Return of the Renaissance Series 1: The Animals

Birds - Les Oiseaux
Clément Janequin
Posted September 18, 2020

It should come as no surprise that music has often tried to echo or reproduce the sounds of the natural world.  In the natural world, birds and their diverse songs and calls are among the most striking examples of sounds that have identifiable melody and rhythm and throughout Western musical history composers have made use of bird sounds.

Franz Snyders (1579–1657), Concert of Birds (ca 1630–1640), Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia)

One the earliest secular songs for which the music has been preserved, the complex double round “Sumer is icumen in” (mid-13th century) identifies the arrival of the summer with the loud call of a cuckoo (“Lhude sing cuccu”).  The well known downward minor third of the cuckoo’s call appears briefly in the main round. (Although it is the minor third that everybody recognizes, the interval of the cuckoo’s call gets wider as the season progresses, eventually reaching a fourth.  Thus, Mahler did not get it wrong, as some have said, when he introduces a cuckoo call of a fourth in his First Symphony; he was just pinpointing the time as “late summer”!)

Among numerous examples from the Baroque period there is Vivaldi, who has a violin concerto (A major RV 335) subtitled “Il cucù” as well as a flute concerto subtitled “Il gardinello” (the Goldfinch; 1729; No. 3 of the op. 10 set). The cuckoo appears again (as a clarinet) in the second movement of Beethoven’s sixth symphony “Pastoral” (a minor third) along with calls that vaguely imitate the nightingale and the quail.

Nor did this fascination with bird song pass. In the 20th century, the French composer Olivier Messiaen criss-crossed France notating bird song, eventually amassing thousands of pages of notes, some of which became transformed into his music. His musical ornithology culminated in his “Catalogue des oiseaux” (1958) for piano, which contains the calls of 77 birds.

Other composers incorporated actual bird song. In the third movement of his tone poem, Pini di Roma (The Pines of Rome; 1924) Ottorino Respighi’s score calls for a phonograph recording of a nightingale to be played over the top of his orchestral music.  Some 50 years later, the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara wrote his Cantus arcticus (1972), subtitled “Concerto for Birds and Orchestra,” in which he superimposes his composed music on top of a soundscape consisting of an actual recording of birds in the North of Finland.

Renaissance composers, not surprisingly, also turned to birds in their music (earlier in this series we talked about swans in the music of Arcadelt and Gibbons). However, Clément Janequin probably deserves pride of place. Among his roughly 400 chansons there are several which have birds as their topic, including a “Chant de l’alouette” (Song of the lark) and a “Chant du rossignol” (Song of the nightingale), but his tour de force was undoubtedly the encyclopedic “Le chant des oyseaulx” (the original spelling in Attaignant’s 1528 edition).

An area in which Janequin had no peer among his contemporaries consists of his “grands chansons,” large-scale, programmatic pieces in several sections, often 5–7 minutes in length. The most popular of these is “La Bataille” celebrating the rather insignificant battle of Marignano (1515), which otherwise would be forgotten by all but professional historians. “La chasse” celebrates hunting, the prevalent pursuit of the nobility of the age. “Les cris de Paris” is a tour-de force that combines the myriad cries of street vendors in the teeming streets of Paris into a coherent vocal work. And then there is the “Chant des oiseaux.”

This grande chanson consists of a narrative text combined with numerous birdcalls (the cuckoo appears again in verse 4). It is in the form of an opening and closing refrain sandwiching four verses, although since the verses end in a repetition of the music of the refrain, it is in fact a multi-layer sandwich. On the surface, the text appears to be almost a cliché:  spring, with its numerous bird calls, is the season for new love. “Wake up, sleepy hearts, the god of love is summoning you” (Resveillez vous cuers endormis, le dieu damours vous sonne) urges the refrain. “It is the first day of May, the birds will perform wonders …  Just unplug your ears” exhorts the first verse.

