Oublie oublie oublie oublie oublie 3v ·
Anonymous (unique)
Appearance in the group of related chansonniers:
*Leuven ff. 22v-23 »Oublie oublie oublie oublie oublie« 3v · Edition · Facsimile
This page with edition as a PDF
Text: Rondeau quatrain, full text in Leuven:
Oublie oublie oublie oublie oublie, Si tu as dueil ou as merancolie 3) oublie oublie oublie oublie oublie, Pour tant donques lesse celle follie, Oublie oublie oublie oublie oublie, |
Forget, forget, forget, forget, forget, If you feel grief or is depressed forget, forget, forget, forget, forget, Therefore now take leave of this folly, Forget, forget, forget, forget, forget, |
1) line 2 is missing four syllables or two word repeats.
2) line 4, “...ne donne une oublie”
3) line 5 is missing a syllable.
Comments:
The unique rondeau was entered into the Leuven chansonnier without any errors in the music. The point of the poem is the repeated call to a male lover about forgetting all past worries, which demands that the word “oublie” is said eight times in order to supply the needed number of syllables. The scribe only found space for six times “oublie” below the first staff of the superius, and also the first line of the couplets is missing a syllable (line 5). Funnily enough, this reduced number of syllables fits the shorter musical lines of the lower voices much better than the superius. The speaker is female and fittingly the setting is in a quite high tessitura with the upper voices an octave apart and a contratenor, which mostly keeps below the tenor. With its staggered entries and a stretch in octave canon between superius and tenor in the rondeau’s second section, the song seems to have been quite recent when it was entered into the chansonnier. It was probably a local product made with much reliance on hexachordal and cadential standard figures.
PWCH December 2023