Clereau – D’un gosier machelaurier

Title

D’un gosier mache-laurier

Composer

Pierre Clereau (or Cler’eau)  (c.1520-c.1567)

Source

Premier Livre de Chansons, Le Roy & Ballard 1559

(text on Lieder.net here)
(blog entry here)
(no recording available)

We round off the set of chansons in Clereau’s 1st book with this setting of what Ronsard himself called a chanson. To me, it’s a bizarre text to set: very complex references and words – after all, how many readers/singers of Clereau’s book knew what a ‘laurel-chewing throat’ was? Or who Lycophron was, how he related to Cassandra – or yet how he related to Ronsard’s reading in the Alexandrian Pleiad? [See blog entry for more discussion!] 

Bizarre text or not, it was also set by Costeley – so was clearly well-known. And Clereau’s setting is rather neat, like the one of De peu de bien, a mix of the homophonic and the gently polyphonic, finding a nice balance between the old and the new, the French (Parisian) and the international styles.

When the songs from the 1st book were later collected into Clereau’s Odes of Ronsard, they ended up in a group in the middle of the book. Mostly the sequence was unchanged: but for some reason this song was transferred from the end of the group to the beginning. Why might that have been? I suspect it is precisely that factor: the bridge between styles. In this structure, with D’un gosier first and De peu de bien last, the repeated  songs are neatly book-ended by songs which bridge the styles, ensuring that singers know both styles are represented.

As another short setting (Ronsard’s stanza-from is also short), this is another song for which additionl verses are printed:

At least the text of these is slightly less specialised: the Trojan was being – hopefully! – sufficiently known to supply adequate context for its early singers.

 

 

 

Clereau – De peu de bien

Title

De peu de bien on vit honnestement

Composer

Pierre Clereau (or Cler’eau)  (c.1520-c.1567)

Source

Premier Livre de Chansons, Le Roy & Ballard 1559

(text on Lieder.net here)
(no blog entry yet)
(no recording available)

This one jogs along at a fairly consistent pace, all minims and semibreves: but although the opening is very homophopnic, and despite the even paving, the piece gradually introduces a more imitative style of real polyphony, with overlapping entries and little running figures. A neat balance between the two forms.

 

 

 

 

Clereau – O Dieux que j’ay de plaisir

Title

O Dieux, que j’ay de plaisir

Composer

Pierre Clereau (or Cler’eau)  (c.1520-c.1567)

Source

Premier Livre de Chansons, Le Roy & Ballard 1559

(text apparently not on Lieder.net)
(blog entry here – setting of alternate verses)
(no recording available)

A pleasant variation from the tune+accompaniment homophony characteristic of these 3-voice settings by Clereau: here the chordal setting is broken up with attractive runs in various voices. Clereau prints a couple of extra verses at the end, no doubt partly because the setting is quite short and there is space left to fill!

But in that small space Clereau takes several risks, sounding adjacent notes against each other ‘on the beat’ at the beginning of a bar: C-D in bar 7, B-C in bar 13, F-G in bar 29. Such emphatic discordant seconds are unusual…

 

Here are the extra verses printed:

 

 

 

Clereau – Le comble de ton sçavoir

Title

Le comble de ton sçavoir

Composer

Pierre Clereau (or Cler’eau)  (c.1520-c.1567)

Source

Premier Livre de Chansons, Le Roy & Ballard 1559

(text on Lieder.net here)
(blog entry here – setting of epode 2)
(recording here – The Toronto Consort, from CD The Italian Queen of France)

To accompany the previous post, Clereau’s “Ton nom que mon vers dira“, his setting of another segment of the same poem. Clereau prints his settings of these texts directly after each other, but in the reverse of the order they appear in the poem – where “Ton nom” follows “Le comble“. Why Clereau – and Lassus too – set them in this reversed sequence is not obvious.

Note also that Clereau stays in homophony throughout this setting, after the ‘break’ into polyphony at the climax of “Ton nom“. To me, it would make more sense to have that climax at the end of the two songs, if they are seen as a unit, rather than in the middle; so perhaps Clereau is not setting them as an implicit two-part song, but as separate entities? But then, why the choice of texts, and why put them side-by-side in his book..?

The recording by the Toronto Consort begins with “Ton nom“, and then continues on to “Le comble” – they clearly see this as a unit, whatever Clereau may or may not have thought!

