CHANSONS DE REGRETZ IN THE LATE FIFTEENTH AND EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURIES

by

Ekaterini Akarepi August 2009

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University at Buffalo, State University of New York in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Music

UMI Number: 3372017 Copyright 2009 by Akarepi, Ekaterini All rights reserved

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Copyright by Ekaterini Akarepi 2009

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To my parents, Maria and Athanasios, With love and gratitude

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

While researching and writing this dissertation, I have had the privilege to receive generous assistance from many people. My first and sincerest thanks go to Professor Michael Long, who has guided me through the long and frequently challenging path of dissertation writing with foresight, remarkable patience, and true understanding. I am grateful to Dr. Long for many years of academic motivation and for being a truly inspiring model as a teacher and scholar. I also wish to acknowledge the members of my committee Professors Charles Smith, Jeffrey Stadelman, and Stephanie Vander Wel for their guidance and support in various levels and ways through the years. Karen Sausner, Graduate Academic Advisor at the Music Department of the State University of New York at Buffalo, has been extremely helpful in giving advice over practical and yet essential matters. I also wish to thank the librarians of the Music Library at the University at Buffalo, and most notably John Bewley, who accommodated my research needs and requests especially during the last few years when I had moved from Buffalo. My heartfelt thanks extend to Silke Lambert for her editorial assistance and to the Graduate Student Association for offering this service; I remain indebted to Silke for always responding to my editing requests quickly, working beyond her assigned time, and, most especially, for her kind words of encouragement. The support of Professor Yianna Liatsos has been indispensable in completing my dissertation and I remain deeply indebted to her. A dear friend and challenging communicator, Yianna stood as my good angel and critical eye by offering abundant

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doses of encouragement and sharp questioning. Zeta Giannopoulou and Anne-Vale Leibundgut generously looked through my English translations of the regretz texts and provided ample comments and suggestions for improvement; I offer my most special thanks to Zeta for always responding with generosity to my relentless inquiries. Above and beyond matters of convention and in a hopefully justifiable tone of heartfelt appreciation, I wish to thank my parents Maria and Athanasios Akarepis and my parents in-law Ariadne and Kyriakos Karathanasis for standing alongside me, patiently, selflessly, and wisely. Lastly and most warmly I want to thank my husband Konstantinos Karathanasis for his love and constant encouragement; for withstanding my minor (and some major) crises of confidence; and for never doubting.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION .iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...iv LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES ix LIST OF TABLES ....xiii LIST OF FIGURES ..xiv ABSTRACT xv INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1. REPERTORY, ISSUES, APPROACHES .4 Tracing the Regretz Complex ....1 Intertextuality and Early Music ...15 CHAPTER 2. THE ORBIT OF GHIZEGHEMS REGRETZ CHANSONS 39 Echoes of Allez regretz ....41 Chanson Reworkings .....41 Allez Regretz and Vens regretz .....43 Sans regretz as a Descendant .........50 Calling the Regretz Nuit et jour ..56 La Regrete as an Offspring ...60 Loose Intertextualities in Anons Tous les regretz and Mon souvenir...68 Echoes and Intersections of Les grans regretz ....72

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Concluding Note...84 CHAPTER 3. THE CROSSROADS OF MILLE REGRETZ 86 Dialogues among the Regretz of Josquin ....88 Paths of Connection among Mille, Parfons, and Plus Nulz Regretz ......90 Threads Across Mille Regretz and Plusieurs Regretz ....99 Veiled Allusions of Mille Regretz in Regretz Sans Fin .......101 Resonances with the Regretz of La Rue.........104 Mille and Plusieurs ...105 Aprez regretz.....109 Tous les Regretz....113 Textual Echoes Between Mille Regretz and Cent Mille Regretz .....119 Mille regretz as the Progenitor of Gomberts Regretz ...121 The Other Way Around ......132 Conclusions. ......134 CHAPTER 4. FURTHER MUSICAL ALLIANCES WITHIN THE REGRETZ COMPLEX .136 The Referential Aspect of Josquins Plus nulz regretz .........136 Discourses with La Rues Tous les regretz ......137 Ties with Secretz regretz ......150 Further Subtle Connections ......154 Josquins Regretz 5 .....157 Graftings and Echoes between La Rues Dueil et ennuy and Tous les regretz..163

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Marguerite of Austria and More Musical Threads.....169 Closing comments .178 CHAPTER 5. THE LITERARY DIMENSION OF THE REGRETZ .180 Literary Roots.180 Allez regretz and the Emergence of Regretz...193 Literary Archetypes in the Regretz Topos .....199 Localized Intertextualities within the Regretz Texts .209 CONCLUSION .216 APPENDIX. TRANSLATIONS OF REGRETZ TEXTS ..222 WORKS CITED 227

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LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES

Ex. 2.1a: Ghizeghem, Allez regretz, m. 1-6.45 Ex. 2.1b: Compre, Vens regretz, m. 1-5...45 Ex. 2.2a: Ghizeghem, Allez regretz, m. 31-36.46 Ex. 2.2b: Compre, Vens regretz, m. 16-24 ..47 Ex. 2.3: Weerbeke, Sans regretz, m. 1-10..53

Ex. 2.4a: Ghizeghem, Allez regretz, cantus and tenor, m. 12-22 ....55 Ex. 2.4b: Weerbeke, Sans regretz, m. 13-2255 Ex. 2.5: Ex. 2.6: Ex. 2.7: Ex. 2.8: Fresneau, Nuit et jour, m. 1-11.....59 Fresneau, Nuit et jour, m. 18-23...60 Ghizeghem, La Regrete, m. 1-1262 Ghizeghem, La Regrete, bassus, m. 13-18.62

Ex. 2.9a: Ghizeghem, Allez regretz, m. 10-14 63 Ex. 2.9b: Ghizeghem, La Regrete, m. 62-66..64 Ex. 2.10: Anon [Ockeghem], Tous les regretz, superius m. 7-9..69 Ex. 2.11: Ghizeghem, Mon souvenir, m. 15-21 ..71 Ex. 2.12a: Ghizeghem, Les grans regretz, m. 1-4.75 Ex. 2.12a: Longueval, Alle regres, superius m. 4-7...75 Ex. 2.13a: Longueval, Alle regres, bassus m. 1-5..75 Ex. 2.13b: Josquin, Mille regretz, bassus m. 1-5...76 Ex. 2.14: Longueval, Alle regres, cantus, tenor, and bassus, m. 27-33...77

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Ex. 2.15a: Ghizeghem, Les grans regretz, superius, m. 1-1279 Ex. 2.15b: Ghizeghem, Mon souvenir, superius, m. 1-879 Ex. 2.16: Anon, Tous nobles cueurs, superius m. 1-10...82 Ex. 3.1a: Josquin, Mille regretz, m. 1-7...92 Ex. 3.1b: Josquin, Parfons regretz, m. 1-19...92-93 Ex. 3.2a: Josquin, Mille regretz, m. 18-24...94 Ex. 3.2b: Josquin, Parfons regretz, m. 44-67.....94-95 Ex. 3.3: Ex. 3.4: Ex. 3.5: Ex. 3.6: Ex. 3.7: Ex. 3.8: Ex. 3.9: Josquin, Mille regretz, m. 17-19......96 Josquin, Plus nulz regretz, m. 8-16..97 Josquin, Plusieurs regretz, m. 1-7......100 Josquin, Regretz sans fin, m. 13-18........103 Josquin, Regretz sans fin, m. 1-8....104 La Rue, Plusieurs regretz, m. 1-10..106-107 La Rue, Plusieurs regretz, m. 36-40...109

Ex. 3.10: La Rue, Aprez regretz, m. 16-24.110 Ex. 3.11: La Rue, Aprez regretz, m. 1-5.112 Ex. 3.12: La Rue, Tous les regretz, m. 1-20....114-115 Ex. 3.13: Gombert, Mille regretz, m. 1-14..122-123 Ex. 3.14a: Gombert, Mille regretz, m. 20-24..124 Ex. 3.14b: Gombert, Regret ennuy, m. 19-23......125 Ex. 3.15: Gombert, O doulx regretz, 1-3...127 Ex. 3.16: Gombert, Tous les regretz, m. 1-9..129

Ex. 3.17: Gombert, O doulx regretz, m. 19-29...130 Ex. 4.1: Josquin, Plus nulz regretz, m. 1-10.141

Ex. 4.2a: Josquin, Plus nulz regretz, m. 16-25...143 Ex. 4.2b: La Rue, Tous les regretz, m. 21-30.144 Ex. 4.3a: Josquin, Plus nulz regretz, m. 31-45......145-46 Ex. 4.3b: La Rue, Tous les regretz, m. 31-40.146 Ex. 4.4: La Rue, Secretz regretz, m. 1-6.. 151

Ex. 4.5a: La Rue, Secretz regretz, tenor and bassus, m. 7-18 152 Ex. 4.5b: La Rue, Secretz regretz, m. 37-42.. 153 Ex. 4.5c: Josquin, Plus nulz regretz, m. 51-61...153 Ex. 4.6: Ex. 4.7: Ex. 4.8: Josquin, Regretz sans fin, m. 32-38.155 Prioris, Dueil et ennuy, m. 1-5.156 Prioris, Dueil et ennuy, m. 8-11...155

Ex. 4.9a: Josquin, Plusieurs regretz, m. 24-30...160 Ex. 4.9b: Josquin, Parfons regretz, m. 28-30.161 Ex. 4.10: Josquin, Plusieurs regretz, m. 46-60...162 Ex. 4.11: La Rue, Dueil et ennuy, m. 1-10..164 Ex. 4.12: La Rue, Dueil et ennuy, m. 36-40166 Ex. 4.13: La Rue, Dueil et ennuy, m. 21-25167 Ex. 4.14a: La Rue, Pour ung jamais, m. 22-33...175 Ex. 4.14b: Ghiselin, Le cueur la suyt, m. 20-24..175 Ex. 4.15a: La Rue, Pour ung jamais, m. 1-11.177

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Ex. 4.15b: Ghiselin, Le cueur la suyt, m. 1-9..178

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1: List of regretz chansons...7-8 Table 1.2: Major sources of regretz..10-11 Table 2.1: Scheme of cadences in Les grans regretz and Mon souvenir...78 Table 4.1: Number of measures per verse setting in Parfons regretz and Plusieurs regretz..159 Table 5.1: Shared vocabulary among Jamasse ung tresor, Cest une dangereuse espergne, and Allez regretz..192 Table 5.2: Regretz sharing the Imperative+regretz incipit...193 Table 5.3: Regretz summoned vs. expelled..200 Table 5.4: Prevalent words signifying suffering in the regretz texts ..206

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LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 2.1: Weerbeke, Sans regretz, superius (FlorC 2439, f. 79v) .51 Fig. 2.2: Longueval, Alle regres, superius (BolC Q19) 73

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ABSTRACT

Musical allusion and intertextual play, well established practices in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, were especially apparent in the realm of sacred repertory as well as in settings of particular song models (De tous biens plaine, Fortuna desperata). Yet one can observe musical networking of a less conspicuous kind among chansons whose only apparent means of connection are a shared literary theme and/or word(s) of the incipit. The late 1400s witnessed an abundance of regretz; these chansons feature the word regretz (and/or similar orthographies of the word) in or close to their incipit. This dissertation deals with the referential world of the regretz on the levels of music, text, and context, extending the discursive context of the regretz complex beyond the previously discussed reworkings of such popular chansons as Allez regretz and Mille regretz. Scrutiny of a group of more than forty regretz chansons considered in the dissertation brings to light intertextual associations of a broad spectrum that ranges from instances of overt relation (shared incipits, prominent musical motives and gestures) to non-apparent intersections of broader shared codes (narratives, musical structures and textures, and alignment of musical material). Prominent literary figures of the fifteenth century such as Jean II de Bourbon and Charles dOrlans were essential in initiating the regretz as a literary theme. The poetic texts of the regretz chansons are composed of a shared vocabulary of constants (code-words and themes), which embodies a rhetoric of sorrow and suffering. Speculating upon musical connections within the regretz complex may help us in gaining insight into the ways such composers as Compre, Fresneau,

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Ghiselin, Ghizeghem, Josquin, La Rue, Longueval, and the later Gombert, among others, acknowledged the regretz as a literary topos and shaped them into a cult musical tradition. Regretz chansons discussed at length include, among others, Ghizeghems Allez regretz and La Regrete, Compres Vens regretz, Josquins Mille regretz, Parfons regretz, and Plus nulz regretz, and La Rues Tous les regretz. A non-inclusive list of other pieces considered includes Fresneaus Nuit et jour, Ghiselins Le cueur la suyt, Josquins Plusieurs regretz and Regretz sans fin, La Rues Dueil et ennuy, Plusieurs regretz and Pour ung jamais, Longuevals Alle regres, and Weerbekes Sans regretz.

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INTRODUCTION

The late 1400s witnessed a large number of chansons, which featured the word regretz in their incipit or close to their opening verse. Most of these regretz chansons appear in manuscript sources that originated from the Burgundian/Habsburg scriptorium, often placed in adjacent folios within prominent chansonniers of the early 1500s, and set by such well-known composers as Alexander Agricola, Hayne van Ghizeghem, Pierre de la Rue, and Josquin des Prez. The meaning of the word regretz during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was associated with narratives conveying the kind of sorrow associated with suffering, anguish, and lament over death or parting. Although sorrow is a close synonym of regretz, it is not adequate to communicate the broad range of significations and nuances of the latter. Notable literary figures of the fifteenth century such as Alain Chartier, Jean II de Bourbon, and Charles dOrlans wrote poems that conveyed the word regretz as a means of engaging in dialogic exchanges and initiating the regretz as a literary topos. The regretz chansons that flourished later in the century must have originated as an outcome of the initial regretz exchanges of the aforementioned poets. This dissertation focuses on a specific set of regretz chansons and delineates their distinct textual, musical, and contextual connections. The texts of the regretz chansons feature shared narratives and code-words. Specifically, I argue that they are marked by a plural form and a multi-faceted quality; they are either summoned (Revenez tous

regretz, Sourdez regretz, Vens regretz) or expelled (Allez regretz, Va ten regretz, Fuys regretz); they do not simply convey feelings, but come across as personified partners; and they feature an extensive vocabulary of suffering and continuity through such constants as mort, dueil (mourning), tourmenter, and cueur. Scrutiny among the regretz of La Rue and Josquin has led me to speculate on historical tracks of influence between the two composers an issue of debate in current music scholarship. Contrary to the more popular idea of La Rue imitating Josquin, I argue that the associations among the regretz of the two composers suggest a path of influence from La Rue to Josquin. Within groups of regretz chansons of particular composers, I have observed threads of connection that hint to cases of self-reference. I have thus drawn lines among the regretz of such composers as Ghizeghem, La Rue, Josquin, and Nicolas Gombert. In particular, the associations between Ghizeghems well-known Allez regretz and his later rondeau La Regrete (very intriguing as they involve apart from similarities in their incipits, the shared presence of a four-measure polyphonic block in parallel structural points) suggest that Ghizeghem looks back to his earlier work to compose a sophisticated response. I also observe musical gestures specifically associated with particular subgroups of regretz such as a shared musical gesture found in the regretz of both Josquin and La Rue, featuring a rising step and falling sixth, set on a fixed rhythmic pattern, and presented in duets and in repetition. I view this gesture as a musical distinctive pattern within the regretz complex.

While the application of intertextuality in music scholarship has been controversial, I find the concept enormously useful for addressing associations that occur on several levels such as musical versus poetic text, sources of transmission, and other contextual facets. My use of the concept has been particularly influenced by Kevin Brownlees idea that situates early music scholarship within a gamut of intertextuality (intertextual approaches conveying specificity and intentionality versus others engaging in discourses on the level of broader shared practices such as a literary topos or elements of musical structure).1 Through drawing intertextual associations, I suggest that the regretz chansons must have communicated in a larger or lesser degree; late fifteenth-century composers acknowledged the regretz as a compositional complex; and, apart from their individual value and meaning, the chansons can be viewed for their significance in sharing and shaping the regretz topos.

Kevin Brownlee, Literary Intertextualities in 14th-Century French Song, in Musik als Text: Bericht ber den Internationalen Kongre der Gesellschaft fr Musikforschung, ed. Hermann Danuser & Tobias Plebuch (Kassel: Brenreiter, 1998), 295-9.

CHAPTER 1 REPERTORY, ISSUES, APPROACHES

Tracing the Regretz Complex Leafing through the opening folios of the early sixteenth-century Savoyard chansonnier BrusBR 11239, one cannot fail to observe the string of chansons on the theme of regretz, an undoubtedly appropriate topic for a manuscript whose repertory is especially permeated with sadness. As unique as MS 11239 can be considered in featuring a series of seven regretz chansons within its opening folios, the representation of regretz in central sources of Habsburg-Burgundian origin is equally significant (BrusBR 228 and VienNB Mus. 18746). As a matter of fact, the profusion of regretz chansons in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is most remarkable. Apart from the more widely known Allez regretz and Mille regretz, composed by Hayne van Ghizeghem and Josquin des Prez respectively, various chansons de regretz composed at the time call on le grans, plusieurs, cent mille, and tous les regretz, as well as addressing the regretz with such commands as venez, revenez, sourdez, va ten, and fuys. Several regretz texts were set by such celebrated Franco-Flemish composers as Alexander Agricola and Pierre de la Rue, while regretz by composers of a relatively lesser stature such as Richafort, Fresneau, Longueval, Fvin, and Weerbeke, among others, have also survived. This dissertation deals with chansons of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries that feature the word regretz (and its variants) in or close to their opening

verse(s). It aims to explore the intertextual dimension of the regretz chansons and, in the course of this discussion, to develop the idea that the regretz, apart from their individual significance, can also be viewed as virtually linked together to a compositional family which I call the regretz complex. It is the abundance of regretz chansons in various manuscripts dating from around the early 1500s, as well as the status of Allez regretz as a cult chanson, which prompted the sprouting of an Allez regretz compositional family, which intrigued me, in the first place, to consider the regretz chansons as a chanson complex and to investigate threads of interrelation within it. Indeed, the discursive world of the regretz extends, as I will clarify, beyond previously discussed instances of intentional borrowing in chanson reworkings modeled after Allez regretz and Mille regretz. Intertextual threads within the regretz network will be observed on the levels of music, literary text, and context (sources, authorial discourses, historical events), and in a spectrum that ranges from instances of overt relation (shared incipits, prominent musical motives and gestures, shared vocabulary) to non-apparent intersections of broader shared codes (themes, narratives, comparable musical structures and textures, alignment of musical material, etc.). During the course of my discussion, I will develop the idea that on the level of poetry, the regretz must have been viewed as an established literary topos with a welldefined panoply of conceptual archetypes; their musical settings, complemented by both apparent and subtle weavings of musical material, stimulate and expand the referential world of the regretz. Lastly, while the issue of influence is not central in my discussion it is not my purpose to establish authorial intention among regretz chansons of individual

composers in certain instances, I have found it appropriate to speculate on possible threads of communication that may have prompted musical and/or textual crossfertilizations. The repertory under consideration concerns regretz chansons that were composed, broadly speaking, from around the 1460s to the 1540s. Yet, apart from a small number of regretz chansons, which stand, chronologically, on the boundaries of this time span namely, Jean Delahayes Pour les regretz and the regretz of Nicolas Gombert the core regretz repertory I primarily consider dates from the 1470s up to the 1520s. A group of forty-eight regretz (see table below1) has formed the starting point of my investigation. Scrutiny of this stock-repertory led me to discover threads of musical and/or textual interconnection among the majority of these chansons; it is thus those chansons that exhibit some degree of intertextual association with others that I selectively discuss.2 A considerable number of regretz chansons feature the word regretz in their opening hemistich. It was this consistency in the opening line of their poetic texts, certainly not surprising for fifteenth-century audiences that were familiar with the tradition of poetic contests on designated refrains,3 that initially intrigued me to explore the intertextual dimension of the regretz network. These regretz whose incipits carry the
Jean Delahaye
1

Pour les regretz

As all anonymous regretz chansons are unica, I include their sources as a further means of identification. The symbol * in the table stands for works that circulate without ascription and are attributed to a composer on the basis of stylistic evidence. The symbol ** stands for works of debatable attribution. 2 As the volume of the repertory under consideration is quite substantial, it is not feasible to deal with all regretz chansons at length. Thus, a number of intertextual instances are briefly touched on in the footnotes. I have not, so far, noticed any hint of musical and or textual associations for the following chansons: Vides regret, Jay ung regretz, Je nay regretz, and Plain de regret. 3 On poetic contests upon a set incipit / refrain in the fifteenth century, see Yolanda Plumley, Playing the Citation Game in the Late Fourteenth-Century Chanson, Early Music 31/1 (2003): 20-39, esp. 21-22;

Hayne van Ghizeghem

Johannes Ockeghem Alexander Agricola

Loyset Compre

Jehan Fresneau Pierre de la Rue

Josquin des Prez

Gaspar Weerbeke Antoine Brumel Antoine de Fvin Johannes Prioris Johannes Ghiselin Antoine de Longueval Anon. Anon. Anon. Anon. Anon. Anon. Anon.

Allez regretz La Regrete Les grans regretz Mon souvenir Tous les regretz* Allez regretz Va t'en regret Revenez tous regretz Sourdez regretz Va t'en regret Vens regretz Nuit et jour Cent mille regretz** Dueil et ennuy* Secretz regretz Tous les regretz Aprez regretz* Je n'ay regretz* Plusieurs regretz* Pour ung jamais Tous nobles cuers Parfons regretz Plus nulz regretz Mille regretz** Regretz sans fin Plusieurs regretz Sans regretz Tous les regretz Fuyes regretz Dueil et ennuy (soucy) Le cueur la suyt Alle regres Tous nobles cuers Allez regretz Dueil et ennuy (soucy) Venez regretz (sourdez) Vides regret Jay ung regretz Plain de regret

ParisBNF 1596 (late 1490s) Bologna Q 17 (1490s) ParisBNF 1597 (c. 1500) ParisBNF1597 (c. 1500) FlorBN Magl. XIX. 107 bis (c. 1510-3) VienNB Mus.18746 (c. 1523) MS Ny kgl.Samling 1848 2o (c. 1525)

Table 1.1: List of regretz chansons.

Honey Meconi, Art Song Reworkings: An Overview, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 119/1 (1994): 23.

Jean Richafort Bartolomeo degli Organi Ludwig Senfl Nicolas Gombert

Sur tous regretz Allez regretz Allez Regretz Mille regretz O doulx regretz Regret ennuy traveil Tous les regretz Table 1.1 (cont.): List of regretz chansons.

word regretz can be divided into two subgroups: in the first, the word regretz occupies the third and fourth syllable of the opening four-syllable hemistich and is preceded by the imperative of a verb as an apostrophe demanding action (allez, sourdez, vens, etc.); in the second, the regretz are preceded by either an adjective, most often of quantity (mille, cent mille, tous les, plusieurs, les grans, parfons etc.), or a preposition (aprez, sans) and are, for the most part, addressed in the third person. In a few chansons, the regretz appear either at a later position of the opening line (Pour ung jamais, Tous nobles cuers, Le cueur la suyt) or in the opening of the second line (Mon souvenir, Nuit et jour). The majority of the regretz were composed by Franco-Flemish composers; composers of French origin rate second in number, yet a few of them, namely Compre and Josquin, are represented by several regretz.4 La Rue stands as the most productive composer of regretz with nine chansons, followed by Josquin, of whom five regretz have survived. Ghizeghem, Agricola, and Compre, composers of the same generation, as well as the later Gombert, have each set three to four regretz. The status of La Rue as the most prominent composer of regretz chansons has been discussed in relevant scholarship in
4

Ludwig Senfl and Bartolomeo degli Organi, who both composed cantus-firmus settings based on Ghizeghems Allez regretz, are the only non-French/Franco-Flemish composers.

association with his employment in the service of Marguerite of Austria.5 In their majority, the regretz composers were active in the last two decades of the fifteenth and the first two decades of the sixteenth centuries and had ties with the French and/or the Habsburg-Burgundian courts. During the late 1480s and up to the late 1490s, several of these composers were employed as singers and/or composers of the French court (for instance, Agricola, Compre, Brumel, Fevin, Fresneau, Prioris, and Ghiselin), while others were linked with the court of Burgundy, earlier under Charles the Bold (Ghizeghem), later Philip the Fair (Agricola, La Rue, Weerbeke) and, subsequently, Marguerite of Austria. Five manuscript collections, all dating from the first quarter of the sixteenth century, feature a considerable number of regretz chansons. (Several sources of the time host a small number of regretz.) Of these five sources, three are major court chansonniers, originating from the Habsburg-Burgundian scriptorium: FlorC 2439, known as the Basevi Codex and compiled in c. 1505-08 for a member of the AgostiniCiardi family in Siena; BrusBR 228, written for Marguerite of Austria sometime between 1508 and 1516; and VienNB Mus. 18746, compiled as a set of partbooks of five-voice works and dated from 1523.6 The two remaining regretz sources are the chansonnnier

Several of La Rues regretz bear evidence of association with Marguerite (to be discussed in Chapters 3 and 4). See also Meconi, Pierre de la Rue and Musical Life at the Habsburg-Burgundian Court (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 86-88, 135, 137, 142, 147-48. Yet, the La Rue-Marguerite connection, and especially the claim that La Rue was Marguerites favorite composer, a view enshrined in the scholarly literature for more than a century, is something that we will never be able to uncover as Meconi notes (ibid., 84). 6 For more information pertaining to the Habsburg-Burgundian scriptorium, see the various writings in the edited anthology The Burgundian-Habsburg Court Complex of Music Manuscripts (1500-1535) and the Workshop of Petrus Alamire, eds. B. Bouckaert & E. Schreurs (Leuven-Neerpelt: Alamire Foundation, 2003). For scholarly discussions on the aforementioned sources, see: Martin Picker, The Chanson Albums

BrusBR 11239, dated from c. 1500 and most likely stemming from North France or Savoy, and ParisBNF 1597, copied also c. 1500 or shortly after and possibly originated at the court of Ren II de Vaudmont, Duke of Lorraine (thus known as the Lorraine chansonnier).7 It is worth mentioning that two chansonniers, BrusBR 11239 and VienNB Mus. 18746, open with a series of regretz, grouped together in their opening folios. BrusBR 228, on the other hand, stands out as the source containing the greatest volume of regretz. Table 1.2 lists the regretz chansons that are included in each of the five major sources.

