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FORS SEULEMENT L'ACTENTE QUE JE MEURE: OCKEGHEM'S RONDEAU AND THE GENDERED RHETORIC OF GRIEF
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 August 2012
Abstract
Fors seulement is among Johannes Ockeghem's most extensively discussed chansons. A much debated feature of this rondeau is that its two upper voices span almost the same high register. Sources disagree over which of these voices is the tenor: earlier and authoritative manuscripts assign this role to the uppermost voice, while later ones ‘normalise’ the disposition by giving it to the slightly lower one. Apart from a few passing remarks, musicologists have not taken into sufficient consideration that the text of Fors seulement, the lament of a woman, is modelled upon Alain Chartier's Complainte on the death of his lady, as Paula Higgins has demonstrated. This article focuses on the transformation of the rhetoric of grief from male Complainte to female rondeau, and considers anew the issue of Fors seulement's unique contrapuntal structure and its troubled reception from the point of view of the peculiarly gendered nature of its poetic voice.
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References
1 The musical sources for Fors seulement are: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rés. Vmc. MS 57 (‘Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussée’, hereafter: Nivelle), fol. VIr (incomplete: after the medial cadence there is just the tenor and contratenor); Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 517 (olim 295, hereafter: Dijon), fols. 28v–29r; Washington, DC, Library of Congress, MS M2.1 L25 Case (‘Chansonnier Laborde’, hereafter: Laborde), fols. 99v–100r; Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, MS Guelf. 287 Extrav. (hereafter: Wolfenbüttel), fols. 43v–45r; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, f. fr. 1597 (‘Chansonnier de Lorraine’, hereafter: Chansonnier de Lorraine), fols. XXXVIr–XXXVIIv; Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Cappella Giulia, XIII.27 (hereafter: Cappella Giulia), fols. 97v–98r (mod. num. 104v–105r); Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 461 (‘Fridolin Sichers Gesangbuch’, hereafter: Gesangbuch), p. 2. To these should be added the sources for the poetic text alone: London, British Library, MS Lansdowne 380, fol. 251r; Berlin, Staatliche Museen der Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78.B.17 (olim Hamilton 674, ‘Chansonnier of Cardinal de Rohan’), fol. 69r; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, f. fr. 1719 (hereafter: P 1719), fol. 34r; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, f. fr. 1722, fol. 72v; Le jardin de plaisance et fleur de rethoricque, Paris [Antoine Vérard], c. 1501, fol. 115r.
2 A. W. Ambros, Geschichte der Musik, vol. 3 (Leipzig, 18933), p. 57; O. J. Gombosi, Jacob Obrecht: Eine stilkritische Studie (Leipzig, 1925), pp. 16–34; H. C. Wolff, Die Musik der alten Niederländer (15. und 16. Jahrhundert) (Leipzig, 1956), pp. 200–5; H. Hewitt, ‘Fors seulement and the Cantus Firmus Technique of the Fifteenth Century’, in G. Reese and R. Snow (eds.), Essays in Musicology in Honour of Dragan Plamenac (New York, 19772), pp. 91–126; Fors seulement: Thirty Compositions for Three to Five Voices or Instruments from the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, ed. Martin Picker (Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, 14; Madison, 1981), pp. vii–xxv; P. Higgins, ‘Antoine Busnoys and Musical Culture in Late-Fifteenth Century France and Burgundy’ (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1987), pp. 144–8; C. Goldberg, Die Chansons Johannes Ockeghems – Ästhetik des musikalischen Raumes (Laaber, 1992), pp. 291–306; R. Wexler, in J. Ockeghem, Motets and Chansons, ed. R. Wexler with D. Plamenac (Johannes Ockeghem, Collected Works, 3; Boston, 1992), p. lxvi; F. Fitch, Johannes Ockeghem: Masses and Models (Collection Ricercar, 2; Paris, 1997), pp. 122–7; J. van Benthem, ‘The Transmission of Fors seulement l'atente’, in J. Ockeghem, Kyrie Gloria Credo super Fors seullement l'atente, ed. J. van Benthem (Johannes Ockeghem, Masses and Mass Sections, II, 4; Utrecht, 1998), pp. vi–vii; C. Urchueguía, ‘Intertextualität und historisches Textverständnis in der Musik der Renaissance – Fors seulement: zwischen Werk und θεμα’, in C. Henkes et al. (eds.), Text und Autor: Beiträge aus dem Venedig-Symposium 1998 des Graduiertenkollegs ‘Textkritik’ (München) (Beihefte zur Editio, 15; Tübingen, 2000), pp. 115–52.
3 In the second half of the 15th c. the contratenor tends to be the part pitched lowest, even though the tenor, the part immediately above, often crosses below it. In Fors seulement the contratenor is firmly separated from the two upper voices and contained within a bass register. On the vocal ranges of Ockeghem's chansons see D. Fallows, ‘Ockeghem as a Song Composer: Hints towards a Chronology’, in P. Vendrix (ed.), Johannes Ockeghem. Actes du XLe Colloque international d'études humanistes, Tours, 3–8 février 1997 (Tours, 1998), pp. 301–16.
4 The Loire Valley chansonniers are nowadays unanimously considered to be a group of codices originating from central France between 1460 and 1480 (at least as far as the earliest corpus of the manuscripts is concerned). Despite the idiosyncrasies of individual manuscripts, convincing links have been established between these chansonniers and the ambience of the French court. Their close affiliation, both cultural and chronological, to the milieu in which Ockeghem and Antoine Busnoys operated gives them a special importance in these composers’ secular output. The most recent and thorough study of the Loire Valley chansonniers is J. Alden, Songs, Scribes, and Society: The History and Reception of the Loire Valley Chansonniers (New York and Oxford, 2010), which takes into account all previous work on these manuscripts.
