Amours 1.215

De ses Maris, l’industrieuse Heleine,

L’esguille en main retraçoit les combas

Dessus sa toile : en ce poinct tu t’esbas

D’ouvrer le mal duquel ma vie est pleine.

 

Mais tout ainsi, Maistresse, que ta leine

Et ton fil noir desseignent mon trespas,

Tout au rebours pourquoy ne peins-tu pas

De quelque verd un espoir à ma peine ?

 

Mon œil ne voit sur ta gaze rangé

Sinon du noir, sinon de l’orangé,

Tristes tesmoins de ma longue souffrance.

 

O fier destin ! son œil ne me desfait

Tant seulement, mais tout ce qu’elle fait,

Ne me promet qu’une desesperance.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            Her husbands’ battles the industrious Helen,

                                                                            Needle in hand, retraced

                                                                            Upon her cloth; in the same way you enjoy yourself

                                                                            Laying open the pain with which my life is filled.

 

                                                                            But even as, mistress, your wool

                                                                            And your black thread depict my death,

                                                                            Instead why do you not paint

                                                                            With some green a hope in my pain?

 

                                                                            My eyes see nothing arrayed upon your gauze

                                                                            But black and orange colours,

                                                                            Sad witnesses of my long suffering.

 

                                                                            O proud fate! Her eyes do not defeat me

                                                                            By themselves, but everything that she does

                                                                            Promises me nothing but despair.

 

 

 

The allusion to a wife embroidering a husband’s battles perhaps brings more readily to mind Penelope making (and un-making) her tapestry while awaiting the return of Odysseus in Homer’s epic. But here it is the dutiful Helen (hardly our image of her!) who is sitting weaving. The scene comes from Iliad book 3, where the rainbow goddess Iris comes as messenger of the gods to Helen, and finds her weaving scenes of the Trojan War which (Helen recognises) is a fight for possession of her. (Her husband at this point is Paris, though Iris instils a longing for her former husband Menelaus – another reason for Ronsard to speak of her weaving both husbands’ battles … )

 

Of course the precise details are not the point: Ronsard merely needs the image of a wife weaving her husband’s tale – to contrast it with his own tale of woe being woven by Cassandre.

 

Blanchemain’s earlier version differs in a number of details. In line 1, technically both Achaeans and Trojans were ‘Greeks’, although we tend to think of it as a war between ‘Greeks’ and ‘Trojans’. In line 3 Ronsard replaces the vaguely-mediaeval ‘gauze’ with the more common ‘cloth’; and in line 6 also he opts for less recondite words in his later version.

 

 

Des maris grecs l’industrieuse Heleine,

L’aiguille en main retraçoit les combas ;

Dessus ta gaze en ce poinct tu t’esbas,

Traçant le mal duquel ma vie est pleine.

 

Mais tout ainsi, Maistresse, que ta leine

D’un filet noir figure mon trespas,

Tout au rebours pourquoy ne peins-tu pas

De quelque verd un espoir à ma peine ?

 

Las ! je ne vois sur ta gaze rangé

Sinon du noir, sinon de l’orangé,

Tristes tesmoins de ma longue souffrance.

 

O fier destin ! son œil ne me desfait

Tant seulement, mais tout ce qu’elle fait,

Ne me promet qu’une desesperance.

 

 

                                                                            Her Greek husbands’ battles the industrious Helen,

                                                                            Needle in hand, retraced ;

                                                                            Upon your gauze in the same way you enjoy yourself

                                                                            Drawing the pain with which my life is filled.

 

                                                                            But even as, mistress, your wool

                                                                            With its black thread represents my death,

                                                                            Instead why do you not paint

                                                                            With some green a hope in my pain?

 

                                                                            Alas, I see nothing arrayed upon your gauze

                                                                            But black and orange colours,

                                                                            Sad witnesses of my long suffering.

 

                                                                            O proud fate! Her eyes do not defeat me

                                                                            By themselves, but everything that she does

                                                                            Promises me nothing but despair.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amours 1.203

Celuy qui fist le monde façonné

Sur le compas de son parfait exemple,

Le couronnant des voûtes de son temple,

M’a par destin ton esclave ordonné.