Clereau – Ton nom que mon vers dira

Title

Ton nom que mon vers dira

Composer

Pierre Clereau (or Cler’eau)  (c.1520-c.1567)

Source

Premier Livre de Chansons, Le Roy & Ballard 1559

(text on Lieder.net here)
(blog entry here – setting of strophe 3)
(recording here – The Toronto Consort, from CD The Italian Queen of France)

Let’s return to the 3-voice settings by Clereau. This time a text which has strong Catholic associations – though it is also possible to see these as simply Royalist. Of course, the two might be just as polarised as each other from time to time in the late sixteenth century, a period of religious strife in France. (See the blog entry for further details – note that we’ve also had a setting of this text by Lassus.

The recording demonstrates that a homophonic setting is not musically uninteresting: it’s just very different from the polyphony we saw in Utendal, for instance. In fact it sounds very comfortably familiar to those of us brought up on Victorian hymn-tunes! And, to be fair, Clereau writes fairly mobile parts for each voice, which is not always the case with some of the musicians we shall meet: La Grotte, organist, writes in a style which I would call instrumental, in that the parts often all repeat chords in a way which would be easy to play on an organ, but which is rather less interesting as a part to sing… That may be why La Grotte’s settings were re-used by lutenists, while some more adventurous polyphonic pieces were not. At any rate, Clereau approaches this from a singer’s perspective, instead. (And includes a neat little piece of imitative polyphony at the end, just to prove he can do that too…)

Incidentally, the Toronto Consort, although new to me, are well-established, and I think it shows in their very fine recording.

Clereau – La Lune est coustumiere

Title

La Lune est coustumiere

Composer

Pierre Clereau (or Cler’eau)  (c.1520-c.1567)

Source

Premier Livre de Chansons, Le Roy & Ballard 1559

(text not (apparently) on Lieder.net site)
(blog entry here)
(recorded extract here – Ensemble Gilles Binchois, from CD Amours, amours)

Another 3-voice setting by Clereau. The text comes from the Odes, so making it entirely appropriate for re-publication later in Clereau’s Odes de Ronsard. The Ensemble Gilles Binchois used this song to open their CD Amours, amours which, to me, implies that they put a high value on it. So it is good to see Clereau getting some recognition.

Although, as I mentioned, the 3-voice songs are all relatively short, this one is particularly short, filling a bare two lines of music – only 3 musical phrases. Clereau considerately(!) prints 5 more verses to be sung to the same music – see picture. (The Ensemble Gilles Binchois sensibly present these in a variety of dfferent voicings – solo voices with instrumental accompaniment, reduced voices with instruments, etc). The excerpt I offer is the final verse with the fullest voicing.

Clereau – Comme un qui prend une coupe

Title

Comme un qui prend une coupe

Composer

Pierre Clereau (or Cler’eau)  (c.1520-c.1567)

Source

Premier Livre de Chansons, Le Roy & Ballard 1559

(text on Lieder.net site here)
(blog entry here)
(recording not available)

We head into uncharted territory with the first 3-voice setting so far added. I mentioned that Le Roy & Ballard’s ’10th book’ was devoted entirely to Clereau, which I take as a sign of his importance; note that this book – also entirely of settings by Clereau – came out in the same year as the ’10th book’, this time issued effectively as Clereau’s ‘opus 1’ (though that is a concept not yet used).

All the Ronsard settings in this book are in the homophonic style of the air de cour. This wasn’t because Clereau could only write that way: take for example the song Pis ne me peut venir, at the end of the book, which is a text of no particular literary pretensions widely set by other composers of the period. Clereau, like the others, sets it in the imitatve polyphonic style, demonstrating his mastery of that genre as well as leaving us with the question why all his Ronsard settings are in a ‘domestic’, French style rather than the international style.

These 3-voice songs are all relatively short. The 3 voice parts are labelled Superius, Superius 2, and Concordans (effectively the Tenor which supports both upper voices).

Clereau was one of the first to jump on the bandwagon for producing ‘Ronsard volumes’. He re-published this 1er Livre in 1566 as Odes de Ronsard, though 2 of the 3 part-books have not survived; and in the mid-1570s produced an expanded book of Odes of Ronsard, re-printing all the pieces in this First Book together with a number of new pieces. However, a large number of the over 45 pieces in the book were not Ronsard settings!

No recorded extract, as this – with Clereau’s other 3-part songs – has been neglected to date.