Anonymous, La fiance que j’ay en vous

La fiance que j’ay en vous 3v · Anonymous

Appearance in the group of related chansonniers:

*Nivelle ff. 25v-26 »La fiance que j’ay en vous« 3v · Edition · Facsimile

Other musical sources:

Paris 15123 ff. 47v-48 »Lefranche que j’ay en vous« 3v · Facsimile

Text: Rondeau quatrain; full text in Nivelle; also found in Berlin 78.B.17 f. 94v, ed. Löpelmann 1923, pp. 149-150; London 380 f. 243v, ed. Wallis 1929, p. 126. After Nivelle:

La fiance que j’ay en vous,
mon amy, sans ung autre eslire,
me fait oublier le martire
que j’ay et tout mon grant courroux.

Car une foiz nous verrons nous;
mais qu’est ce qui le me fait dire?

La fiance que j’ay en vous,
mon amy, sans ung autre eslire.

Par dieu, voire, et maugre tous
ceulx qui ont voulu contredire,
autre que dieu ne nous puet nuyre
car a ce j’ay tout mon recours:

La fiance que j’ay en vous,
mon amy, sans ung autre eslire,
me fait oublier le martire
que j’ay et tout mon grant courroux.

The trust that I have in you,
my lover, without wanting any other man,
makes me forget the torture
that I suffer and all my great rage.

For one day we will see each other;
but what is it that tells me so?

The trust that I have in you,
my lover, without wanting any other man.

By God, for certain, and despite all
those who wanted to deny it,
no one but God can harm us
for I rely completely on this:

The trust that I have in you,
my lover, without wanting any other man,
makes me forget the torture
that I suffer and all my great rage.

Evaluation of the sources:

Copied by the main Nivelle scribe with a small error in the contratenor only. The slightly later so-called “Chansonnier Pixérécourt” (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, ms. f.fr. 15123) has nearly the same version of the music with only the refrain as text. The main differences appear in the contratenor, especially in bars 9.3 to 15.

In both sources the music starts with a general pause consisting of a brevis and two semibreves. The introductory brevis bar was not meant to be performed in the realized rondeau form, and therefore it is not counted in the edition. It seems to be a device meant to insure absolute notational clarity in the cases where a song starts with an upbeat in all voices and the opening is homorhythmically designed (see further my note ‘On chansons starting with a general pause’). The case of “La fiance que j’ay en vous” is, as we shell see, different.

It is quite obvious that the scribe (or the exemplar) of the Paris 15123 version has tried to make the music a bit easier to perform. Two of the breves in the first line have been split up into two semibreves each (tenor bb. 1.3-2.1 and contra bb. 2.3-3.1), which certainly must ease the singers’ deliberations. And after the second note in bar 13 he has added a punctus divisionis that makes clear the shortening of the preceding brevis in ligature, even if the expected pattern of perfections has shifted.

Comments on text and music:

This song is a joke. A woman assures us of her absolute confidence in her lover, who she has not seen for a long time and who has caused her great anguish. The music tells us that her trust is a lie. Certainly, it is written for a high voice (c'-e'') posing as a female speaker and two high tenors in the same ranges (g-g' and g-a'), that is, in a high tessitura. It is notated i tempus perfectum and opens as mentioned with a general pause of a full brevis bar followed by two semibrevis rests. The only thinkable explanation for this procedure is to assure that all voices are aware of the upbeat in a homorhythmic texture in triple time. But the song is not in triple time, it is only notated in tempus perfectum. It is not very homorhythmic, and the upbeat effect is somewhat destroyed by the brevis value in the tenor. If one succeeds in performing the song after this notation, in spite of its displaced patterns of perfections and displaced middle and final cadences, it sound as a lively, quite funny song i double time – as shown in the alternative edition, where the main cadences fall as they are meant to.

It is main gimmick is a fanfare-like canonic imitation on the triad c'-e'-g', in which the three voices are treated as equal. It comes twice, every time intoned by the contratenor, at the start of the second line “mon amy” (b. 6) with two semibreves between the entries, and stretto-like at the fourth line (b. 19) with only a minima between the voices.

Is it a response to Caron’s exquisite and widely known male song »Accueilly m’a la belle au gent atour«? It has the same general pauses, same disposition of voices, and it lets the first C-triad ‘fanfare’ lead to the middle cadence, just like in Caron’s song. Maybe it is mocking its model. Or the composer knew the fanfare at the end of Guillaume Du Fay’s »Se la Face ay pale«. But a fanfare twice is a little overdone – making fun in sound at the lady’s trust?

The real fun is on the pages. The listener would never know that this song appears in a lying disguise, but the reader of the small chansonnier having cracked the notation can chuckle in private. I would suspect Busnoys of being the author of this little joke.

PWCH October 2022