BrusBR 11239

ParisBNF 1597

Allez regretz* Vens regretz* Va t'en regret* (Compre) Les grans regretz* Tous les regretz* (Brumel) Tous les regretz* (La Rue) Revenez tous regretz* Dueil et ennuy (soucy) (anon.) Allez regretz Les grans regretz* Va t'en regret* (Compre) Mon souvenir Venez regretz (sourdez) La regrete

Table 1.2: Major sources of regretz.

FlorC 2439

Dueil et ennuy (La Rue) Sourdez regretz

of Marguerite of Austria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965); the Introduction in Meconi, Basevi Codex: Florence, Biblioteca del Conservatorio, MS 2439 (Peer: Alamire, 1990); on VienNB Mus. 18746, Herbert Kellman, ed. The Treasury of Petrus Alamire. Music and Art in Flemish Court Manuscripts 1500-1535 (Leuven: Alamire Foundation, 1999). 7 For a critical discussion of ParisBNF 1597 and transcriptions of its repertory, see Clifford Marion Shipp, A Chansonnier of the Dukes of Lorraine: The Paris Manuscript Fonds Franais 1597 (PhD diss., North Texas State College, 1960).

10

Revenez tous regretz Va t'en regret (Agricola) Sans regretz Le cueur la suylt Tous nobles cuers (La Rue)

BrusBR 228

VienNB Mus. 18746

Tous les regretz (La Rue) Secretz regretz* Dueil et ennuy* Revenez tous, regretz Dueil et ennuy (Prioris) Plus nulz regretz Plusieurs regretz (La Rue) Aprez regretz Pour ung jamais* Tous nobles cuers* (La Rue) Va t'en regret* (Compre) Sourdez regretz* Cent mille regretz* Plusieurs regretz* (La Rue) Dueil et ennuy* (La Rue) Je nay regretz* Jay ung regretz Parfons regretz

Table 1.2 (cont.): Major sources of regretz. The regretz are listed in order of appearance within each source; * marks regretz in adjacent folios.

Early music scholarship has variously dealt with specific regretz chansons,8 yet only a handful of studies have viewed regretz as a compositional family that extends beyond the much cited cantus firmus settings of Ghizeghems Allez regretz.9 Otto Gombosi, quite early, was the first to notice musical links between two regretz chansons,
See David Fallows, Who composed Mille regretz? in Essays on music and culture in honor of Herbert Kellman, ed. Barbara Haggh (Paris: Minerva, 2001), 241-252; and Christopher Reynolds, Musical Evidence of Compositional Planning in the Renaissance: Josquins Plus nulz regretz JAMS 40 (1987): 5381. On connections among the two Mille regretz by Josquin and Gombert and Gomberts Tous les regretz, see Ignace Bossuyt, Nicolas Gombert and Parody, Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie 8/2 (2003): 112-122. 9 Besides Irena Cholijs work on the subject, mentioned later on, Meconi has included settings of Allez regretz in her Art Song Reworkings, a study of the most important polyphonic models and compositional complexes.
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namely Ghizeghems Allez regretz and Compres Venes regretz.10 Martin Pickers doctoral research and ensuing edition of the celebrated Marguerite of Austrias chansonniers (BrusBR 11239 and BrusBR 228) brought to attention the special role of Mechelen court as a leading center for the production and dissemination of regretz.11 The two chansonniers are noted for the unusual number of regretz chansons they host, compelling scholars to see in them a reflection of Marguerites misfortunes and conjure up an image of Marguerite as the ultimate pitiable creature of the early 1500s. Pickers edition and critical study has been indispensable, for, apart from gathering together transcriptions of the largest group of regretz chansons, it offers a glimpse into the artistic circle of Marguerites court. Picker paints Marguerite as a dedicated patroness of arts, pointing out her literary heritage and her contacts with Jean Lemaire and Octovien de Saint-Gelais, rhtoriquers who were imperative in the production of regretz.12 A review of musical settings stemming from Ghizeghems Allez regretz is the subject of discussion in Irena Cholijs scholarly work.13 Cholij mainly deals with cantus firmus and mass reworkings as well as lute arrangements stemming from direct quotation

Ghizeghem und Compre: zur Stilgeschichte der burgundischen Chanson, in Studien zur Musikgeschichte: Festschrift fr Guido Adler zum 75. Geburtstag (Wien: Universal-Edition, 1930), 100106. 11 Picker, The Chanson Albums. 12 Picker, in a later regretz study, brought to light additional regretz chansons unpublished at that time. He further speculated on the role of the three regretz rondeaux by the court poet Saint-Gelais as farewell songs composed to be performed on the eve of Marguerites departure from France after her broken engagement to Charles VIII; see Picker, More regret chansons for Marguerite dAutriche, in Musique naturelle et musique artificielle: in memoriam Gustave Reese, ed. Mary Beth Winn (Montreal: Editions CERES, 1980), 81-101. 13 Irena Cholij, Borrowed Music: Allez regrets and the Use of Pre-existent Material, in Companion to Medieval and Renaissance music, ed. Tess Knighton and David Fallows (London: Dent; New York: Schirmer, 1992), 165-172. See also Cholij, Fifteenth-and Sixteenth-Century Settings of Allez regretz, (M.M. diss., Kings College, London University, 1984).

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of one or more voices of the model chanson and avoids discussion on wider musical cross-fertilizations among regretz.14 The emergence of regretz as a major literary and musical topos of the late 1400s has been the outcome of the research of two scholars, the literary historian Mary Beth Marvin and the German musicologist Clemens Goldberg.15 Both Marvins and Goldbergs studies have been indispensable for the progress of my research, serving as valuable sources of thought and model. Marvin was the first scholar to address regretz chansons as texts bound together in a larger literary family. Shaped out of literary discourses exchanged between the French court poets Alain Chartier and Jean II de Bourbon, poetic regretz celebrated a parallel popularity to their musical counterparts. In her pioneering study, Marvin traces the literary roots of regretz, investigates contextual relationships within the literary and musical regretz networks, suggests a genealogy of the regretz chansons, and speculates about the centers of their production. Furthermore, she attempts to classify regretz into two subgroups according to their incipit syntax, and observe correlations among these subgroups, the centers of production of regretz chansons, and their projected sentiments.

Howard Mayer Brown has previously listed Allez regretz settings in his copious study on chansons in French popular theater (Music in the French Secular Theater, 1400-1550 [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963]), yet Cholij, quite regrettably, fails to cite Browns contribution. There is also no reference in Cholijs article of Gombosis early discussion, mentioned above, on the regretz of Ghizeghem and Compre. The article is remarkably void of references. 15 Marvin, Regrets in French Chanson Texts of the Late XVth Century, in Fifteenth Century Studies 1 (1978): 193-215; Goldberg, Was zitiert Compre? Topos, Zitat und Paraphrase in den Regrets-Chansons von Hayne van Ghizeghem und Loyset Compre, in Studien zur Musikgeschichte: Eine Festschrift fr Ludwig Finscher, ed. A. Laubenthal & K. Kusan-Windweh (Kassel: Brenreiter, 1995), 88-99. See also Goldbergs monograph Das Chansonnier Laborde: Studien zur Intertextualitt einer Liederhandschrift des 15. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1997).

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Goldbergs Was zitiert Compre? has been the single most thoughtful study on the regretz chansons. Carrying on Marvins arguments, Goldberg looks into a group of musically related regretz chansons (Ghizeghems La Regrete and Les grans regretz, Compres Vens regretz, Va ten regret, and Sourdez regretz) which, headed by Ghizeghems Allez regretz, share in a tradition molded by literary and contextual associations. He traces the source of regretz as a popular, versatile late fifteenth century topos in Allez regretz. He also discusses earlier regretz, such as Delahayes Pour les regrets among others, chansons that conveyed a static, linear meaning related to the topos of departir. Reading Compres Vens regretz against Allez regretz, Goldberg explores musical interrelations, but mostly suggests ways in which Allez enhances the meaning of Vens and originates the complexity of the topos of regretz. The discursive context of Allez vis vis Vens brings forth regretz as texts that are non-linear but governed by shared principles of time, movement, and space and also carrying specific structural caesuras and stereotypes (death, cuer, fin, tourmenter, dueil). Goldbergs arguments are highly thought-provoking, and define a context of reference for my work. Seeing the group of late fifteenth and early sixteenth century regretz I examine through the lens of his methodology has been of particular influence in establishing intertextually the complexity of the regretz topos. Furthermore, Goldbergs use of the concept of intertextuality has served as a point of departure for the theoretical foundation of my work. The following discussion aims to illustrate my sense of the concept by presenting its major critical voices, definitions, and uses. I also plan to review the emergence of the term in musicological

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scholarship and, most specifically, its use in scholarly writings on early music. The last part of this chapter revolves around musical synonyms of intertextuality allusion and musical borrowing and their implementation in recent and influential discourses on the fifteenth-century chanson.

Intertextuality and Early Music As John Milsom has remarked, musicological studies of early music are unquestionably spiced up with neologisms, either coined anew or appropriated from other disciplines.16 Quite a few of these neologisms have induced debates in scholarly circles in regard to their appropriateness and efficiency of use,17 intertextuality being a recent yet celebrated addition not bereft of either popularity or polemics. The theory of intertextuality joined the terrain of early music studies in the early 1990s, employed to complement discussions of borrowing, allusion, influence, and

Milsom, Imitatio, Intertextuality, and Early Music in Citation and Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Musical Culture: Learning from the Learned, ed. Suzannah Clark & Elizabeth Eva Leach (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005), 141. 17 The most striking example is Renaissance, a word long adopted in music historiography (August Wilhelm Ambros, Geschichte der Musik, 1868), widely used, equally debated and in part avoided, in favor of phrasings less susceptible to Burkhardtian, and, in particularly, Italocentric and Hegelian connotations [such as early/late fifteenth/sixteenth century music.]. Imitation Mass is yet another word whose use and subsequent meaning have been crowned with confusion. Applied interchangeably with Parody Mass to describe a distinct type of sixteenth century mass based on a pre-existing polyphonic model, the word has also been used to characterize late fifteenth century tenor masses, which, although drawing from a polyphonic model, single out one voice as a cantus firmus; see, Lewis Lockwood, On Parody as Term and Concept in 16th-Century Music, in Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: A Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. J. LaRue et al. (New York: Norton, 1966), 560-75; and Peter Burkholder, Johannes Martini and the Imitation Mass of the Late Fifteenth Century, JAMS 38/3 (1985): 470-523. Musicologists have also been recently cautious about the use of Isorhythm, a term nearly as old as modern musicology itself. Margaret Bent, for instance, has criticized the use of the term for being invariably applied and thus acquiring conflicting meanings, and also for reaching the status of a blueprint, a rule bound monolith defining the genre; see Bent, Isorhythm, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (2001), 12: 618-23.

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quotation. Its emergence in the vocabulary of early musicology has not been thoroughly innocent. Despite its growing application in the last decade, quite a few scholars have been critical of its variable meanings and uses. As Milsom puts it authors have used it to convey a variety of meanings, to the extent that one might wonder whether, in musicological circles at least, it now possesses any single agreed definition.18 Intertextuality was introduced to musicology roughly at the same time it made its way into other non-literary studies.19 Two writings pioneered the adoption of intertextuality in discussions of early music. David Crooks dissertation on the Magnificats of Orlando di Lasso was the first to employ the term. Crook justifies his adoption of the term for its broad and non-specific nature: it allows us to analyze relationships between pairs of works, or entire complexes of works without the terminological difficulties inherent in works such as parody, imitation (or imitatio), or even borrowing.20 In his dissertation-turned-book, Crook acknowledges the broadness and non-intentionality inherent in the theory of intertextuality, yet he clearly defines the

Milsom, Imitatio, 141. Graham Allen, in his introductory guide to Intertextuality (Intertextuality, London and New York: Routledge, 2000), discusses the following, among other representative writings, as examples of non-literary studies that first adopted an intertextual approach, intertextuality apparently being the term du jour of the scholarly thought of early nineties: Keith A. Reader, Literature/cinema/television: intertextuality in Jean Renoirs Le Testament du docteur Cordelier in Intertextuality: theories and practices, ed. Worton and Still (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1990), 176-89; T. Jefferson Kline, Screening the Text: Intertextuality and the New Wave French Cinema (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1992); James Goodwin, Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1994); Marvin Carlson, Invisible presences, performance intertextuality, Theatre Research International 9/2 (1994): 111-17. 20 David Crook, Orlando di Lassos Magnificats ad imitationem (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1991), 138-140. In the subsequent monograph following his dissertation, Crook justifies his use of the term prompted, in the first place, by the need for a more purely descriptive term devoid of previous meaning in music-historical writings (in contrast to imitation) and unencumbered by undesirable connotations in general usage (in contrast to parody); see Crook, Orlando di Lassos Imitation Magnificats for CounterReformation Munich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 155.
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limiting boundaries of his own approach: to employ intertextuality as a means of highlighting relationships among composition complexes (i.e. pieces related by common incipits) that go beyond descriptions of parody technique.21 Michael Allsen, in his Intertextuality and Compositional Process in two Cantilena Motets by Hugo de Lantins, the second study to employ the term, defends his use of intertextuality to signify all forms of material melodic, contrapuntal, structural, and textual shared by musical works.22 Intertextuality is prominently featured in the title of Allsens study, albeit without further elaboration apart from the above definition.23 Graham Allen, distinguished authority on intertextuality, has reviewed Allsens handling of the concept rather unfavorably. Intertextuality, Allen says, taking the opportunity from Allsens essay, is, frequently, an empty signifier when used.24 While Allsen and Crook were the first musicologists to apply the concept of intertextuality in their research, the adoption of the term had been first suggested by Rob Wegman.25 Following a critical discussion of the theory of musical imitatio and its

Crook, Orlando di Lassos Imitation Magnificats, 156. Parody technique is used, I assume, to describe the derivation and transformation of material from a model composition into a newly composed work. Crook, though, has previously argued against the adoption of the term parody following scholarly debates and objections over its use (Ibid., 151-155). Crook discerns three elements of intertextuality: the derived composition; its model []; and its subtext (those elements contained in it that signal its relationship to its model) (Ibid., 156). 22 The Journal of Musicology 11/2 (1993): 174-202, esp. 175. 23 Allsen makes no note to the literary origins and use of intertextuality. Moreover, apart from a short definition and passing reference of the concept in the second page of his essay, Allsen does not further exploit the term. 24 Graham Allen, Intertextuality, This Years Work in Critical Cultural Theory 3/1 (1993): 48. Allens critique of the overuse of the term describes a reality that has been noted by scholars of intertextual theory. The remark of critical theorist Mary Orr sounds parallel to Allens: Intertextuality heralded a catch-all term and methodology for the business of comparison and contrast in cultural production. (Orr, Intertextuality: Debates and Contexts [Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003], 169.) 25 Rob C. Wegman, Another Imitation of Busnoyss Missa LHomme arm - And Some Observations on Imitatio in Renaissance Music, Journal of Royal Musical Association 114/2 (1989): 189-202.

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application to address musical borrowing in the fifteenth century, Wegman proposes, even though with reservation, the adoption of intertextuality as more relevant to discussions of musical borrowing. He also hints to the potential of the concept to encompass variable aspects of borrowing, in contrast to the more specific and hugely controversial imitatio. It is of particular note that intertextuality has proved to be a heavily controversial concept in the course of its adoption in early music scholarship. Part of the problem lies with the fact that the meaning of the term has been misread, being treated as a catchy and all-encompassing word, an alternative for influence and imitation. Yet, intertextuality, at least as originally developed in literary theory, is not a synonym for borrowing. The concept, as I will address further on, has broader significations; borrowing is but one of its possible facets. Intertextuality has alerted us to the idea that every text is tangled with other texts, and is a tissue of inevitable references, echoes, codes, and quotations from other texts. A text is not a closed system, possessing stable and self-contained meaning, but rather an open-ended, multisignified entity. Any text is involved in a dialogue with other texts, its meaning generated by the intertextual relations the reader traces in it. The theory of intertextuality is itself polyphonic. From Julia Kristevas coinage in the time of theory, as Paris of the late 1960s was labeled, to the subsequent colonizations of her term, intertextuality proved to be adaptable to contemporary literary and cultural theories and highly pluralistic in significance and function. Intertextuality is resistant to a single definition, to an extent that prominent contemporary scholars, such as

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Allen and Mary Orr, talk about many versions of intertextuality.26 Certainly, the varied articulations that typify the concept reflect the distinct historical situations and ideological agendas out of which it has emerged. Kristevas celebrated definition conveys intertextuality as a productive process, and views the text as a permutation of texts, an intertextuality in the space of a text in which several utterances, taken from other texts, intersect and neutralize one another.27 Roland Barthess entry for Texte in Encyclopdie universalis (1973) reverberates Kristevas voice: Every text is an intertext; other texts are present within it to varying degrees and in more or less recognizable forms []. Every text is a new tissue of recycled citations. Fragments of codes, formulae, model rhythms, bits of social discourse pass into the text and are redistributed within it.28 The intertextual in Barthes and Kristeva does not indicate the concrete presence of specific, palpable intertexts. The idea of the text being a tissue of quotations29 departs from the traditional notion of quotation by opening up intertexts to cultural codes, systems and discourses. Michael Riffaterre,
As Orr characteristically notes, intertextuality has already been fractured and pulled in different and conflicting directions since it was coined (Intertextuality, 59). Orr, in her monograph, attempts to organize a critical study of intertextuality that reconsiders the received version of intertextuality as made up from a closed group of canonized voices (Kristeva, Barthes, Genette, Riffaterre) and highlights unvoiced modes of intertextual work (that is, underrepresented voices, shadowland terms of cultural recycling). Allen similarly notes that the term has spawned a plethora of definitions and one can only engage with it as a split, multiple concept, which poses questions [] rather than forcing one to produce definite answers (Allen, Intertextuality, 59-60). 27 Quoted in Orr, Intertextuality, 27. The term was first mentioned in the context of the quoted definition, in her essay Le Texte clos [The bound text] in Semeiotik: recherches pour une smanalyse (Paris: Points, 1969). The notion that text is productivity is fundamental in Kristevas theory of intertextuality. By that, she considers texts as always in a process of production, not closed and consumable entities. While the concept of intertextuality was appropriated and variedly transformed in the context of literary criticism and beyond, Kristevas ideas remain the most radical. Theorists after Kristeva claimed that intertextuality describes the way a text is either engaged in a conversation with other texts (Eco) or caught up in a network of references (Barthes), yet in Kristevas theory, intertextuality is simply the text. 28 Quoted in Orr, Intertextuality, 33. 29 Barthes, Image-Music-Text (Fontana: London, 1977), 146.
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following the tradition of earlier French poststructuralists, such as Barthes and Kristeva, renounces the association of intertextual reading with source-hunting and influence and the equivalence of intertextuality with imitation. An intertext, he states, not to be viewed in terms of sources, is a corpus of texts, textual fragments, or text-like segments of the sociolect that shares a lexicon and, to a lesser extent, a syntax with the text we are reading (directly or indirectly) in the form of synonyms, or even conversely, in the form of antonyms.30 Direct quotation and allusion are deemed taboo terms in intertextual theory, constituting arch-enemies of intertextuality. Literary theorists exclude direct quotation and allusion as a part of the intertextual process, yet the concepts are frequently used in non-literary scholarship dealing with intertextuality. Literary critics such as Grard Genette and Umberto Eco have largely embraced quotation and allusion as instances of determinable intertextual relationships among texts.31 Intertextuality, the first level of Genettes transtextuality, embraces the actual presence of one text within another.32 Similarly, the intertextual dialogue according to Eco, whose literary works are heavily loaded with echoes, quotations, and allusions, transpires the instance where a quotation is explicit and recognizable.33 While Genette acknowledges intertextual processes performed on the semiotic level of cultural signification, a notion that resonates with the

Allen, Intertextuality, 121. The literary theorist Lauro Zavala recognizes the following as intertextual strategies: allusion, ekphrasis, quotation, parody, plagiarism, and pastiche as well as irony, hyperbole, metaphor, and paradox (A Model for Intertextual Analysis in Semiotics, ed. C.W. Spinks and John Deely [New York: Peter Lang, 1995], 103-108.) 32 Allen, Intertextuality, 101. 33 Eco, Innovation and Repetition: Between Modern and Postmodern Aesthetics, Daedalus 134/4 (2005): 197.
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theories of Kristeva and Barthes, his own intertextual approach partly functions on the pragmatic level of concrete and direct relationships among texts. Several other possible aspects of transtextuality coexist within a text (joined under the collective term paratextuality), Genette argues, in the form of variable textual transformations, commentaries, readers expectations, marginalia and other material that occupies a texts threshold. Practically every theoretical movement has assimilated intertextuality. Canonized studies of intertextuality place the ancestral home of the concept in linguistics and particularly in the theory regarding the differential and relational nature of the linguistic sign expressed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure as early as 1915. While Kristeva coined the term, it is still debatable in literary critical circles whether she was the original spearhead behind intertextual theory, or a mediator who brought together Saussurean and Bakhtinian models and attempted to combine their insights and major theories.34 Kristevas employment of intertextuality is situated in semiotics and psychoanalysis, whereas Bakhtins discussions of the dialogic nature of utterance and the heteroglot ability of language, notions that are at the heart of the intertextual aspect of language, stem from Eastern-European formalism and cultural studies. Barthess deployment of intertextuality is characteristically poststructuralistic. The intertextual, in Barthess world, provokes the text to be pluralistic in meaning and open-ended, its unity

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Orr argues that critics of intertextuality have sidelined Kristevas contribution, describing her mode of intertextuality as a derivative of the work of the Bakhtin circle. Marginalization of her work, according to Orr, was fueled by poor accessibility (it was partially translated) and a male dominated philosophical establishment (she was viewed as a derivative of the male-ruled Tel Quel). See Orr, Intertextuality, 20-23.

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lying not in its origin but in its destination, that is, not in the writer, but in the reader. 35 Intertextuality has been grafted in the work of French structuralist theorists, such as Genette and Laurent Jenny. Structuralists employ intertextuality to locate and fix literary meaning, a critical position hardly akin to Kristeva and Barthes. In Genettes work, hypertextuality, a renaming of the Kristevan term and an element of the five-branched transtextuality, charts intended, self-conscious relations among works in the closed system of literature.36 Hypertextual reading is closely bound, according to Genette, with the readers literary competence to uncover the hypotext broadly known as the intertext a point that is also emphasized in the work of Jenny and Riffaterre. Nonetheless, Riffaterres version of intertextuality aims to demonstrate critical certainty. That is to say that, for Riffaterre, intertextual interpretation brings forth unity, rather than disruption of the texts structure, as Jenny in a deconstructive gesture argues. The diversity that characterizes the theoretical stance and affiliation of canonized writers on intertextuality applies, in addition, to their notion of intentionality in crossing texts. Such radicals as Kristeva, Barthes, and Harold Bloom argue that textual interconnectivity is unavoidable, and that the citations which go to make up a text are

Barthes, Image-Music-Text, 148. The reader, quoting from Barthes, is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost. The emphasis on the reader is tied with the Barthian notion of the Death of the author, a theory that decapitates the writer as originator and considers his output as the-already-written. 36 Genette redefines intertextuality as transtextuality, subdividing it into the five following categories: intertextuality, architextuality, metatextuality, paratextuality, and hypertextuality. The varied manifestations and vagaries of Genettes intertextuality materialize on various levels, such as among texts, within a single text, between text and reader, between text and genre, as well as in the periphery of texts as material objects. For a synoptic presentation of the five types, see Allen, Intertextuality, 98-109.

