songs (6vv) | Oeuvres de Ronsard

Title

Pleut il à Dieu n’avour jamais taté

Composer

Alexander Utendal (c. 1543-1581)

Source

Fröhliche neue Teutsche und Frantzösische Lieder, Dieterich Gerlach (Nuremberg) 1574

(text on Lieder.net site here – as Las! Pleut à Dieu)
(blog entry here)
(recorded extract here: source, Hofmusik auf Schloss Ambras: Froeliche newe Teutsche vnnd Frantzoesische Lieder (1574), Neue Innsbrucker Hofkapelle)

The last of Utendal’s Ronsard settings, moving up to 6 voice-parts, and in 2 sections. It’s a fitting climax to the book, with all 6 parts highly mobile (plenty of runs of quavers) unlike many of his French contemporaries with their homophonic inner parts often very static. This is polyphony in its fully-developed mid-sixteenth century style.

This is one of the poems removed from the Amours (retranchée) in later editions, so still awaits posting on this blog.

I’ve chosen the lively opening for the extract: lots of imitative entries piling on top of one another, and lots of little runs in all the parts. It runs to about bar 33 of the transcription.

part 2

Title

Bon jour mon coeur, bon jour ma douce vie

Composer

Philippe de Monte (1521-1603)

Source

Le Rossignol Musical … , Phalèse 1597
(text on Lieder.net site here)
(blog entry here)
(recording here: source, Philippus de Monte – Motets, madrigals & chansons, Ensemble Orlando Fribourg)

A new composer, and this time a Flemish one well-known for his polyphony in the Italian/Flemish style rather than for chansons in the French style. But of course like Lassus and others he wrote in many styles. This is an interesting setting, since it consciously adopts the French style in the homophony of the opening, though the solo soprano contrasting with the rest of the group is rather a ‘modern’ & non-French touch. The section in triple time which follows allows de Monte to show off (still homophonically) a variety of different groupings within his choir; and then he allows himself to indulge in something more like his usual dense polyphony, before showing his versatility by setting the second verse in a nicely varied repeat of the first – similar but rarely quite the same for any length of time. It’s also quite an intriguing setting, in that it sounds rather like one of those ‘epigrammatic’ settings which set perhaps half a sonnet, yet in fact sets the whole 18 line chanson.

The 1597 Rossignol musical is a late source, but the setting originally appeared in de Monte’s own book of Ronsard settings in 1575.

The recording is an attractive one from a Swiss choir I’ve not come across before, though they have been around for some 20 years!