Mon seul plaisir, ma doulce joye 3v · Bedingham / Du Fay
Appearance in the group of related chansonniers:
*Laborde ff. 65v-66 »Mon seul plaisir ma doulce joye« 3v · Edition · Facsimile
*Wolfenbüttel ff. 41v-42 »Mon seul plaisir ma doulce joye« 3v · Edition · Facsimile
Other musical sources:
Berlin 78.C.28 ff. 20v-21 »M« 3v
Cop 1848 p. 431 »Mon seul plaisir« 3v · Facsimile
Escorial IV.a.24 ff. 27v-28 »Mon seul plaisir ma doulce joye« 3v · Facsimile (31)
Florence 176 ff. 58v-59 »Mon seul plaisir et ma doulce joie« 3v Duffay · Facsimile
Florence 2356 ff. 48v-49 »Mon sol plaisir« 3v · Facsimile
Paris 15123 ff. 69v-70 »Mon seul plesir ma doulce ioy« 3v · Facsimile
Paris 2973 ff. 44v-45 »Mon seul plaisir ma doulce joye« 3v · Facsimile
Paris 4379 ff. 23v-24 »Mon seul plaisir ma douce joie« 3v · Facsimile
Pavia 362 ff. 24v-25 »Mon seul pleysir et ma doulce joye« 3v
Porto 714 ff. 59v-60 »Mon seul plaisir ma doulce joye« 3v Idem [=Bedyngham de Anglia]
This page with editions as a PDF
Use as timbre for laude and use of material see Fallows 1999, pp. 285-286.
Edition: Gutiérrez-Denhoff 1988 no. 33 (Wolfenbüttel).
Text: Rondeau quatrain by Charles d’Orléans “Ma seule plaisant doulce joye” – the version used for the musical setting s a slightly different first line; full text in Laborde and Wolfenbüttel; also in Escorial IV.a.24, Paris 2973, Paris 4379 and Pavia 362; the music version is also found in Berlin 78.B.17 ff. 82v-83, ed.: Löpelmann 1923, p. 121, and London 380 f. 238v, ed.: Wallis 1929, p. 122.
After Wolfenbüttel & Laborde (corrections according to Berlin 78.B.17):
Mon seul plaisir, ma doulce joye, Helas, avoir je ne pourroye mon seul plaisir, ma doulce joye, Car, quant desplaisir me guerroye mon seul plaisir, ma doulce joye, |
My only pleasure, my sweet joy, Alas, I will not have my only pleasure, my sweet joy, For, when Displeasure attacks me, the mistress of my hope, I have such desire to see you again that I would not know how to ask for it. |
1) Laborde & Wolfenbüttel, line 2, “... de mon desir” (error)
2) Laborde & Wolfenbüttel, line 3, “... de vous voir” (error)
3) Laborde, line 4, “que mander ...” (error); Laborde & Wolfenbüttel, “... ne le pourroye” (error)
4) Laborde, line 6, “aulcuns biens ...”
Evaluation of the sources:
“Mon seul plaisir” was very popular in the 1460s and 1470s, especially in Italy, but also in the northern regions, as is evident from the many sources in which the song is found, and it was used as a timbre for laude and quoted in poems and songs. It disappeared from the repertory during the last decades of the century, but was still included in a small music book written in Lyon around 1524, which became part of the large music collection in The Royal Library, Copenhagen, MS Ny kgl. Samling 1848 2° (cf. Christoffersen 1994, vol I, pp. 94-108, and vol. II, no. 261). Since the song was composed sometime in the middle of the century, many small variations in the music had arisen in the sources, which, however, do not influence the song's identity to any great extent, see further the editions in Dufay 1966 no. 90, and the comments in Fallows 1995 no. 90. In the chansonnier in Porto, Biblioteca Pública Municipal, Ms. 714, made in Ferrara in the 1460s, the song is ascribed to the English composer John Bedingham, while the Florentine chansonnier of the late 1470s, Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Ms. Magl. xix.176, mentions Guillaume Du Fay as its composer. (1)
The song as it appears in the Laborde and Wolfenbüttel chansonniers was copied from the same original, from which both main scribes have faithfully taken over all its errors in music and words. They both bring a text that, especially in the refrain, has been distorted during transmission; in line two a word from the next line “desir” has crept up as a rime word, even though it does not rime, line three is missing a syllable and in line four the rime word “pourroye” has mistakenly become the same as in line five. A dissonant e' appears in the contra in bar three, and after bar 15 contra has a brevis rest, which their exemplar had removed in the other voices, but forgot to do in the contra – most other sources have the brevis rest in all three voices.