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anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read.37 In Blooms terms, intertextuality is a product of the anxiety of influence driven by psychological motivations from the part of the author to prove her independence from earlier authors, yet unconsciously involved in a process of creative misreading38 (rewriting). Thus, any text is necessarily an intertext, and any writing a misreading, certainly inevitable, but also unintentional. Yet Genette and Jenny, among other theorists, argue that intertextual penetration can operate on either an unconscious or a conscious plane.39 Instances of imitation, parody, citation, montage, and plagiarism, which purists like Kristeva and Barthes, defending shared semiotic codes, discard from the vocabulary of intertextuality, are embraced by Jenny as expressions of explicit intertextuality. A common thread that runs through and unifies the variegated tissues of intertextual discourse is the rhetoric of disruption. Intertextuality, whether employed in Bakhtinian, poststructuralist, structuralist, or feminist readings, disturbs subjectivity, threatening notions of individuality, originality, and unity. Barthess vision of intertextuality, centering on the idea that the origin of a text is a plurality of voices, cannot but sound demoniacal from a monologic point of view and upset singular and
Barthes quoted in Allen, Intertextuality, 69. Barthess denial of authorial agency during the intertextual process is further recycled, as for instance in his entry for texte in Encyclopdie universalis (1973): The intertext is a field of anonymous formulae whose origin is rarely recoverable, of unconscious or automatic citations without speech marks (quoted in Orr, Intertextuality, 33). The writer in Barthess oeuvre is also referred to as an orchestrator of what is already written rather than its originator, and, even more interestingly, as a spider weaving the intertextual web of the text. (See Barthes 1974, 21.) Kristevas brand of intertextuality denies agency and intention, for the author is ruled out of her discussions. It is the texts that transform previous texts within a semiotic process; the author seems to be eliminated altogether. 38 See Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973). It remains Blooms most infamous study, delineating the creative misreading that emerges out of the antagonistic struggle with ones predecessors, as a poetic text delivered from a six-part poetic labour (clinamen, tessera, kenosis, daemonization, askesis, and apophrades). 39 Jenny distinguishes between works that are explicitly intertextual, such as imitations and citations, and those in which the intertextual relation is not foregrounded (see Allen, Intertextuality, 112-113).
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stable meaning endorsed by monologism. 40 In such a context, the reader is transformed from a consumer of stable meaning into a writer, and he becomes the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost.41 The idea of intertextual space acting as a terrain of clash between monologism and plurality vibrates profoundly in the work of Bakhtin. The concept of dialogism, dominating Bakhtins analysis of the polyphonic attributes of the novel, extends to a generalized theory of intertextuality applicable to the system of language that stresses the plurality of utterance, its meaning and logic dependent upon what has previously been said.42 The polyphonic aspect of language entails the social dimension of Bakhtinian intertextuality; it foregrounds variable ideological positions and class conflicts in society which threaten to destabilize authority and unity, as these are expressed by canon and state power.43 A different kind of disruption triggered by the intertextual process, applied not to expanded social conditions but to formal structures within a text, is discussed in the work of Jenny. The intertextual dimension, now defined as a mechanism of

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Allen (Intertextuality, 69) mentions Barthess reference to the association of plurality with evil in Christian teaching, when employing the words My name is Legion: for we are many of the possessed man in the Gospel according to Mark. 41 Ibid., 75. 42 Bakhtins theory about the dialogical character of the novel regards literary voices (heroes) within a novel as having their own discursive consciousnesses, which are, in their turn, responses to and calls to other discourses. The theory was first developed in Bakhtins literary study on Dostoyevsky (Problemy Poetiki Dostoevskogo [Moscow, 1963]). 43 The idea of intertextuality as a carrier of disruption, undoubtedly Bakhtin-inspired, is at the heart of Kristevas vision. Intertextuality demonstrated in Kristevas version of dialogic language, termed poetic language, is meant to designate a kind of language which, because of its embodiment of otherness, is against, beyond and resistant to (mono)logic. Such language is socially disruptive, revolutionary even. Intertextuality encompasses that aspect of text which struggles against and subverts reason, the belief in unity of meaning or of the human subject, and which is therefore subversive to all ideas of the logical and the unquestionable. Allen, Intertextuality, 45.

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perturbation, Jenny argues, shatters the formal and thematic structure of a work.44 The reader confronts a dithering path too: to either accept the intertextual reference as a segment integrated into the syntagmatic structure of the text or recall the source text, carrying out a sort of intellectual anamnesis.45 Our contemporary understanding of intertextual theory as conveyed in early music scholarship has been exceedingly limited. Intertextuality seems to have been confined, for the most part, to addressing intentional borrowing and stabilizing affiliation among musical works.46 Largely absent from this restricted approach, as Milsom remarks, are notions of non-directional, unintentional and (to the listener) essentially meaningless interconnection,47 elements that are essentially bound with the roots of intertextual theory.

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The problem of intertextuality, Jenny says, is to bind together several texts in one without their destroying each other and without the intertext [] being torn apart as a structured whole. See Laurent Jenny, The strategy of form in French Literary Theory Today: a Reader, ed. T. Todorov (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1982), 45. 45 Ibid., 44. Jenny argues that these two processes really operate simultaneously in intertextual reading [] studding the text with bifurcations that gradually expand its semantic space (Ibid., 44-45). 46 Among early music writings with an intertextual touch, not discussed or cited later on, see: Wulf Arlt, Hellas/Las in Liedanfngen des 15. Jahrhunderts in Musik als Text: Bericht ber den Internationalen Kongre der Gesellschaft fr Musikforschung, ed. Hermann Danuser & Tobias Plebuch (Kassel: Brenreiter, 1998), 358-361; Vincenzo Borghetti, Musikalische Palimpseste: Autoritten und Vergangenheit im art-song reworking des 15. Jahrhunderts, in Autoritt und Autoritten in musikalischer Theorie, Komposition und Auffhrung, ed. Laurenz Ltteken & Nicole Schwindt (Kassel: Brenreiter, 2004), 99-118; Paula Higgins, Love and death in the 15th-century motet: A reading of Busnoyss Anima mea liquefacta est/Stirps Jesse, in Hearing the motet: Essays on the motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Dolores Pesce (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 142-168; Vassiliki Koutsobina, Readings of poetryreadings of music: Intertextuality in Josquins Je me complains de mon amy, Early Music 36/1 (2008): 67-77; Fritz Reckow, Sonus pulcher ad aliquid: Notizen zur kompositorischen Intertextualitt im spten Mittelalter in Musik als Text, 291-294; Murray Steib, Ockeghem and intertextuality: A composer interprets himself, in Early musical borrowing, ed. Honey Meconi (New York: Routledge, 2004), 37-63; and Christina Urchuegula, Intertextualitt und historisches Textverstndnis in der Musik der Renaissance: Fors seulementZwischen Werk und Thema in Text und Autor, ed. Christiane Henkes and others (Tbingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2000), 115-151. 47 Milsom, Imitatio, 144.

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Kevin Brownlee, responsive to the varied definitions and expansions of intertextual theory in critical scholarship, considers musicological studies to operate within a spectrum of intertextualities, with its two extremes ranging from textual specificity and apparent intentionality to shared practices beyond textual loci and vague intentionality. In the second extreme, the one less commonly exploited, we cannot easily identify clear links among the intertexts, but we can identify a context, a discursive world. As Brownlee puts it, it is now a question of a gamut of (at times overlapping) types of intertextuality. [] At one end of the spectrum would be the intertextuality most highly marked by a visible authorial or textual intentionality, coupled with an extreme specificity with regard to the model text or texts []. At the other end of the spectrum would be those kinds of intertextuality in which the model is not a textually specific one. In these cases the model (or the subtext) could be a topos [] a rhetorical figure or procedure, a character, a genre []. In these cases, intentionality is much less clearly visible.48 Milsoms work is among the few scholarly writings that have adopted the second extreme of Brownlees spectrum of intertextuality. In his most recent article, Milsom employs intertextuality in an attempt to go beyond reading against the model in the sense of surface citations, and confront deep models of grammar in fifteenth century contrapuntal practices shared by musical works that are otherwise not overtly and aurally

48

Kevin Brownlee, Literary Intertextualities in 14th-Century French Song, in Musik als Text, 295-9, at 295.

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related.49 Another example of intertextual web bound with shared codes that transcend textual loci appears in Brownlees discussion on the En Attendant complex of the late fourteenth century.50 Brownlee pinpoints intertextual links, such as shared words as symbols, and comparable syntax and structure, among the literary texts of the En attendant chansons. Yet, he views these links as manifestations not of internal and thus deliberate responses within the complex, but of a sharing in a general Esperance tradition. Thus, a shared discourse based on the common topos of Hope and its status as courtly ideology (variations emanating among the various voices of the poems) constitute the core of Brownlees intertextual reading. An attempt to reconcile the hardcore polarized approaches described by Brownlees spectrum of intertextualities can be seen in the intertextual approach of Clemens Goldberg. As previously mentioned, Goldberg in his Was zitiert Compre? looks beyond straightforward instances of musical quotation and paraphrasing in a number of late fifteenth century regretz chansons and examines how intertextual links initiate, transform, and reshape the topos of regretz.51 He constructs an intricate web of intertexts whose threads extend from musical and textual affiliations within the group of regretz chansons to links initiated by shared verses and related topoi conveyed in

See Milson, Imitatio, 146-151. Milsom discusses how musical works of the fifteenth century, not aurally related, may be read intertextually on the basis of shared grammar techniques, and in particular the stretto fuga. 50 Brownlee, Literary Intertextualities in the Esperance Series: Machauts Esperance qui massere, the Anonymous Rondeau Esperance qui en mon cuer sembat, Senleches En attendant esperance conforte, in Musik als Text, 311-313. Among other writings on the Esperance complex that demonstrate unintentional and generalized intertextuality, see: Wulf Arlt, Machaut, Senleches und der anonyme Liedsatz Esperance qui mon cuer sembat, in Musik als Text, 300-310; and Susan Rankin, Observations on Senleches En attendant esperance, in Musik als Text, 314-318. 51 Clemens Goldberg, Was zitiert Compre?. See also the relevant discussion in this chapter, 14.

49

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satellite non-regretz chansons. Not interested in proving influence or authorial intention, Goldberg regards musical connections and other structural resemblances as an impetus for an interpretation of the evolution of the topos of regretz. The texts of the regretz chansons, Goldberg observes, enhance one another through ambiguous meanings and antithetical registers, a process that progressively alters and develops the identity of the regretz topos from a stereotypical lament over death to a multi-faced state of mind. Goldbergs reading questions the identity and message of the regretz, seeing projected in them not a static feeling but multiple ones, originated and directed towards various recipients (unapproachable lady, unworthy lady, and rival lover, among others). In point of fact, the regretz network, under the pen of Goldberg, transforms into a play, with individual regretz acting as partners, personified feelings, which come and go.52 A polyphonic, la Bakhtin, dimension of the regretz topos is thus brought forward. The scholarly debate between David Fallows and Paula Higgins, emerging in the context of the Freiburg colloquium on Fourteenth and Fifteenth century Musical Intertextualities, touched on variable and to a large extend conflicting aspects of intertextuality that conform to Brownlees spectrum of overlapping intertextualities.53 Fallows and Higginss approaches converge at most in regard to textual specificity, both bringing forth multiple musical and textual puns within a group of fifteenth century songs related to Dufays Le serviteur hault guerdonn. However, Higgins embraces influence,

52

Sind die regrets Ansprechpartner, personifizierte Gefhle, die kommen und gehen (Goldberg, Was zitiert Compre?, 93). 53 See Fallows, Le serviteur of several masters, in Musik als Text, 337-345; and Higgins, Servants, mistresses and the fortunes of their families: Influence and intertextuality in the fifteenth-century song, in Musik als Text, 346-357.

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homage, and emulation as primary topics of her intertextual approach, in contrast to Fallows, whose notion of innocent intertexts negates the idea of motivation behind the act of borrowing. Somehow heretically to the prevailing Freiburg discourse, Fallows attacks affiliations within a song network, arguing against intention in the use of a certain model in preference to another.54 Higgins, on the other hand, influenced by Howard Mayer Browns seminal article on emulation and intention in fifteenth-century intertextuality,55 argues that the creation of song networks was a localized phenomenon, originating within the Mundus significans of the fifteenth-century musician, a universe of highly symbolic connotations that stimulated conscious interconnections in musical creation and beyond.56 Higgins examines, apart from highly particularized interrelations (incipits and melodic patterns), various broader, less text-specific threads among pieces of the serviteur network (topos of fortune as agent of affective states, general musical elements such as signature and direction of melodic motion) that may relate to Brownlees pole of less explicit intertextual relations. However, it is Fallowss approach that is closer to Kristevan and Barthesian notions of intertextuality as non-intentional and author-dissociated. Acknowledging musical interrelations within the serviteur network, Fallows suggests that these stem from modal archetypes a notion of Kristevan origin57 or from the composers tendencies to borrow, whether consciously or not, from

54 55

Fallows, Le serviteur, 337. Howard Mayer Brown, Emulation, Competition, and Homage: Imitation and Theories of Imitation in the Renaissance, JAMS 35 (1982): 1-48. 56 Higgins, Servants, Mistresses, 347. 57 Fallowss view relates to that branch of Kristevan theory arguing that the intertextual dimensions of a text cannot be studied as mere sources or influences stemming from what traditionally has been styled background or context, which in Higginss study identifies with the maitrise.

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other pieces with a particularly distinctive tonal characterization, a claim that echoes Barthes and Blooms notions of the authors impossibility of being monologic.58 Yet Higgins expands the referential world of the serviteur network by discussing intertextual associations among songs not explicitly related but drawn together by the topos of Fortune. She suggests a servant/mistress musical intertextuality in the Serviteur/Fortune family situated within the cultural code of the courtly lyric tradition, an approach that relates to Barthess notion of the intertextual as being author-dissociated and comprised by the entire cultural code. Recent intertextual studies on the fourteenth century chanson have brought to light Machauts role as the initiator of an extensive network of literary and musical citations, further developed by composers of the ars subtilior generation.59 The issue is significantly explored in a series of articles by Yolanda Plumley, whose scholarship restores musical networking as a central compositional practice in the late fourteenth

Yet Fallows sounds skeptical of appropriating the French literary branch of intertextual theory for the study of musical borrowing: With the point once made that no work exists without a context [] it remains true that just criticism needs to try to sort out some of the various levels. An equalization of all statements [] has its philosophical value; but the chief difficulty with the study of medieval music today is that we have still not got round to serious value-judgments. In that respect the literary critics live in a different world, inheriting judgments that seem to go back centuries. (Fallows, Le serviteur, 337.) 59 Musicological research is heavily focused on intertextuality in Machauts motets. Among recent literature, see Margaret Bent, Deception, Exegesis and Sounding Number in Machauts Motet 15, Early Music History 10 (1991): 15-27; Jacques Boogaart, Encompassing past and present: quotations and their function in Machauts motet, Early Music History 20 (2001): 1-86; Kevin Brownlee, Fire, Desire, Duration, Death: Machauts Motet 10, in Citation and Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Musical Culture: Learning from the Learned, ed. Suzannah Clark and Elizabeth Eva Leach (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2005), 79-93; and Alice V. Clark, Machaut Reading Machaut: Self-Borrowing and Reinterpretation in Motets 8 and 21, in Citation and Authority, 94-101. For scholarly work on intertextualities in Machauts secular music and Ars Subtilior composers, see: Elizabeth Eva Leach, Fortunes Demesne: The Interrelation of Text and Music in Machauts Il mest avis (B22), De fortune (B23) and Two Related Anonymous Balades, Early Music History 19 (2000): 47-79; Arlt, Machaut, Senleches; Susan Rankin, Observations; L. Welker, Weitere Beobachtungen zu Esperance, Musik als Text, 319-321; and Anne Stone, A Composer at the Fountain: Homage and Irony in Ciconias Sus une fontayne, Music and Letters 82/3 (2001): 361-390.

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century.60 As Plumley argues, intertextuality in the form of citation and allusion, far from being a solitary act practiced by a handful of artists for the sake of influence, was a cultural convention of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, expected to initiate discourse. Although Plumleys employment of the term intertextuality is not so broad as to embrace less deliberate kinds of references in the line of those articulated by the French literary theorists her use of intertextuality embraces primarily apparently intentional references 61 her approach is not solely bound with proving influence as the impetus for intertextuality. Moving beyond identifying musical and textual citations, she attempts to speculate on how composers apparently communicated their echoes and responses. Plumleys most significant contribution, from my perspective, lies in her emphasis on the aural aspect of intertextuality and its performative presentation as a means of encouraging the intertextual competence of the audience. The citation game, an expression of sophistication among members of northern French literary societies engaged in poetry contests, may have been played, Plumley suggests, by composers as well.62 Intertextuality, a game for the ears as much as for the eyes, was meant to be heard and be seen outside the material boundaries of the musical manuscript.63 The point was

See Citation and Allusion in the Late-Fourteenth Century: The Case of Esperance and the En attendant Songs, Early Music History 18 (1999): 287-363; Intertextuality in the fourteenth-century chanson, Music and Letters 84/3 (2003): 355-377; and Playing the citation game. 61 Intertextuality in the Fourteenth-Century Chanson, 356. 62 Ibid., 370. 63 Higgins has also defended musical intertextuality as understood in a primarily aural context, the performance being the agent that brings forth intertextuality. Fallows, on the contrary, defends the view that the written music is the work itself and it contains many vital aspects of the works cultural resonance. See Higgins, Servants, Mistresses, 350; and Fallows, Le serviteur, 338.

60

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previously laid out by Joyce Coleman, who, in regard to the performance of lyric poetry, argued that skillful readers facilitated the recognition of points of citation by pointing those moments through dramatic emphasis and articulation.64 The act of pointoyer, a rhetoric device praised by celebrated fourteenth century poets such as Christine de Pizan and Eustache Deschamps, could have been appropriated, Plumley suggests, to highlight instances of musical citation as well. By using some kind of analogous musical rhetoric, such as gesturing, grimacing, and emphasizing alluded messages in the lyrics, performers would have been able to signal and pointoyer moments of intertextual significance, and the audience would be able to hear as much as see them. Musical borrowing in the fifteenth century has been a widely discussed and virtually clichd subject. Prevalent threads of debate in writings dealing with citation and allusion engage with issues of genealogy, typology of borrowing techniques, chronology of models and intertexts, composers motives, and the connection of borrowing with the rhetoric concept of imitatio. Musicological scholarship has gone to great lengths in addressing borrowing in the mass and motet of the fifteenth century, genres in which Franco-Flemish composers demonstrated immense fascination while turning to allusion and quotation as points of departure for a new work. Earlier literature concentrated on cantus firmus usage, types of models, and ways these models were incorporated into the fabric of novel sacred

64

Public reading and the reading public in late medieval England and France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

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compositions.65 Prominent in scholarly discussion on quotation in fifteenth century cyclic mass stands a string of discourses on mass settings based on the popular Lhomme arm tune. The Lhomme arm mass settings, certainly the most prestigious liturgical complex of the later fifteenth century, have sparked quests on the origin and significance of the tune, the progenitor of the family, the association of the masses with the Burgundian Court and particularly their use for meetings of the order of the Golden Fleece.66 Recent discussion has also alerted us to the importance of polyphonic chansons as models for cantus firmus and imitation masses and the extent of dependence of late fifteenth century sacred repertory on polyphonic quotation.67 While exhaustive studies have centered on borrowing techniques in chanson-based mass, few have been notable for engaging intertextual approaches or offering provocative suggestions about the discursive role of preexistent texts in diverse musical loci.68

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Earlier notable scholarship on borrowing in fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries mass and motet includes: Edgar H. Sparks, Cantus Firmus in Mass and Motet, 1420-1520 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963); Philip Gossett, Techniques of Unification in Early Cyclic Masses and Mass Pairs, JAMS 14 (1966): 205-31; and Lockwood, On Parody as Term and Concept. 66 See especially Richard Taruskin, Antoine Busnoys and the Lhomme arm tradition, JAMS 39 (1986): 255-93; Leeman Perkins, The LHomme arm Masses of Busnoys and Okeghem, JM 3 (1984): 363-96; and Lockwood, Aspects of the LHomme arm Tradition, JRMA 100/1 (1974): 97-122. Michael Long has added intertextual interpretations to the discourse, linking the Lhomme arm tradition with the crusade propaganda and the role of Church in it. See, Long, Arma virumque cano: echoes of a golden age, in Antoine Busnoys: Method, Meaning, and Context in Late Medieval Music, ed. Paula Higgins (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 133-54. 67 Notable studies treating polyphonic borrowing practices in chanson masses include: Peter Burkholder, Johannes Martini and the Imitation Mass.; Cathy Ann Elias, Imitation, Fragmentation, and Assimilation of Chansons in the Masses of Gombert, Clemens, and Crecquillon: a Kaleidoscopic Process (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1994); Murray Steib, A Composer Looks at his Model: Polyphonic Borrowing in Masses from the Late Fifteenth Century, Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 46/1 (1996): 5-41; and Todd Evan Sullivan, Chanson to Mass: Polyphonic Borrowing Procedures in Italian and Austro-Italian Sources, ca. 1460-ca. 1480 (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1994). 68 Paradigmatic among recent literature, M. Jennifer Bloxams study on the chanson mass fabricates a cultural framework comprised of sources of theological exegesis, Latin and vernacular religious lyric poetry, and devotional painting, in an attempt to situate the creation of chanson-based mass repertory in the

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However, despite studies focusing on borrowing in the sacred repertory of the fifteenth century and in particular the function of the polyphonic chanson among the initiators of this tradition, an assessment of the intertextual within the realm of chanson itself has yet to be undertaken.69 Relatively few studies have addressed modes of dialogism within the referential world of the late fifteenth-century chanson. Seminal in this sense, as well as much quoted, remains Mayer Browns article on theories of imitation in late fifteenth and early sixteenth century chanson. The study proved influential, judging from the recurrent aspects of borrowing explored in subsequent scholarship, modeled on Mayer Browns central topics of discussion.70 His core argument is that borrowing, a learning tool for student composers educated in the maitrise, was governed by close relationships among composers and a desire of novice composers to imitate the learned ones. Mayer Brown defends the view that borrowing in the fifteenth century was tied to the Hellenistic practice of learning through imitating, a topic widely debated in the contemporary French humanistic circles. Imitatio, a practice carrying rhetorical connotations and an essential element in the development of a mature literary style, was employed by Burgundian and French rhetoriquers, such as Guillaume Crtin
northern courtly environment of the late 15th century and subsequently to seek answers on to how the genre was understood in its cultural context (Bloxam, A Cultural Context for the Chanson Mass, in Early Musical Borrowing, 7-35). Christopher Reynolds has recognized that allusive quotations may trigger intertextual readings to informed listeners or act as commentaries to mass texts. Fifteenth century masses, Reynolds suggests, incorporated musical allusions to secular songs, whose invisible texts can be understood as glosses on liturgical themes, a practice sparked by humanistic trends that promoted the worldliness of sacred affairs (Reynolds, The Counterpoint of Allusion in Fifteenth-Century Masses, JAMS 45/2 [1992]: 228-260). 69 As Bossuyt quite recently put it, Up to now the study of parody technique in the Renaissance has focused primarily on sacred music, in particular Mass and Magnificat [] Less attention has been devoted to the secular repertoire (see Bossuyt, Nicolas Gombert and Parody.). 70 Mayer Brown mentions that, in the early eighties, borrowing was discussed in scholarship on a case by case basis, and that there was never any attempt to consider imitation as a standard technique of the time (Emulation, Competition, and Homage, 10).