Roelant Savary (1576–1639), Birds in a Landscape (1622) Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique

But what would a Renaissance piece be if one could not find additional layers of meaning? Philippe Caron (an expert in the French language of the 16th century) argues that there is actually an underlying message in the apparent onomatopoeic sounds of the birds, which can also become transcriptions of colloquial dialogue (e.g. Turri = tu ris = are you laughing? Or Ticun = petit con = you stupid fool); and (not surprisingly) some phrases have a distinctly sexual undertone (cuckoo/cocu = cuckhold). Indeed, Caron goes as far as to suggest that there may be yet another layer to this complex piece and that the original version (there was a later, shorter, version) might have been a personal attack by Janequin on a fellow-composer, Guillaume Colin (the words “Guilemette Colinette” — with its pejorative use of a grammatical diminutive — appear fleetingly in the tenor part). Caron says that Janequin seems to be accusing Colin of trying to steal one of Janequin’s own patrons by non-musical subterfuge.

As so often in Janequin’s grands chansons, the challenge for the singers is not so much in the possibility of multiple layers of meaning, as it is to negotiate the tricky rhythms while not losing your place in the sequences of repeated “nonsense” syllables where there is no meaning to provide signposts. All this is exacerbated by the fact that there seems no limit to how fast these pieces should go! In “Le chant des oyseaulx” you can at least be grateful for the “restarts” provided by each verse! CRSP has performed this work several times, most recently in our Christmas 2015 concert entitled “Byrd and Birds.”

Janequin’s “Chant des oiseaux” as performed by “A sei voce” conducted by Bernard Fabre-Garrus

An untraditional video that shows visually the principle of polyphonic imitation (even if the intonations are not always quite as immaculate as the miming).

Chickens – Il est bel est bon, commère, mon mari
Pierre Passereau
Posted August 11, 2020

Tacuinum sanitatis in medicina ad narrandum sex res necessarias – et septentrionalibus regionibus (a mid 15th century [German] translation of a well-known 11th century Arab medical treatise by Ibn Butlan of Bagdad), Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Latin 9333 fo 63r.

Songs can be an important source of information about social norms and customs.  Madrigal and chanson composers often turned to texts that addressed issues of the day, subjecting them to everything from harmless fund to biting satire. The gamut of topics — from philandering religious (e.g. Orlando Lasso “Un jeune moine est sorti du couvent” [A young man came out of the monastery]) to the custom that a young woman could not marry until her elder sisters were married (Thomas Vautor’s “Mother, I will have a husband”) — were fair game for composers.

At a time when marriages were frequently arranged for social or economic benefit by parents with little regard for the wishes of those being married (the higher the social class, the more likely that was), songs dealing with various aspects of marriage were widespread. Perhaps surprisingly, given that most of the texts and music were by men, the fate — and perspective — of women appears extensively, even including explicit domestic abuse (e.g. Lassus’s “Quand mon mari vient de dehors [When my husband comes in] which includes the line “I greatly fear that he will kill me”).

Among frequent laments was the lot of young women married against their will to older men. Some accepted their situation (while mocking the marital efforts, e.g. Thomas Ravenscroft “I lay with an old man”), others rebelled by taking younger lovers:  cuckolded husbands was a particularly common theme (e.g. Pierre Certon’s “La, la, la, je ne l’ose dire” [La, la ,la; I dare not say it]).  And love as a battlefield was a cliché (e.g. Giovanni Gastoldi “Amor vittorioso” [Victorious Love]).

Page 1 of the original 1536 Attaignant publication

Beyond the fact that he was a documented singer (tenor) in a number of important French choirs from the end of the 15th century, very little is known about the life of Pierre Passereau (fl. 1509–1547). Of his compositions, only his chansons have survived, thanks to their publication by Pierre Attaignant. Thus saved from oblivion, Passereau is, alongside Janequin and Claudin Sermisy, among the most popular composers of the French chanson. Indeed, his brilliant “Il est bel et bon, commère, mon mari” (My husband is both handsome and kind, mistress) was first published by Attaingnant in the same 1536 collection, Tiers livre contenant XXI chansons à quatre esleves de plusieurs livres, as Janequin’s “Martin menoit son porceau,” No. 2 in the present series.

The Poultry Yard (Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht) (1670–90)

“Il est bel et bon” is an interesting example of a reversal of the accepted gender roles. Two women gossiping over the backyard fence, query each other about their husbands. Although it is not clear whether we are dealing with one exceptional spouse, or whether both these women have found such a paragon, they both seem very content — and with good reason. Not only does this model husband break the conventional mold in that he neither beats, nor scolds his wife, but he even does the household tasks, including the traditional female chore of feeding the chickens, while his wife can relax and take her ease. So astounding is this, laughs the wife, that even the chickens are bemused, as they ask each other “what’s going on?” Of course, hardened cynics might wonder if there is not just a hint — when the chickens address each other as “petite coquette” (you little flirt) — that the wives might be using their unanticipated free time for other activities.

