Anonymous, Recours d’onneur et de liesse

Recours d’onneur et de liesse 3v · Anonymous

Appearance in the group of related chansonniers:

*Laborde ff. 15v-16 »Recours d’onneur et de liesse« 3v PDF · Facsimile

Edition: Goldberg 1997, p. 405.

Text: Rondeau quatrain; full text; also found in Jardin 1501, f. 75v.

Recours d’onneur et de liesse,
a qui chaiscun doit recourir,
ne prenes pas en desplaisir
se je vous nomme ma maistresse.

Or penses quel desplaisir m’esse
quant je ne vous voy a loisir,

Recours d’onneur et de liesse,
a qui chaiscun doit recourir.

Penses que vostre amour me blesse
et de dueil me faictez mourir,
car se aultrement je n’ay plaisir,
je meurs de deul et de destresse.

Recours d’onneur et de liesse,
a qui chaiscun doit recourir,
ne prenes pas en desplaisir
se je vous nomme ma maistresse.

Low Tide of honour and of delight,
which everyone is fated to meet,
do not be displeased
if I call you my mistress.

Oh, think what annoyance it is to me
when I do not see you from time to time,

Low Tide of honour and of delight,
which everyone is fated to meet.

Remember that your love hurts me
and makes me die of sorrow,
for if in other ways I did not have pleasure,
I would die from grief and distress.

Low Tide of honour and of delight,
which everyone is fated to meet,
do not be displeased
if I call you my mistress.

Evaluation of the source:

Copied by the main scribe of Laborde with only a single scribal error. In the last staff of the tenor part, a key signature is introduced. Possibly, this was meant for the contratenor part, which have the key signature in its first staff only.

Comments on text and music:

Sarcastic poem addressed to the personified Low Tide of honour and delight, which anybody can happen to meet. The irony is stressed by the jolly triple time in the rondeau's second section, where the poet names this Ebb in Fortune as his mistress. The setting is in a high tessitura with extended ranges in the lower parts. The contratenor keeps below the tenor for most of the time, but in the three-part imitation, which opens the second section, it enters a fifth above the tenor. A competent, varied composition, very effective in its handling of the rhythmical tension between the slow opening line (a brisk tempo is needed in order to bring it of), the acceleration towards the medial cadence, and the jovial start of the second section. Remark also the syncopated passage in the superius bars 14-21 and the way in which the triple time in coloration after the opening imitations actually wavers between triple and a faster duple time (bb. 39 ff).

PWCH January 2012