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and Jean Molinet, influential composers and pedagogists in their own turn. Mayer Brown mentions the erudite Johannes Tinctoriss habit to use composers as models for his own composition as an example of conscious engagement with rhetorical imitatio.71 A large part of Mayer Browns article is devoted to discussing types of borrowing techniques composers used to gloss one another. Instances of borrowing techniques considered include the addition of (canonic) lines beneath the superius or tenor, revisions to alter the structure of the model, use of common musical and/or textual incipits, structural allusions (based on common phrase structure, cadences) and reworking of borrowed textual and/or melodic material. Mayer Browns exemplar of a typology of borrowing techniques has been widely adopted in subsequent scholarship. Honey Meconis study of popular chansons and their compositional glosses surveys modes of reworking of secular models and discusses the evolution of borrowing techniques in the secular and sacred realms.72 Meconi, definitely expanding on Mayer Browns typology, adopts instances of overt, deliberate borrowing, while ruling out shadowy intertextualities such as those not carrying incipit echoes yet based on subtle borrowing of melodic structure, phrasing, and cadential patterns. Various techniques of borrowing in subsequent derivative works and genres are thoroughly presented in Meconis study,

Mayer Browns defense of borrowing as a manifestation of imitatio has been influential for several scholars, such as Burkholder, Higgins, and Reynolds. See Higgins, Servants, Mistresses; Burkholder, Johannes Martini; and Reynolds, The Counterpoint of Allusion. Meconi and Wegman have argued against assuming a direct connection between the concept of imitatio and the practice of musical borrowing in the fifteenth century. Meconi claims that the rhetoric connotations of imitatio are not relevant in the music of the fifteenth century. Wegman questions the application of imitatio to the discussion of musical borrowing in the fifteenth century for it runs the risk of either creating semantic ambiguity or developing an unnecessarily distorted picture of Renaissance music history. See Meconi, Does Imitatio Exist, Journal of Musicology 12/2 (1994): 152-178; and Wegman, Another Imitation, esp. 196-98. 72 Meconi, Art Song Reworkings.

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among them variable patterns of addition or removal of one or more voices, duos based on a cantus firmus line, allusions based on a reworking of a model, combinative works, quodlibets, and Latin compositions. Foremost in the literature on reworking in the fifteenth-century chanson is the question of composers motives of borrowing. Unquestionably, borrowing, in the mid to late fifteenth century, was a cult procedure for composing cantus firmus and cyclic masses. It has been viewed as a habit established for centuries, evolved from earlier practices, when composers erected their sacred polyphonic structures over plainchant foundations. Yet, how does one explain the flood of chansons that engage in conversation within the secular realm, copiously exchanging adieus, regrets and sorrows, fortunes, servants, sweet memories, and good virtues, among others at the time? Meconi has extensively discussed why composers borrowed in the realm of chanson, her two writings summarizing the speculations commonly encountered in scholarship.73 Her overview, quite briefly, considers the following motives: intertext chansons as survivors from lost cantus firmus masses; influence of the contemporary Italian cultural setting, which welcomed northern composers and encouraged the abandonment of fixed forms; borrowing as a pedagogical tool; borrowing as a way to modernize older models; inspired by the composers intention to engage in an intellectual play with the audience; as a conscious play among composers impelled by composition contests; as a product of homage or emulation of master and/or teacher composers; lastly, rather mundanely, due to reasons of easiness, and in cases of self-borrowing, triggered by

73

Meconi, Art Song Reworkings and Meconi, Does Imitatio Exist.

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compositional curiosity. Meconi discusses various plausible motives of borrowing in great length, yet she does not refer to the larger cultural and intellectual context that may have endorsed borrowing as a cult practice and whose manifestations were visible in all forms of art in the Franco-Flemish courtly environment.74 Lastly, amid the scarcity of writings on intertextuality within the late fifteenthcentury chanson, one may refer en passant to a number of studies that deal with the networking of particular song models. A series of editions of chanson families, initiated by Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, molded on fashionable chansons such as De tous biens plaine, Fors Seulement, and Fortuna Desperata, have gathered together an array of musical responses to the original tunes, thus showcasing the extent of their diaspora and the kinds of transformation these tunes underwent within the context of their intertexts.75 The remaining chapters of the dissertation are designed in such a way that the first three principally center on musical intertextualities while the fourth focuses on intertextualities on the level of the poetic texts. Each of Chapters 2-4 deals with one or
Art scholars have discussed at length about motives for borrowing and the extent of borrowing in art production in the Franco-Flemish culture of the fifteenth century. Borrowing as a widespread practice that pervaded all forms of fifteenth century material culture is an issue that will be addressed below (see Conclusion). 75 See Martin Picker, Fors Seulement: Thirty Compositions for Three to Five Voices or Instruments from the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance 14 (Madison: A-R Editions, 1981); Cynthia J. Cyrus, De tous bien plaine: Twenty-Eight Settings of Hayne van Ghizeghems Chanson, RRMMM 36 ((Madison: A-R Editions, 2000); and Honey Meconi, Fortuna desperata: Thirty-Six Settings of an Italian Song, RRMMM 37 ((Madison: A-R Editions, 2001). Settings of Busnoyss Fortuna desperata, the most popular Italian song of the fifteenth century, were previously discussed by Julie Cumming, whose study emphasized the symbolic function and transformation of the image of Fortuna; see The Goddess Fortuna Revisited, Current Musicology 30 (1980): 7-23. Similarly, the genealogy of Ockeghems Fors Seulement, the tune generating the most expansive complex of derivative settings, was considered earlier on by Helen Hewitt; see Fors seulement and the Cantus Firmus Technique of the Fifteenth Century, in Essays in Musicology in Honor of Dragan Plamenac, ed. G. Reese and R.J. Snow (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969), 91-126.
74

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more particular regretz subgroups; each subgroup revolves around a central regretz chanson and/or composer. In particular, Chapter 2 discusses intertextualities stemming from Ghizeghems regretz chansons. Chapter 3 focuses on Josquins Mille regretz as a point of departure. The discussion relies and expands on the work of Owen Rees, which has previously traced allusions of Mille regretz beyond the regretz complex and within Josquins own output.76 Chapter 4 deals with musical alliances within the regretz complex which, firstly, have not been previously discussed and, secondly, are to a great extent non-directional and, most likely, unintentional. The main thread of discussion centers on Josquins Plus nulz regretz, a chanson, that although it enjoyed wide reputation in the first half of the sixteenth century, does not seem to manifest traces of influence with others; it is here considered along with La Rues Tous les regretz and Secretz regretz. Chapter 5 considers the literary aspect of the regretz by discussing their origin in the work of such prominent fifteenth-century poets as Alain Chartier and Charles dOrlans, the influence of these poets notion of the regretz as a theme in the text of Allez regretz penned by Jean II de Bourbon, and the taxonomy of code-words and constants of the literary topos of regretz.

76

Owen Rees, Mille regretz as Model: Possible Allusions to The Emperors Song in the Chanson Repertory, JRMA 120/1 (1995): 44-76.

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CHAPTER 2 THE ORBIT OF GHIZEGHEMS REGRETZ CHANSONS

Ghizeghems Allez regretz was undoubtedly regarded as a chanson la mode in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. Not only was it disseminated in an unusually great number of manuscripts and early printed sources,1 but it was also the archetype for a considerable group of chansons that arose around the late 1400s and early sixteenth century. While certain chansons de regretz of Josquin, such as Mille Regretz and Plus nulz regretz, demonstrate an equal, if not higher, intertextual activity than Allez, as I will discuss in the following two chapters, the progeny of Allez stands out as involving largely chansons derived through direct quotation and/or exhibiting signs of deliberate allusion. The diaspora of Allez regretz within the genre of Franco-Flemish chanson has been variously discussed, yet neither in extent nor in detail. Scholars, more often that not, have tended to refer to Allez regretz as a model in passing, pointing to derivative chansons built up from cantus firmus appropriation, yet failing to address Allez regretz as a springboard for subtler forms of influence within the regretz complex.2 As I discuss in
1

For a complete list of the over twenty-six manuscripts and tablatures, see Fallows, A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs 14151480 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 81-2. Measure numbers in the discussion that follows refer to the edition in Barton Hudson, ed., Hayne van Ghizeghem: Opera omnia, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 74 (n.p.: American Institute of Musicology, 1977), 3-5. 2 The only extensive study on the progeny of Allez regretz was undertaken by Irena Cholij. See Cholij, Borrowed Music: Allez regrets and the Use of Pre-existent Material; Cholij, Fifteenth- and SixteenthCentury Settings of Allez regretz. Both writings deal with the strict use of (mainly the tenor of) Allez regretz as cantus firmus in compositions of various genres (lute arrangements, masses, etc.). Otto Gombosi was the first to discuss intertextualities springing from Allez regretz in his Ghizeghem und Compre: zur Stilgeschichte der burgundischen Chanson. Instances of Allez regretz as model for later compositions have been identified in Mayer Browns seminal study Music in the French Secular Theater, 1440-1550, 186-87. Goldbergs Was zitiert Compre? remains the most thoughtful in its holistic approach of the literary, musical, and cultural aspects of Ghizeghems chanson.

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this chapter, regretz chansons inspired from Ghizeghems original were molded upon a variety of borrowing techniques and demonstrated various levels of intertextual dependence, ranging from the widely apparent to the less directional. Four cantus firmus settings by Alexander Agricola, Anonymus, Bartolomeo degli Organi, and Ludwig Senfl have used one voice of the original Allez regretz, commonly the tenor, as a template and have variedly drawn on musical elements from the remaining two parts. Chansons such as Compres Vens regretz and Weerbekes Sans regretz relate closely to Allez regretz through direct quotation of melodic incipits and rhythmic gestures rather than complete cantus firmus lines. Apart from conspicuous associations, further, less apparent interconnections likely triggered from Allez regretz will be discussed in this chapter. These intertextualities tend to shift towards the other end of Brownlees spectrum of intentionality. On that other pole of Brownlees spectrum, I have observed that Allez regretz seems to relate, by means of somewhat inconspicuous associations, to Ghizeghems La Regrete and Fresneaus Nuit et jour, chansons that have not previously been regarded as belonging to the cycle of regretz.3 Lastly, one may notice even subtler kinds of intertextual links cases where intentionality, in Brownlees words is much less clearly visible among Allez regretz, Les grans regretz, and a group of less celebrated regretz chansons, including Ockeghems Tous les regretz, anons Tous nobles cueurs, and Ghizeghems own Mon souvenir.
Marvins Regrets in French Chanson Texts of the Late XVth Century was the first study to identify regretz chansons as a group based on their text incipits. Her regretz cycle does not include chansons such as La Regrete, Nuit et jour, and Mon souvenir, since she only considered texts that include the word regret(z) in their first verse. I have embraced these and other chansons (such as Tous nobles cueurs) that feature the regretz in subsequent verses (yet close to the first) as belonging in to the regretz complex on the basis of a shared discursive context. La Regrete is considered as a regretz chanson in Goldbergs Was zitiert Compre? too.
3

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Echoes of Allez regretz Chanson Reworkings Most likely, Agricolas Allez regretz was the earliest of the four cantus firmus chanson settings quoting from Ghizeghems prototype.4 Apart from a few negligible variances, Ghizeghems tenor is slavishly quoted in the tenor of Agricolas intertext. The incipit of the model is also quoted at the opening of the superius. Agricolas setting shares the same number of voices, as well as the Lydian modality and an identical scheme of cadences with the prototype Allez. Texturally though, the two pieces are strikingly dissimilar. The original Allez regretz exhibits an open layout of a graceful superius buttressed by an equally tuneful and balanced tenor, joined together by a discreet contratenor, in the tradition of the so called Burgundian chanson.5 In contrast to the clarity and refinement of Ghizeghems, Agricolas Allez regretz projects a higher level of complexity. The cloned tenor, although maintaining the tessitura of the model, is now positioned as the lowest voice of a texture that hosts in the two upper parts a densely convoluted duo of a restless superius and a contratenor of at times unusually high passages. The serpentine-like weaving of the upper lines obstructs the accentuation of any

Surviving sources of the chanson include: Odhecaton A, TourBV 94, VatG XIII.27, and SgallS 461. The transcription to which I refer is in Edward R. Lerner, ed., Alexandri Agricola: Opera Omnia, vol. 5, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 22 (n.p.: American Institute of Musicology, 1970), 20-21. 5 The term Burgundian chanson, rather outmoded in present scholarship, has been variously criticized for its inappropriateness, as has its parallel term Burgundian school. See, for instance, John Milsom, Burgundian school, in The Oxford Companion to Music (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 181-2; and Leeman Perkins, Toward a Typology of the Renaissance Chanson, The Journal of Musicology 6/4 (1988): 421-47. It has here been used to cover specific attributes of the chanson of the third quarter of the fifteenth century, particularly its transparent texture that structurally relies on a superius-tenor pole and a pronounced superius.

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part but the tenor, which, owing to its distinct, less winding character and position as the lowest voice, emerges prominently to signify its descent as a borrowed tune. Senfls setting of Allez regretz, the sole secular work of the composer using a text in French, is an additional indication of the immense popularity of Ghizeghems chanson that spanned well into the first decades of the sixteenth century.6 Senfls four-part response to the line of Allez regretz settings displays a rather straightforward process: the tenor of the original is transferred, transposed a fifth upwards yet perfectly intact, into the altus part of the new setting, the opening of the intertext marked by further short quotations extracted from the incipit and the tenor of the model. The characteristic incipit gesture of the rising sixth, apparently a motivic trademark mostly reminiscent of the progenitor Allez regretz, is quoted in the opening of the superius of Senfls setting. It is complemented by an equally overt presentation of the opening tenor phrase now placed in the bassus and a subtle reference to the contour of the two opening measures of Ghizeghems contratenor likewise laid in the contratenor. The opening three measures of Senfls setting as a whole mirror the opening of the model Allez regretz, reflecting a polyphonic quotation of all three voices; the entrance of the complete tenor cantus firmus quotation in the fourth measure of the altus, a voice previously silent yet resonating with the opening of the bassus, poses as a striking musical moment. Further echoes of prominent motives of the prototype regretz chanson, such as the ascending sixth in measures 22-24 of the bassus that retains the pitch classes as well as the opening rhythm of Ghizeghems incipit, and the three-measure phrase in the bassus following the signum
The edition to which I refer is A. Geering & W. Altwegg, eds., Ludwig Senfl: Smtliche Werke, vol. 4 (Wolfenbttel and Zrich: Mseler, 1961), 58-9.
6

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congruentiae reminiscent of the contratenor line in measures 19-21 of Ghizeghems contratenor, signal Senfls reverence to the original Allez regretz and his intention to celebrate and convey his dependence on it. The textural resemblance of the propagated Allez regretz to the original, considering the evolution of song writing within the four decades that separate the two chansons, is a further indication of Senfls plan to show kinship with his model. Texturally, Senfs reworking appears to be closer to Ghizeghems than that of Compre (see discussion below). Although lacking the well-defined contour and grace of the individual parts found Ghizeghems chanson, the four voices of the reworking retain their independence, a rhythmic homogeneity, and a sense of clarity as a whole.7

Allez regretz and Vens regretz Vens regretz, one of the three regretz chansons composed by Compre, demonstrates a sophisticated adherence to the model Allez regretz.8 Vens can essentially be seen as a patchwork made of key melodic, rhythmic, and structural elements of Allez regretz, quoted or paraphrased, and skillfully interwoven with newly composed material.9

The two remaining cantus firmus settings by Bartolomeo and Anonymous, which are included in BolC Q17, exhibit a similar treatment of Ghizeghems quoted tenor and part of the superius as those by Agricola and Senfl. The extent of their dependence on Ghizeghems prototype is discussed in Cholij, Borrowed music, 169-70. 8 Vens regretz survives in ten sources: BolC Q17, BrusBR 228, BrusBR 11239, CopKB 1848, FlorBN Magl. 107bis, FlorBN Magl. 117, ParisBNF1596, ParisBNF1597, ParisBNF22245, and TourBV 94. In BolC Q17, it is preceded by its model Allez regretz. Measure numbers pertaining to Vens regretz during my discussion refer to the edition in Ludwig Finscher, ed., Loyset Compere: Opera Omnia, vol. 5, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 15 (n.p.: American Institute of Musicology, 1972), 59-60. 9 Studies considering intertextual affiliations between the two chansons include Gombosi, Ghizeghem und Compre; Cholij, Borrowed music, 170-171; Goldberg, Was zitiert Compre?, 93-94 (mostly on the interaction of the poetic texts). Fincher makes a passing reference to Compres regretz chansons in Loyset

43

The chansons employ the same mode (Lydian) and quoted material is presented untransposed, in the original scale degrees. Structurally molded on Allez regretz, Vens regretz retains the form of rondeau cinquain with a text of decasyllabic verse. Cadential patterns are also identical. In most instances, Compre also observes the original scale degrees of the cadences; there is only one divergence that occurs in the penultimate cadence as Allez cadences on F and Vens on D. All three voices of Vens regretz are rooted to a certain extent in Allez regretz, yet the core borrowed phrases are imitatively exchanged between the superius and the tenor. Vens principally extracts melodic material from the tenor of Allez in a rather intricate, almost labyrinthine fashion. Extensive quotation mostly occurs in the first part of the rondeau. In all three phrases of the first section, the tenor first presents quoted material, imitated by the superius. Although the part of tenor appears to have the lead in launching the quoted tenor, the superius, at times, extends a borrowed line above newly composed material in the tenor (see 3rd phrase, esp. m. 13-16). As seen in Ex.2.1a and Ex. 2.1b, the opening measures of Vens regretz announce their strong dependence on Allez regretz, with both the tenor and bassus citing Ghizeghems opening tenor and superius respectively. The tenor carries, at first in direct quotation, later in paraphrase, the complete first phrase of the original tenor. The part of the superius, which opens on the second half of the second measure in imitation of the tenor an octave higher, appears

Compre (c. 1450-1518): Life and Works, Musicological Studies and Documents 12 (n.p.: American Institute of Musicology, 1964), 235. See also a brief discussion of its poetic text in Gerald Montagna, Caron, Hayne, Compre: A transmission reassessment, Early Music History 7 (1987): 107-157, in 149.

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later, in the caesura of the first phrase, to echo the closing cadential passage of the first phrase of the superius of Allez.

Ex. 2.1a: Ghizeghem, Allez regretz, m. 1-6.

Ex. 2.1b: Compre, Vens regretz, m. 1-5.

Similarly, the second phrase commences with an imitative passage citing the second phrase of the tenor of Allez to eventually cadence by means of a paraphrased line in the tenor while the superius carries on the quoted tune. In contrast to the first two phrases, it is only the superius that resonates with the quoted tenor in the third phrase of the rondeau.

45

The second section of Vens regretz opens with a nearly complete polyphonic quotation in the two lower lines (see Ex. 2.2a and Ex. 2.2b). Apart from that opening snippet of Allez, the formerly leading parts of superius and tenor do not introduce further quoted material. Yet, the second section of Vens does not completely break free from its close bonds with Allez. The most interesting musical moment following the signum congruentiae arises in neither of the focal parts, i.e. superius and tenor, but in the bassus. Indeed, starting on the last semibrevis of measure 21 the bassus initiates a string of sequential motives, distinctive for their contour of a descending sixth, which in its turn can be seen as a mirror of the incipit of Allez regretz. The prominent role of the ascending seconddescending sixth sequence in the bassus augments when one observes the sequential patterns in the upper parts that incorporate a motive of similar contour (ascending seconddescending fourth).

Ex. 2.2a: Ghizeghem, Allez regretz, m. 31-36.

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Ex. 2.2b: Compre, Vens regretz, m. 16-24.

Lastly, the sequence brings to mind a short, yet memorable sequential figure of falling fifths that concludes the second phrase of the superius of Allez. Suggesting that Compre modeled that particular moment in Vens after the sequential pattern in Allez is certainly a point hard to prove. Yet, considering that Vens is consciously modeled on Allez, and having observed that the associations between the chansons move beyond clear-cut quotations of a cantus firmus routine, one can speculate that Compre, inconspicuously, but certainly deliberately, drew less elaborate material from the model chanson, such as the sequential motive discussed above, or the prominent rising and/or falling scaling fifth figures, discreetly apparent in Allez and prominently dispersed in Vens. The sophisticated adherence of Vens regretz on Ghizeghems venerated chanson, observed as a topographical grid of interpolated musical relations, is further magnified upon a consideration of the literary facets of the chansons. What one observes at first 47

glance, from comparing the incipits of the chansons, is a striking antithesis. Musical convergence, visible in the opening phrases of the chansons, is fitted to contrasting imagery, apparent in the opening invocation towards the regretz with the words Allez versus Vens. In Ghizeghems chanson the regretz are asked to depart, while in that of Compre they are implored to arrive. Yet, upon comparing the first two verses of the rondeaux (see complete opening stanzas below), we can clearly see that, apart from the initial textual counterpoint (allez/vens), the openings of the refrains share some striking, mainly formal, similarities.10
Allez regretz, vuidiez de ma presence Allez ailleurs faire vostre acointance Assez avez tourmente mon las cueur Remply de dueil pour estre serviteur Dune sans per que jay amee denfance 11 Allez regretz, vuidiez de ma presence Allez ailleurs faire vostre acointance Assez avez tourmente mon las cueur Remply de dueil pour estre serviteur Dune sans per que jay amee denfance 11 Vens, regretz, vens, il en est heure Vens sur moy faire vostre demeure Cest bien raison qu ce je vous enhorte Car aujourdhuy toutte ma joye cest morte Et si ne voy nulluy qui me sequeure12 Vens, regretz, vens, il en est heure Vens sur moy faire vostre demeure Cest bien raison qu ce je vous enhorte Car aujourdhuy toutte ma joye cest morte Et si ne voy nulluy qui me sequeure12

The following presentation of the resemblances and interaction between the two poetic texts is largely influenced by the relevant discussion in Goldberg, Was zitiert Compre?, 93-94. Goldberg first considers formal resemblances (poetic form, number of syllables, and caesuras in opening verse), which, as he argues, are essential elements in the case of subsequent paraphrases of the model text. He explores the metamorphosis of the regretz topos from a concrete story with a rival in Allez to a stereotyped narrative of mourning over loss. He also unveils a string of archetypal themes shared in both texts (death, heart, and others). Goldberg argues that, taking in consideration the musical bonding between the chansons, we can view the narrative of Comperes text as enhanced by means of its association with that of Ghizeghem, and interpret it accordingly as a text that concerns not a case of death but an unfortunate love affair. See also the relevant discussion in Chapter 5, pp. 194-99.

10

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The opening verse in both chansons launches with an imperative verb (allez/ vens) joined with the word regretz and followed by an imperative verb (vuidiez/ vens). Lines of comparable construction are also employed in the following verses; they both begin with a repetition of the incipit verb (allez/vnes) and close with nouns of similar topographical meaning (acointance/demeure); the words faire vostre are centrally positioned at the opening of the second hemistich. Considering Compres close musical reliance on Ghizeghems rondeau, mostly prevalent in its opening phrases, the textual affiliation of the matching opening verses can be seen as an auxiliary layer of intertextual signification. Furthermore, an intriguing conceptual innuendo weaved in text and music radiates from Allez to Vens: the regretz are poetically set in motion (allez/vnes departure/arrival), their passing, more than an imaginary migration, concretely materialized by means of a musical quotation of the model chansons central part (the tenor) transformed into the nucleus of Compres chanson (in the tenor and complementarily in the superius). The Allez/Vens matrix can then be seen as a kind of musical response to a poetic pledge. The remaining verses of both opening stanzas elucidate the preoccupation of the narrator with the regretz, which commonly relates to a suffering state of mind (Remply de dueil/ma joye cest morte). Henceforth, the progression of the narratives
Go sorrows, leave my presence || Go and make acquaintance elsewhere || You have tormented my weary heart enough || I am full of sorrow, being the servant || Of one matchless that I have loved from my childhood. 12 Come, sorrows, come, it is time || Come, make your dwelling with me || There is good reason for me to implore you || For today all my joy is dead ||And, alas, I do not see a soul who might succor me. The present translation is based on the translations by Susan Jackson in Allan Atlas, Anthology of Renaissance Music (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998), 492, and Amanda Zuckerman Wesner, The Chansons of Loyset Compre: Authenticity and Stylistic Development (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1992), 400.
11

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advances quite differently. In Allez regretz, the male lover confronts a complicated situation that involves, apart from the commonplace theme of unrequited love, the presence of a rival against whom he expresses feelings of resentment and vengeance. The unfolding of the narrative in Vens regretz sinks into poignant expressions of frustration (mon cueur sente et pleure; Labit de dueil [my heart asks and weeps/ the habit of mourning]) that culminate in an agonizing imploring of regretz to witness the poets suffering ains que je meure (before I die) death being a customary resolution in its turn. A last point of intersection can be observed in the openings of the final stanzas:
Ny tournez plus, car, par ma conscience Se plus vous voy prouchain de ma plaisance [Do not come back, for, by my conscience If I see you near me more] Mais gardez bien quaprs vous ne demeure Labit de dueil plus noir que belle meure [But make sure that behind you does not remain The habit of mourning, darker than the mourning clothes]

Here, both chansons engage in a gesture of exhortation that, although eventually developing quite differently (revengeful in Allez, apologetic in Vens), signals a perceivable caesura in the narrative.