5 The Chansonnier de Lorraine was copied probably in Paris around 1500, or perhaps later. On this manuscript see C. M. Shipp, ‘A Chansonnier of the Dukes of Lorraine: The Paris Manuscript Fonds Français 1597’ (Ph.D. diss., North Texas State College, 1980); J. P. Couchman, ‘The Lorraine Chansonnier: Antoine de Lorraine and the Court of Louis XII’, Musica Disciplina, 34 (1980), pp. 85–166. The facsimile of the manuscript is accessible on the website <http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9060517z/f1.image>. Cappella Giulia is a Florentine manuscript, copied in the years 1492–4; see The Cappella Giulia Chansonnier (Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, C. G. XIII 27), ed. A. Atlas, 2 vols (Musicological Studies, 27; Brooklyn, 1975–6). The Gesangbuch is probably the work of the Sankt Gallen organist Fridolin Sicher, who could have copied it around 1515; concerning this see The Songbook of Fridolin Sicher, around 1515, Stiftsbibliothek Cod. Sang. 461, ed. D. Fallows (Facsimile editions of prints and manuscripts; Peer, 1996).
6 Here I summarise opinions as to the function of the two upper voices in Fors seulement, citing only a few studies representative of musicologists’ differing positions on this matter.
7 Gombosi, for instance, does not even address the question of divergences within the tradition, always referring to the chanson's highest-pitched voice as ‘Oberstimme’ or ‘Diskant’: see Gombosi, Jacob Obrecht, pp. 16–34.
8 Hewitt, ‘Fors seulement and the Cantus Firmus Technique’, p. 95; Fors seulement, ed. Picker, p. x.
9 Wexler, in Ockeghem, Motets and Chansons, p. lxvi; van Benthem, in Ockeghem, Kyrie Gloria Credo, pp. vi–vii.
10 Goldberg, Die Chansons Johannes Ockeghems, pp. 298–9.
11 Of Ockeghem's other rondeaux none is comparable in length to Fors seulement. With the sole exception of La despourveue, none has been copied into two successive openings in those manuscripts in chansonnier format. Rather, the use of two openings is typical for virelais, which are generally longer than rondeaux. In fact, with few exceptions Ockeghem's virelais are copied on two successive openings in the chansonniers. The exceptions are indeed the rondeau La despourveue, transmitted in two adjacent openings in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Magl. XIX.176 (fols. 83v–85r), and the virelai Ma bouche rit, one single opening in Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 2356 (fols. 28v–29r) and Cappella Giulia (fols. 76v–77r).
12 I reproduce excerpts from the transcription of the chanson in the Wexler edition, Ockeghem, Motets and Chansons, pp. 62–3.
13 Instead of the dotted rhythm, Dijon and Laborde have a semibreve followed by two minims. The dotted rhythm is found in all the other sources. Nivelle seems to belong to this latter group, judging by the single occurrence of the descending phrase in the surviving fragment of the tenor which at this point (b. 54) has the dotted rhythm lacking in Dijon and in Laborde. In the sources containing Ockeghem's reworkings of the rondeau, or his pieces which quote the melodic material (the five-part mass on Fors seulement, the rondeau Fors seulement contre ce qu'ay promys and Intemerata dei mater) it is always the dotted rhythm that is found.
14 These are practices by and large common to all secular music manuscripts of the period. I concentrate on the Loire Valley chansonniers because specific features of these manuscripts concerning particular details of the mise en page are directly relevant to my argument. On copying procedures in chansonniers from the second half of the 15th c. see the studies by Jane Alden, in particular Songs, Scribes, and Society, esp. ch. 2 (pp. 65–107), and ‘The Scribes’ Role in the Production of 15th-Century Chansonniers: New Perspectives’, Revue Belge de Musicologie, 49 (2005), pp. 43–64.
15 Wolfenbüttel, which like Nivelle preserves Fors seulement in two successive openings, has the capital ‘T’ only at the beginning of the piece. In the second part voice B has at the beginning the capital ‘Q’ of ‘Qu'il n'est douleur’. Nivelle – within the limits of the surviving fragment – presents a similar situation, but here the capital with the initial of the poetic text, followed by the incipit of the second part of the text, is found in the contratenor too. Given that some folios have been lost, it is not possible to know how the Nivelle copyist had labelled the voices at the beginning of the chanson.
16 The initial in Laborde may look like an ‘F’. However, comparing it with the initials of neighbouring chansons (O dieu d'amours on fols. 97v–98, Les treves d'amours on fols. 98v–99, Joye me fuit on fols. 100v–101) proves that this letter is much more similar to the ‘T's of their tenors than to the ‘F’ of voice A in Fors seulement.
17 This is the copyist known as ‘Dijon scribe’, since he copied the entire Dijon manuscript (excepting a few later additions). From his hand are also the Copenhagen Chansonnier (Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, MS Thott 291 8o) and a portion of Laborde. For the physical description of these manuscripts and the identification of the hands see Alden, Songs, Scribes, and Society, Appendixes A and B (also accessible on the website <www.oup.com/us/songsscribessociety>). There is a facsimile edition of Dijon: Dijon, Bibliothèque Publique, Manuscrit 517, ed. D. Plamenac (Brooklyn, 1971); the colour facsimile of Laborde and of the Copenhagen Chansonnier are accessible online at these websites: <http://www.rarebookroom.org/Control/unkthe/index.html?page=1> (Laborde); <http://www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/manus/702/dan/> (Copenhagen).
18 C. E. Barret, ‘A Critical Edition of the Dijon Chansonnier: Dijon, Bibliothèque de la Ville, MS 517 (Ancien 295)’, 2 vols (Ph.D. diss., George Peabody College for Teachers of Vanderbilt University, 1981), vol. 2, p. vi.
