Anonymous, Videz de hors, car vous estes trop chaut

Videz de hors, car vous estes trop chaut 3v · Anonymous

Appearance in the group of related chansonniers:

*Dijon ff. 77v-78 »Videz de hors, car vous estes trop chaut« 3v · Edition · Facsimile

Leuven, Index »Videz dehors« (not entered) · Facsimile

Other musical sources:

Florence 176 ff. 34v-36 »Vidies de ors, car vous estes trop ault« 3v

Text: Rondeau quatrain; full text in Dijon; also in Paris 1719 f. 91-91v, Paris 1722 f. 21v; Chasse 1509 ff. O6v-P1 “Rondel d’ung amant ennuyé”.

After Dijon:

Videz de hors, car vous estes trop chaut,
Desir d’amer, puisque par vous n’ay joye.
De mes amours n’ay riens qui me resjoie,
de plus sur moi vous logier ne me chault.

Mon cueur m’enblez et le mussez si hault
qu’aler n’y puis, si fault que je y pourvoie.

Videz de hors, car vous estes trop chaut,
Desir d’amer, puisque par vous n’ay joye.

Banir vous veul, et faire le me fault,
quant de par vous que nul bien, que je voie,
ne puis joyr; prenez dont autre voie,
fuiez vous ent, acop faictes ung sault.

Videz de hors, car vous estes trop chaut,
Desir d’amer, puisque par vous n’ay joye.
De mes amours n’ay riens qui me resjoie,
de plus sur moi vous logier ne me chault.

Go away, for you are too hot,
Love’s Desire, since I have no pleasure in you.
From my love I get nothing that makes me happy,
I do not want you to haunt me any longer.

You steal my heart and hide it so well
that I cannot follow there, if I must think about it.

Go away, for you are too hot,
Love’s Desire, since I have no pleasure in you.

I wish to banish you, and I must do it,
as for you i cannot rejoice in any happiness
that I can see; therefore go elsewhere,
you must flee from here, clear out at once.

Go away, for you are too hot,
Love’s Desire, since I have no pleasure in you.
From my love I get nothing that makes me happy,
I do not want you to haunt me any longer.

Evaluation of the sources:

Entered by the Dijon scribe with a few writing errors in the music. In the texting of the superius he has carefully at a line break divided the word “logi-er” (bb. 32-35) and thereby given the line a supernumerary syllable, which fits the music perfectly. He has quite exceptionally used a double stroke in all three voices to separate the two sections of the rondeau. In the only other source, the song is distributed over two openings. That is in the slightly later chansonnier in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Ms. Magl. xix.176. Its version is identical with a few variants in details, coloration and ligatures, and with only the refrain as text.

The song is written for two equal, unlabelled voices in a very high tessitura. The part placed at the right side of the opening, at the tenor’s position, takes care of the tenor function at the main cadences. The song is notated without any hexachordal signatures in both sources, and they both contain only one accidental, the flat before b’ in the voice at the tenor’s place (b. 11). This flat is the only indication of the alternation that occurs throughout the song between b-natural and b-flat and the associated play with hexachords colouring the texture. It leaves a great deal of interpretation of the notes to the performers. If the main scribe of the Leuven chansonnier had got the song copied – it is only listed in his index without page reference – it might have been interesting to see which solution he had chosen.

Comments on text and music:

The rondeau quatrain is a quite repetitive renouncement of love in artful rimes approaching equivoque. It is set in music for two very high voices (d’-g’’) and a supporting Concordans an octave lower (c-g’), and the division in two sections is marked by a signum conguentiae, a general pause for the duration of a beat in all three voices and a double stroke through all parts. The two sections are parallel in structure: The first opens in three-part canonic imitation at the unison and octave and then proceeds in free polyphony with the ‘superius’ as the leading voice until the ‘tenor’ crosses up and leads to the middle cadence. The second section consists of a strict canon between the upper voices; then they twice run up and down with an exchange of positions until the ‘superius’ leads to the final cadence.

The strictly Dorian music opens with a display of the combined C- and G-hexachords giving their interplay a characteristic bright sound. In the second line, the ‘tenor’ introduces a flat in bar 11, which for a short time pulls the music to the combination of C- and F-hexachords with a nice contrast in sound. The concordans, which delivers the foundation for the canon in the second section, is in the third line ((bb. 20-26) clearly conceived in the world of flats, which therefore must dominate the canon. This sets the scene for final extended line, which exposes the high voices in the g’- and c’’-hexachords, in order to let them in turn reach the high g’’.

It is a song for boy singers and their teacher of the same type as Prioris’ »Mon cueur et moi d'une alliance«, which is found in the Copenhagen, Laborde and Wolfenbüttel chansonniers, or the anonymous »Quant je fus prins au pavillon« in Leuven chansonnier. However, “Videz de hors” cannot quite live up to the confidence and elegance of these songs. Especially the strict canon in the second section seems a bit easy and square.

PWCH August 2024