix feist contrefaire au vif
De la guerre les tons, et le doux chant naïf
Des oiseaux desgoisans, que par un feint ramage
Il faisoit gringoter sa voix et son langage.
The entire poem is quoted by the Abbé H.-J. Molinier, Mellin de Saint-Gelays (Rodez, 1910), pp. 580-581, ii. 3.
27 Gérold, Chansons populaires, pp. 43-44.
28 Sartori, Bibliografia da Petrucci, p. 70.
29 Robert Eitner, Bibliographie der Musik-Sammelwerhe des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhun-derts (Berlin, 1877), pp. 433 and 598.
30 Gérold, Chansons populaires, pp. 43-44, gives words and music, with variant readings and MS sources. Paris, Chansons, gives text (pp. 10-11) and melody (“Musique”, trans-scribed by August Gavaert, p. 5), differing from Gerald's version. Paris cites another poem beginning “En l'ombre d'un buissonet”, pp. 20-21. A modern transcription of a MS written c. 1480 contains music and text of this chanson: Théodore Gérold, Le Manuscrit de Bayeux (Strasbourg, 1921), p. 119.
31 Tiersot, Chanson populaire, p. 240 ff.
32 In Plattard's edition, this prologue is printed in v, 264-272, with “Ecrits divers.” See p. 265.
33 Tiersot, Chanson populaire, p. 244.
34 Rabelais' grandmother married “en secondes noces” a man named Frapin, and of their six children, one was this “seigneur de Sainct George.” See Plattard, Œuvres de Rabelais, v, 363, n. 10.
35 The entire poem is quoted by Henri Clouzot, “Deux Noëls cités par Rabelais”, Revue des études rabelaisiennes, iv (1906), 189-190.
36 Henri Clouzot, “Topographie Rabelaisienne: Poitou”, ibid., ii (1904), 237. The melody which Friar John sang has been preserved and appears in Tiersot, Chanson populaire, pp. 248-249.
37 Ancien Théâtre François, ed. Emmanuel Louis Nicolas Viollet-le-Duc (Paris, 1854-57), ii, 373.
38 Eitner, Bibliographie, p. 323.
39 Bordier, Chansonnier Huguenot, i, xxxj, and ii, 439. Bordier does not give the texts to these songs and his chansonnier contains no music. For other parodies of “Hari, bouri-quet”, see i, 145-149 and 149-154.
40 So called in the Edition critique, iii, 142, n. 87.
41 L. Petit de Julleville, Les Mystères (Paris, 1880), i, 275.
42 Le Jardin de Plaisance et Fleur de Rhétorique (c. 1501), facsimile ed. E. Droz and A. Piaget (Paris, 1910-25), i ciii, recto.
43 Josquin des Prés, Werken, ed. A. Smijers, i, Missen (Leipzig, 1931-40), no. ix.
44 Jardin de Plaisance, i, 101.
45 Eitner, Bibliographie, p. 628.
46 See my article, “Rabelais and Musical Ideas”, Romanic Review, xli (1950), 24.
47 According to the “Briefve Declaration”: “Ttibilustre, on quel jour estaient en Rome benistes les trompettes dédiées aux sacrifices, en la basse court des tailleurs.”
48 Rabelais in His Writings (Cambridge, 1918), p. 213.
49 See biographical data in Hugo Riemann, Musik-Lexikon, elfte Auflage, ed. Alfred Einstein (Berlin, 1929).
60 The standard work on the composers of the Netherlandish Schools is August Wilhelm Ambros, Geschichte der Musik (Leipzig, 1881-93), iii, 3rd rev. ed. Otto Kade. For a more recent work on this subject, see André Pirro, Histoire de la musique de la fin da XIVe siècle à la fin du XVIe (Paris, 1940).
51 Cotgrave defines mignon and mignonne as “Minion, dainty, neat, spruce, compt, fine, elegant …” and mignonnement as “Minionly, minion-like.”
52 For instance, in his “Lettres écrites de Rome”, Plattard, Œuvres de Rabelais, v, 243.
53 Cotgrave defines “secret” as “Secret, inward, privy, close, hidden, concealed, abstruse, dark, mystical, unknown.”
54 See Edward Lowinsky, Secret Chromatic Art in the Netherlands Motet (New York, 1946). Mr. Lowinsky discusses the mitsica reservata at some length, p. 87 ff. He also quotes several passages from Rabelais' works showing him to be a past master of the art of ambiguity and his writings part of an esoteric movement in literature: see especially pp. 160-161. He does not, however, mention the musicians in their “jardin secret.”
55 The poem appears in the Œuvres complètes de Melin de Sainct-Gelays, ed. Prosper Blanchemain (Paris, 1873), iii, 266.
56 “Rabelais musicien”, Le Temps (7 mars 1933), p. 4.
57 Eitner, Bibliographie, p. 643, lists “Frere thibault” by Janequin in Moderne's Paragon des Chansons (1538) and Attaingnant's Cinquiesme liure cBtenant XXV. Chãsms (1539). According to Tiersot, Chanson populaire, p. 481, the piece was published in Attaingnant's Tresiesme livre contenant dix-neuf chansons, 1543.
58 Rabelais generally followed some source or basic plan for his many lengthy enumerations in Gargantua de Pantagrual. See, e.g., my article, “Rabelais and the Greek Dances”, MLN, lxrv (1949), 251-255.
59 This and subsequent information regarding song publications is based upon Eitner's Bibliographie, which lists chronologically all music publications as they appeared during the 16th and 17th centuries, with composers represented in each.
60 M. Plattard's note interpreting Rabelais' Rouzée as Cipriano da Rore (Œuvres de Rabelais, iv, 264, n. 55) is surely open to question, since the composer Rousée or Rouset had works published in Attaingnant collections in 1534 and 1535. See the lists of Rousée's works in Eitner, Bibliographie, p. 820.
61 Of the 180 chansons in the list, five are repetitions.
62 See Jean Plattard, Life of François Rabelais, tr. Louis P. Roche (London, 1930), p. 199.
63 See the introduction by Philomneste junior (Gustave Brunet) to the edition of 1576, La Navigation du compaignon à la bouteille (Genève, 1867), pp. v-xvi. The chansons are listed in the chapter, “Comment on dansa un bransle auquel une des damoiselles de la royne fit un saut merveilleux dont elle demeura pendue au haut de la salle”, pp. 38-41. Forty dances appear here, “qui sont toutes danses pour sauter et pour gambader” (p. 40).
64 Ibid., pp. 109-110, n. 12: “Nous complétons cette liste d'après l'édition de Claude de La Ville, 1547, ou elle est bien plus étendue que dans d'autres éditions.” A list of 33 additional chansons follows, two of which are repetitions.
65 Quite possibly, however, there are chansons “lurking” in the Fifth Book (as well as in the preceding books) which have not been discovered.