19 Nivelle alone would seem to share with Dijon a comparable meticulousness. Apart from Fors seulement there are two other chansons in this manuscript with the same initials for two or all three voices: the anonymous Puis qu'a vous servir me suis mis (here, as in Dijon, the same initial appears in all voices) and Guillaume Dufay's Ma plus mignonne de mon cueur, in which both tenor and superius have the initial ‘M’ but no indication as to voice (the upper voices move within a similar range, with crossings, and make use of imitation). In Wolfenbüttel Ma plus mignonne follows the standard voice designation and mise en page of the time. This point has been noted by Peter W. Christoffersen in his online study of the Loire Valley chansonniers, where he provides two transcriptions of this chanson as it appears in the two manuscripts (<http://chansonniers.pwch.dk/CH/CH034.html>). In his commentary he writes that ‘in Wolfenbüttel the voices are arranged in exactly the same way on the page, but the voices on the right-hand page are mechanically labelled according to their location as “Tenor” and “Contra”. Without doubt the labelling of the parts in Nivelle is the most authoritative of the two sources.’ I will consider below the accuracy or otherwise with which the tenor's function is indicated where this voice lies outside the usual range.
20 Furthermore, a ‘C’ for the contratenor (here as in Dijon designated ‘concordans’) was intended, but this initial letter was not written, though still visible is the cue letter, a ‘C’ the copyist has inserted in order to guide the illuminator. A similar situation to that of Joye me fuit is found in Busnoys's Ma plus qu'assez (no. 8). This virelai too appears in another Loire Valley chansonnier, the Copenhagen Chansonnier, which is entirely the work of the Dijon copyist. Here, by contrast with Dijon, the mise en page for Ma plus qu'assez is the standard one for three-part chansons: the initial of the poetic text for the superius, and ‘T’ and ‘C’ for tenor and contratenor respectively. The colour facsimile of the Copenhagen Chansonnier, together with a transcription of its contents and commentary may be found at Christoffersen's website dedicated to the Loire Valley chansonniers, <http://chansonniers.pwch.dk/CH/CH013.html>.
21 That the Dijon copyist was very attentive to the music he was copying and to its compositional characteristics also emerges from Christoffersen's analysis of the key signatures of the Busnoys chansons in the Loire Valley chansonniers; see his ‘Busnoys in the Hands of Scribes, or: What did Key Signatures Mean to the Scribes?’, paper presented at the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, 5–8 July 2010, Royal Holloway, University of London, accessible on the website <http://www.pwch.dk/Publications/PWCH_BusnoysInTheHands.pdf>, p. 5.
22 I reproduce the text and translation in Richard Wexler's Ockeghem, Motets and Chansons, pp. lxiv–lxv. This is the rondeau text in the Dijon manuscript; the divergent readings in the other music manuscripts and in poetic anthologies do not involve significant variants – in any case they are not of significance for the points under discussion here.
23 D. Fallows, A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs, 1415–1480 (Oxford, 1999).
24 On this topic see L. I. Lipking, Abandoned Women and Poetic Tradition (Chicago, 1989). On the lament as a specifically female expressive form and literary/musical genre, see L. Curtis, ‘Christine de Pizan and Dueil Angoisseux’, in T. M. Borgerding (ed.), Gender, Sexuality, and Early Music (New York and London, 2002), pp. 265–82. Although focused on material from the mid-16th c. onward, another study useful for the classical roots of the Renaissance female lament is L. Holford-Strevens, ‘Her Eyes Became Two Spouts: Classical Antecedents of Renaissance Laments’, Early Music, 27 (1999), pp. 379–93.
25 There is a vast literature on the reception of the Heroides, and more generally on the lament by the abandoned woman, during the Middle Ages; for the points discussed here see R. J. Hexter, Ovid and Medieval Schooling: Studies in Medieval School Commentaries on Ovid's Ars Amatoria, Epistulae ex Ponto, and Epistulae heroidum (Münchener Beiträge zur Medievistik und Renaissance-Forschung, 38; Munich, 1986); S. C. Hagedorn, Abandoned Women: Rewriting the Classics in Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer (Ann Arbor, 2004), esp. pp. 1–46.
26 See G. Rosati, ‘Epistola femminile e lamento femminile’, in Ovidio, Lettere di eroine (Heroides), ed. G. Rosati (Milan, 1989), pp. 35–45; W. S. Anderson, ‘The Heroides’, in J. W. Binns (ed.), Ovid (London and Boston, 1973), pp. 49–83.
27 Rosati, ‘Epistola femminile’, pp. 37–8.
28 ‘Nihil enim nobili est probrosius mulieri quam de se ipsa non exspectare promissa et spem frustrare largitam suoque sermone fallere gentem. Hoc videtur illis mulieribus convenire quae meretricio more versantur, et quae muneris gratia amoris nituntur mandata subvertere et ob lucrum eius dehonestare militiam’; A. Capellanus, De amore, Libri tres, I, vi, 131–2, ed. F. P. Knapp, Text nach der Ausgabe von E. Trojel (Berlin, 2006), p. 88.
29 ‘Quamvis enim istud in masculis toleratur propter usum frequentem et sexus privilegium, quo cuncta in hoc saeculo etiam naturaliter verecunda conceduntur hominibus liberius peragenda …’; ibid., II, vi, 16, p. 412.
30 Higgins, introduction to the Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chausée, p. iii; the origin of Fors seulement in Chartier's poem is further analysed and discussed by Higgins in greater detail in ‘Antoine Busnoys and Musical Culture in Late Fifteenth-Century France and Burgundy’, pp. 144–8.
31 See The Poetical Works of Alain Chartier, ed. J. C. Laidlaw (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 40–1; the edition of La Complainte is on pp. 320–7.
32 He was a notary and secretary to the king, and furthermore, like Ockeghem he was a canon of Notre Dame in Paris and at Tours Cathedral; see Higgins, ‘Antoine Busnoys and Musical Culture’, pp. 147–8; see also Laidlaw, ‘The Life of Alain Chartier’, in The Poetical Works of Alain Chartier, pp. 1–27.