 

Comme l’esprit qui saintement est né

Pour voir son Dieu, quand sa face il contemple,

Plus heureux bien, recompense plus ample

Que de le voir, ne luy est point donné ;

 

Ainsi je pers ma peine coustumiere,

Quand à longs traits j’œillade la lumiere

De ton bel œil, chef-d’œuvre nompareil.

 

Voila pourquoy, quelque part qu’il sejourne,

Tousjours vers luy maugré moy je me tourne,

Comme un Souci aux rayons du Soleil.

 

 

 

                                                                            He who made the world fashioned

                                                                            On the measure of his perfect example,

                                                                            Crowning it with the vaults of his temple,

                                                                            Has ordained me by fate as your slave.

 

                                                                            Like a spirit which is born holy

                                                                            To see its God, when it contemplates His face

                                                                            Is given no greater good, no repayment

                                                                            More ample, than to see Him;

 

                                                                            Just so I lose my accustomed pain

                                                                            When in long draughts I drink in the light

                                                                            Of your fair eye, an unequalled masterpiece.

 

                                                                            That is why, wherever it is,

                                                                            I always despite myself turn towards it

                                                                            As a marigold turns to the rays of the sun.

 

 

 

 As Muret tells us, this poem is ‘almost a translation of Bembo’s sonnet‘ (below); and, this time, this is more literally true than elsewhere when Ronsard borrows ideas but offers a different poem.  Here Ronsard’s poem – while clearly a Ronsard poem, and with ‘in-fill’ which is his own – remains faithfully very close to the original.

 

Here’s Bembo – rime 38:

 

L’alta cagion, che da principio diede

A le cose create ordine e stato,

Dispose ch’io v’amassi e dielmi in fato,

Per far di sé col mondo exemplo e fede.

 

Che sì come virtù da lei procede,

Che ‘l tempra e regge, e come è sol beato

A cui per grazia il contemplarla è dato,

Et essa è d’ogni affanno ampia mercede,

 

Così ‘l sostegno mio da voi mi vene

Od in atti cortesi od in parole,

E sol felice son, quand’io vi miro.

 

Né maggior guiderdon de le mie pene

Posso aver di voi stessa, ond’io mi giro

Pur sempre a voi, come elitropio al sole.

 

 

                                                                            The high Cause, who from the beginning gave

                                                                            To created things their order and station,

                                                                            Arranged that I should love you and handed me to the fates

                                                                            To make of this an example of faithfulness for the world.

 

                                                                            That, as virtue flows from Him

                                                                            Who tempers and rules it, and as it is with the blessed sun,

                                                                            So by Him the gift of looking upon her is given by grace,

                                                                            And she is the ample reward for all labour;

 

                                                                            So, my support comes to me from you

                                                                            Whether in acts of courtesy or in words,

                                                                            And I am only happy when I gaze upon you.

 

                                                                            No greater reward for my troubles

                                                                            Could I have from you yourself, hence I turn myself

                                                                            Always and only toward you, as the heliotrope does the sun.

 

 

That did not stop Ronsard improving his version between editions! In Blanchemain’s edition, lines 6- 7 read “quand sa face il contemple, / De tous maux un salaire plus ample …” (‘when it contemplates His face, / For all its troubles no greater payment / Than to see Him is given to it.’)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Janequin – Pourquoy tournés vous

Title

Pourquoy tournés vous voz yeux

Composer

Clément Janequin

Source

Huitiesme Livre de Chansons, published by Le Roy & Ballard, 1557

(text on Lieder.net site here)
(blog entry here)
(recording here – source: Janequin – La Chasse & autres chansons, Ensemble Clément Janequin)

By coincidence (I guess!) the two Ronsard texts chosen by Sweelinck are also the only two Ronsard texts in the 1575 edition of the 8th book of songs published by Le Roy and Ballard. This is one of those books which, in its various editions, saw songs come and go: the full listing is on the ‘sources’ page. It’s faintly odd that in the mid-1570s, when volumes devoted (almost) entirely to Ronsard song were very much the fashion, Le Roy and Ballard actually reduced the number of Ronsard songs included in the new edition of their 8th book!