Seven Chicks (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) (c1665–68)

This chanson is remarkable as a tour de force of repetition — in words and music, beginning with its basic form:  a refrain (“My husband is handsome and good”) and verses with the refrain starting and finishing the piece as well as separating the three verses. What immediately strikes the ear is the way in which Passereau mimics the various clucking sounds of the chickens, from the repeated “bon, bon, bon” of the refrain to actual imitation using onomatopoeic nonsense syllables and recurring rhythms in the last line of text: “Co, co-co, co-co-dac, co-co-dac, co-co, co-co, co-co-dac” etc., alternating with real words (inevitably repeated) — “petite coquette” — that play with the same rhythm.  Indeed, one can easily see — and hear — how the contrapuntal imitation of the individual vocal lines throughout this chanson, as they chase each other singly, in pairs and then all together, might be seen to resemble the behaviour of a whole flock of chickens!

CRSP have performed this madrigal on many occasions, always relishing the opportunity for over-the-top emphases. It is, however, crucial not to lose concentration, because if you miss your way in all that “cackling,” it is very hard to jump back onto the merry-go-round!

Ensemble Janequin (who, led by the peerless countertenor Dominique Visse, can always be counted on for an over-the-top rendition of a French chanson.)

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The Cricket (Cicada):
Josquin Desprez: Il Grillo
Posted July 1st, 2020

One of the more popular pieces in the repertoire of choirs singing Renaissance music is the Frottola “El Grillo” by Josquin Desprez. The frottola was the predominant secular vocal musical genre in Italy in the late 15th –early 16th centuries (before it was usurped by the madrigal). It is thought that it emerged out of the practice of reciting poetry to musical accompaniment at various Italian Renaissance courts (such as that of the Medici in Florence). The melody was usually in the top line; complex counterpoint was generally avoided; there was usually a reprise (chorus) and several verses. The subject matter was generally less than serious, although it could range from deliberately frivolous to satirical, often with a very local target.

Breviary of Marie de Savoie (c 1430, created on the occasion of her marriage to Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan). Bibliothèque municipal de Chambéry, MSS C 4, Fo 429v

A 1611 woodcut of Josquin des Prez

Josquin was a prominent early member of the Franco-Flemish constellation of composers who were key in the transition from late Mediæval music to that of the Renaissance. Born in Northern France in the early 1450s, Josquin’s real “surname” was probably Lebloitte, but already his grandfather had adopted the descriptive sobriquet “des Prez” (of the meadows, with various spellings), by which the composer is known today. Like so many of the Franco-Flemish composers, Josquin spent time (nearly 20 years) in Italy, mostly at various Northern Italian courts. It is thought that his song “El Grillo” was composed while he was in the employ of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, a member of the ruling family of Milan, although the authorship of our Josquin is in fact not absolutely certain.

From the ea. 13th C. Bestiary of Pierre de Beauvais Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 308, Folio 88v

For many years “El Grillo” was a staple of the Early Music revival, treated as a fun-to-sing, frivolous — almost “nonsense” — song, the words of which were a bit of a mystery (why the “Spanish” title? Why the occasional “mistakes” in the Italian text?). In recent years, various aspects of the piece have been uncovered that have led to lively debates and disputes among musicologists. Among these tidbits has been the presence of a Spanish singer, by the name of Carlo Grillo, at the Sforza court. Could this song perhaps be a jab at a singer who was too full of himself, showing off with how long he could sing a melodic phrase (“che tiene longo verso” — who holds a note for a long time)? But if so, then his memory lived on after he had left the court some 10 years before Josquin joined it (although there were still a lot of Spaniards in the retinue of the Spanish duchess, Lucrezia Borgia). Maybe it was a (too?) subtle hint to his patron that his musicians needed to be paid (unlike the cricket, they don’t sing just for the love of it “Alhor canta sol per amore”). The arguments range from those who see in the text a parody of Greek mythology about cicadas to those who argue that these Greek texts were not known in Italy at the time. Is the cricket being encouraged to drink (beve, beve — mistakenly for bevi), or to be brief (a misprint in the original for breve, breve — given the “longo verso”)? Could it have been written for a celebration of Festa del Grillo, a day on which Florentine noblemen gave caged crickets to their lady friends (caught by local peasants at the beginning of summer because of their potential to multiply and ruin harvests, crickets were spared because superstition said it was bad luck to kill one)? There is, not surprisingly, some agreement that there is a sexual innuendo (since the sound produced is that of the male cicada rubbing its wings to attract females — there are several other, more explicit, frottole about grilli).