33 See Higgins, introduction to the Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussée, p. iii; ead., ‘Antoine Busnoys and Musical Culture’, pp. 144–5.
34 In the two musical manuscripts Ockeghem's rondeau precedes that of Busnoys; in P 1719 their position is reversed (see below).
35 P. Higgins, ‘Antoine Busnoys’, Grove Music Online (accessed 24 Sept. 2011). On the circulation of Chartier's poetry among musicians of the mid-15th c. see D. Fallows, ‘Binchois and the Poets’, in A. Kirkman and D. Slavin (eds.), Binchois Studies (Oxford, 2000), pp. 199–215.
36 See Higgins, ‘Antoine Busnoys and Musical Culture’, pp. 144–60, for an analysis of the intertextual links (and their cultural implications) in other works by Busnoys and Ockeghem in which the two composers pay each other reciprocal homage (the aforementioned In hydraulis and Ut heremita solus). The connection linking the Ockeghem and Busnoys rondeaux with Chartier, and the relationship between the two settings, would alone provide sufficient material for a further article. In the present study I shall concentrate my analysis on Ockeghem's rondeau, making only a few references to the one by Busnoys.
37 Van Benthem, ‘The Transmission of Fors seullement l'atente’, p. vii. For his edition of the rondeau van Benthem follows Wolfenbüttel, and, as in this chansonnier, he identifies the highest voice as the composition's tenor; however, just as if it were a true superius, he prints it on the first line of the system.
38 Laidlaw points out that the manuscripts of the Complainte differ as to the ordering of the stanzas, which in his words consist of ‘a series of variations on the theme of grief, and there is not always a close or logical connection between them’. Nonetheless we can infer from his critical commentary that only the internal stanzas of the poem were rearranged; in fact there is agreement between different sources as to the position both of the first three stanzas and the last two, which are clearly recognised as having an explicit introductory or concluding function: see Laidlaw, in The Poetical Works of Alain Chartier, p. 321.
39 See Higgins, ‘Antoine Busnoys and Musical Culture’, pp. 146–7. Higgins notes that the same rhyme-words also recur in Busnoys's rondeau Joye me fuit.
40 The Poetical Works of Alain Chartier, p. 327.
41 Analogous observations can be made for Busnoys's Joye me fuit et douleur me queurt seure, which according to Higgins paraphrases Chartier's rondeau Joye me fuit et Desespoir me chache. In this case too the chanson is a feminine transformation of a text about male grief. The protagonist of Chartier's rondeau says: ‘Je n'ay plaisir ne je ne le pourchache’; his lack of action is therefore the result of a refusal. The protagonist in the chanson, however, undergoes with no possibility of escape the torments of Sorrow and Anger (lines 1–2: ‘Joye me fuit et douleur me queurt seure / Courroux me suit sans riens qui me sequeure’), and, just like the protagonist in Fors seulement, she continues to wait for an event that will resolve the situation, expressing her one remaining hope that death will come soon (line 5: ‘Mon seul desir et que briefment je meure’). Both the Complainte and this rondeau share the theme of the loved woman's death, which, Laidlaw reminds us, recurs in two other ballades, ‘Aucunes gens m'ont huy araisonné’ and ‘Je ne fu nez fors pour tout mal avoir’: see The Poetical Works of Alain Chartier, p. 41. Apropos of Joye me fuit Fallows emphasises that in the most recent attestation of the poetic text (Le jardin de plaisance et fleur de rethoricque, fol. 98) there is a variant in line 19 which turns the poetic ‘I’ from a woman into a man; see Fallows, A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs, p. 227.
42 For an edition of the text of Binchois's rondeau see the edition of the Chansonnier Cordiforme: Chansonnier de Jean de Montchenu, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Rothschild 2973 [I.5.13], ed. G. Thibault and D. Fallows (Paris, 1991), p. 59.
43 The text of this rondeau is to be found in Chansonnier de Jean de Montchenu, p. 29.
44 The text of this rondeau is in Au grey d'amours … (Pièces inédites du manuscrit Paris, Bibl. nat., fr. 1719) étude et édition, ed. F. Féry-Hue, Le Moyen français, 27–8 (1991), pp. 210–11.
45 In his commentary on the Cordiforme Comme ung homme David Fallows underlines the close musical relationship between this parody and its model, but from the textual point of view he limits their links just to the first line, because, by contrast with the music, he discerns in the poetic text of Comme ung homme desconforté ‘un ton fidèle et résolu, tandis que l'autre est suicidaire et dénué de tout espoir’. D. Fallows, in Chansonnier de Jean de Montchenu, p. xci.
46 C. Casagrande, ‘The Protected Woman’, in C. Klapisch-Zuber (ed.), A History of Women in the West: Silences of the Middle Ages (A History of Women, ed. G. Duby and M. Perrot, vol. 2; Cambridge, Mass., 1992), pp. 70–1.
47 Casagrande,‘The Protected Woman’, p. 71. I am translating this last passage direct from the original Italian (Bari, 1990, p. 89) since Clarissa Botsford's English version is misleading here: ‘costruire un modello etico femminile adatto alle donne di una società che si andava complicando etc.’ does not mean ‘to set up a flexible ethical model suitable for women in an increasingly involved and complicated society’.
48 On the increasing control over women in the last centuries of the Middle Ages, see the concluding sections of J. Dalrun, ‘The Clerical Gaze’, and D. Régnier-Bohler, ‘Literary and Mystical Voices’, in Klapisch-Zuber (ed.), A History of Women, pp. 15–42 and 427–82 respectively.
49 Casagrande, ‘The Protected Woman’, p. 87.
50 Ibid., p. 89.
51 Ibid., p. 95.
52 F. da Barberino, Reggimento e costumi di donna, ed. G. E. Sansone (Florence, 1957), p. 27. I am quoting from Casagrande, ‘The Protected Woman’, p. 95.