My transcription uses the 1557 S-T-B parts which are on Gallica, and the 1559 Contra (where the word underlay is fractionally different – I’ve standardised it here) which I enjoyed handling in the British Library. The tiny size of the book caught me by surprise – the pages are much smaller than a modern postcard.

Janequin’s setting – nearly 50 years older than Sweelinck’s! – naturally sounds old-fashioned beside it. Long stretches of homophony, relieved by patches of polyphony; a much less consistent (or insistent) use of melodic ‘themes’. But Janequin does play with triple-rhythm at several points, though in a way which is less audible in performance than it is visible in the score…  The selection I’ve chosen includes a couple of these triple-time segments.

Sweelinck – Plus tu cognois

 

Title

Plus tu cognois que je brusle pour toy

Composer

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621)

Source

Chansons a cinc parties de M. Jean Pierre Svvelingh, 1594

 

(text on Lieder.net site here)
(blog entry here)
(recording here – source: Sweelinck, The Secular Vocal Works, Gesualdo Consort Amsterdao)

 

Here’s the other Sweelinck setting of Ronsard. Little to add to my previous comments on Sweelinck – though you might note the way the opening melodic phrase is picked up and repeated (again and again) very precisely in each voice – a move towards baroque fugue technique, beyond the looser approaches of the renaissance fuga. Sweelinck also delivers a fabulous cadence at bar 40, where the newly-departing phrase manages to take off without in any way diminishing the power of the ‘minor’ feeling as the previous one finishes. Ravishing! (That ‘minor’ mood was also clear in the previous Sweelinck piece – another sign of his move towards baroque tonality and away from renaissance ‘modes’.)

Incidentally, this text is one of the most popular among Ronsard’s composers – the first time we’ve had it here, but plenty more to come…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amours 1.219

Depuis le jour que captif je souspire,

Comme un serpent l’an s’est tourné sept fois :

(Sous astre tel je pris l’haim) toutesfois

Plus qu’au premier ma fiévre me martire.

 

Quand je soulois en mon estude lire

Du Florentin les lamentables vois,

Comme incredule alors je ne pouvois

En le mocquant, me contenir de rire.

 

Je ne pensoy, tant novice j’estoy,

Qu’homme eust senti ce que je ne sentoy,

Et par mon fait les autres je jugeoye.

 

Mais l’Archerot qui de moy se facha,

Pour me punir un tel traict me cacha

Dedans le cœur, qu’onque puis je n’eus joye.

 

 

 

                                                                            Since the day I sighed in captivity

                                                                            The year has turned, like a serpent, seven times :

                                                                            Beneath such a star I hooked myself. Yet

                                                                            More than at first my fever tortures me.

 

                                                                            When I used to read in my study

                                                                            The Florentine’s lamenting voice,

                                                                            Like a disbeliever then I could not,

                                                                            Mocking him, restrain my laughter.

 

                                                                            I did not think, such a novice was I,

                                                                            That man could have felt what I did not feel,

                                                                            And by my actions I judged others.

 

                                                                            But the little Archer, angry with me,

                                                                            To punish me buried such a wound

                                                                            Within my heart that since then I’ve had no happiness.

 

 

 

Perhaps this is the nearest Ronsard gets to admitting that he set out complaining about the fashion for frivolous love sonnets, and writing classical odes instead, but then ended up writing this collection of over 200 to establish himself!

 

The ‘Florentine’ of line 6 is of course Petrarch, born in Arezzo but brought up just outside Florence.

 

In revising his earlier version, Ronsard very neatly made one change in each ‘stanza’ [though to be fair one is really only a minor change in the mood of a verb]. All are only changes of detail, though each is a small but valuable improvement. So here’s the whole poem again in that earlier version:

 

 

Depuis le jour que captif je souspire,

L’an dedans soi s’est tourné sept fois :

(Sous astre tel je pris l’haim) toutesfois

Plus qu’au premier ma fiévre me martire.

 

Quand je soulois en ma jeunesse lire

Du Florentin les lamentables vois,

Comme incredule alors je ne pouvois

En Ie mocquant, me contenir de rire.

 

Je ne pensois, tant novice j’estoy,

Qu’homme eust senti ce que je ne sentoy,

Et par mon fait les autres je jugeoye.

