Embellishments 8: Spotlight: Chansons in Modern Editions

Chansons in Modern Editions

Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance includes a number of volumes devoted to fifteenth and sixteenth-century chansons and edited by a number of higly respected specialists in the field. These publications encompass hundreds of pages of excellent music by a variety of composers, including the complete chanson repertoire of André Pevernage edited by Gerald Hoekstra.

The music comes from famous chansonniers, such as the Excorial Chansonner, the Dijon Chansonner, and other sources. As to the composers, they extend from well-known composers like Josquin des Pres and Antoine de Févin to other more regional figures. The texts also vary, and include the poetry of Pierre Ronsard and less unfamiliar poetry. All these editions are newly engraved and include texts and translations of the sung texts. Each volume includes an introduction in which the editor discusses the music and provides a context for understanding it.

The music is of interest for musical and cultural reasons. As secular music, the texts are often close to the everyday life. In his perceptive review of Maniates’s Combinative Chanson, Martin Picker calls attention to this aspect of the anthology:

This is a veritable treasure-trove of the popular music of fiteenth-century France, in authentic settings and complete with their bawdy texts, preserved unembarrassed directness in the translations provided. One can imagine these songs lustily resounding in college rooms, taverns, and barracks, not only in the fifteenth century, but today as well. (Notes 47:211)

In publishing these editions, A-R Editions makes available exceptional music of this direct nature. Like many Recent Researches publications, these volumes are also unique to A-R and otherwise unavailable in any other modern editions. One may apply Picker’s comments about The Combinative Chanson to the other A-R editions of chansons:

. . . performers now have a new chanson repertoire from a neglected generation, and we may expect that future performances of fifteenth-century music will be enlivened by the strains of these earthy songs, bringing us as clse as music allows to the common people of the late medieval and early modern eras.

Jean de Castro
Chansons, Odes, et Sonetz de Pierre Ronsard (1576)
Edited by Jenice Brooks
R 97

The Combinative Chanson: an Anthology
Edited by Maria Rika Maniates
R 77

French Chansons for Three Voices (ca. 1550)
Edited by Courtney S. Adams
R 36–37

Pierre de Manchicourt
Twenty-nine Chansons
Edited by Margery Anthea Baird
R 11

André Pervernage
The Complete Chansons Edited by Margery Anthea Baird
R 60–64

Selected Chansons from British Library, MS Additional 35087
Edited by William M. Mc Murty
R 68

The Si Placet Repertoire of 1480–1530
Edited by Stephen Self
R 106

Thirty-six Chansons by French Provincial Composers (1529–1550)
Edited by Leta S. Miller
R 38


Print of superius part for “Amour, dy moy de grace” published in Jean de Castro’s Chansons, Odes, et Sonetz de Pierre Ronsard (Pierre Phalèse, 1576)	“Amour, dy moy de grace” as engraved in Jean de Castro: Chansons, Odes, et Sonetz de Pierre Ronsard (1576), edited by Jeanice Brooks, Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance, vol. 97