What most agree upon is that the piece is rife with musical puns, making it worthy of a composer like Josquin. These include the phrase “non fa come gli altri ucelli” (does not do what other birds do) — where, in the original publication, the tenor part has a different rhythm from the other 3 parts, or the imitation of the monotonous (in the literal sense; it does not change pitch, only rhythm based on the outside temperature) sound of a cricket (on repeated syllables “dale-dale, beve-beve, canta-canta), or the long-held note (a “longa” in the terminology of the day) in 2 of the parts on “longo verso.”

While an appreciation of some of these in-jokes would no doubt enhance a singer’s appreciation of this piece, it can be enjoyed at a variety of levels, to which numerous performances by CRSP over the years would testify.

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Two Swans:
Jacob Arcadelt: Il bianco e dolce cigno (The gentle white swan)
Orlando Gibbons: The Silver Swan
Posted May 21st, 2020

While not quite intergalactic in scope, the double star focus in this segment of our animal series plays out over a lengthy time span and provides a rich geographic journey.

Roman Mosaic (4 CE), Basilica, Soli, Cyprus

The myth that a swan is mute until the moment of its death — when it “sings” for the first and last time — was well-known already in Ancient Greece. It appeared as long ago as in “The Swan and the Goose,” one of the fables attributed to Aesop (c. 620–564 BCE). Even though the legend was frequently challenged (including, forcefully, in an early treatise on Natural History by Pliny the Elder in the first century CE), it was very much part of the culture in Renaissance Europe, as exemplified by the two songs discussed here.

There are numerous divergent interpretations of what the dying swan symbolizes, from sexual to funerary, with the beauty of pure art in between (the swan was sacred to both Apollo and Venus). Our two madrigals are not only from different countries and different time periods, but also use the symbol of the dying swan in dramatically different ways. At the same time, given that the cusp between life and death is intrinsic to the myth, it is no surprise that musical works invoking the dying swan are generally melancholic in nature, often with an element of nostalgia for what was and will no longer be, or that was not and now never will be.

The polyphonic music of the Italian High Renaissance (e.g. Palestrina) had its origins in the works of the Franco-Flemish composers, many of whom at some point worked in Italy. Among these was Jacques/Jacob Arcadelt (c1507–1568) who is known principally as a composer of madrigals, a genre of which he was a pioneer. Originally from somewhere in what today is Belgium, he moved first to Florence (late 1520s) and then to Rome (in 1538, where he sang in the Sistine Chapel choir), before joining the French Royal chapel in 1551. His more than 200 madrigals belong to his Italian period. “Il bianco e dolce cigno” was published in 1539 as the opening piece in his first madrigal collection, Madrigali à 4 voci, Libro 1. The singer compares himself to the dying swan — with the difference that he is referring to the so-called “little death”: “I die a blessed death” and, if dying involves no other pain, “I would be content to die a thousand deaths.”

Robin Testard, “Allegory of Music” in Evrard de Conty, Livre des échecs amoureux (1495–1498), fo 65. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

Almost a third of Shakespeare’s plays are set in Italy. There are several reasons for this, including the advantages of setting plays with potentially dangerous political subjects in a different place (and time). Another probably had to do with the biases of contemporary audiences: plays set in Italy led “the orange-sucking mob” (to use the term adopted by my English teacher) to anticipate extreme passion and extreme violence. Nonetheless, there was also a genuine interest in the Arts of Renaissance Italy, as demonstrated by the fact that the first book of madrigals published in England — by Nicholas Yonge in 1588 — was the collection entitled Musica Transalpina. It consisted of 57 madrigals by 18 Italian composers (Arcadelt, as a non-Italian, was not included), with the texts in English translation.

