Les treves d’amours et de moi 3v ·
Anonymous
Appearance in the group of related chansonniers:
*Dijon ff. 48v-49 »Les treves d’amours et de moi« 3v PDF · Facsimile
*Laborde ff. 98v-99 »Les treves d’amours et de moi« 3v PDF · Facsimile
*Leuven ff. 6v-7 »Les trevez d’amours et de moy« 3v PDF · Facsimile
Other sources:
*Sevilla 5-1-43 ff. 64v-65 »Les treves d’amours et de moy« 3v PDF
Editions: Droz 1927 no. 41 (Dijon).
Text: Rondeau quatrain; full text in Dijon, Laborde and Leuven; also in Berlin 78.B.17 ff. 163-163v, ed. Löpelmann 1923, p. 309.
After Dijon and Laborde:
|
Les treves d’amours et de moi
Ce traicte fait a bonne foy les treves d’amours et de moi Mon cueur s’en est troublé un poy,
Les treves d’amours et de moi |
The truce between love and me This treaty done in good faith the truce between love and me My heart is a bit worried, The truce between love and me |
1) Leuven, line 2, “sont les plus ...”
Evaluation of the sources:
The Dijon scribe copied the song into the Dijon and Laborde chansonniers using the same exemplar, which did not supply any mensuration signs or indications of the rondeau’s middle cadence. The differences in text and music are negligible (see the edition). A ligature in the contratenor (bb 10-13) is erroneously in Laborde written as a c.o.p.-ligature; in Dijon the scribe started in the same way, but realized that it was wrong and corrected it. Before the b-flat in bar 40 in the tenor a sharp (mi-sign) appears boldly written in Laborde; in Dijon the scribe did not include this spurious accidental at first, but squeezed it in before leaving the page. A natural b makes no sense in a song with Bb as it tonal centre. These dubious points reflect the Dijon scribe’s exemplar, which may not have been of the highest quality.
The Leuven chansonnier contains the same version of the song with a few variants. In the upper voice bar 17.1 it looks like the scribe first wrote a semibrevis c’; he later realized that the passage was too short and squeezed in a punctus. This was, however, not quite enough. What were in his exemplar may have been similar to the bars 17-18, which Dijon/Laborde and the Sevilla MS agree on. In bars 40-41 in the tenor, the rest and the b-flat have been prolonged, which destroys the syncopated imitation of the upper voice. Again, this may be a simple writing error or represent a slightly degraded exemplar confirming that the song enjoyed quite a wide circulation.
The song is also found in the slightly younger French-Italian chansonnier in Sevilla, Biblioteca Capitular y Colombina, MS 5-1-43, without any errors, but lacking the text following the refrain. Here the melodic line of the upper voice is identical to the Dijon/Laborde version, but the lower voices show many differences, especially the contratenor plays a more active role in the first section of the song (see the edition). The song in the Sevilla MS seems more consistent and may be the original version, which has been simplified in the Dijon/Laborde and Leuven versions – maybe in order to make it easier to accommodate the short lines of the poem. However, it could easily be the other way round, that someone has discovered the possibility of a more active role for the contratenor in bars 10-13 and so on.
Comments on text and music:
A light-hearted song about a summer’s truce between Love and the author, with the heart as a slightly rebellious participant. The short lines of the rondeau quatrain are set for high voices in fast declamation alternating with long melismas. Superius (c’-f’’) and tenor (f-g’) are an octave apart with the wide-ranging contratenor (d-bb’) often crossing above the tenor. The song somewhat unusually has B-flat as its central and final note. It is placed in this transposed realm in order to obtain the bright sound of high voices, probably mainly boys, at some courtly entertainment.
The music fits the mood of the poem in the Sevilla version, where the bouncy feeling of triple time is continued in the lower voices at the opening of both the song’s sections (bb. 1-8 and 27-34 in the tenor). The tension between double and triple time is quite elegant, while the Dijon/Laborde and Leuven versions seem somewhat heavy-footed. These elements, at least, probably belong to the original idea of this song. The high contratenor, octave leap cadences, and the snatches of faulxbourdon and imitation place this song somewhere in the early 1460s, so it may have been in circulation for some time in differing versions before it appeared in the ‘Loire Valley’ chansonniers.
PWCH September 2016, revised April 2017