53 G. Boccaccio, Famous Women (De mulieribus claris), ed. and trans. V. Brown (I Tatti Renaissance Library, 1; Cambridge, Mass., 2001); the story of Semiramis is on pp. 8–11.
54 C. de Pizan, Le Livre de la Mutacion de Fortune, ed. S. Solente (Paris, 1959).
55 Contrast her son Ninyas, who, without even cross-dressing, deserves reproach since like a woman he ‘languished idly in bed, while [his mother] exerted herself in battle against her enemies’; Boccaccio, Famous Women, p. 11.
56 On the importance of Christine's male transformation as an allegory of social and professional emancipation, and at the same time of emancipation from the Ovidian models for metamorphosis, see J. L. Kellogg, ‘Transforming Ovid: The Metamorphosis of Female Authority’, in M. Desmond (ed.), Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference (Minneapolis, 1998), pp. 181–4.
57 On Dueil angoisseux and its relations to the events of Pizan's life and to the culture of the female lament, see Curtis, ‘Christine de Pizan’, pp. 268–71.
58 See M. Desmond, ‘Christine de Pizan: Gender, Authorship and Life Writing’, in S. Gaunt and S. Kay (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 123–35.
59 See M. Quilligan, The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan's Cité des dames (Ithaca, NY, 1991).
60 What Boccaccio condemns in Semiramis, as Dante had already done in the Inferno (V, 52–60), is the excessive lust innate in her sex, which led her to promulgate wicked laws to cover up her own misdeeds, such that in the end she fell victim to an outburst of contempt from that very son who, together with her, had been besmirched by shameful acts. See Boccaccio, Famous Women, pp. 11–12. For the figure of Semiramis in Boccaccio and in Pizan see L. Dulac, ‘Un mythe didactique chez Christine de Pizan: Sémiramis ou la veuve héroïque’, in Mélanges de philologie romane offerts à Charles Camproux (Montpellier, 1978), pp. 316–31. On De mulieribus claris as an anti-model for the Cité des Dames see P. Philippy, ‘Establishing Authority: Boccaccio's De Claris Mulieribus and Christine de Pizan's Livre de la Cité des Dames’, Romanic Review, 77 (1986), pp. 167–93; P. Caraffi, ‘Boccaccio, Christine e il mito di Didone’, in S. Mazzoni Peruzzi (ed.), Boccaccio e le letterature romanze tra Medioevo e Rinascimento, Atti del Convegno Internazionale Boccaccio e la Francia, Firenze–Certaldo, 19–20 maggio 2003, 19–20 maggio 2004 (Florence, 2006), pp. 7–21.
61 On this aspect above all see R. Brown-Grant, Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defence of Women: Reading beyond Gender (Cambridge, 2003).
62 C. de Pizan, La Cité des dames, I, 15. There is a recent edition of the French text in La città delle dame, ed. P. Caraffi and E. J. Richards (Rome, 1997): the passage quoted is on p. 106; the English translation is available in The Book of the City of the Ladies, ed. R. Brown-Grant (London, 1999), p. 35. On the programmatic role of Semiramis as cornerstone of the ladies’ City see Quilligan, The Allegory of Female Authority, pp. 69–103.
63 Apart from the Cité des dames we should consider her texts against Jean de Meun's misogynistic conclusion to the Roman de la Rose, assembled in the Querelle de la Rose, c. 1401.
64 See n. 4 above.
65 I refer above all to K. N. Moll, ‘Voice Function, Sonority, and Contrapuntal Procedure in Late Medieval Polyphony’, Current Musicology, 64 (2001), pp. 26–72, esp. pp. 50–7; see also his Counterpoint and Compositional Process in the Time of Dufay: Perspectives from German Musicology (Criticism and Analysis of Early Music, 2; New York and London, 1997), pp. 3–64.
66 Moll quotes in particular Meier's ‘Die Harmonik der cantus-firmus-haltigen Satz des 15. Jahrhunderts’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 9 (1952), pp. 27–44 (translated in Moll, Counterpoint and Compositional Process, pp. 149–70).
67 Moll, ‘Voice Function’, p. 51.
68 Ibid., pp. 51–2.
69 ‘Tenor autem est illa pars, supra quam omnes aliae fundantur quemadmodum partes domus vel aedificii super suum fundamentum …’. The text of the treatise is in J. de Grocheo, De musica, in E. Rohloff, Der Musiktraktat des Johannes de Grocheo nach den Quellen neu herausgegeben mit Übersetzung ins Deutsche und Revisionsbericht (Media latinitas musica, 2; Leipzig, 1943), p. 57.
70 ‘Tenor est cujusque cantus compositi fundamentum relationis’, in J. Tinctoris, Diffinitorium musice. Un dizionario di musica per Beatrice d'Aragona, ed. C. Panti (La tradizione musicale, 8; Florence, 2004), p. 48. My translation does not reproduce that of Panti, which introduces some additions to Tinctoris's text.
71 J. Tinctoris, Proportionale musices, ed. G. D'Agostino (La tradizione musicale, 14; Florence, 2008), pp. 84–5.
72 ‘Est autem primaria pars totius compositi cantus fundamentum relationis quam primo factam ut principalem cetere respiciunt. Et hec frequentius immo fere semper tenor est, ita quidem dictus quasi ceteras partes sibi subditas tenens.’ Tinctoris, Proport ionale musices, pp. 86–7. My translation (for which I thankfully acknowledge the kind assistance of Maria Caraci Vela and Edoardo Ferrarini) differs from D'Agostino's in one particular: I take ‘primo factum’ to mean ‘made first’ and not ‘made as principal’.
73 For the edition of the Missa Caput see G. Dufay, Missarum Pars Prior, ed. H. Besseler (Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, 1/2; Rome, 1960), pp. 75–101.
