Anonymous, Pour le mal qu’on vous fait porter

Pour le mal qu’on vous fait porter 3v · Anonymous

Appearance in the group of related chansonniers:

*Nivelle ff. 9v-10 »Pour le mal qu’on vous fait porter« 3v · Edition · Facsimile

*Wolfenbüttel ff. 56v-57 »Pour le mal qu’on vous fait porter« 3v · Edition · Facsimile

Edition: Gutiérrez-Denhoff 1988 no. 47 (Wolfenbüttel).

Text: Rondeau quatrain; full text in both sources; also found in Paris 1719 f. 89v, Berlin 78.B.17 f. 96v “Pour les maulx”, ed. Löpelmann 1923, p. 154.

After Nivelle:

Pour le mal qu’on vous fait porter,
des termes qu’on vous tient et porte,
doleur mortelle seuffre et porte
qui m’est trop dur fes a porter. 1)

Quant j’oy vostre cas rapporter
ma peine a rage se raporte

pour le mal qu’on vous fait porter,
des termes qu’on vous tient et porte.

Mon mal ne puis plus suporter,
car, jour ne nuyt, ne me suporte;
puisqu’aultrement ne me deporte,
de vivre me veulx deporter

pour le mal qu’on vous fait porter,
des termes qu’on vous tient et porte,
doleur mortelle seuffre et porte
qui m’est trop dur fes a porter.

For the hurt they make you suffer,
the insults they give you and tell,
to endure and bear mortal pain
that to me is too hard to hold.

When I hear your case reported,
my pain is turned into rage

for the hurt they make you suffer,
the insults they give you and tell.

My suffering can no longer be borne,
for, day or night, nothing can help me;
since it does not otherwise release me,
I want to renounce to live

for the hurt they make you suffer,
the insults they give you and tell
to endure and bear mortal pain
that to me is too hard for me to hold.

1) Wolfenbüttel, lne 4, “... dure a porter”

Evaluation of the sources:

This song does not seem to have circulated widely and may have been quite new when it reached the ‘Loire Valley’ chansonniers. It has been copied into the Nivelle and Wolfenbüttel chansonniers without errors by the two main scribes from closely related exemplars. In both manuscripts mensural signatures are omitted, and in Nivelle the contratenor is notated without a clef, but three fa-signs placed respectively above the top line of the staves, between the second and third lines and on the fourth line clearly indicate the pitch according to the conventions of ‘clefless’ notation. (1) In Wolfenbüttel F-clefs are given for safety. That the tempus is perfect is evident from the fact that the lower voices start with black ligatures, which indicate that perfect longae and breves are made imperfect, and in Nivelle the first perfection in the upper voice is marked with a punctus divisionis. This marking is missing in Wolfenbüttel.

Apart from differences in the use of coloration and ligatures, there are only a few divergences in detail between the two sources (S, bb. 6, 16 and 23; T, bb. 4 and 12; C, b. 15). Nivelle's version seems to be the most consistent.

Comments on text and music:

The speaker is in despair, wanting to die, upon hearing about the situation of the adored one in a somewhat strained poem in rimes équivoques, which exclusively uses the rhyming words “porter/porte”. The music tries to live up to the poem's artistry by demonstrating a similar complication of its expression. The three voices are each in their own range (a-d'', d-f', G-b), and only in a single passage does the contra move up above the tenor (bb. 20-21). The song is without imitation. Instead, the composer tries some other unusual devices in addition to the contratenor’s ‘clefless’ notation, which is mostly a visual marking. The same applies to the missing mensural signatures, which are easily decoded, but nevertheless signal the song’s constant vacillation between double and triple time.

The rhythmic flexibility seems to have been the composer's main concern, to make the listener uncertain about where stressed beats are placed. This is supported by extensive use of syncopation, which also influences the placement of the syllables, alternating with completely regular declamation. The contrast between the two sections of the rondeau is accentuated by the fact that the first section, quite unusually, begins and ends on B-flat, while the second section establishes G Dorian as the main mode. The procedure results in melody lines that, after a successful start, seem a bit awkward. The song's sounding reality is probably not as striking as intended by the anonymous composer.

PWCH March 2026

1) See further my article ‘Prenez sur moi vostre exemple: The ‘clefless’ notation or the use of fa-clefs in chansons of the fifteenth century by Binchois, Barbingant, Ockeghem and Josquin’, Danish Yearbook of Musicology 37 (2009), pp. 13-38.