Sans regretz as a descendant Sans regretz, a relatively obscure chanson by Ghizeghems contemporary Weerbeke, demonstrates a close reliance with Allez regretz that extends to a remarkably similar layout and cadences along with quoted motives and loose paraphrases. Similarly to all regretz chansons modeled on or intertextually associated with Allez, I tend to believe that Sans regretz is also a rondeau; yet its designation as such is debatable. The

50

text of the chanson, in its single survived source, the Basevi Codex (FlorC 2439), is incomplete, though all parts are halfway marked with a signum congruentiae.13

Fig. 2.1: Weerbeke, Sans regretz, superius (FlorC 2439, f. 79v).

Labeling of the piece as a rondeau is rather puzzling. It looks to me that the first section of the chanson consists of four phrases, instead of three. The first three phrases appear to support decasyllabic lines. The text set to the fourth phrase is corrupt. Judging from the length of the phrase, which is relatively short in comparison to the previous ones, I am inclined to think that a hemistich of five syllables may have been used for the

13

A transcription of Sans regretz is included in Paul G. Newton, Florence, Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Cherubini, Manuscript Basevi 2439: Critical Edition and Commentary, vol. 2 (PhD diss., North Texas State University, 1968), 226. Measures numbers in the related discussion refer to this transcription.

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fourth phrase. In that case, Sans regretz follows the form of an extended poetic rondeau, similar to a rondeau lay.14 Architectonic similarities between Allez regretz and Sans regretz are significant. All cadences of Sans regretz, apart from the penultimate, are modeled, and in a few instances replicated note for note, on those of Allez. The first cadence of both chansons, for example, employs a leading tone cadence on F; the contratenor moves independently from the cadential gesture, suspending the impression of a complete caesura and propelling towards the opening of the second phrase. Sans regretz is similarly written in the Lydian mode, the only divergence being the omitting of the signature of B flat in the superius, a disagreement easily mended by the application of musica ficta during the performance. Texturally, the chansons are mostly comparable. Weerbekes chanson, like its model, is constructed from a balanced superius-tenor duet accompanied by an equally active contratenor and an absence of imitative entrances among parts. Individual voices share identical ranges and there is barely any sign of voice crossing. Generally, Sans regretz illustrates qualities of the conservative facet of the Burgundian chanson as

A rondeau lay is an elaborate version of a rondeau cinquain with additional interpolated hemistichs after the second and the fourth lines. Yet, based on the single fragment of the surviving text of Sans regretz, no interjected half verse follows after the second line. Instead, the rhyming scheme of the surviving three lines (a a b) observes the rhyme of the first half of a rondeau cinquain. Most likely, the extra (half) verse placed at the end of the first section may be part of a variant form of the rondeau cinquain. In continuation to my discussion above (measure numbers refer to the transcription in P. Newton), the point of the middle cadence of the second section is slightly confusing. If it takes place on measure 45 this seems to be the only clearly articulated cadence before the final where all parts are led to a full stop the opening phrase of the second section appears to be unusually shorter than the closing phrase (eight versus twenty measures). One other possibility in regard to the confusing layout of the rondeau could be that the signum has been misplaced and, instead of at the end of the first section, occurs on the cadence of the third verse (m. 31). In that case, though, the scheme of cadences, previously parallel to that of Allez regretz, is now in conflict.

14

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manifested in the work of Ghizeghem; nonetheless, the superius of Sans regretz lacks the grace of Allezs leading voice. Weerbeke, most likely, was particularly eager to call attention to the tight adherence of his chanson to the widely popular Allez regretz.15 Indeed, Sans regretz displays its affiliation with Allez regretz at the outset, with a brief but unmissable quotation of the tenor of Allez in the lower part (see Ex.2.3, m. 1-4). Although the quoted motive in Sans regretz is transposed, starting from F instead of C, I assume that it was certainly meant to be aurally caught by the audience, for it is also partially duplicated in the incipit of the superius. Moreover, the contratenor (m. 5-7), following the quotation of the tenor of Allez, sings a rising sixth motive reminiscent of the incipit of Allez, starting from C in accordance with the original pitch classes of Allez.

Ex. 2.3: Weerbeke, Sans regretz, m. 1-10.

If there indeed existed a direct line of influence between Allez regretz and Sans regretz, it must have originated from Allez for, apart from its status as an influential chanson, it survives in a number of earlier sources than Weerbekes regretz (Basevi Codex dates from c. 1505-08; see this chapter, n. 25 for a discussion of the earliest sources of Allez regretz).

15

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Right after the execution of the rising sixth motive, which further resonates in the superius, I can hardly imagine Weerbekes contemporaries missing the reference to Allez regretz. In fact, the composer signals his kinship with the widely known regretz chanson in an exceedingly candid manner. The opening verse, Sans regretz veul entretenir mon cueur (Without sorrows I want to keep my heart), can be viewed as a reaffirming response to the appeal of Allez regretz to go away and vuidiez de ma presence (leave my presence). This brief but witty textual interplay echoes in its musical rendering the two most distinct motives of its model chanson (superius and tenor melodic incipits), most strikingly in consecutive order. With the second quotation (m. 5-7), an allusion to the staple melodic gesture of Allez regretz, Weerbeke might have aimed to insure that the reliance upon Ghizeghem would be obvious even if the audience had failed to notice it before then. I have not, so far, located further instances of allusion in Sans regretz, yet the superius and tenor duet of the complete second phrase strikes me as a free, and rather loose, paraphrase of the same voices in the second phrase of Allez regretz (see Ex. 2.4a and Ex. 2.4b). One may also notice that the superius parts of the third phrase in both chansons begin by using the same pitches.

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Ex. 2.4a: Ghizeghem, Allez regretz, cantus and tenor, m. 12-22.

Ex. 2.4b: Weerbeke, Sans regretz, m. 13-22.

Lastly, a consideration of the poetic texts of the chansons can only further complement their reliance. Although the corrupt status of the text of Sans regretz prevents a thorough reading of it, the surviving verses suggest parallels with the opening verses of Allez regretz:

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Allez regretz, vuidiez de ma presence Allez ailleurs faire vostre acointance Assez avez tourmente mon las cueur Remply de dueil

Sans regretz veul entretenir mon cueur Qui long temps a souffert deuil et langueur Remedy nay qua ma dame Nature Qui nous16

For instance, both texts seem to display a conspicuous resentment towards regretz. Similarly to Ghizeghems chanson, where the regretz are ordered to leave my presence, in Weerbekes, the singer announces, equally decisively, that without regrets I want to keep my heart. The heart is specified as the locus where regretz have previously lain, their siege described in terms of time and intensity (assez avez versus qui long temps) and effect (tourmente vis--vis a souffert). Dueil, a stereotyped feeling in courtly love poetry, is also featured in both opening stanzas (Remply de dueil at the beginning of the fourth verse of Allez compared with a souffert deuil).

Calling the Regretz Nuit et jour The orbit of chanson intertexts revolving around Allez regretz may possibly include, as I will now attempt to argue, Fresneaus rondeau Nuit et jour.17 The underlying resemblances between Allez and Nuit et jour have not been previously considered, in all probability owing to the fact that the latter has not been recognized as a regretz chanson. Furthermore, intertextualities are rather veiled beneath a texture unlike that of Allez. The

16

The surviving text is translated as: Without regrets I want to keep my heart || that for a long time has suffered from grief and weakness || there is no remedy that my lady Nature has || which []. Unless otherwise noted, the English translations of the regretz texts are mine. 17 It survives in the following sources: WashLC L25 (Laborde Chansonnier), LonBLR 20 A.xvi, FlorR 2794, VatG XIII.27, and twice in CopKB 1848. The transcription I rely on is in Allan Atlas, The Cappella Giulia Chansonnier (Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, C.G.XIII.27), vol.2, Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen/Musicological Studies 27 (Brooklyn: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1975), 30. See also the recent critical edition of Fresneaus oeuvre: Olivier Carrillo & Agostino Magro, eds., Jean Fresneau: Messe et chansons (Turnout, Belgium: Brepols, 2004).

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unusually long silence at the beginning of the tenor in Nuit et jour indicates clearly that the tenor does not have the same function as in Allez regretz, where it underpinned the superius, a role that has been taken over by the bassus in Nuit et jour (see Ex. 2.5). The tenor enters after the completion of the first phrase of the rondeau and moves in longer values than the other two voices. Judging from the suspended rhythmic activity, held and repeated notes, and melodic phrases of short range, I suspect that the tenor was probably not sung to the text. It may likely have originated as a paraphrase of a cantus firmus, although I have not yet located a tune resonant with the tenor line of Nuit et jour within the regretz complex. Yet, regardless of the origins of the tenor, the eight-measure long tacet of the part may not have been an innocent compositional choice. The text of Fresneaus chanson during the first phrase reads Nuit et jour sans repos avoir (Night and day, without rest), the key-word regret initiating the beginning of the second phrase. The silenced tenor may have been thought of as a response of contrasting insinuation to sans repos, a hollow filled with visual and aural rests in counterpoint to a text that suggests activity and duration (night and day). Most interestingly, apart from viewing the tacet tenor as a textual/musical pun, its opening right after the superius sings the word regret may also be suggestive of the composers intention to highlight the word as particularly significant.18

Under this light, the labeling of the tenor line in early sources such as Laborde and FlorR 2794 with the single text regret (most likely a reference to the beginning of the second verse of Nuit et jour), practically christening the line regret (in the fashion of cantus, bassus, contratenor, etc), may not be a scribes error. In VatG XIII.27, the textual incipit reads the word Perget, and has been interpreted as being derived from the word regret (the opening word of the tenor). See Atlas, Cappella Giulia, 1: 124-5.

18

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A last remark worth making in regard to the second line of Nuit et jour has to do with its close reliance to the third line of Allez regretz (see lines below). Similarly to the opening of Sans regretz discussed earlier, expressions of duration and intensity are used to recount the attack of regretz (assez avez versus nuit et jour and sans repos). Likewise, the word tourmente echoes as the end result of the attack of the regretz.
Allez regretz, vuidiez de ma presence Allez ailleurs faire vostre acointance Assez avez tourmente mon las cueur Nuit et jour sans repos avoir Regret matriste et me tourmente

The overall dimensions of the chansons also converge to some extent; Nuit et jour, a rondeau quatrain, is shorter than Allez, yet repetitions of the text (the text in the last phrase, for instance, is entirely repeated) stretch its length considerably. Interrelations of a broader kind exist between the chansons: both are written in the Lydian mode, with F as the finalis, yet neither the medial nor the remaining internal cadences fall in identical pitch classes; F (an octave lower than the opening pitch of the superius) is the lowest pitch and is heard once in the second section of the rondeau. The most intriguing correlations between Allez regretz and Nuit et jour, as I have observed, can be tracked down to a couple of melodic and rhythmic motives. The incipit of Allez regretz (see Ex. 2.1), undoubtedly the imprint of the celebrated chanson, is variedly featured in Fresneaus rondeau. The superius of Nuit et jour (Ex. 2.5) opens with a phrase barely reminiscent of Ghizeghems incipit; the first two measures echo the rising line of Allez, yet the association is rather frail. The rhythmic pattern of the first three measures in both superius lines is also identical. Starting in measure 6, the opening of the second phrase in the bassus introduces a rising sixth that could relate to the incipit of 58

Allez. Following the signum, the opening two measures of the bassus are not only rhythmically suggestive of the incipit but are also identical in intervallic content (Ex. 2.6). A rhythmic quotation of the incipit, reverberant of the rhythmic opening of Nuit et jour, is featured in the tenor, beginning on measure 25.

Ex. 2.5: Fresneau, Nuit et jour, m. 1-11

The second melodic/rhythmic cell of Allez that discreetly appears in Nuit et jour is extracted from the third measure of the tenor of Ghizeghems chanson. It is composed of a semibrevisbrevistwo minimas(brevis) rhythmic gesture and is melodically marked by a rising third followed by a falling fourth (see Ex. 2.1). The cell emerges twice in Nuit et jour; measure 9 and later measure 21 carry a nearly unaltered presentation in both the superius and the bassus (with variation in the opening pitch of the cell). The positions of

59

the cell, I have observed, share parallel features: reiterations of the cell in Nuit et ejour commence on the third measure of the second and third phrases and are laid out as a duet of the superius and the bassus. Quite interestingly, the words of the first stanza of Nuit et jour set to the quoted cell triste and espoir are utterly contrasting in meaning. I can imagine that they could easily initiate a moment of mental playfulness among the audience who were hearing the echoes of the shared cell sung repetitively according to the layout of the rondeau. A further, rather minor, point to be noticed is that the second and third phrases are partly comprised of a joint presentation of the first two measures of the incipit of Allez regretz followed by the cell (see bassus of phrase 2 and superiusbassus duet of phrase 3, the latter in Ex. 2.6 below starting on m. 19).

Ex. 2.6: Fresneau, Nuit et jour, m. 18-23.

La Regrete as an offspring Not only did Allez regretz propagate a considerable network of intertexts within the work of Franco-Flemish composers, as I have discussed and will later continue to observe by bringing in further examples, but it held a pivotal place within Ghizeghems cycle of regretz chansons. La Regrete, a later three-part rondeau by Ghizeghem, shares

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some striking links with Allez, not previously considered in scholarship. The piece, I will argue, was modeled on Allez, most likely under the composers intention to compose a refined and sophisticated response to his earlier piece, which was already fashionable by the 1490s.19 La Regrete commences with a rising sixth figure in the tenor, reminiscent of the incipit of Allez Regretz. The association of the figure with Allez is further intensified by the resounding of the figure an octave higher in the opening of the superius (see Ex. 2.7).20 The second half of the incipit of La Regrete (m. 5-7 in the tenor), although not as strikingly evocative as the rising sixth figure, brings to mind the beginning of the tenor of Allez. Especially when one considers the pitch D (top of a rising sixth) attached to the second phrase (i.e. m. 4-7 in the tenor), the extended line can be seen as rhythmically identical and a close paraphrase of the tenor incipit of Allez Regretz. What is more, part of this line echoes in the contratenor (m. 2-3). Observing then the close ties crowded into the opening of the two chansons, it is important to comment on how noticeable Ghizeghems tight reliance on Allez appears early on in La Regrete.

La Regrete circulates in the following manuscript and printed sources: Canti B, Egenolff III, LonBLR 20 A.xvi, ParisBNF 1597, and UppsU 76a. In my discussion, measure numbers refer to the modern edition of La Regrete in Barton Hudson, ed., Hayne van Ghizeghem: Opera omnia, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 74 (n.p.: American Institute of Musicology, 1977), 29-31. 20 This is the only instance of interrelation linking Allez regretz and La Regrete that has, to my knowledge, been discussed in scholarship, specifically in Goldberg, Was zitiert Compre?, 94. Goldberg indicates the opening rhythm and the rising sixth gesture in La Regrete as clear citations stemming from Allez regretz. He notes that the shared opening rhythm is not found in other beginnings of Ghizeghems chansons, apart from, additionally, Les grans regretz. He also notes that Ghizeghems regretz chansons exhibit extensive motives characterized by intensified sequences, voice motion, and motivic variation, elements that match, in the level of the narrative, with the multiplicity that characterizes the attack of the regretz.

19

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Ex. 2.7: Ghizeghem, La Regrete, m. 1-12.

The musical fertilization of La Regrete with gestural strands of Allez is carried out beyond the opening of the chanson. Minor motives, cells, and noticeable melodic gestures of Allez are interspersed in the body of La Regrete. For instance, the rising sixth figure at measure 15 of the bassus is a straightforward paraphrase of the opening motive.

Ex. 2.8: Ghizeghem, La Regrete, bassus, m. 13-18.

An abundance of descending fifths and fourths in La Regrete responds to the presence of the same intervallic gestures in Allez regretz. Furthermore, both chansons 62

employ a short sequential pattern in the superius that leads to the final cadence. Most strikingly, a four-measure long polyphonic chunk of La Regrete is extracted, note for note, from Allez (see Ex. 2.9a and Ex. 2.9b). The profile of the polyphonic quotation can be seen as double-faceted, marked by a cadentialopening phrase pattern in the superiustenor pair and a distinctively tuneful bassus that serves as a chain uniting the closing and opening phrases. It is not merely on account of the presence of a polyphonic block instead of a single migrated line that I consider this particular instance of appropriation as utterly revealing. What I view as equally important is that Ghizeghem aligns the quoted block (itself having a distinct cadential function) in moments of comparable structural significance in both chansons. In Allez regretz, the block is situated at the end of the first phrase, and in La Regrete, it appears at the closing of the first phrase following the signum congruentiae, in both instances acting as an auditory bridge. Although taking into account that the locus of the block in Allez makes it aurally more prominent due to the constant repetitions commanded during the performance of the rondeau, the quotation is still situated in a kind of virtual pedestal in La Regrete, the closing of the first phrase after the signum being topographically parallel to the end of the first phrase in Allez.

Ex. 2.9a: Ghizeghem, Allez regretz, m. 10-14.

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Ex. 2.9b: Ghizeghem, La Regrete, m. 62-66.

The broader layout of La Regrete is also closely modeled after that of Allez regretz. The chanson is composed in the Lydian mode, transposed a fourth upwards and with a finalis on B flat. Even if the geography of cadences in La Regrete is not entirely modeled after that of Allez, various resemblances can be observed. For instance, both the first as well as the penultimate phrase of both chansons cadence in F. Final cadences are similarly structured as of the leading-tone type with a descending fifth in the contratenor. Medial cadences fall in the fifth above the finalis, i.e., C in Allez, F in La Regrete. The superius of La Regrete shares not only the same lower pitch, A la-mi-re (according to the gamut), with that of Allez. This pitch is also sung in the same locus in both rondeaux, in the phrase following the signum. Based on the dating of the surviving sources of La Regrete, the rondeau must have been composed sometime in the late 1480s or most likely in the 1490s.21 Even stylistically it sounds significantly advanced, showing traces of the work of Ghizeghems less conservative contemporary Antoine Busnoys. The texture of the chanson is
21

The Lorraine Chansonnier (ParisBNF 1597), the earliest surviving source of La Regrete, dates from c. 1500.

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considerably more adventurous than that of Allez regretz, featuring frequent imitation points between the superius and tenor (in the beginning of all phrases but the last) and a rather rhythmically active and tuneful contratenor. Moreover, La Regrete is significantly longer than Allez regretz (eighty versus fifty-four measures) due to longer and more angular phrases and the use of a poetic text following the expanded form of the rondeau cinquain lay. When compared in regard to their discursive content, the poetic text of La Regrete differs considerably from that of Allez regretz. The regretz that previously played a central role through their evocation in the opening verse are now virtually excluded, their indirect presence implied by means of their recipient, la regrete. The poet, instead of directing his message towards the regretz, engages in a praise of his beloved one, she being the one afflicted with regretz. In the opening stanza of La Regrete, the first-person subject adopts a courtly speech act enumerating the virtues of his lady and imploring her to show sympathy toward whom qui vous ame. The following verses carry on the poets attempt to move his object of desire by an exaggerated reference to her bon bruit (good reputation) that is rhetorically measured against the highest standards (dont je voy France honoure et emplie). In the last stanza, the poet addresses a courtly plea for the ladys love that involves a split of paths: further attempts to touch the lady through a reminder of his suffering (Mais en mon cueur ce mal tais et replie [But in my heart this sorrow hides and folds]), yet also a threat that, if his love is rejected, he will tarnish her fame. While I do not see explicit intertextual links between La Regrete and Allez regretz in a verbal

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and discursive context, the endings of the rondeaux are similar in expressing the poets intention, and the progression of the narrative towards resolution:
Ny tournez plus, car, par ma conscience Se plus vous voy prouchain de ma plaisance Devant chascun vous feray tel honneur Que len dira que la main dun seigneur Vous a bien mis a la malle meschance22 S vous aymer de bon cueur je memplie Amour le veult bonvouloir luy supplie Mais desamplie Vous voye dung los qui tarnit votre fame Cest que piti vostre cueur point nentame Qui vous est blame Mais en mon cueur ce mal tais et replie23

In Allez regretz, the poet resolves to demand his rival to stay away and warns him with explicitly threatening remarks (see last three verses).24 Blows, this time against his lady, are shot in La Regrete (see lines 3-4), although the rondeau concludes with a last attempt to shame her for his suffering. The key words denoting the shifting intentions of the poet/malepersona are meschance and tarnit. To conclude, the courtly erotic register embodied in the opening stanzas of Ghizeghems rondeaux by the image of a soft-spoken subject suffering from unrequited love is later replaced by one that implies revenge. Considering its close reliance on Allez regretz, I tend to believe that La Regrete was consciously modeled on the former, well-known chanson. By the late 1480s and during the following decade, when La Regrete was most likely composed, the popularity

Do not come back, for, by my conscience || If I see you near me more || Before everyone I will do you such honour || That they will say that a lords hand || Has really hone you mischief. 23 If I am set to love you with good heart || I want to beg for love at your pleasure || But if denied || You will see a praise that will tarnish your fame || It is such a pity that nothing touches your heart || to weaken you || But in my heart this sorrow hides and folds up. 24 The presence of a rival as a third person within the narrative of Allez regretz is suggested in Goldberg, Was zitiert Compre?, 93. See also the discussion in Chapter 5, pp. 195-96.

22

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of Allez must have been apparent.25 Ghizeghem incorporated diverse elements from his successful chanson (incipit, prominent melodic gestures, cadential patterns, and even polyphonic blocks) to compose his new rondeau, La Regrete, possibly driven by his intention to create a chanson of elevated complexity while trying out new trends. While borrowed elements of Allez regretz mark La Regrete, compositional choices such as the extensive use of imitative entrances, the employment of a longer poetic form, and the departure from the old-fashioned polarized texture of the Burgundian chanson point to Ghizeghems plan of composing a chanson that follows in the lineage of Allez regretz, yet it is not a mere copy but a sophisticated descendant. Under this consideration, La Regrete undoubtedly held a special place in the composers oeuvre. A last but enlightening piece of evidence in that line lies at the beginning of the second phrase of the rondeau. Here, the superius, starting on measure 19, carries a paraphrase of the superius of the second phrase of none other than the composers celebrated De tous biens plaine, which alongside Allez regretz was regarded among the most fashionable chansons during the last quarter of the fifteenth century.26 Quite intriguingly, in both La Regrete

The argument for the dissemination of Allez regretz is partially made on the grounds of the inclusion of the chanson in an extensive network of surviving sources. The earliest source of Allez regretz is FlorR 2356 of Florentine origin and dated no later than c. 1480. Three sources copied during the 1480s, FlorR 2794 of Florentine origin, the Laborde chansonnier from the Loire Valley, and the Ferrarese RomeC 2856 (dating argued c.1480s up to 1490), host Allez regretz. It also survives in several manuscripts of the early and mid 1490s: VatG XIII.27, FlorBN Magl. 178, FlorBN BR 229, BolC Q17, and VerBC 757). 26 The network of chanson settings based on Ghizeghems De tous biens plaine ranks among the largest group of composition complexes stemming from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. On the popularity of De tous biens plaine, mostly as a polyphonic model, and also as a widely disseminated chanson, see the Introduction in Cyrus, De tous bien plaine. See also Meconi, Art Song Reworkings, esp. 11-12; and Mayer Brown, Music in the French Secular Theater, 137-38.

25

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and De tous biens plaine, the word dhonneur is employed at or just before the point of the paraphrase during the first statement of the refrain.27

Loose Intertextualities in Anons Tous les regretz and Mon souvenir Intertextualities sprung from Allez regretz that have been discussed so far are, for the most part, overt and rather undisputable. They tend to be confined to the side of Brownlees intertextual continuum that embraces direct quotation and intentionality. However, during my pursuit of intertextualities within the regretz network, I have observed various instances that would fall at the opposite extreme of the intertextual continuum. For instance, a setting of Tous les regretz that survives anonymously in Ottaviano Petruccis Canti B contains motives that, very inconspicuously, allude to melodic gestures of Allez regretz.28 Specifically, the rising sixth on the second half of the first phrase in the superius of Tous les regretz is evocative of the staple rising sixth of the incipit of Allez (see Ex. 2.10). The rhythmic profiles of the shared gestures are also remotely comparable.