 

Mais l’Archerot qui de moy se facha,

Pour me punir un tel soin me cacha

Dedans le cœur, qu’onque puis je n’eus joye.

 

 

 

                                                                            Since the day I sighed in captivity

                                                                            The year upon itself has turned seven times :

                                                                            Beneath such a star I hooked myself. Yet

                                                                            More than at first my fever tortures me.

 

                                                                            When I used to read in my youth

                                                                            The Florentine’s lamenting voice,

                                                                            Like a disbeliever then I could not,

                                                                            Mocking him, restrain my laughter.

 

                                                                            I did not think, such a novice was I,

                                                                            That man could have felt what I did not feel,

                                                                            And by my actions I judged others.

 

                                                                            But the little Archer, angry with me,

                                                                            To punish me buried such care

                                                                            Within my heart that since then I’ve had no happiness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amours 1.216

Amour, que j’aime à baiser les beaux yeux

De ma maistresse, et à tordre en ma bouche

De ses cheveux l’or fin qui s’escarmouche

Dessus son front astré comme les cieux !

 

C’est à mon gré le meilleur de son mieux

Que son bel œil, qui jusqu’au cœur me touche,

Dont le beau nœud d’un Scythe plus farouche

Rendroit le cœur courtois et gracieux.

 

Son beau poil d’or, et ses sourcis encore

De leurs beautez font vergoingner l’Aurore,

Quand au matin elle embellit le jour.

 

Dedans son œil une vertu demeure,

Qui va jurant par les fleches d’Amour

De me guarir : mais je ne m’en asseure.

 

 

 

                                                                            Love, how I love kissing the beautiful eyes

                                                                            Of my mistress, and twisting in my mouth

                                                                            The fine gold of her hair which skirmishes

                                                                            Over her brow, starry like the heavens!

 

                                                                            In my opinion, the best of her best

                                                                            Is her fair eye, which touches me deep in my heart,

                                                                            And her fair Scythian knot, still wilder,

                                                                            Makes my heart courteous and graceful.

 

                                                                            Her fair golden hair, her eyebrows too

                                                                            With their beauties make the Dawn blush

                                                                            When in the morning she beautifies the day.

 

                                                                            Within her eye lives a power

                                                                            Which keeps swearing by Love’s arrows

                                                                            To cure me; but I won’t rely on it.

 

 

 

Again, Ronsard takes tropes he’s ued and re-used many times, and makes something fresh and vibrant out of them. I do like this poem, and the ending especially wraps up a marvellous complex of feelings both positive and negative about the condition of love in just a few words.

 

 Although the earlier version shares a recognisable set of ideas with this later version, in detail it is a different poem! (Fortunately, the different opening words signal there’s change to watch out for.) Note how some re-punctuation around line 7’s Scythian completely shifts the meaning.

 

 

Mon Dieu, que j’aime à baiser les beaux yeux

De ma maistresse, et à tordre en ma bouche

De ses cheveux l’or fin qui s’escarmouche

Si gayement dessus deux petits cieux !

 

C’est à mon gré ce qui lui sied le mieux

Que ce bel œil, qui jusqu’au cœur me touche,

Et ce beau poil, qui d’un Scythe farouche

Prendroit le cœur en ses plis gracieux.

 

Ses longs cheveux, et ses sourcis encore

De leurs beautez font vergongner l’Aurore,

Quand plus crineuse elle embellit le ciel,

 

Et dans cet œil je ne sais quoi demeure

Qui me peut faire en amour à toute heure

Le sucre fiel et le riagas miel. 

 

 

                                                                            My god, how I love kissing the beautiful eyes

                                                                            Of my mistress, and twisting in my mouth

                                                                            The fine gold of her hair which skirmishes

                                                                            So gaily above those two small heavens.

 

                                                                            In my opinion, the things which suit her best,

                                                                            Are that fair eye, which touches me deep in my heart,

                                                                            And that beautiful hair, which would seize the heart

                                                                            Of a wild Scythian in its graceful folds.

 

                                                                            Her long hair, her eyebrows too

                                                                            With their beauties make the Dawn blush

                                                                            When with hair spread wide she beautifies the sky.

 

                                                                            And in that eye lives some unknown

                                                                            Bitter sugar and honey-sweet poison

                                                                            Which can make me be in love all the time. 

