Anonymous, O infame desleauté

O infame desleauté 3v · Anonymous

Appearance in the group of related chansonniers:

*Dijon ff. 151v-152 »O infame desleauté« 3v · Edition · Facsimile

*Wolfenbüttel ff. 51v-52 »O infame desloyaulté« 3v · Edition · Facsimile

Edition: Gutiérrez-Denhoff 1988 no. 42 (Wolfenbüttel).

Text: Rondeau quatrain; full text in both sources, but different poems after the first three lines. Obviously, the Wolfenbüttel version is corrupt.

After Dijon:

O infame desleauté,
O fin et faulx oeil flamboyant, 1)
O faulce amour soubz beau semblant
qui mon cueur as desherité.

O faincte amour sans leauté,
O faulx amour vouloir tremblant,

O infame desleauté,
O fin et faulx oeil flamboyant.

O lumiere sans charité,
en amour mon cueur enflambant
jamais ne seray vo servant
car par trop lonctemps je l’ay esté.

O infame desleauté,
O fin et faulx oeil flamboyant,
O faulce amour soubz beau semblant
qui mon cueur as desherité.

After Wolfenbüttel:

O infame desloyauté,
O faulce amour soubz beaux semblant,
O fin et faux oeil flammeant,
O regart plain de faulceté.

O guerre musse en assurant, 2)
O terrible cueur sans pitié,

O infame desloyauté,
O faulce amour soubz beaux semblant.

O bel acueil demesuré,
O traison faicte en regardent, 3)
O abisme de avaulté,
O fier desdaing dart trespassent.

O infame desloyauté,
O faulce amour soubz beaux semblant,
O fin et faux oeil flammeant,
O regart plain de faulceté.

O infamous deceit,
O clear and false dazzling eye,
O false love under a beautiful guise,
who has stolen my heart.

O feigned love without fidelity,
O false love of irresolute intent,

O infamous deceit,
O clear and false dazzling eye.

O light without kindness,
in love my inflamed heart
will never be your servant
for I have been so for too long.

O infamous deceit,
O clear and false dazzling eye,
O false love under a beautiful guise,
who has stolen my heart.

O infamous deceit,
O false love under a beautiful guise,
O clear and false dazzling eye,
O look full of falsehood.

O war, hidden while reassuring,
O terrible, pitiless heart,

O infamous deceit,
O false love under a beautiful guise.

O warm welcome exaggerated,
O betrayal done while taking care,
O abyss of praise,
O proud disdain of the dart trespassing.

O infamous deceit,
O false love under a beautiful guise,
O clear and false dazzling eye,
O look full of falsehood.

1) Dijon, line 2 “...oeil fambloyant” error)
2) Wolfenbüttel, line 5, “.. mussee en ...” (error)
2) Wolfenbüttel, line 10, “.. en regart” (error)

Evaluation of the sources:

This paraphrase of John Bedyngham’s (or Dunstable’s) famous and widely circulated Italian song »O rosa bella«, which is found in many sources from the second half of the 15th century, including the Wolfenbüttel chansonnier (ff. 34v-36), has been entered into the Dijon and Wolfenbüttel chansonniers by the two main copyists. They have used different ecemplars and neither of the results has been very successful.

The Dijon scribe has copied the poem in a usable version, but has misplaced the lines of text in the upper voice in this rondeau quatrain, so that the first three lines have been placed under the first section of the song, with only one line left for the second section. The music in Dijon contains a number of questionable dissonant passages (S bb. 18 and 21; C bb. 5 and 16), which may be simple writing errors incurred during the song's transmission, but may just as well be compositional clumsiness that has not been corrected.

These places in the music all appear much better in Wolfenbüttel. Here, however, the poem has been corrupted. The first three lines are the same in a slightly changed order, but then it continues with condemnations of false love as a pure enumeration without development in the poem. The poem's rhyme pattern, rimes embrassées (abba), breaks up and the number of syllables fluctuates. It seems that the text after the first lines has been missing at some point, and that a copyist has tried to fill in with lines of the same kind.

In the edition, the Wolfenbüttel version has been provided with the text from Dijon to provide a usable version.

Comments on text and music:

The Italian love song »O rosa bella« has been transformed into a denunciation of infamous, faithless love in the form of a French rondeau. The music borrows most elements from the old hit song. It is for three voices in the same ranges as the model (g-c'', d-f', c-d'), it retains the initial vocalise on “O” in all three voices (bb. 1-6), slightly varied, and the imitation between superius and tenor starting in bar 6 is clearly derived from the corresponding passage in “O rosa bella”, now translated into octave imitation; the unison triadic imitation comes in bar 10. Likewise, the song's final phrase is a variant of that in “O rosa bella”. In between come melodic phrases that are, if not taken from “O rosa bella”, then clearly inspired by the melodic ductus of the model. The tenor sticks to the F hexachord for most of the song, with a few fluctuations down to D. This leads to a certain monotony, especially when compared with the original’s much more varied use of similar phrases.

The song must have existed for some time before it was entered into the two 'Loire Valley' chansonniers for the divergences between them to have occurred, but the song is unlikely to have had any wider distribution.

PWCH April 2026