74 R. Strohm, The Rise of European Music, 1380–1500 (Cambridge, 1993), p. 236.
75 Moll, ‘Voice Function’, pp. 51–2.
76 It is no accident that Helen Hewitt (‘Fors seulement and the Cantus Firmus Technique’, p. 95), despite accepting the mise en page of the late manuscripts, reveals a certain perplexity when considering this voice, which enters last as the superius (see above). Clemens Goldberg focuses on the oddity of the use of two preparatory duets at the beginning of both sections of Fors seulement in the context of contemporary chansons. In this connection he notes that this fact is the probable cause of alignment problems between music and poetic text. See Die Chansons Johannes Ockeghems, pp. 298–9; and also ‘Werk, Quelle, Analyse: Betrachtungen zum Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussée’, in P. Niedermüller et al. (eds.), Quellenstudium und musikalische Analyse: Festschrift Martin Just zum 70. Geburtstag (Würzburg, 2011), pp. 1–22.
77 The chanson in which the refashioning of voice function and designation most resembles that of Fors seulement is the anonymous rondeau Quant seray je clamé (Table 1, no. 12), which I shall consider later.
78 On the difference between 15th-c. chansons and masses as to the tenor's discourse, there is an especially significant passage in an English treatise from the beginning of that century, where we read that ‘he who would compose a motet should make the tenor his first task … and he who would compose a ballade, a rondeau, a virelai or a psalmody should do the discant first’ (‘Et qui vult condere modulum (=motettum) fiat primo tenor … Et qui vult condere baladam, rotundellum, vireledum, psalmodiam fiat primo discantus’). Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 410, II, fols. 7v–8r]; I quote from S. Ehrmann-Herfort, entry ‘Stimmgattungen’, ‘IV: Satztechnische Veränderungen im 15. Jahrhundert’ in MGG 2, vol. 8 (1998), col. 1786.
79 I should mention that the Loire Valley chansonniers, although so consistent in keeping to the same mise en page, do not all transmit the same text. As I noted above, Laborde and Dijon differ from Wolfenbüttel (and perhaps also from Nivelle) as to the version with undotted rhythm of the descending melodic figure typical of Fors seulement; their agreement as to the mise en page, placing the tenor as highest voice, consequently takes on a greater significance.
80 The case of Fors seulement is therefore different from that of three-voice pieces with two voices in the same register typical of older repertories. Analysing music composed between c. 1350 and 1450, Margaret Bent has observed that ‘equal-voice self-contained duets with mutual cantus-tenor function … do not have a separate tenor part because the tenor function is taken care of within the duet; the parts are rarely labelled’. In Ockeghem's rondeau it is instead the tension between the grammar and rhetoric of the tenor that has made it possible to assign the position and role of this voice to the highest one. See M. Bent, ‘Naming of Parts: Notes on the Contratenor, c. 1350–1450’, in M. Jennifer Bloxam et al. (eds.), Uno gentile et subtile ingegno: Studies in Renaissance Music in Honour of Bonnie J. Blackburn (Collection Épitome Musical; Turnhout, 2009), pp. 1–12, at 10.
81 Indirect evidence that the copyists might have been aware of this ‘double process’ is provided by a chanson in some respects similar to Fors seulement: Phillipet de Pres's rondeau Je ne seray plus vert vestu, transmitted in one of the Loire Valley chansonniers (Wolfenbüttel, fols. 54v–55r). In this chanson too, as in Fors seulement, one of the three voices enters after the other two, following an introductory duet, at the cadence of the other two voices. Here, in contrast to Fors seulement, the voice that comes in last is the superius. Nonetheless, apart from the use of this mode of entry for the third voice, the two upper voices move as they do in a normal three-voice chanson: that is, there is no significant crossing between superius and tenor (which becomes the highest voice only in bars 27–8 and part of 42). Phillipet de Pres's rondeau uses a standard contrapuntal structure, in which each voice fulfils the function traditionally assigned to it: except for the cadence in bars 10–11 (where the superius enters at the resolution) tenor and superius always keep to their traditional motion at a cadence. Significantly, by contrast with Fors seulement, Je ne seray expresses a masculine point of view – in fact the text opens with a ‘virile’ gesture of refusal (‘Je ne seray plus vert vestu’), characterised by a rhetoric comparable to that of the Complainte, of Chartier's rondeau Joye me fuit et Desepoir me chache and of the two Comme ung homme desconforté settings analysed above. Despite the similarity of their beginnings, there are no other points of contact linking Je ne seray with Fors seulement. It is no accident that this rondeau's mise en page does not exhibit the transmission problems of Ockeghem's piece: all voices are always set out in their usual places. An edition of Je ne seray plus is in Der Wolfenbütteler Chansonnier: Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel codex Guelf. 287 Extrav., ed. M. Gutiérrez-Denhoff (Musikalische Denkmäler, 10; Mainz, 1988), pp. 81–2.
82 Cappella Giulia has the incipit ‘Frayres y dexedes me’, so far unidentified.
83 It is true that this manuscript, copied around 1500 or even later, contains various chansons whose tenor has the text, or only portions of text, written underneath the notes. However, I believe that in the specific case of Fors seulement the presence of the text beneath the voice which was the superius of the Loire Valley chansonniers can be linked to the situation of the two upper voices in this rondeau (as the case of Sicher's Gesangbuch, discussed below, will show). On this chansonnier see Couchman, ‘The Lorraine Chansonnier’; a study and edition of the manuscript may be found in Shipp, ‘A Chansonnier of the Dukes of Lorraine’.
84 Urchueguía, ‘Intertextualität und historisches Textverständnis’, p. 136.
85 Fallows suggests that not only did Sicher come into possession of the manuscript in 1545 (as shown by a note of ownership on the first page), but, on the basis of certain palaeographical comparisons, that he was in fact also the copyist (if this is true, he copied the manuscript long before he became its owner). Ockeghem's Fors seulement is the second piece in the manuscript; it is immediately followed by eleven reworkings, among them Fors seulement contre ce qu'ay promys by Ockeghem himself, and other compositions (including some based on the so-called ‘new’ tenor, the tenor of a new setting of the rondeau's refrain), whose music was inspired by Ockeghem's piece without quoting it directly. Apropos of this see Fallows, Introduction to The Songbook of Fridolin Sicher, pp. 5–31.