 

 

Blanchemain also offers us another complete re-write of the final tercet, from 1587 (Marty-Laveaux’s is the 1584 text), which shows that Ronsard never really felt any of his poems, even the delightfully-good ones, were a finished statement:

 

En son œil vole une image vestue

D’aile et de traits : je croy que c’est Amour,

Je le cognois, il me blesse, il me tue. 

 

                                                                            In her eye floats an image clothed

                                                                            With wings and barbs; I believe it is Love,

                                                                            I recognise him – he wounds me, he kills me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sweelinck – Pourquoy tournez vous

 

Title

Pourquoy tournez vouz voz yeux

Composer

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621)

Source

Chansons a cinc parties de M. Jean Pierre Svvelingh, 1594

 

(text on Lieder.net site here)
(blog entry here)
(recording here – source: Sweelinck, The Secular Vocal Works, Gesualdo Consort Amsterdao)

 

Time for a new composer and a new source. Sweelinck is someone we tend to think of as ‘early Baroque’, mainly because of his forward-looking organ works. It’s odd to see him in company with people who are clearly NOT baroque – yet that is the reality of Sweelinck. As is the fact that his keyboard music is a small (and in some ways unrepresentative) fraction of his total output, in a recent ‘complete’ edition around 7CDs compared with around 17CDs of vocal music (two-thirds of it psalm settings).

The vocal music is much ‘closer’ to its pre-baroque contemporaries, as the settings of Ronsard show. Even so, the vocal settings show forward-looking ideas: in this one, for instance, the voices enter one by one over a remarkably long span of time, rather than (e.g.) in pairs or sequentially but much closer together; and the quinta and bassus effectively act together as the ‘bass line’, a fine and sonorous support for the 3 lines above which, in turn, already show something of the ‘melody plus accompaniment’ style developing into the baroque.

As the title page shows, though Sweelinck wrote in the French style (among others) to gain sales in the French market, his contemporaries (even those in Franco-Flemish Anvers = Antwerp in the Low Countries, had some problems with his name!

(image from Gallica)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regnard – Je suis plus aise

 

Title

Je suis plus aise que les Dieux

Composer

François Regnard

Source

Poésies de P. de Ronsard et autres Poëtes, 1579

 

(text on Lieder.net site here)
(blog entry here)
(recorded extract here – source: Ronsard et les Néerlandais, Egidius Kwartet)

 

Only the first quatrain, and not even a complete version of those lines – Regnard keeps it short and sweet in this setting! The superius has a text variant at the top of page 3 – a quite suitable typo, but on this occasion Ronsard is happy not sad… The quavers on the first beat of bar 27 surprised me (I think this is Regnard stretching the ‘rules’) but this is a fluent setting designed to engage the reader / listener at the opening of the book, alongside “Si je trespasse”.

(Image courtesy of Uppsala universitetsbibliotek.)

 The recorded extract is the end of the chanson, from “Tout esperdu…” onwards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amours 1.209

L’Homme a la teste ou de plomb ou de bois,

S’il ne tressaut de crainte et de merveille,

Quand face à face il voit ma non-pareille,

Ou quand il oit les accords de sa voix :

 

Ou quand, pensive, aux jours des plus beaux mois

Amour tout seul seulette la conseille

Par les jardins, et d’une main vermeille

Faire un bouquet des fleurettes de chois :

 

Ou quand l’Esté, lors que le chaud s’avale,

Au soir à l’huis l’apperçoit qu’elle egale

La soye à l’or d’un pouce ingenieux :

 

Puis de ses doigts qui les roses effacent,

Toucher son Luth, et d’un tour de ses yeux

Piller les cueurs de mille hommes qui passent.

 

 

 

                                                                            A man has a head made of lead or wood

                                                                            If he does not start from fear and wonder

                                                                            When he sees face to face my unequalled lady

                                                                            Or when he hears the harmony of her voice ;

 

                                                                            Or when, pensive in the fairest months,

                                                                            Love and Love alone advises her alone

                                                                            In the gardens, and with a rosy hand

                                                                            Makes a bouquet from the choicest blooms ;

 

                                                                            Or when in the summer, when the heat abates

                                                                            In the evening, he notices her by the door as she makes

                                                                            Silk like gold with her clever fingers ;

 

                                                                            Then with her fingers which are pinker than roses

                                                                            Playing her lute, and with a glance of her eyes

                                                                            Stealing the hearts of a thousand passing men. 