27

A considerable degree of relatedness can be observed in the literary texts of the two Ghizeghem chansons. They both embody a courtly register that deals with praising a certain lady of de tous biens and enumerating her virtues. The first couple of verses are particularly alike: De tous biens plaine est ma maistresse || Chascun luy doibt tribut dhonneur and La Regrete en tous biens accomplie || Dhonneur, de los, et de grace remplie. 28 Picker has attributed the chanson to Ockeghem (More regret chansons, 85-6). Apart from the incipit Tous les regretz, no further text is included in its sole source, Canti B, yet, as Picker argues, the chanson was most likely conceived as a setting to the poem Tous les regretz by Saint-Gelais (also set to music by la Rue). A transcription can be seen in ibid, 97-101.

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Ex. 2.10: Anon [Ockeghem], Tous les regretz, superius m. 7-9

Later on, the superius opening of the third phrase (m. 30) recalls the tenor opening of the third phrase in Allez regretz. The two gestures share a similar opening rhythm. Their melodic contours also evolve comparably, composed of the triple repetition of the opening pitch followed by a rising minor second and a falling fifth. Upon considering the literary texts of the two chansons, it is intriguing that they treat the theme of regretz in conflicting ways. In Allez regretz, the regretz, which Assez avez tourmente mon las cueur, are asked to depart; in Tous les regretz, the poet calls all regretz qui les cueurs tourmentez to gather in his own heart. A playful literary pun can be observed when the first two verses of the chansons are read against each other.
Allez regretz, vuidiez de ma presence Allez ailleurs faire vostre acointance [Go regrets, leave my presence Go and make acquaintance elsewhere] Tous les regretz qui les cueurs tourmentez Venez au mien et en luy vous boutez [All sorrows which torment hearts Come to mine and place yourself in it]

It is as if the texts engage in a dialogue that takes the form of a literary bargain. The regretz brought up in Allez regretz are not simply expelled; they are directed to make acquaintance elsewhere. Their virtual migration may befall the tormented heart of the person who appeals upon them to Venez au mien.29 Subtle signs of intertextual association seem to exist among Allez regretz and the rest of Ghizeghems surviving regretz, namely Mon souvenir and Les grans regretz. Not
29

A similar metaphorical passage of regretz takes place in the intertextual space of interaction between the texts of Allez regretz and Vens regretz (see the relevant discussion in this chapter, p. 49).

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previously considered as a chanson de regret the regretz do not appear until the second line of the stanza Mon souvenir conveys enough stereotyped literary topoi apparent in regretz chansons to be identified as such.30 The chanson exhibits traces of a close bond with Les grans regretz. Yet before exploring the links between these two chansons, I plan to call attention to rather discreet instance of connection between Mon souvenir and the celebrated Allez regretz. Starting on the second half of m. 17, the contratenor of Mon souvenir quotes, transposed a sixth higher, the contratenor caesura of the first phrase of Allez (see Ex. 2.11 and Ex. 2.9a respectively). The quotation is readily identified on account of its rhythmic gesture and its distinct arch made up of a tuneful descending sixth followed by an octave leap. The upper voices move in similar rhythmic values, a consistency that extends to the opening of the subsequent phrases following the shared contratenor gesture of both Mon souvenir and Allez regretz. The case in discussion is not a plain quotation of a single motive in one part, but also of its context that engages the polyphonic orbit of its surrounding parts (superius and tenor) and a defined structural locus (end of phrase opening of new phrase).31
30

Such literary conventions in Mon souvenir refer to death as a result of the regretz that lie in the heart of the narrator (Mon souvenir me fait mourir pour les regretz que fait mon cueur) and to the time scale of langueur (nuyt et jour, sans cesser). These and other literary topoi will be extensively discussed in chapter 5. 31 The positioning of the quoted contratenor motive at the closing of the first section of Mon souvenir, the extended contratenor line stretched out on the point of the signum and beyond, entails problems during the performance. The second turn of the rondeau commands the repetition of the first section three times in succession and the contratenor cannot be performed literally as it is written. Two solutions appear feasible to me. One option is for the contratenor to discard the quotation and to cadence on a D in brevis on m. 18. This is the most straightforward option. If it was for the quotation to resound, I suggest the following rhythmic reworking of the closing passage: the finalis of the cadence in the upper voices to change in to a longa, and the three last notes of the descending sixth (m. 19-20) to shift in one measure, diminishing values in half (minima-minima-semibrevis).

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Ex. 2.11: Ghizeghem, Mon souvenir, m. 15-21.

It needs to be noted that the same quotation shared between Mon souvenir and Allez regretz appears in La Regrete, there also identified by its extended polyphonic dimension and its distinct locus (see discussion above on p. 63-64). Why would Ghizeghem choose to propagate an identical polyphonic quotation in three out of his four regretz rondeaux? La Regrete, I argued earlier, was modeled on Allez regretz; the shared polyphonic quotation is one among several links between the chansons. Mon souvenir, though, does not seem to openly relate with either La Regrete or Allez regretz. Thus, the persistent positioning of the contratenor quotation close to cadential moments leads me to speculate that the motive was a conventional part of the composers grammar. Ghizeghem was pulling in one of his compositional hallmarks, as a convenience, when it was needed to bridge separate phrases and to create the illusion of continuation during moments of cadential break.32

32

A similar compositional trick appears at the end of the third phrase of Mon souvenir.

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Intersections of Les grans regretz Ghizeghems Les grans regretz never enjoyed the unprecedented popularity of Allez regretz. It survives in ten sources (almost a third of the number for Allez regretz), one of which (BrusBR 11239) misattributes its authorship to Agricola. It also never inspired the volume of chanson reworkings that Allez regrets aroused. Intertextualities springing from Les grans regretz are not as daringly visible as those developed within the orbit of Allez, with the exception of one chanson, Longuevals Alle regres. The latter is, to my knowledge, the only regretz chanson that engaged in a faithful cantus firmus appropriation of a part of Les grans regretz. It is highly surprising that Alle regres, although directly citing from Les grans regretz, carries a title that alludes, rather misleadingly, to Ghizeghems other, yet most venerated, regretz chanson, Allez regretz. The direct link of Alle regres with Les grans regretz lies in the tenor part of the chansons. The tenor of Alle regres is borrowed note for note and with minor rhythmic changes, made to accommodate a new text, I suppose,33 from the tenor of Les grans regretz. Even though the finalis of the chanson is different from that of its model (D versus G; yet the Dorian modality is retained), the tenor, in the single surviving source of Alle regres, is copied note for note in the original pitches of the tenor of Les grans regretz. A canonic inscription above the part, which reads Canon unus tonus plu ault, instructs the performer to transpose it a step higher in order to harmonically match with the surrounding voices (see Fig.2.2 below).

33

Regrettably, the unique surviving source of Longuevals chanson, the Rusconi Codex (BolC Q19), does not include the text. I assume the poetic rondeau of Longuevals chanson did not relate with that of Allez regretz. The latter was a rondeau cinquain while Alle regres is set as a rondeau quatrain.

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Fig. 2.2: Longueval, Alle regres, superius (BolC Q19).

Yet, why would the scribe of Rusconi choose to transfer intact the pitches of the borrowed tenor and rule their transposition to fit in the harmonic context of Alle regres by means of a canon? The inscription is clearly not confined to the typical use of a canon as a rule for the implementation of a conventional canonic procedure (such as the addition of an extra voice at a dictated interval, mensural augmentation/diminution, etc). It is rather used to illustrate a special aspect of the chanson and, most specifically, to mark off the pivotal status of the tenor as a part of exceptional significance in comparison to its surrounding voices. The inscription is to attract the eye and trigger the mind of the knowledgeable singer to recall the tenor part as a familiar and recognizable tune. The text incipit is an additional pointer to Ghizeghems lineage and to the intertextual association of Longuevals chanson with the regretz output of Ghizeghem. Borrowing the words of the mid-sixteenth century theorist and canon-expert Hermann Finck, the canon in Alle regres functions as a regula argute revelans secreta cantus.34 Indeed, the inscription

I am freely adopting Finchs quoted phrase in a metaphorical sense. The phrase is discussed in Bonnie J. Blackburn, Two Treasure Chests of Canonic Antiquities: The Collections of Hermann Finck and Lodovico Zacconi, in Canons and Canonic Techniques, 14th-16th Centuries, ed. Blackburn & Katelijne Schiltz (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 303. The expression is mentioned in the context of one of Fincks definitions of canon in the early sixteenth century. His example falling under this definition comes from a Josquin motet, unfortunately not revealed, but the canonic inscription that he discusses is a verse extracted from a psalm and used as a canonic motto. Similarly, in Alle regres, a phrase is used as a key to unlock the canonic puzzle.

34

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above the tenor part cleverly reveals the secret of the composition to those musicians seeing Longuevals chanson in the Rusconi Codex. Apart from the borrowed tenor and the common use of a rondeau quatrain form, there are no further eye-catching similarities between Les grans regretz and Alle regres. Les grans regretz is a three-part chanson with independent voices of an ordinary voice range that virtually do not engage in voice crossing or imitative exchanges. Alle regres, a four-part chanson, features quite high tessituras (especially in the bassus and also in superius-altus contrapuntal passages such as the one in the second phrase), imitative entrances at the beginning of phrases (mostly between superius and bassus), and instances of voice crossing (see particularly the opening of the chanson). Yet one can observe a few discreet instances of intertextual association between the chansons. The incipit of Alle regres (Ex. 2.12b), a gesture that rises to prominence through its double presentation in both the bassus and the superius, may owe its contour to the opening of Les grans regretz (Ex. 2.12a). The first two measures of the incipit are designed as a retrograde inversion of those of the tenor. The following couple of measures feature a descending fourth similarly to measures 3-4 of the superius of Les grans regretz.

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Ex. 2.12a: Ghizeghem, Les grans regretz, m. 1-4.

Ex. 2.12b: Longueval, Alle regres, superius m. 4-7.

Besides, the incipit of Alle regres is reminiscent of the opening of Josquins celebrated Mille regretz, a chanson that, as I will show in Chapter 3, also coveys a certain degree of kinship with Les grans regretz. More specifically, the bassus of Mille regretz is strikingly similar to the incipit of Alle regres. Ex. 2.13a and Ex. 2.13b show the openings of the bassus parts of Alle regres and Mille regretz and reveals that the lines are identical both in their rhythmic progression and melodic shape, the only deviation being in the interval bridging measures 2 and 3.

Ex. 2.13a: Longueval, Alle regres, bassus m. 1-5 (my transcription).

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Ex. 2.13b: Josquin, Mille regretz, bassus m. 1-5.

Viewed more broadly, the interval of fourth can be seen as a dominant building material in both Alle regres and Les grans regretz (and in Mille regretz too). The opening of the incipit of Les grans regretz is composed of a rising fourth from G to C and a falling fourth from B flat to F. Measures 3-4 in the tenor feature a falling fourth that duplicates the falling gesture of the superius. The figure is also repeated in the contratenor at the opening of the second section of the rondeau and rhythmically varied in m. 15-17 of the superius. A falling fourth similarly resonates in m. 2-3 of the contratenor. In Alle regres, the interval of fourth, apart from its prominence in the closing of the incipit, is mostly prevalent in the opening gestures of the second section, taking the form of a sequence of rising fourths in both the superius and bassus (Ex. 2.14). Rising fourths are also featured at the beginning of the fourth phrase, especially in the superius and altus. So persistently echoed is the gesture of rising fourth in the first measures of the second section that it can be viewed as a response to the central falling fourth gesture of the borrowed tenor, first heard in m. 3 and repeated in m. 37 (right after the sequence of falling fourths). The gestures are similar in their opening with a characteristic dotted semibrevisminima rhythmic pattern and in their closing with a down-step suspension figure.

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Ex. 2.14: Longueval, Alle regres, cantus, tenor, and bassus (second highest part excluded), starting right after the signum, m. 27-33 (my transcription).

A last instance of linkage worth adding to the net of alliance between Alle regres and Ghizeghems regretz group pertains to the chanson that Longuevals chanson openly alludes to by way of its text incipit Allez regretz. The opening gesture of the second phrase in Alle regres echoes the opening of the tenor in the second phrase of Allez regretz. The distinctive traits of the gesture, such as its commencing on the second half of the measure and its rhythmic stability, are evident in Alle regres. Longueval treats the gesture with an obvious intention to bring it to the fore, for he showcases it through imitative entries, beginning in the lowest part, and restated in the superius and the altus (bassus and superius entries even reproduce the original pitch classes of the Allez regretz tenor).

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As previously mentioned, I have noticed that Les grans regretz is intertextually bound with Mon souvenir. Yet, any connections between these two chansons of Ghizeghem do not show up explicitly. The most direct clue of their relatedness is the shared Dorian modality and the rondeau form of a four-line refrain. The layouts of the cadences are similarly devised, apart from the medial cadence.
Les grans regretz First cad. Medial Third cad. Final cad. G G B flat G Mon souvenir G D B flat G

Table 2.1: Scheme of cadences in Les grans regretz and Mon souvenir.

A few inconspicuous paraphrases of motives are also observed. The superius openings of the fourth phrase in both chansons have the same descending direction from D to F and are both four measures long. Furthermore, the complete opening phrase in the superius of Les grans regretz looks to me as if it was discreetly modeled on that of Mon souvenir. As seen in Ex. 2.15a and Ex. 2.15b , the first four measures of Les grans regretz, also corresponding to a complete hemistich, can be considered as an expanded paraphrase of the compact four-note incipit of Mon souvenir, with a melodic direction from G to F. The superius of the second hemistich of Les grans regretz can similarly be seen as an expansion of that of Mon souvenir. The latter involves a concise motive of an ascending third from G to B flat and a gradual descend of a third cadencing on G. Les grans regretz follows a similar path from G to B flat to G, yet since the second hemistich

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is longer, the extra syllables (je porte) are set to a melismatic passage that leads to the cadence on G.

Ex. 2.15a: Ghizeghem, Les grans regretz, superius, m. 1-12.

Ex. 2.15b: Ghizeghem, Mon souvenir, superius, m. 1-8.

Les grans regretz and Mon souvenir demonstrate further signs of interconnectedness through textual allusion. As mentioned above, both chansons feature the formal structure of a rondeau quatrain. Middle lines of stanzas share common rhyming syllables words ending in -(u)eur (cueur-cueur, liqueur-labeur, rigueurlangueur, etc.). More than that, rhyming words in middle lines are of identical lexical word class (nouns) and length (two syllables). However, it is in their sharing of concrete textual material that the chansons openly intersect. Indeed, the two chansons by

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Ghizeghem seem to interact by means of an extensive network of shared vocabulary (see texts below; identical words are highlighted in bold letters, words of identical roots are underlined and in bold, words of similar meaning are capitalized, and those of contrasting meaning are identified by strikethrough). It is apparent from comparing the poems that textual cross-allusions were not meant to materialize in parallel positions within the layout of the texts, a trend that does not converge with the positioning of motivic allusions, which, more often than not, occur in equivalent moments of interrelated chansons. What we observe then, by considering the weaving of textual and musical associations within the two Ghizeghem chansons, is an interplay of allusions, or else a contrapuntal intertextuality that materializes in intricate ways beyond an one-to-one matching. Interestingly, and in contrast to their recurring textual echoes, the poems are only loosely related in their subject matter. They are certainly related by their general courtly tone and an emphasis on the regretz as bearers of suffering. However, in contrast to the narrative of Les grans regretz, centering on the poets unending torments as an impetus for a plea of compassion from his lady, in Mon souvenir, the poet pledges to recover his memories infected by regretz, here personified as double-faceted (having a riguer and a doulceur identity).

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Les grans regretz que sans cesser je porte Et nuyt et jour TOURMENTENT tant mon cueur Que se de vous ne vient quelque liqueur Impossiblest que plus je men deporte Mais jespere que grace lon maporte Pour remede quil me vauldra bonheur Aujourdhuy nest plaisir que me SUPPORTE le cueur mestraint et me tient en rigueur Alegez moy et me donnez vigueur Qu je vaulx mort a vous je men raporte35

Mon souvenir me fait mourir Pour les regretz que fait mon cueur dont nuyt et jour suis en labeur soubz espoir de le secourir Se sans cesser devoye courir Se sauray je par quel rigueur Sa doulceur me fault descouvrir Et le mettre hors de LANGUEUR En luy donnant port et faveur Sans plus dire ne SOUSTENIR36

An anonymous setting of Tous nobles cuers demonstrates clues of a loose intertextual association with Les grans regretz akin to the instance of free paraphrase between Mon souvenir and Les grans regretz discussed above. As in Les grans regretz (refer to Ex. 2.15a), the incipit of Tous nobles cuers (Ex. 2.16) opens with an ascending fourth from G to C, followed by a descending gesture to F. In this context, it is worth mentioning that the first couple of measures of the incipit of Tous nobles cuers echo the opening of Allez regretz. The outline of the second hemistich in Tous nobles cuers (qui mes regretz voyez) follows a broad scheme from B flat to G, composed of a short sequential descending motive from B flat to G and G to E, then raising to A and cadencing in G. Les grans regretz tracks a comparable melodic curve. The words sans cesser are set in a descending gesture from B flat to G (the conjunction que is set on
Translated as: The great sorrows that I incessantly bear || And night and day much torment my heart || Unless some sustenance comes from you || It is impossible for me to go on. || But I hope that grace will return back to me || as a remedy that will bring me happiness. || Today there is no pleasure to keep me alive || My heart is torturing me and keeps me in harshness || Relieve me and give me strength || or I want death to take me back to you. 36 Translated as: My memories make me die || For all the regrets that are in my heart || Night and day Im in labor || In hope of rescuing them. || Without ceasing they are led astray || They are known of such harshness. || Their sweetness I must uncover || And place them out of suffering || By giving them harbor and favor || Without saying more but supporting.
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pitch A leading to the descending gesture), followed by a further descend to D, and a rising passage to A that cadences on G. Not only the topmost parts but also the two lower voices of the chansons display a certain level of relatedness.

Ex. 2.16: Anon, Tous nobles cueurs, superius m. 1-10.

The kind of interconnection observed in the opening phrases of the chansons is rather vague. It involves the outer shaping and melodic direction of sub-phrases, elements that are not directly audible and easily recognizable. I would not argue that Les grans regretz and Tous nobles cuers are intentionally affiliated. In fact, since I have not observed further signs of relatedness, I tend to believe that any similarities are rather reflective of the common Dorian mode (with final on G) and conventional melodic patterns governed by the grammar of late fifteenth century chanson. Fresneaus Nuit et jour, previously discussed in regard to its musical intertextualities with Allez regretz, will now be considered for its textual interconnectedness with Les grans regretz. Both chansons are rondeaux quatrains and deal with the torturous pain caused by regrets that leads to despairing actions, and in particular, withdrawal from life and ultimately death a narrative of prevalent resonance within the rhetoric of regretz. The opening verses of the rondeaux are strikingly similar:

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Les grans regretz que sans cesser je porte Et nuyt et jour tourmentent tant mon cueur

Nuit et jour sans repos avoir Regret matriste et me tourmente

The regretz share attributes related to time, locus, behavior, and effect, the only divergence being their presence in singular form in Nuit et jour. Thus, their haunting presence is felt day and night, decidedly accentuated by their ceaseless occupation (sans cesser, sans repos [without ceasing, without rest]) of the heart of their bearer. Regretz inflicting torment in the heart of the sufferer is also a conventional image in the regretz network (see the key-word tourmente/nt). Le cueur as the locus of the regretz is visible at the end of the second verse of Les grans regretz rhyming with the word liqueur of the following verse, a word which, in the context of the first stanza, conveys the meaning of nourishment for the suffering heart. A further reference to cueur is present in the last stanza of the chanson, le cueur mestraint (my heart is torturing me), here also indicating the regretz pinning down the heart as the locus of distress. Le cueur, in Nuit et jour, is not identified within the opening verses; it appears further on in the couplet of the second stanza (Et plus mon cueur sen malcontente [the more my heart is unhappy]). The image of hope is also conveyed in both chansons, but with slightly conflicting intentions. In Nuit et jour, hope is clearly unobtainable: nay plus espoir natente (so that I have no hope to expect). Hope is invoked in Les grans regretz (Mais jespere que grace lon maporte [But I hope that grace will return back to me]), yet the closing stanza of the chanson not only renounces the intervention of hope (Aujourdhuy nest plaisir que me supporte [Today there is no pleasure to keep me alive]) but also implies a fatal ending (je vaulx mort a vous je men raporte [or I want death to take me back to you]). Nuit et jour does not allude to death in the same 83

explicit way as Les grans regretz. The last stanza of the chanson is a poetic invocation of withdrawal from life illustrated by metaphors of darkness, an imagery that, in my view, stands for death:
Jen pers le sens et le savoir Au lit de plours soubz noire tente Passant ma vie desplaisente En la chambre de desespoir37

Concluding Note The regretz chansons of Ghizeghem, most particularly his Allez regretz as well as, in the second place, his Les grans regretz, proved to be highly influential on the development of the regretz as a topos and compositional complex. In this chapter, I argued for the idea that Allez regretz left its imprint on a greater number of regretz chansons than previously considered. The chanson must have held a special position for Ghizeghem too, as the rest of his regretz showcase signs of influence from it. More than that, the fact that all of his regretz interrelate, to a greater or lesser degree, indicates that by means of this interplay Ghizeghem acknowledged, or, as the earliest regretz composer, probably consciously shaped, the concept of regretz networking. Furthermore, Allez regretz influenced a substantial number of later regretz of such composers as Compre, Weerbeke, and Fresneau, among others. Various non-apparent interconnections among Les grans regretz, Mon souvenir, Longuevals Alle regres, anon.s Tous nobles cuers, and

Translated as: I am losing my mind and my consciousness || on the bed of cries under the black shade || passing my miserable life || in the chamber of despair.

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others, discussed in this chapter, demonstrate discourses on the levels of music and poetic texts that further enrich the intertextual dimension of Ghizeghems regretz.

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CHAPTER 3 THE INTERTEXTUAL SCOPE OF MILLE REGRETZ

If Mille regretz is nowadays regarded among the most famous chansons of Josquin, it partially owes it to the reputation of its composer, whether his authorship is assumed or legitimate. Beyond speculations over the fame of the chanson in the early sixteenth century as la cancion del Emperador1 and its popularity as model for masses and other chansons, it is the debate on the authorship of Mille regretz that has widely circulated and, at times, divided the musicological circles.2 Among those that reject a Josquinian parenthood for Mille regretz, Louise Littericks voice has been quite prominent. Her arguments against Josquins authorship, echoing those of Joshua Rifkin, focus on the stylistic simplicity of the chanson that is without parallel among his secure four-voice secular works, which are characterized by imitative procedures or melodic derivation from precompositional material that is popular in style.3 Part of the confusion

The expression is included in Luys de Narvezs vihuela tablature (Los seys libros del delphin de musica, 1538). Here Narvez credits Mille regretz to Josquin. It is widely assumed that the chanson was written for Charles V. Scholars have related the occasion for the composition of the chanson with a presumable encounter between Josquin and Charles V in Brussels in 1520 when the latter was heading to Cologne for his coronation. See Helmuth Osthoff, Josquin Desprez, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. F. Blume, vol. 7 (Kassel: Brenreiter, 1958), col. 197, quoted in Bossuyt, Nicolas Gombert and Parody, 112-13. 2 Adopting the official view expressed in Macey et al., Josquin (Lebloitte dit) des Prez, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (2001), 13: 240, I will consider Mille regretz as a legitimate chanson of Josquin. 3 Litterick, Chansons for Three and Four Voices, in The Josquin Companion, ed. Sherr (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 374; and Rifkin, A Singer Named Josquin and Josquin dAscanio: Some Problems in the Biography of Josquin des Prez, unpublished paper, n. 15, quoted in Litterick, Chansons for Three and Four Voices, n. 4. It is however on the basis of its style that Picker supports Josquins authorship, arguing that its simplicity, although not common in Josquins secular oeuvre, is in accord with the overall control and refinement of text/music relationship, motivic economy, and transparent texture (Picker, Josquin and Jean Lemaire; Four chansons re-examined, in Essays

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over Josquins authorship is due to a conflicting attribution to J. le maire in one of the two earliest publications of the chanson, Pierre Attaingnants Vingt et sept chansons musicales a quatre parties of 1533.4 The most recent scholarly response on the dispute along with a thorough review of previous scholarship is presented by David Fallows in his Who Composed Mille regretz.5 Fallowss arguments, in favor of Josquins authorship, center on the attribution of the chanson to Josquin in Tylman Susatos print of 1549 and the consideration of the source as more reliable in regard to Josquins music, compared with that of Attaingnant.6 No doubt, the popularity of Mille regretz close to the middle of the sixteenth century was considerable. Not only did it circulate widely in sources of French, Spanish,

presented to Myron P. Gilmore, eds. Bertelli and Ramakus, vol. 2 (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978), 447456, esp. 451-52. Pickers argument shaped on the basis of aesthetic criteria has recently been questioned by Fallows, whose claim is founded under the light of the composers ever changing biography and reconsideration of works previously attributed to him. See Fallows, Who Composed Mille regretz, in Essays on Music and Culture in Honor of Herbert Kellman, ed. Barbara Haggh (Paris and Tours: Minerve, 2001), 241-252. Earlier views on what was Josquinian were based, Fallows indicates, on works that are probably not his. (Ibid., 242) For a recent synopsis of scholarly discoveries regarding Josquins life, see Richard Sherr, Chronology of Josquins Life and Career, in The Josquin Companion, 11-20; and Jesse Rodin, When in Rome: What Josquin Learned in the Sistine Chapel, JAMS 61/2 (2008): 307372, and esp. 307-313. 4 The other source, also published in 1533 but without ascription, is Hans Gerles Tabulatur auff die Laudten. Daniel Heartz has suggested that the ascription J. le maire refers to the poets name, Lemaire, and may have been used in place of the composers; see Pierre Attaingnant, Royal Printer of Music (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), 97. The hypothesis that it indeed meant to indicate the composer, yet an unknown one and not necessarily the reknown poet Lemaire, has also been suggested by Rifkin in his unpublished essay A Singer Named Josquin, quoted in Fallows, Who Composed Mille regretz, 243. Litterick argues that the ascription to Lemaire was certainly a misattribution resulting from confusion of Mille regretz with the orthographically and aurally similar Plus nulz regretz, also by Lemaire and securely attributed to Josquin. On this hypothesis, see Litterick, Chansons for Three and Four Voices, 375 and Fallowss review in Who Composed, 243-44. 5 241-52. A detailed synopsis is similarly presented by Fallows in the New Josquin Edition, vol. 28, Critical Commentary, 326-329. 6 Susatos publication, Lunziesme livre contenant vingt et neuf chansons, remains the only source of the chanson to indicate Josquin as its originator, apart from Narvezs instrumental arrangement.

