Quant j’ay au cueur aulcun contraire 3v ·
Busnoys, Antoine
Appearance in the group of related chansonniers:
*Leuven ff. 65v-67 »Quant j’ay au cueur aulcun contraire« 3v · Edition · Facsimile
Other source:
Paris 15123 ff. 184v-185 »Quant j’ay au cueur aucun contraire« 3v Busnoys · Facsimile
This page with edition as a PDF
Citations and use in other compositions, see Fallows 1999, p. 337.
Text: Rondeau cinquain, full text in Leuven, also found in Jardin 1501 f. 83 (no. 232); after Leuven:
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Quant j’ay au cueur aulcun contraire Car vous estez mon doulx repaire quant j’ay au cueur aulcun contraire Nully ne m’en sauroit hors traire, et j’ay aulcunement affaire qu’aulcun me viengne secourir, il ne me fault que recourir a vous, belle tres debonnaire. 1) line 4, “il ne fault ..." (error) Lines 12-16 in Jardin 1501: Nully ne m’en scauroit hors traire,puisque vo cueur m’a voulu traire a vostre gracieux plaisir; pourtant vueil tousjours obeir a vous, belle tres debonnaire. |
When I in my heart somewhat suffer For you are my gentle refuge, when I in my heart somewhat suffer No one could draw me away, When I in my heart somewhat suffer
No one could draw me away, |
Evaluation of the sources:
»Quant j’ay au cueur aulcun contraire« survives without composer attribution in the Leuven chansonnier, which is the only source that transmits the poem and its music in a complete version. Not that the copy in Leuven is perfect. It has a misplaced clef and several wrong notes, which all are easy to see through, and the scribe displays some laxity concerning the length of the poetic lines; lines 4 and 13 each miss a syllable, while line 15 has one too many (see above).
The younger Florentine chansonnier in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, ms. f.fr. 15123 (MS Pixérécourt) gives the song under Busnoys’ name in a corrupt version. In comparison with Leuven it exhibits many differences of musical details, and of coloration and ligatures. At some point during its transmission, two puncti belonging to the ligature, which fills out bar 18 in the tenor, have gone missing. The ensuing rhythmic discrepancy between the voices has been repaired by blackening the second note of the ligature in the superius and substituting the two semiminimae with a black minima, and in the contratenor the semibrevis a has been deleted. In this way the voices fit together again, the song has become one semibrevis shorter, and all cadences are displaced in relation to the perfections. This version has been published in the Collected Works (Busnoys 2018 no. 29).
The Pixérécourt MS gives only the refrain as text. The poem appears in the Jardin de plaisance, published in Paris by Anotoine Verard just after 1500. Here it is quite obvious that the printed tierce is not original, but an adaption, maybe a clumsy effort to make the poem more in line with the courtly style. The second line of this tierce reuse the rime word of the first line, “traire”, and the last line was simply lifted from the refrain’s last line “a vous belle tres debonnaire” – not procedures recommended by the Rhétoricquers!
Comments on text and music:
The courtlyness of this rondeau is a bit ambiguous. The lover praises his lady in rich rimes. However, the “belle tres debonnaire” has surrendered to his advances, so to him she has become a safe haven to which he can turn, when other women reject him. The praise seems shaded, bordering on a shaming, more fitting for an entertainment among men than in a lady’s salon.
The setting is lyrical and elegant, written for a high agile voice d'-f'', a high tenor g-a', and a supporting contratenor a fifth lower d-d'. The variable, rhythmically animated upper voice sustains the melodic interest in mostly free polyphony with the supporting voices, while the tenor forms the backbone of the music with its persistent keeping within the c'-hexachord, only in bars 4 and 23-24 does it shortly dip down into the g-hexachord. Colouring is supplied by the contratenor, which inserts b-flats into the harmony (in Leuven by turning hexachordal signatures on and off, in Paris 15123 by accidentals). The two sections of the rondeau cinquain are of equal length. The two-line second section has been extended by long melismas, the first one (bb. 20.3-22) is a strict canon at the fifth at minima distance between superius and tenor, and the final one is a confident demonstration of setting the melodic arc of the tenor’s C-hexachord.
An Italian scribe of the 1480s, who most probable copied a French exemplar, ascribed this song to Busnoys. Nothing in the music contradicts this ascription. However, heard in the context of the ‘Loire Valley’ chansonniers, “Quant j’ay au cueur aulcun contraire” sounds more like Caron’s musical language.
PWCH December 2022