86 In his analysis of Fors seulement Gombosi writes: ‘Der Satz weist alle Charakteristika des Ockegemschen Stiles auf, seine Melodien (am wenigsten die Oberstimme, die vielleicht Lehngut ist) übergehen die Kadenzen, verwischen die tonalen Beziehungen’ (‘The piece exhibits all the characteristics of Ockeghem's style: its melodies continue beyond the cadences, and blur the tonal connections – less so in the highest voice, which is perhaps a borrowing’ [i.e. from another composer]). Gombosi, Jacob Obrecht, p. 17.
87 R. Strohm, ‘Modal Sounds as a Stylistic Tendency of the Mid-Fifteenth Century: E-, A-, and C-Finals in Polyphonic Song’, in U. Günther et al. (eds.), Modality in the Music of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Musicological Studies and Documents, 49; Stuttgart, 1996), p. 165.
88 Dijon, Laborde and P 1719. According to Higgins, in P 1719 Fors seulement is distinguished by the caption ‘response’ (‘Antoine Busnoys and Musical Culture’, p. 146). However, I have been unable to find any trace of this caption in the manuscript. Rather, the two rondeaux are labelled with two later annotations: ‘d'une femme’ for Joye me fuit and ‘dame’ for Fors seulement.
89 The edition of the Dijon version is in Barret, ‘A Critical Edition of the Dijon Chansonnier’, vol. 2, pp. 180–3. In the Mellon Chansonnier (New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 91) Joye me fuit is on fols. 36v–38r; the tenor (here designated as such) has the text partially beneath the notes in the first section, while after the medial cadence it has just the first hemistich of line 4: ‘loins de mon esperance’. For the facsimile and edition of Joye me fuit in this chansonnier see The Mellon Chansonnier, ed. L. L. Perkins and H. Garey, 2 vols (New Haven, 1979), i, pp. 108–11; the colour facsimile of the manuscript is accessible at <http://www.undoulxregard.org/mellon/>.
90 So much so that Gombosi, for instance, doubted that the highest voice could be the work of Ockeghem: see above.
91 In an article on stylistic changes in 15th-c. chansons, Lynn Trowbridge noted the singularity of Busnoys's style, observing significantly that ‘he more than any other composer studied achieved a texture in which the individual voices participate on an equal and independent footing. This arrangement, often attributed both to Ockeghem and Busnois, appears on the basis of the evidence gathered in the course of this study to be considerably more characteristic of Busnois than Ockeghem.’ L. M. Trowbridge, ‘Style Change in the Fifteenth-Century Chanson: A Comparative Study of Compositional Detail’, Journal of Musicology, 4 (1985–6), p. 162.
92 Strohm, The Rise of European Music, p. 460.
93 Ibid. The same situation as in Dijon is found in the Mellon Chansonnier, which transmits Je ne puis vivre with the poetic text written beneath both the upper voices (fols. 14v–16r), and in which at the ouvert/clos the tenor lacks its initial (fol. 16r). On the Dijon and Mellon Chansonnier versions of this chanson see below. On Busnoys and Jacqueline d'Hacqueville see the bibliographical references in the next note.
94 P. Higgins, ‘Celebrating Transgression and Excess: Busnoys and the Boundaries of Late Medieval Culture’, introduction to P. Higgins (ed.), Antoine Busnoys: Method, Meaning, and Context in Late Medieval Music (Oxford, 1999), pp. 1–20. Higgins quotes Leeman Perkins as the first to suggest a link between Busnoys's creativity in the d'Hacqueville chansons and the female subject to whom they were addressed: see L. L. Perkins, ‘Antoine Busnois and the d'Hacqueville Connection’, in M. B. Winn (ed.), Musique naturelle et musique artificielle: In memoriam Gustave Reese=Le Moyen françays, 5 (1979), pp. 49–64.
95 In this article I have focused essentially on the tradition of these chansons in the Loire Valley chansonniers. It is, however, interesting to observe how the voice disposition in these codices also influenced other manuscripts produced later and in different environments. For instance, in the Pixérécourt Chansonnier (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, f. fr. 15123, copied in Florence probably in the 1480s) Joye me fuit (fols. 163v–164r) is transmitted in a manner that suggests a model similar to Dijon: for a start the initial of the superius is an ‘O’ (therefore the text reads ‘Oye’ instead of the correct ‘Joye’); similarly the incipits of the tenor and contratenor lack the initial ‘J’, a sign that the model most likely had the initial of the poetic text for all three voices (not just for the two upper ones, as in Dijon). This detail may have confused the copyist who, expecting there to be a ‘T’ and a ‘C’ for tenor and contratenor, transcribed only what he thought was the chanson's true incipit (and in fact, at least at the start of the section, the imitation involves all three voices). The facsimile of Joye me fuit in the Pixérécourt Chansonnier is accessible online at <http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9007335q/f174.zoom>; C. Goldberg's edition of the manuscript is available at <http://www.goldbergstiftung.org/file/pixgesamtalt.pdf> (Joye me fuit is on p. [333]).
96 On poetry and chansons as social phenomena see J. M. Taylor, The Making of Poetry: Late-Medieval French Poetic Anthologies (Turnhout, 2007); S. R. Kovacs, ‘Staging Lyric Performances in Early Print Culture: Le Jardin de Plaisance et Fleur de Rethorique (c. 1501)’, French Studies, 55 (2001), pp. 1–24; K. Seewright, ‘An Introduction to British Library MS Lansdowne 380’, Notes, 65 (2009), pp. 633–736; Alden, Songs, Scribes, and Society, esp. pp. 167–240; see also J. Alden, ‘Reading the Loire Valley Chansonniers’, Acta Musicologica, 79 (2007), pp. 1–31.