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Flemish, and German origin,7 but it also sparked explicit responses by esteemed composers of Josquins generation such as Morales and Gombert.8 My objective in this chapter is to consider the impact of Mille regretz within the network of regretz chansons and to unveil intertextual traces of explicit as well as of a more obscure nature, beyond the handful of obvious reworkings of the chanson. My study has been particularly influenced by the work of Owen Rees, unique in its discussion on allusions of Mille regretz beyond the regretz complex, most particularly in chansons of Gombert, and also on self-allusions within the composers own output.9 At times, my discussion involves chansons also addressed by Rees; in those cases, I attempt to extend Reess observations by bringing in additional instances of shared material and speculating about textual parallels as additional marks of a shared communication.

Dialogues among the Regretz of Josquin Apart from Mille regretz, Josquins regretz output includes the following four chansons: Parfons regretz, Plus nulz regretz, Plusieurs regretz, and Regretz sans fin.10 Most likely, they all come from the composers later years. Yet since they survive only in
Sources for Mille regretz include eight manuscripts, the two printed editions by Attaingnant and Susato, and a substantial group of tablatures. For a complete list of sources, see New Josquin Edition, vol. 28, Critical Commentary, 307-11. 8 Works explicitly influenced by Mille regretz include: Gomberts six-part reworking of Mille regretz, Moraless Missa Mille regretz, Susatos three-part parody of Mille regretz (printed in his 1544 vol.), two additional settings of the responce to the poem, Les miens aussi (one in three parts after his reworking, and the other in four parts after Josquins original, published in his editions of chansons of 1544 and 1549 respectively, and both placed right after Josquins chanson), and a setting for five-parts, again by Susato. For a complete list of related settings, see New Josquin Edition, vol. 28, Critical Commentary, 333-34. 9 Rees, Mille regretz as Model: Possible Allusions to The Emperors Song in the Chanson Repertory, JRMA 120/1 (1995): 44-76. 10 Cent mille regretz, now thought of as a chanson by La Rue, has in the past been attributed to Josquin (see note 58).
7

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posthumous sources and are not related to a particular occasion apart from Plus nulz regretz they cannot be securely dated.11 None of the regretz makes use of a forme fixe; they are all free-composed, and, in their majority, settings of a one-stanza poem reflecting the rhyme of a rondeau. (However, Regretz sans fin is in two sections, mirroring the twostanza poem, and Plus nulz regretz sets a three-stanza poem that resembles a rondeau but uses a peculiar rhyme scheme. 12) Extensive use of canons is featured in all chansons but Mille regretz; Plus nulz regretz is the most extravagant in its profusion of canonic lines (featuring a double canon in the opening musical phrase). In regard to their transmission in shared sources, Attaingnants edition of 1549, Trente sixiesme livre, remains the most inclusive, featuring four regretz of Josquin.13 All three chansons with more that four parts (Parfons, Plusieurs, and Regretz sans fin) are included in Susatos Le septiesme livre contenant vingt et quatre chansons a cincq et a six parties (1545).

All five chansons can be regarded as belonging to the later years of Josquins output according to their restrained style; see discussion on Josquins secular works in Macey et al., Josquin (Lebloitte dit) des Prez, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (2001), 13: 240. As Milsom remarks, to think of Josquins late style similarly to that of other composers, as one characterized by economy of means, rigour of technique, and a concern with the themes of lamentation and commemoration is an appealing idea. Yet, he continues, little evidence exists for the dating of individual works, and any chronology based upon style alone is likely to be hazardous (Milsom, Motets for Five or More Voices, in The Josquin Companion, 306-07). 12 The form of the poem as well as of the music of Plus nulz regretz is not straightforward. It has been argued whether the chanson was meant to be performed as a rondeau. For a summary of the varying views, see New Josquin Edition, vol. 28, Critical Commentary, 359. 13 Mille regretz is the only known regretz chanson not included in Attaingnants 1549 edition. As mentioned above, it was earlier hosted in Attaingnants 1533 edition.

11

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Paths of Connection among Mille, Parfons, and Plus Nulz Regretz Parfons regretz does not openly reveal signs of connection with Mille regretz.14 Surface elements of the chansons, such as modality, number and structure of voices, and motto gestures are widely divergent. Parfons regretz is a five-part chanson, the quintus featured in canon at the octave with the bassus. Imitative entrances are at times introduced (see especially the opening of the chanson, where all parts but the contratenor engage in imitation). Extensive repetition is also at use, especially between lines of the text that rhyme, undoubtedly an example of Josquins endeavor to showcase musical/textual correspondence.15 For instance, the second poetic line is, for the most part, set on a polyphonic block of the opening verse (m. 21-28 is a repetition of m. 1118). Similarly, the complete fourth line replicates the polyphonic setting of the third line. Measured against the facade features of Parfons regretz, Mille regretz appears more ascetic in design and structure,16 featuring a four-part texture, almost no imitative
14

Parfons regretz does not exhibit an extensive network of transmission. Its earliest known source is VienNB Mus.18746 (dated ca. 1523 and compiled at the Netherlands court). For more on the source and Josquins representation in it, see Jaap van Benthem, Einige wiedererkannte Josquins-Chansons im Codex 18746 der sterreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 22 (1971): 18-42. The chanson is also included in the following printed editions: Susatos Le septiesme livre contenant vingt et quatre chansons a cincq et a six parties (1545); Attaingnants Trente sixiesme livre (1549); and Mellange de chansons by Roy et Ballard (1572). Measures numbers and musical examples in the following discussion refer to the following editions for Mille regretz and Parfons regretz respectively: Josquin des Prez: Opera Omnia, editio altera, ed. Albert Smijers, vol. 3, 63 and vol. 3, 5-6 (Amsterdam: Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1957). 15 Indeed, the formal structure of Parfons regretz reflects that of its text. The five-line stanza of the poem has an aabba rhyme scheme; the musical structure can be described as AABBC. A further example of Josquins sensitivity to text and syntactic scheme can be observed in his marking of the caesuras within individual lines. As Patrick Macey points out, Josquin, in Parfons regretz and in most of his five-voice chansons, uses a rest after the fourth syllable to observe the caesura of the decasyllabic line; See Macey, An expressive detail in Josquins Nimphes, napps, Early Music 31 (2003): 407. 16 Scholarly writings have variously pointed to the stylistic distinctiveness of Mille regretz within Josquins oeuvre, a fact that has been used as an argument against its attribution to Josquin. In its uniqueness, as Fallows notes, the chanson has nothing in common with what is otherwise known of Josquins four-voice works. (New Josquin Edition, vol.28, Critical Commentary, 326) And later on, as concerns the songs

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passages, and avoidance of repetition of motives/phrases (the only instance of repetition occurs at the closing of the chanson, on the words brief mes jours definer, yet it involves a short motive in contrast to the extensive repetition of longer phrases in Parfons). Finally, in contrast to the Phrygian modality employed in Mille regretz, Parfons regretz is written in the Dorian mode with finalis in G.17 There are, however, striking parallels between the two regretz chansons. Their musical incipits follow an almost similar contour, the shape of an arc, composed of an ascending leap (4th in Mille / 5th in Parfons) and a gradual descent (see Ex. 3.1a and Ex. 3.1b below).18 The openings of the gestures are rhythmically similar too, featuring a pattern of brevistwo semibrevesdotted semibrevis.19 Despite their common profiles, the incipits are articulated quite differently. In Mille regretz, the incipit is plainly stated in the superius. In Parfons regretz, it bursts in and saturates the opening texture with imitative entrances in all parts but the contratenor. A further shared rhythmic motive can be observed during the opening phrases of the chansons. The motive is made of the iteration of five semibreves followed by a brevis (dotted brevis in Parfons), and is commonly set on the second hemistichs of the opening
musical style [] there is nothing comparable [] in the securely ascribed works of Josquin. (ibid., 329) On the other hand, Picker observes a compliance with Josquins style, related in particular to union between word and tone; economy of motives; and simplicity of texts among others (see Josquin and Jean Lemaire, 452). 17 The Phrygian mode, an emblematic feature of the harmonic profile of Mille regretz, is generally used to embody sentiments of melancholy and seriousness. Richard Taruskin points out that it was from Ockeghem, who first consciously employed it, that Josquin emulated the Phrygian mode (The Oxford History of Music, vol.1 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], 529.) No further known chansons of Josquin are written in the Phrygian mode. 18 In Mille regretz, the arch-shaped gesture opens with a rising fourth (E to A) and proceeds with a gradually falling line that extends to C, the edge of the curve drawn lower. The incipit of Parfons regretz is shaped in to a perfect arch (G-D-G). 19 The dactylic rhythm is a stereotyped feature in openings of several late fifteenth century chansons and thus cannot be considered as an adequate sign of relatedness; see Rees, Mille regretz as Model, n. 17.

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verses of both chansons. Syllabically enunciated in the words de vous habandonner of Mille regretz, it is comparably pronounced in Parfons, setting the words et lamentable joye. In both chansons, the motive is prominently displayed in the superius (there is a further statement in the tenor of Mille regretz20) and occurs in parallel structural moments (i.e., second hemistich of opening verse).21
S C T B

Ex. 3.1a: Josquin, Mille regretz, m. 1-7.

Cantus Contrat. Quintus Tenor Bassus

Ex. 3.1b: Josquin, Parfons regretz, m. 1-19.

20

In parallel to the repetition in the tenor of Mille, the motive is stated twice in the superius of Parfons regretz (m. 11-12 and m. 14-15; the repetition further extends the rhythmic motive with a cadential melisma at the closing of the first phrase). 21 The rhythmic motive is reiterated (extended by an additional brevis) in the second phrase of Mille regretz (vostre fache amoureuse). It is the superius and later on the tenor that carry the motive, similarly to the rhythmic motive in the opening phrase of Mille.

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Ex. 3.1b (cont.): Josquin, Parfons regretz, m. 1-19.

If the above are only vague instances of allusion, the concluding section of Parfons regretz is particularly telling in its connectedness with Mille regretz. Starting on the second half of m. 19 (et paine douloureuse) in Mille regretz, the contratenor sings a gesture prominently marked by a descending minor sixth preceded by a rising step (labeled sigh gesture for the sake of reference; see Ex. 3.2a). A variant of the gesture is articulated in the superius in duet with the contratenor, here the descending part of the gesture followed by a rising step. For the most part, the combined gestures move a third apart. The passage is restated in the two lower voices, two tempora ahead. The sigh gesture provides the core melodic material for the ending of Parfons regretz, both its melodic22 and rhythmic profiles faithfully reproduced (see Ex. 3.2b). In fact, this last part of the chanson is strikingly saturated by multiple statements of the sigh gesture that round up to nine reiterations occurring in all five voices of Parfons.23 Parfons regretz even

22

It is the first version of the gesture, the one that opens with the rising step followed by the falling sixth, that is mostly used in Parfons regretz. 23 All parts but the tenor, which carries one statement of the gesture, echo the gesture twice.

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imitates the presentation of the gesture in duets, set at the interval of the third, as observed in Mille regretz.24

S C T B

Ex. 3.2a: Josquin, Mille regretz, m. 18-24.

S C Q T B

Ex. 3.2b: Josquin, Parfons regretz, m. 44-67.

Starting on the second half of m.57, the gesture echoes in three voices simultaneously (superius, contratenor, and quinta pars).

24

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Ex. 3.2b (cont.): Josquin, Parfons regretz, m. 44-67.

A consideration of the poetic texts set to the shared sigh gesture is quite revealing of Josquins conscious self-appropriation. The gestures in Mille and Parfons carry the words et paine douloureuse and et larmes il se noye respectively, semantically related by their bitter tone.25 Structurally seen, the quoted lines show a number of parallels: they share an equal number of syllables and occur at the second hemistich of a decasyllabic line. They are also set syllabically to the shared gesture. Moreover, both hemistichs commence with the conjunction et and, even more telling, the word dueil falls just before the opening of the gestures.

25

They translate as painful distress and it [my heart] may drown in tears.

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An additional motive of intertextual significance set to the keyword dueil is shared between the two regretz chansons of Josquin. The motivic cell in question draws a perfect arch, composed of a rising fourth / falling fourth, with its middle note repeated, and is set in semibrevis values.26 It is anchored in both chansons in the bassus, adjacent to the articulation of the gesture discussed above. Thus, in Mille regretz, it appears just before the launching of the prominent gesture discussed above (see Ex. 3.3), and in Parfons regretz upon the completion of the last repetition of the gesture (m. 60-62 in Ex. 3.2b).27 Dueil (mourning) is an additional semantic element that further links the shared motive. It is articulated in both reiterations of the motive as part of the hemistichs Jay si grand dueil (in Mille) and Affin quen dueil (in Parfons).

Ex. 3.3: Josquin, Mille regretz, m. 17-19.

The haunting sigh gesture, marking the midpoint of Mille regretz with lamenting calls of paine douloureuse and so profusely echoing in the concluding part of Parfons

26

The motive starts on the second half of the measure in both chansons. In Mille regretz, the last note covers a whole measure. 27 In Parfons regretz, the motive is repeated in paraphrase, right after its statement (m. 62-65 in bassus).

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regretz, occurs in yet another of Josquins chansons de regretz, his Plus nulz regretz.28 Starting on the second half of m. 10 (Ex. 3.4), the bassus quotes the gesture following the exact rhythmic values as well as the pitch classes of the gesture in Mille. In line with the order of the statements of the gesture in Mille, first in the contratenor, then in the bassus two tempora ahead, the gesture in Plus nulz is similarly echoed, only now in reverse order, first in the basssus, then in the contratenor.29 The contratenor response even adopts the pitch classes of the first statement of the gesture in the bassus of Parfons (Ex. 3.2b, m. 46-49).
C

Ex. 3.4: Josquin, Plus nulz regretz, m. 8-16.

Further intertextual weavings can be observed: the sigh gesture in Plus nulz regretz is set on the second hemistich of a verse as in Mille and Parfons; the hemistich in
The chanson was composed sometime between 1 January 1508 (when Lemaires poem on the occasion of the signing of the treaty of Calais, which it sets, was written) and 1511, the date of its earliest transmission in the Brussels/Tournai partbooks (BrusBR IV.90/TourBV 94). For dating/review of the source, see Leon Kessels, The Brussels/Tournai-Partbooks: Structure, Illumination, and Flemish Repertory, TVNM 37 (1987): 82-110. If transmission in sources is an indication of popularity, then Plus nulz regretz must have been significantly popular. For a complete list of sources, see The Josquin Companion, vol. 28, Critical Commentary, 343-347. Yet, it mostly circulates independently from the other regretz of Josquin. Its only shared transmission is in MunBS 1516 (along with Mille regretz) and in Attaingnants edition of 1549. For an analysis of the piece, see Reynolds, Musical Evidence of Compositional Planning in the Renaissance: Josquins Plus nulz regretz, JAMS 40/1 (1987): 53-81. Plus nulz regretz is heavily canonic. It opens with a double canon that covers the first line of text (up to m. 9). Additional imitative passages are exercised throughout the chanson with a capricious freedom in changing pitch and temporal intervals, breaking free momentarily and resuming. I would thus consider the claim that in Plus nulz Josquin eschewed canon mentioned in the Josquin entry of the New Grove Dictionary as a careless oversight. For an edition, see Picker, The Chanson Albums, 280-84. 29 It is here echoed three tempora ahead.
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Plus nulz reads ne soyent ditz nescriptz, its subject being joye, a feeling that comes in sharp contrast to dueil and paine douloureuse of Mille regretz. The intensity of joy is defined as of a grand scale it is joy that cannot be described in words (nothing can be spoken or written of it, as the second verse of the opening stanza reads) that counterpoises the harshness of grand dueil. Josquins compositional choice to musically illustrate this joy with a gesture that in his other two regretz chansons, and especially in his infamous Mille, was a signifier of immeasurable sorrow must have been consciously planned. Plus nulz regretz is the only surviving regretz chanson of the late fifteenth century that coveys a non-amorous narrative.30 In contrast to all other chansons that invoke the regretz once in their opening verses, the regretz in Lemaires poem are mentioned five times. They are neither appealed to appear nor are they implored to go away; they are simply banished. Plus nulz regretz expresses optimism of an unparalleled degree, in part related to the fleeing of the regretz.31 By quoting the aforementioned gesture that has been so strongly associated with his other regretz chansons, Josquin seems to recall the notion of regretz, if only briefly. In counterpoint to a regretz poem that celebrates discharge from sorrow, Josquins allusion not only communicates a conscious act of momentary evocation and skillful instance of punning between text and music, but most importantly acknowledges his regretz chansons as an independent and active network.

30

For a transcription and a translation of the poetic text, see The Josquin Companion, vol. 28, Critical Commentary, 358. 31 See especially the following verses: Plus nulz regretz, grans, moyens ne menuz; Joinctz et unis nayons plus nulz regretz; Regretz plus nulz ne nous viennent aprs; Dont noz epritz nauront regretz plus nulz.

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Threads Across Mille Regretz and Plusieurs Regretz Similarly to Parfons regretz, Josquins Plusieurs regretz bears a great number of resemblances with Mille regretz that only become visible after focused parallel readings of the chansons. It is interesting, though, that any allusions between Plusieurs regretz and Mille regretz are veiled beneath surface-structural features that are much divergent. Plusieurs regretz 5 makes use of the Dorian mode, is highly contrapuntal, and features instances of imitation in openings of phrases that are of longer breath than the concise, short phrases arranged in syllabic style of homophonic texture in Mille regretz.32 Plusieurs regretz also features canonic voices (the quintus is in canon with the tenor at the 5th) and extensive repetition of complete phrases (2nd and 4th are exact repetitions of 1st and 3rd with new verses; the setting of the last verse is also repeated). Immediate clues of a potential intertextual association between the two regretz of Josquin are provided in their opening measures. The superius of Plusieurs regretz opens with a rather unorthodox treatment of its textual incipit introduced in a threefold musical phrase (Ex. 3.5, m. 1-7). The three statements of plusieurs regretz are symmetrically laid out, with minima rests dividing melodic gestures of almost equal duration (1st motivic cell expands in 2 1/2 tempora, and 2nd/3rd each lasts for 2 tempora). The three cells as a whole (m. 1-7) are closely related to the superius opening of Mille regretz

On the other hand, intriguing broader parallels are shared between Plusieurs regretz and Parfons regretz. To begin with, the earliest source for both chansons is VienNB Mus.18746 (dated 1523); they also share transmission in two printed sources (Susatos Le septiesme livre of 1545 and Attaingnants Trente sixiesme livre of 1549). Both regarded as of Josquins late style, they are written for five voices, in the Dorian mode, are rich in canons, and are structured on an AABBC scheme influenced by the rhyme pattern aabba of their five-stanza poems. Formal and motivic intertextualities between the chansons are discussed in Chapter 5. For more on the formal outline of Josquins five-voice chanson, see Macey, An expressive detail, 407. Measure numbers refer to the edition in Josquin des Prez: Opera Omnia, vol. 3, 15-16.

32

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(setting of complete first verse, m. 1-6; see Ex. 3.1a). Both regretz feature an incipit of a rising contour (4th/5th) that stretches to pitch A, followed by a descending gesture to C, and further expanded with a characteristic octave leap and a descending line of adjacent intervals (3rd/4th).33

S Q C T B

Ex. 3.5: Josquin, Plusieurs regretz, m. 1-7.

If the superius opening of Plusieurs regretz was indeed modeled on that of Mille regretz, Josquin must have been eager to highlight that association.34 The potential significance of the related passage is by no means concealed, for Josquin showcases it in imitative entrances at the canonic parts and also in the bassus of Plusieurs regretz.35 And to further emphasize the importance of the passage and likely provide an additional hint
I need to stress that I am mostly considering the overall contour and key-intervals of the related openings. In a microscopic level, regarding for instance the opening rising gesture to A, a comparison would not show significant visible links (Mille features a leap of a 4th set in longer values and a dactylic rhythm, while the incipit in Plusieurs rises in steps and in a more elaborate rhythmic pattern). 34 Even their text incipits signifying the forcefulness of the regretz by their size (plusieurs vs. mille) are suggestive of a possible link between the two chansons. 35 It is only the opening rising gesture (cell 1) that is quoted by the canonic voices. The second and third cells are taken over by the bassus. The bassus also partially quotes the opening passage. It opens with the second cell of the threefold phrase of the superius (omits the opening rising gesture) followed by the octave leap (cell 3) that, so definitely, dominates the opening of Mille regretz. Josquin seems to treat the three parts of the phrase as modular cells that can be rearranged and shuffled around in horizontal and vertical arrangements. For instance, during the opening of the two lowest voices, cells 1 and 2 are superimposed.
33

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of its lineage, he has chosen to set the second verse of the text as an exact repetition of the complete opening phrase. Even more, Josquin provides an additional sign to highlight the association of the opening of Plusieurs with the incipit of Mille. He skillfully distorts its Dorian modality with a definite Phrygian closure at the end of the third statement of plusieurs regretz.36 Rees has traced down a further striking moment of relatedness between Plusieurs regretz and Mille regretz. The concluding passage of Plusieurs (see Ex. 3.10) quotes in its canonic voices (see gesture on the words ne schavent plus quilz font) the staple rising step/falling sixth sigh gesture of Mille regretz (set on the words et paine douloureuse). Similarly to Mille, the gesture is here echoed between voices at a distance of 2 tempora.37

Veiled Allusions of Mille Regretz in Regretz Sans Fin Passing moments of cross-fertilization can be observed between Mille regretz and Josquins Regretz sans fin.38 The most remarkable type of association between the chansons occurs in their poetic texts. Shared words and phrases are used in the contexts

This point was first observed in Rees, Mille regretz as Model, 67. Rees has also observed that the second statement of the shared gesture occurring in the quinta pars even matches the pitch classes of the second statement in the bassus of Mille. He has added further remarks regarding the intertextual significance of the passage in Plusieurs, most notably the presence of a sudden harmonic shift caused by the contrast between B natural and e natural accompanying its first note and the b flat which forms its second note (m. 46-47) (ibid., 68-69). What I find particularly telling is that pitch class B occurs once in its flat inflection, right on the point of the shared gesture; if influenced by Mille regretz, Josquin was particularly cautious to follow the intervallic content of the original gesture. Macey has discussed cross-relations in the closing section of Josquins five-voice chansons as a potential hallmark of his late music (see Macey, An expressive detail, 408). 38 The transmission of Regretz sans fin is exceedingly limited. It circulates in only two printed sources, Susatos Le septiesme livre (1545) and Attaingnants Trente sixiesme livre (1549).
37

36

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of the chansons to register suffering states of mind though Regretz sans fin is profoundly woeful which particularly converge in their common determination to abandon life. The most striking moment of textual interrelatedness can be observed between the second half of Mille regretz and the first stanza of Regretz sans fin; most words and expressions of Mille appear to be scattered in the text of the latter chanson (see especially the expression brief mes jours definer and its paraphrased echo brief finer ma vie). Shown below are the texts of the chansons with common expressions highlighted in bold.
Mille regretz de vous habandonner Et deslonger vostre fache amoureuse Jay si grand dueil et paine douloureuse Quon me verra brief mes jours deffiner39 Regretz sans fin il me fault endurer Et en grant dueil mes doulans iours user Par ung rapport meschant dont fuz servie Mieulx me vouldroit de brief finer ma vie Quainsi sans cesse telle douleur muer Tout plaisir doncqs ie veulx habandonner Plus nulx soulas ie ne requirs donner Puis quil me fault souffrir par seulle envie40

Cues for instances of musical allusion among chansons are often delivered in their texts.41 Thus, for instance, the shared expression grand dueil bears similarities, if only vague ones, in its musical settings. The expression in both chansons is part of opening hemistichs (Jay si grand dueil and Et en grant dueil) set in syllabic fashion. In contrast to its homophonic single statement in Mille regretz (m. 17-19), the textual
39

A thousand sorrows for abandoning you || And leaving your loving face || I have such great sadness and painful distress || That my days will soon be seen to end. 40 For a translation, see Chapter 5, n. 53. 41 This is regarded as a generally accepted view. See, for instance, Reynolds, The Counterpoint of Allusion in Fifteenth-Century Masses, JAMS 45/2 (1992): 228-260, at 229. Plumley, among others, discusses musical allusions prompted by textual cross-references in the work of Machaut and other composers of the ars subtilior (Intertextuality in the Fourteenth-Century Chanson, esp. 363-69). For an edition of Regretz sans fin, see Josquin des Prez: Opera Omnia, vol. 3, 9-12.