British (English) School; Orlando Gibbons; Faculty of Music and Bate Collection of Musical Instruments; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/orlando-gibbons-221320

Other such collections followed and they collectively gave birth to a whole school of English madrigalists, of which Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625) was one of the last members. Born into a musical family, he occupied major positions, including in the Chapel Royal and at Westminster Abbey, in the reign of James I Stuart, as well receiving both a Bachelor and a Doctor of Music from Oxford University. His 20 madrigals were a relatively minor part of his musical compositions, but include “The Silver Swan,” one of the best known of all English madrigals. It was published in his First Set of Madrigals and Mottets, apt for Viols and Voyces, published in 1612. The reference to viols in the title points to a distinctive feature of Gibbons’s style — the long melodic phrases that recall the texture of the viol consorts that were so popular in England in the early 17th century and a genre to which Gibbons was a significant contributor. The closing lines of Gibbons’s text belongs more to a lament for the “good old days”: “More Geese than Swans now live, more Fools than Wise.”

CRSP has performed these madrigals on numerous occasions, so much so that some singers would be happy if they never had to sing them again. Others, however, find the word painting (the “blessed death” in the Arcadelt and the dying away as the swan “sang her first and last, and sang no more” in the Gibbons) a source of delight and welcome the challenge of creating the perfect musical line within the imitative interplay in the Arcadelt (in particular of the conclusion), and the long languid melodies of the Gibbons (so evocative of swans gliding across the water).

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May the Fourth be with you
Posted May 4, 2020

In honour of this significant day in the Star Wars calendar, we offer this tribute celebrating the Gamorrean Guards from Return of the Jedi.

Martin menait son porceau au marché
(Martin was taking his pig to market)

What the madrigal was to the Italians and the English, the chanson was to the French Renaissance — polyphonic secular works. However, the French chanson had a greater range, from the bucolic to the highly satirical, often with a twist that took particular delight in poking fun at human foibles and vices. Clément Janequin (c1485–1558) was a master of the chanson, producing more than 250 extremely diverse songs that were extremely popular in his day, thanks to the innovative technology of the Paris printer, Pierre Attaignant, who published cheap editions that sold like hot cakes (this chanson was first published in 1534).

If Banchieri imitated the sounds made by animals in his “Contrapunto bestiale” (see No. 1 in this series), Janequin makes an animal — a pig — one of the protagonists of his little story from everyday life. Martin was taking his pig to market and Alix decided to join him. In a quiet spot along the way, she suggests that they engage in some serious fun and games. “But what about the pig?” enquires Martin. “Easy-peasy,” replies Alix and ties the pig to her leg. However, as the action gets particularly energetic, the pig takes fright and makes a run for it, dragging the awkwardly entangled couple along for the ride.

The recording by specialists of the French chanson, the Ensemble Clément Janequin, with the distinctive counter-tenor Dominque Visse on their top line, renders the ensuing chaotic panic with particular exuberance.

CRSP most recently performed this chanson as part of a set devoted entirely to pigs in Spring 2019.

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Contrapunto Bestiale Alle Mente 
(An improvised animal counterpoint)
Posted April 3, 2020

The Venice pre-Lenten Carnival dates back to the 12th  Century. Its reputation and popularity grew so much that 30,000 visitors are estimated to have visited the Carnival in 1687! With participants emboldened by the anonymity provided by elaborate masks, there were often elements of political anarchy and social satire in its hedonistic revelries.

The 2020 Carnival was cancelled because of Covid-19, so in its place we bring you a madrigal by Adriano Banchieri.  Banchieri specialized in “madrigal comedies,” that is, a set of madrigals that together tell a story.

In 1608 he published a collection entitled “Festino nella sera del Giovedì Grasso avanti cena” — An Entertainment for the Eve of Carnival Thursday before Dinner.  In this we find a pair of madrigals of which the second is explained as “A dog, a cuckoo, a cat and an owl enjoy themselves with a counterpoint upon a ground.”

Framed by refrains of nonsense syllable “fa-la-las,” a bass (probably in an advanced state of inebriation) sings a politically incorrect and equally nonsensical ditty in sort-of-Latin: “No trust in hunchbacks, nor in those who limp; if the outside rind is good, write it in the records,” accompanied by the sounds made by the four animals!

CRSP has frequently performed this piece, recently in our Spring 2016 concert “Pray & Play” celebrating the Venice Carnival. On this YouTube performance (link below), this beastly contribution is introduced by the first madrigal of the pair that sets the scene and introduces the “hare-brained” (so says the text) characters that will follow.