97 The text of this virelai (in the Mellon Chansonnier version) together with commentary can be found in The Mellon Chansonnier, ed. Perkins and Garey, vol. 2, pp. 231–4.
98 Je ne puis vivre is in some respects similar to Fors seulement as far as the mise en page of the upper voices is concerned. As is well known, there are two versions of this chanson, one in Dijon (fols. 37v–39r) and one in the Mellon Chansonnier (fols. 14v–16r), whose discrepancies are essentially in the ouvert/clos. In Dijon and the Mellon Chansonnier, though, not only does the music differ in the ouvert/clos: so does the layout of the voices on the page. The first three breves of this section are musically identical in both versions, except that in Mellon the tenor is the highest voice and sings what in Dijon is the superius. After eight breves which do display musical divergences, the two manuscripts concur once more, but in Mellon the superius of Dijon still occupies the tenor place and, despite crossing of the parts, it continues to be the highest voice. There is scholarly disagreement as to the paternity and hence the quality of the two versions, for which see W. Arlt, ‘Vom Überlieferung zum Kompositionsprozeß: Beobachtungen an den zwei Fassungen von Busnois’ Je ne puis vivre ainsy’, in G. Allroggen and D. Altenburg (eds.), Festschrift Arno Forchert zum 60. Geburtstag (Kassel, 1986), pp. 27–39; P. Urquhart, ‘Three Sample Problems of Editorial Accidentals in Chansons by Busnoys and Ockeghem’, in J. A. Owens and A. M. Cummings (eds.), Music in Renaissance Cities and Courts: Studies in Honor of Lewis Lockwood (Detroit Monographs in Musicology, Studies in Music, 18; Warren, Mich., 1997), pp. 465–81. For further investigation into the links between Je ne puis vivre and Fors seulement I refer the reader to my forthcoming monograph on Ockeghem's rondeau and its reworkings.
99 Bologna, Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna, MS Q16, fols. 67v–68r. A digital reproduction of the codex is accessible at <http://badigit.comune.bologna.it/cmbm/images/ripro/gaspari/_Q016/Q016_000.asp>.
100 Here too, as in Ne me veilles just examined, there is a problem of connection between the illuminated initials and the poetic text. On fol. 41r the tenor reads ‘T e pour cela’: it has the illuminated initial ‘T’, which evidently was not what the copyist of the text had in mind. The same occurs at the ouvert/clos (fols. 41v–42r), where the tenor (fol. 42) through the same lack of coordination reads ‘T as que pourra faire’ instead of the correct ‘Las que pourra faire’.
101 I should mention that that the relationship between texts and images is not always so straightforward, and that illuminations do not always portray the subjects of the poetic texts. Alden remarks that miniatures could also have a mnemonic function, ‘helping to create specific mental images of individual songs’, and that decorated initials and borders could both evoke ‘the poetic world of the song's texts’ and ‘reinforce the fictional dimension of these texts, providing them with an ornamental trellis reminiscent of the borders of a garden’, the ideal location for poetic and musical consumption at the time (Songs, Scribes, and Society, pp. 167–8). In the case of Fors seulement the Loire Valley chansonniers present a diversified situation. In Wolfenbüttel the ‘F’ of the superius is a flower-like and rather sad-looking female creature; the ‘T’ of the tenor and the ‘C’ of the contratenor are a snail on a tree trunk and an imaginary creature respectively; on the second opening the ‘Q’ of the superius is an ape with a dragon, the same letter of the tenor is made up of trumpets and floral elaborations, and the ‘C’ of the contratenor is another imaginary creature. In Dijon the ‘F’ of the superius includes snails, a (female?) face and an animal's head; the same letter in the tenor has two snails and a male face; and the ‘C’ of the contratenor floral elements and another male face. Finally, a male figure appears in the ‘F’ of the superius in Laborde. To the best of my knowledge, the relationship between illuminations and chansons in late-fifteenth-century chansonniers has not been specifically investigated; some interesting observations are found in Alden, Songs, Scribes, and Society, especially pp. 167–78, and ead., ‘Reading the Loire Valley Chansonniers’. On the mnemonic function of decorated initials in contemporary manuscripts, see A. M. Busse Berger, Medieval Music and the Art of Memory (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2005), pp. 198–251, and M. J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 221–57.
102 The only other piece among those cited that shows a comparable degree of intervention as to voice functions and the tenor's grammar and rhetoric might be the anonymous Quant seray je clamé discussed above. But we know of only two music manuscripts for this chanson, and we have no information about the poetic text and its origin. Given this, we are not in a position to document the copyists’ different approaches to the mise en page and the designation of voice function in this chanson with the same degree of detail as in Fors seulement; it is not surprising, therefore, that Quant seray je clamé has received much less musicological attention than Ockeghem's rondeau.
103 It is possible that, even though their names are not known, women may have been involved in the composition of chansons (much less likely is their involvement with sacred polyphony). As Liane Curtis has recently suggested, there is nothing that prevents us from saying that some anonymous 15th-c. pieces might in fact have been composed by women (‘Christine de Pizan’, pp. 265–6). This possibility had been discussed by Paula Higgins apropos of the d'Hacqueville chansons by Busnoys, in which she found evidence of the involvement of a woman (Jacqueline d'Hacqueville) not just as lover, but in fact ‘as a participant in a creative musical-literary exchange’ with the composer. Although it is not possible to establish whether or not d'Hacqueville was a musician, Higgins suggests that in view of the continuity between poetic and musical composition in 15th-c. France women may have played a more important role than male-oriented historiography has traditionally ascribed to them: see Higgins, ‘Parisian Nobles’, pp. 184–95.