Anonymous, Jamais ne seray amoureulx

Jamais ne seray amoureulx 3v · Anonymous

Appearance in the group of related chansonniers:

*Dijon ff. 103v-104 »Jamais ne seray amoureulx« 3v · Edition · Facsimile

*Laborde ff. 68v-69 »Jamaiz ne seray amoureulx« 3v · Edition · Facsimile

*Wolfenbüttel ff. 11v-12 »Jamaiz ne sceray amoureux« 3v · Edition · Facsimile

Edition: Gutiérrez-Denhoff 1988 no. 12 (Wolfenbüttel).

Text: Rondeau quatrain; full text in all sources; also found in Berlin 78.B.17 f. 159, ed.: Löpelmann 1923, p. 299; Paris 1719 f. 19v; Jardin 1501 f. 114v.

After Dijon:

Jamais ne seray amoureulx
aux dames, j’en fais la response; 1)
s’amours par sentence prononce 2)
que si seray, j’apelle d’eulx. 3)

Sy n’est il pas au povoir d’eulx 4)
de faire qu’a mon appel renonce, 5)

Jamais ne seray amoureulx
aux dames, j’en fais la response.

J’ay esté trop mal encoureulx, 6)
car j’ay servi, je vous anonce, 7)
dame rebelle, comme aronce,
qui m’a laissé trop douloureux.

Jamais ne seray amoureulx
aux dames, j’en fais la response;
s’amours par sentence prononce
que si seray, j’apelle d’eulx.

I will never fall in love
with ladies, that is my answer;
if Amor judges
that I will be, I appeal to him.

If it is not within his power
to make me give up my appeal,

I will never fall in love
with ladies, that is my answer.

I have been too badly treated,
for I have served, I tell you,
a troublesome lady, like a bramble,
who has left me in too much pain.

I will never fall in love
with ladies, that is my answer;
if Amor judges
that I will be, I appeal to him.

1) Laborde & Wolfenbüttel, line 2, “... en fais ...” (error)
2) Laborde, line 3, “ce amours …”
3) Laborde & Wolfenbüttel, line 4, “... je appelle …”, Wolfenbüttel, “... de eux”
4) Laborde & Wolfenbüttel, line 5, “Ce n’est pas au povoir d’eux” (error)
5) All three sources, line 6 has a syllable (“de”) too many
6) Dijon, line 9, “... maleureux” (error)
7) Dijon, line 10, “car le servir” (error), Laborde & Wolfenbüttel, ”... je vous renonce” (error)

Evaluation of the sources:

Obviously, the Laborde and Wolfenbüttel versions of this song were copied using the same or closely related exemplars. The only differences in the music are found in the tenor part, where the Wolfenbüttel scribe in bar 3 has inserted a decorative dotted figure and where in bars 8-9 the Laborde scribe decided not to write a ligature. Their copies of the music are without errors, but their exemplar contained some errors in the poem, which both faithfully copied. For example, the fifth line was a syllable short, and in line 10 a rhyming word “anonce” has been confused with another “renonce”, which disrupts the meaning of the text.

The Dijon scribe used a similar but different exemplar, which showed another set of errors in the words, with line nine missing a syllable and “le servir” in line 10 being confusing. In fact, the two slightly different versions of the song together can provide a fairly correct version of its lyrics. Musically, Dijon differs from Laborde/Wolfenbüttel only in a few details such as smoother shaping of cadence decoration in the upper voice in bars 4 and 9, a dotted figure instead of minimae in bars 22-23 and in the tenor bar 17, while the reverse is seen in the contratenor bar 22. The exemplars may have been so similar that one could guess from this fact alone that the song must have been relatively new and with limited circulation when it was copied into the three chansonniers.

“Jamaiz ne seray” in Laborde differs from the other two sources by prescribing one flat hexachordal signatures in the tenor and contratenor. Given that the song is clearly Mixolydian and opens with the ascending g-hexachord as an imitation motif in the tenor, this must be a mistake on the part of the Laborde scribe. If the singers consider his signatures as default choices, they will very quickly run into difficulties. A turn towards the flat side does occur later in the song, as a contrasting element in the second section where the flat is clearly indicated in the upper voice in all three sources. An explanation for his mistake may be that the surrounding songs in the Laborde chansonnier do exhibit the classic signature combination with flats in the lower voices, and that the scribe mechanically prepared the pages for this entry with the same combination before he looked properly in his exemplar.

Comments on text and music:

As mentioned above, the song features a change in timbre when the dominating G and C hexachords in the first section are replaced by F and C hexachords at the start of the second half; in the last line (bars 18 ff) the song returns carefree to its starting point. The change is marked by the words “s’amours / dame” being declaimed slowly and homorhythmically in parallel tenths by superius and tenor in strong contrast to the rest of the song, which is characterized by lively counterpoint in dotted rhythms. For a song in tempus perfectum it is indeed unusual to encounter such long chains of minimae and dotted figures, and its imitations between tenor and superius develop throughout the song into longer and longer episodes, from simple imitation to canonic imitation to canon in the last line. The contratenor (range d'-e') does not participate in most of the imitative work, but is well integrated and contributes to the song's lively progression and rapidly changing rhythmic accents. It is in some passages placed between the tenor (c-f') and the superius (c'-d''), but is otherwise supportive below the others.

The male love complaint, which renounces ever falling in love again, expressed in exquisite rimes léonines, is according to the music not to be taken seriously. It is a light-hearted joke, probably composed quite recently when it was entered into the three chansonniers.

PWCH January 2026