The Laborde/Wolfenbüttel version presents a few unique features: In the tenor, a longa in bars 22-23 has been broken up into shorter note values, indicating how to place the text in the tenor; and among the many proposals for the middle cadence, its solution with the contra’s ascent to a' in bar 14 is the most euphonious. In Laborde, the scribe in the contra part has added a one flat signature in the first two staves (bb. 1-16). This is probably a mistake, since Wolfenbüttel, like the majority of sources, is without hexachordal signatures in all voices. It is interesting, however, that the Italian chansonnier from around 1460 in the Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial, Biblioteca y Archivo de Musica, MS IV.a.24, without hesitation prescribes flat signatures in the tenor as well as in the contra (cf. the edition in Hanen 1983 no. 23), and we find the same in the French Chansonnier Cordiforme from the 1470s (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, ms. Rothschild 2973), although the b-flats in the tenor have been erased, but are still clearly distinguishable. Finally, a flat signature appears in the second staff in the tenor (including bars 11-24) in the manuscript Pavia, Biblioteca Universitaria, Ms. Aldini 362, which most probable was executed in Savoy during the 1460s. These hexachordal signatures seem out of place in “Mon seul plaisir” whose C tonality so clearly unfolds within a network of G and C hexachords in all three voices. It would be most relevant to perceive the flat in the Pavia MS as an accidental, which produced a cadence with b-flat in the tenor in bars 12-13 – it fits in and creates an attractive variation in sound. Perhaps the desire to indicate this flexibility at an early stage in the song's career has given rise to the erroneous signatures in some sources.
Comments on text and music:
This version of Charles d’Orléans’ hopeful love song has, at least as far as the refrain is concerned, been slightly modified to fit a phrasing with a caesura after four syllables, which was preferred in many songs. It is set for a melodically attractive and expressive high voice (c'-e'') accompanied by tenor and contra, both in the same range (g-a'). The sound is bright by virtue of the dominance of the C and G hexachords as mentioned above. The lines begin in syllabic settings of the words and end with extended melismas. The second section creates its contrast to the first by suddenly pulling the voices together within the common part of their range, the c'-hexachord, so that a section of equal voices arises in which the voices constantly crosses (bb. 17-20). This effect was anticipated by the open ending of the first section, where the voices end on a c'-triad with the contra in the role of the highest voice. The equal voices passage emphasizes this c'-triad with fanfare-like motifs that run through the voices until they spread out again and without pause slide into the long drawn-out melismas of the last line.
The sound of the second section cannot avoid recalling the effect of Du Fay’s love song »Se la face ay pale«, which was composed in the early 1430s and surely known to the composer of “Mon seul plaisir”. The similarities between the two songs are probably also behind their appearance next to each other in both the Laborde and Wolfenbüttel chansonniers, and are perhaps also the reason why the copyist in Florence 176 believed that “Mon seul plaisir” had been composed by Du Fay.
PWCH January 2026
1) David Fallows thinks that Bedingham may have set the English version of the rondeau “Mi werry joy and most parfit plesere”, and that the song afterwards became known on the Continent with the adapted French words, cf. ‘Words and music in two English songs of the mid-15th century: Charles d'Orléans and John Lydgate’, Early Music 1977, pp. 38-43.