 

 

 

 

Here’s another side of Ronsard, the poet who can bounce from the ridiculous to the sublime in the blink of an eye. This opening is hardly the stuff great poems are meant to be made of – but how arresting it is, and how smoothly it segues into the beautifully-made and very visual images of Cassandre.

 

Blanchemain’s earlier version has a slightly less arresting opening, a slightly less ‘ridiculous’ point from which to transition; and the image that follows is a little less sure.

 

 

L’homme est vraiment ou de plomb ou de bois,

S’il ne tressaut de crainte et de merveille,

Quand face à face il void ma non-pareille,

Ou quand il oyt les accords de sa voix ;

 

Ou quand, pensive, aux jours des plus beaux mois,

La voit à part (comme un qui se conseille)

Tracer les prés, et d’une main vermeille

Tirer de rang les fleurettes de choix ;

 

Ou quand, l’esté, lorsque le chaud s’avale,

Au soir, à l’huys il la void qu’elle egale

La soye à l’or d’un pouce ingenieux ;

 

Puis de ses doits, qui les roses effacent,

Toucher son luth, et d’un tour de ses yeux

Piller les cœurs de mille hommes qui passent.  

 

 

 

                                                                            A man is truly made of lead or wood

                                                                            If he does not start from fear and wonder

                                                                            When he sees face to face my unequalled lady

                                                                            Or when he hears the harmony of her voice ;

 

                                                                            Or when he sees her alone, pensive,

                                                                            In the fairest months, as if taking counsel with herself,

                                                                            Crossing the meadows and with her rosy hand

                                                                            Picking from their rows the choicest blooms ;

 

                                                                            Or when in the summer, when the heat abates

                                                                            In the evening, he sees her by the door as she makes

                                                                            Silk like gold with her clever fingers ;

 

                                                                            Then with her fingers which are pinker than roses

                                                                            Playing her lute, and with a glance of her eyes

                                                                            Stealing the hearts of a thousand passing men. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amours 1.204

Le doux Sommeil qui toute chose appaise,

N’appaise point le soing qui m’a ravy :

En vous je meurs, en vous seule je vy,

Ne voyant rien sinon vous qui me plaise.

 

Vos yeux au cœur m’ont jetté telle braise,

Qu’un feu depuis m’a tousjours pouirsuivy,

Et dés le jour qu’en dançant je vous vy,

Je meurs pour vous et si en suis bien aise.

 

De mal en mal, de souci en souci

J’ay l’ame triste et le corps tout transi,

Sans eschaufer le froid de vostre glace.

 

Au moins lisez et voyez sur mon front

Combien de morts vos doux regars me font :

« Le soing caché se cognoist à la face.  

 

 

 

                                                                            Sweet sleep, which makes all things calm,

                                                                            Cannot calm the pain which has seized me ;

                                                                            In you I die, in you alone I live,

                                                                            Seeing nothing but you which pleases me.

 

                                                                            Your eyes have thrust such a furnace into my heart

                                                                            That a fire has since then always pursued me

                                                                            And since the day I saw you dancing

                                                                            I have been dying for you and yet am happy to be so.

 

                                                                            From one ill to another, from one care to another

                                                                            My soul is sad and my body utterly numb,

                                                                            Without warming the cold of your ice.

 

                                                                            At least read and see upon my brow

                                                                            How many times your sweet glances do me to death :

                                                                            “Hidden cares make themselves known on the face.”

 

 

 

Death and life, fire and ice – formal opposites we meet often in Ronsard, yet each time he finds a way of refreshing them and avoiding mere repetition.

 

The only difference between this and Blanchemain’s earlier version is in line 6, where Ronsard simply adjusted the order of words to achieve a line ‘built’ slightly better: the old version is “Qu’un feu toujours depuis m’a pouirsuivy”. To try to catch the difference in English I suppose we could re-translate ‘That a fire always since then has pursued me’, though I am far from sure which of my two versions is the more, which the less, awkward!