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quotation in Regretz sans fin is treated in counterpoint and further repeated (Ex. 3.6, m. 13-19). Yet, most of the statements of grand dueil are set on comparable rhythmic patterns, dominated by the use of semibrevis and brevis values. Superius statements of the complete hemistich, for example, are rhythmically identical, marked by a dactylic opening rhythm (see Ex. 3.3, m. 17-19 in Mille regretz and m. 17-19 in Regretz sans fin).
S

Se xtu s

Ex. 3.6: Josquin, Regretz sans fin, m. 13-18.

Inconspicuous rhythmic allusions can also be seen in the openings of the chansons. The opening of the quintus in Regretz sans fin (see Ex. 3.7, m. 4-6) is rhythmically reminiscent of the superius opening of Mille regretz (Ex. 3.1a, m. 2-4), the latter also duplicated in the bassus at the interval of the fifth below. Moreover, the descending part of the incipit of Mille (m. 2-3) is echoed in the contratenor opening of Regretz sans fin (m. 1-2). Overall, the openings of the chansons seem to engage in a game

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of rhythmic exchange and shuffling of rhythmic cells. For instance, the opening rhythmic cell of Mille regretz, composed of a dactylic pattern (brevistwo semibreves) is transformed in its retrograde form in the openings of the outer voices of Regretz sans fin. The opening rhythmic pattern (m. 1-3) of the tenor (and subsequently of its canonic partner sexta pars) in Regretz sans fin can be seen as a rearrangement of the rhythmic values of the contratenor of Mille regretz (m. 1-3).

Ex. 2.3: Josquin, Regretz sans fin, m. 1-8.

Resonances with the Regretz of La Rue The significance of La Rue as a prominent composer of regretz can hardly be overestimated. With eight surviving chansons centered on the theme of regretz, the majority of which relate in some way or another to Marguerite, he can undoubtedly be regarded as the most prolific composer of regretz chansons. Three of these chansons (Plusieurs regretz, Aprez regretz, and Tous les regretz) demonstrate traces of intertextual association with Mille regretz. Taking into consideration the apparently earlier dating of

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la Rues chansons, most certainly composed before 1508,42 any potential tangible line of influence with Josquins chanson, if it ever existed, must have been prompted by La Rue. The possibility that it was Mille regretz that infected any of the three regretz of La Rue is rather obscure, although not entirely dismissible.43

Mille and Plusieurs The opening of Plusieurs regretz features extensive cross-referencing with the superius opening of Mille regretz.44 All parts apart from the contratenor open with a melodic line that closely resembles that of Josquins superius (m. 1-6). The tenor for instance, as well as the superius two tempora ahead in imitation, opens with a rising fourth from D to G, set in dactylic rhythm as in Mille regretz; it then descends stepwise to B flat tracking a minor sixth (in fact the order of intervals is identical), and proceeds with an octave leap and a characteristic repeated-note gesture in semibrevis values (see Ex. 3.8). The resemblance between the opening passages, occurring in the uppermost voices of the chansons (as well as in the tenor of Plusieurs regretz), is, without any doubt,

Both Plusieurs regretz and Aprez regretz are unica and only survive in BrusBR 228 (dated ca. 1508). Tous les regretz belongs among the chansons on texts by Saint-Gelais (1493) that La Rue composed as a gesture of welcome for the young Marguerite shortly after her return from France (ca. 1494). For a discussion on the dating of the chanson and the occasion of this composition, see Meconi, Pierre de la Rue, 86. 43 Yet in the following discussion I aim to observe and discuss intertextualities between La Rue and Josquin without attempting to secure immediate ties. 44 The resemblance between the chansons was first pointed out by Rees in his Mille regretz as model, 6364. The opening of the contratenor (m. 1-2), the only part not related to the incipit of Mille regretz, could be seen in connection with the opening of the bassus of Mille (same rhythm and gesture in inversion). Measure numbers in the relevant discussion of Plusieurs regretz, refer to the edition in Picker, The Chanson Albums, 339-42.

42

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explic.45 If the first complete phrase is clearly dominated by Josquins migrated superius passage, then the fact that the second phrase of Plusieurs regretz is an almost exact repetition of the first widely celebrates the importance of the passage and La Rues intention to highlight it further. The concluding section of Plusieurs similarly duplicates note for note its opening phrase, the only changes occurring at the closing of the phrase to accommodate a cadence in the finalis.46 Even the textual incipits provide an additional clue so that they drag the eye and mind to contemplate a potential interrelatedness. Both chansons open up with an expression of quantity. The word plusieurs resonates with mille; the regretz compete in their manifestation of profusion.

Ex. 3.8: La Rue, Plusieurs regretz, m. 1-10.

The bassus of Plusieurs regretz, instead of faithfully following the opening of Mille regretz, partially interrelates with it (the descending sixth as well as the octave leap are omitted). 46 The repetitions of the opening passage and recurring echoes of Josquins incipit in essentially three out of the five phrases of Plusieurs is also noted by Rees, ibid., 64. I have also observed, in regard to the concluding section, that the contratenor, previously the only voice that did not carry the opening incipit, now not only quotes it, but is the first to enter with the incipit before further imitative entries in the tenor and the superius. Based on these observations, it is tempting to think of Mille regretz as a model for Plusieurs. It that case, Mille should have been composed sometime in late 1490s, a date that, however, has not been previously suggested in Josquins scholarship. In any case, the confusing dating of Mille regretz hinders further speculations about its composition before of after Plusieurs regretz.

45

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Ex. 3.8 (cont.): La Rue, Plusieurs regretz, m. 1-10.

Additional interrelationships, not as conspicuous as the intersection of a great part of Plusieurs regretz with the superius opening of Mille regretz, can be observed and further attest to the intertextual play between the chansons. The second hemistich of Plusieurs regretz, Qui sur la terre sont, first set in quasi-melismatic gestures, is later sung by the three lower voices syllabically and in strict homophony (Ex. 3.8, m. 8-10). Here, La Rues compositional choice is comparable with the change of texture occurring in the second hemistich of Mille regretz. De vous habandonner in Mille regretz is not only set syllabically in contrast to its preceding alluring melisma; rhythmic and melodic elements of the passage are mirrored in that of Plusieurs. Thus, all three lower voices of the latter chanson (m. 8-10) are set in the rhythmic pattern of the contratenor of Mille (m. 5-7). The tenor and partially the bassus in Plusieurs reproduce the melodic shape of the contratenor and the superius of Mille regretz respectively.

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One of the most frequently quoted gestures of Mille regretz, the ascending step/descending sixth occurring on the words et paine douloureuse (sigh gesture), is also detected in Plusieurs regretz (see Ex. 3.9). Yet, it is not only the gesture that seems to be of importance; Plusieurs regretz shares with Mille regretz the textural scheme of the presentation of the gesture. As Rees has pointed out, in Mille regretz, the gesture is sung in duets, first by the two upper voices, then by the two lower ones; a comparable presentation of the gesture occurs in Plusieurs regretz.47 Starting on m. 36 of the chanson, the gesture is first sung by the superius, partially duplicated in the contratenor, and later by the bassus, in part followed a third above by the tenor. The core voices carrying the gesture in Mille (contratenor and bassus) exchange statements in the same pitch classes, a compositional choice also followed by La Rue. As for the texts of the shared gesture, they converge significantly in their semantic dimension. The fourth verse of the opening stanza of Plusieurs regretz addresses the impact of sorrows (douleurs) on the poet: Me tourmentant de si piteuse sorte (Tormenting me so piteously). The corresponding verse in Mille regretz conveys comparable sentiments of suffering: Jay si grand dueil et paine douloureuse. Besides, the word douloureuse resonates with piteuse in its rhyming and shared role as register of the intensity of despair; its link with douleurs in the second verse of Plusieurs regretz should also be noted.

47

Rees, Mille regretz as model, 64.

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Ex. 3.9: La Rue, Plusieurs regretz, m. 36-40.

Aprez Regretz The sigh gesture occurs in La Rues Aprez regretz, where it also partially embraces relevant aspects of its presentation as observed in various instances previously discussed (repetition in other voices, duets). It is hosted in the second part of the second phrase and it is first introduced by the contratenor (see Ex. 3.10, m. 19-22) similarly to Mille regretz.48 This first statement likewise follows the exact pitches and rhythmic values of that in Mille regretz. Presented mainly by the superius and in duet at the tenor, the second statement begins at almost the same number of tempora ahead as in Mille regretz.

48

Measure numbers refer to the edition in Picker, The Chanson Albums, 347-50.

109

Ex. 3.10: La Rue, Aprez regretz, m. 16-24.

La Rues consistent reliance upon the sigh gesture is undeniably intriguing. What makes it more fascinating, particularly in the case of Aprez regretz, is the word set to it and its adjacent text. The word in question is souvenir, echoed in a threefold presentation of the shared gesture. Preceding souvenir is the word dueil followed by the conjunction et in direct matching with the text of Mille regretz right before the presentation of the gesture (see opening verses of Aprez vs. 3rd line of Mille below).

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Aprez regretz il se fault resjouyr Chassant tristesse et deuil et souvenir [After sorrowing, one must rejoice Chasing sadness and mourning and memories]

Jay si grand dueil et paine douloureuse

Souvenir, in the context of Aprez regretz, is not a word innocent of meaning and interpretation; the word is the textual embodiment of the migrated gesture, resonating with the latter by means of its meaning that is, memories. By virtue of the grafting sigh gesture, souvenir embodies its signified as a bearer of memories. Taking in consideration the various migrations of gesture within the regretz of Josquin and la Rue, it can be said that the gesture itself, too, is an embodiment of the past and an aural signifier of the regretz in particular. And while souvenir as a carrier of memories related to tristesse et deuil (beginning of verse) is, in the context of Aprez regretz, to be chased away, its counterpart, the staple shared gesture, engages in a counterpoint of contrast: the regretz are meant to go away, yet their presence is materialized by means of the gesture as a musical topos. In contrast to Plusieurs regretz, whose opening closely resembles that of Mille regretz, the opening of Aprez regretz does not bear any conspicuous signs to suggest a connection. It is due to the shared souvenir / paine douloureuse gesture discussed above that I am impelled to compare the opening of Aprez regretz with that of Mille regretz for possible parallels. Besides, the dactylic rhythm of the two opening measures, sung in homophony, is notable, as is also the harmonic progression with a semitone rise in the

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lowest voice (A to B flat in Aprez [see Ex. 3.11]; E to F in Mille).49 The harmonic gesture is particularly striking, more so since the B flat in Aprez Regretz is a signed B-fa, and is accompanied in the contratenor by a 1-6-7-1 progression similar to 1-6-2-1 in Mille.

Ex. 3.11: La Rue, Aprez regretz, m. 1-5.

Further scrutiny of the openings reveals an additional, albeit subtle, thread of connection. Following the gesture set on the opening hemistich, all voices of Aprez regretz but the tenor sing a motive composed by a rising fourth and a conjunct descent. Although neither rhythmically or textually similar, nor of an intervallically consistent descent, the underlying shape of the motive brings to mind the opening superius motive of Mille regretz.

The second section of Aprez regretz (m. 35) also opens homophonically and in dactylic rhythm. Parts enter in duets (first the two lower voices, then the two upper voices), a compositional habit frequently employed by Josquin (see et paine douloureuse of his Mille regretz).

49

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Tous les Regretz Rees, in his study of the referential world of Mille regretz, has called attention to a possible link with la Rues Tous les regretz. The latter, as Rees mentions, uses a motive that recalls the incipit of Mille regretz.50 He does not, however, provide further specifics regarding the allusion apart from this observation. The opening section of Tous les regretz displays an all-pervading imitative texture, woven out of entries of the initial motive in the intervals of the octave and the fifth.51 Even though its texture stands in contrast to the concise and mostly homophonic presentation of the Mille regretz opening, the opening motive of Tous les regretz shares a comparable contour with the incipit of Josquins chanson. In fact, if for a moment we discard the gesture of the opening fourth in Mille regretz (m. 1), the phrase (m. 2-6) seems to correspond to a substantial part of the Tous les regretz incipit and even beyond. As seen in Ex. 3.12, the incipit of La Rues chanson tracks a descending sixth filled in with crotchets; an octave leap leads to the second hemistich, set syllabically in a series of semibrevis of repetitive pitches and a subsequent descent. Its underlying orbit is remarkably similar to that of Mille regretz.52 Even more, individual sub-phrases match in

50

Rees, Mille regretz as model, 72. For an edition of Tous les regretz, see Picker, The Chanson Albums, 180-83. 51 The part of bassus opens with a paraphrase of the motive. 52 The part of contratenor in Tous les regretz shares an identical opening with the superius, but proceeds differently following the octave leap.

113

Ex. 3.12: La Rue, Tous les regretz, m. 1-20.

114

Ex. 3.12 (cont.): La Rue, Tous les regretz, m. 1-20.

their parallel textual positions: e.g., the second gesture (repetitive pitches and falling third articulated in semibreves) occurs in both chansons at the second hemistich.53 If the opening motive of Tous les regretz, as was just shown, resembles that of Mille regretz excluding the opening fourth gesture, the virtual omission of the particular interval is compensated for at the beginning of the second phrase in La Rues chanson. Starting on m .13, the bassus sings the gesture A-D-D-C, unmistakably reminiscent of the E-A-A-G incipit of Mille regretz. The motive is repeated an octave higher in the tenor (m. 17-19). The second half of the second phrase features in the bassus, in continuation of the A-D-D-C motive (starting on m. 16), a gesture that is rhythmically identical with the second half of the opening phrase in Mille regretz. The gestures in both La Rues and Josquins chansons are repeated at a distance of two semibreves later. Moreover, the pitch

53

Other obscure similarities between the openings of Tous les regretz and Mille regretz are particularly suggestive of their intertextual association. The opening motive in La Rues chanson shares its overall pitches with that of Josquins. In addition, the semibrevis gesture in the tenor of Tous les regretz(m. 10-13) echoes the one in the superius of Mille regretz (m.5-6).

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classes of the gesture in Tous les regretz are almost identical with those in the superius of Mille regretz (excluding the second note). To summarize, the overall structure of the complete phrases (2nd phrase in the two lower voices of Tous les regretz and 1st phrase in the superius of Mille regretz) share a number of attributes: both begin similarly with a rising fourth and a subsequent descent and also feature similar gestures in their second hemistichs. The kinship between the phrases is not visibly apparent; it is rather largely obscured due to the elaborate falling figure and subsequent octave leap in Mille regretz, features that are nonetheless echoed in the first phrase of Tous les regretz. To put it in other words, when both the first and second phrases of Tous les regretz are considered against the opening superius phrase of Mille regretz, they demonstrate a kinship that integrates every motivic element of the latter. These intertextualities are veiled and would most probably go unnoticed if it were not for the textual incipits of the chansons referring to regretz that prompted their parallel scrutiny. Yet, they are not sufficient to prove a direct influence between the chansons. One the other hand, the texts of the chansons demonstrate signs of correspondence, which could have prompted either of the two composers to allude, albeit discreetly, to the regretz chanson of the other. Tous les regretz conveys the distress of a lover who has parted from his beloved. The reason of his separation is not explicitly stated (Car jay perdu celle [Because I have lost her]). It could presumably be death. Yet, it may also be that she abandoned him, as is the case in Mille regretz (vous habandonner et deslonger). In any case, the narrator in both chansons suffers due to a kind of departure. In similar fashion, the

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Regretz are invoked in profusion in both poems. Mille regretz competes with tous les regretz qui les cueurs tourmentez (All sorrows which torment hearts) as they are summoned to intervene. In fact, in Tous les regretz, the regretz are called upon persistently: Venez au mien (Come to mine [my heart]); Venez doncques et plus rien ne doubtez (Come then and you will no longer doubt anything); Venez et vous diligentez (Come and hasten). It is however in the poets resolution and ultimate desire that the parallel narratives culminate; death is commonly seen in both texts as an unavoidable path. In Mille regretz, this is stated firmly and concisely in the two concluding verses. In Tous les regretz, death is implored more that once in both the first and last stanzas. In both chansons, death as resolution is preceded by an expression of the narrators suffering that serves to justify his state of mind and to portray death as a natural denouement. Seen below are the two concluding verses of Mille regretz and their parallel verses in Tous les regretz (3rd verse of 1st stanza, 4th verse of 3rd stanza respectively).
Jay si grand dueil et paine douloureuse Quon me verra brief mes jours deffiner Pour abregier le surplus de ma vie Jay triste soing qui veult que je desvye54

Could we assume, based on their parallel textual segments and overall comparable narratives, that the texts of Tous les regretz and Mille regretz were consciously related?55 The two poems are among a few regretz whose authors are known. Both were written by
54

The first line translates as To cut short whats left of my life and the second as I have a sad care so that I want to die. 55 I have previously emphasized that issues of influence and deliberate modeling are not of primary concern in my current research. Any speculation on the possibility of direct cross-borrowing within the regretz network is meant to raise questions rather than attempt to secure conscious ties.

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famous literary auctoritates; Mille regretz by Jean Lemaire de Belges, court poet and historiographer of Marguerite of Austria, and Tous les regretz by Octavien de SaintGelais, who, although never employed by her, is also associated with Marguerite by means of a group of farewell regretz chansons he composed on the occasion of her departure from France in 1493.56 Since 1504, the time he was appointed as court historiographer at her Savoy court, Lemaire engaged in writing poetical works dedicated to his patroness, Marguerite.57 As her court historiographer, he may well have been aware of the regretz chansons written for her by Saint-Gelais. Such a hypothesis acquires further merit if we also take into consideration that Lemaire, apart from Mille regretz, penned additional poems dealing with regretz, such as Plus nultz regretz (1508) and Les Regretz de la Dame Infortune (1506), the latter in the tradition of associating regretz with the misfortunes of Marguerite, initiated by Saint-Gelais. In any case, if a conscious string of influence between the two poems existed, it must have originated with Lemaire, whose involvement with Marguerite begins after Saint-Gelaiss death (d. 1502). In the same line, if musical intertextualities between Tous les regretz and Mille regretz are deliberate, and not intersected by means of a third intermediary chanson, it must have been Josquin who alluded to La Rue. Based on stylistic evidence (dependence on the rondeau form, melismas), Tous les regretz belongs to the earlier chanson output of La Rue. Besides, as Picker has argued, Tous les regretz
Picker considers the following rondeaux, Tous nobles cueurs, Le cueur la suy, and Tous les regretz in More regret chansons, 81-101. 57 During the first couple of years of his employment he wrote for her La Couronne Margaritique, a poetic biography of her, and Premier eptre de lAmant Vert, an imaginary letter from her parrot, the green lover, lamenting her absence; a few years later, he wrote Les Regretz de la Dame Infortune for the death of her brother, Philippe. See Picker, The Chanson Albums, 16.
56

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was most likely composed around the time Saint-Gelais wrote the poem, to be performed at a farewell event dedicated to Marguerite.58 Josquin, on the other hand, although never officially employed by Marguerite, may have come to know La Rues chanson by means of his association with Lemaire,59 who in turn was in Marguerites service at the time Marguerites chansonnier MS 11239 was compiled, in which Tous les regretz was prominently featured.60

Textual Echoes Between Mille Regretz and Cent Mille Regretz In line with my previous discussion on textual resemblances between Mille regretz and La Rues regretz chansons, a last regretz chanson to be considered is Cent mille regretz.61 Similarly to Lemaires poem, the text of the chanson consists of a single

58

Picker, ibid., 16. Meconi has similarly argued for a date close to the writing of the poem (see this chapter, n. 42). 59 Pickers claim that Josquin was a friend of Lemaire is perhaps overstated (no evidence provided) (Picker, The Chanson Albums, 16). For certain, there must have been some kind of professional contact (see Picker, Josquin and Jean Lemaire). Not only had the artists previously collaborated (e.g. at the creation of Plus nulz regretz written by Lemaire to celebrate the Treaty of Calais, initiated by Marguerite, and set to music by Josquin), but it is seems that Lemaire was thinking very highly of Josquins composition skills. For instance, in a later version of his poem La plainte du desir, written to commemorate the death of Louis of Luxembourg (1503), Lemaire invokes Josquin, along with other composers such as Agricola and Hilaire Penet, to compose a lament, an invitation, it has been suggested, realized in Cueurs desolez, presumably authored by Josquin. For a discussion on the attribution of Cueurs desolez to Josquin, see Josquin (Lebloitte dit) des Prez, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (2001), 13: 226. Besides, the poet, describing the music of his time in La Description du Temple de Venus of his La Concorde des Deux Langages, praises Josquin, among such composers as Agricola, Ockeghem, and Compre, for creating music of les verbes coulourez (Picker, The Chanson Albums, 16-17). 60 According to Picker, BrusBR 11239 is of Savoyard origin, most probably compiled before Marguerites marriage to Philibert II le Beau, duke of Savoy in 1501, or during her years of residence in Savoy (15011507), and passed to her possession after the death of her husband. See Picker, The Chanson Albums, 5-7. 61 The chanson was attributed to Josquin in Attaingnants 1550 collection. It is featured as the first piece in VienNB Mus.18746 and transmitted anonymously. Attribution to La Rue comes in its earliest surviving source, the superius partbook VatP 1982 (ca. 1513-23). Stylistic evidence suggests a La Rue authorship. See Bernstein, Chansons Attributed to Both Josquin des Prez and Pierre de la Rue: A Problem in Establishing Authenticity, in Proceedings of the International Josquin Symposium, ed. Wilem Elders (Utrecht: Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1986), 125-52, esp. 131-35.

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stanza, in keeping with the trendy abandonment of the rondeau form in chansons of the late fifteenth/early sixteenth century.
Cent mille regretz me poursuivent sans cesse Deuil me conduict et plaisir me delaisse Et fortune si tres mal me promene Que ma langueur vault pis que mort soudaine Pouisquil est force quainsi je vous delaisse62

Typical of courtly poetry, Cent mille regretz is filled with sadness, registered with expressions of inconsolable grief, unavoidable parting, and a veiled suggestion of death. The lyrical selfs state of mind projected in Cent mille regretz is strikingly replicated in the narrative of Mille regretz and articulated by a shared vocabulary. For instance, the word dueil is reiterated, while expressions such as je vous delaisse (used twice), mort soudaine, and langueur in Cent mille regretz reverberate with the following in Mille regretz of parallel meaning: de vous habandonner, brief mes jours deffiner, and paine douloureuse. Needless to say, the textual incipits of the chansons are so intriguingly alike that I am tempted to interpret this an obvious signal of allusion from the part of the poet of Cent mille regretz. Cent mille regretz is an explicit paraphrase of Mille regretz; this fact, taken into consideration along with the shared vocabulary and related narratives of the chansons, suggests that the poems must have engaged in some kind of communication.63

62

Translated as: One hundred thousand regrets pursue me without ceasing || Grief governs me and pleasure forsakes me || And fortune so unkindly charts my course || That my debility is worse than sudden death || Since I am thus forced to abandon you (translation in Meconi, Style and Authenticity in the Secular Music of Pierre de la Rue [PhD diss., Harvard University, 1986], 209). 63 During the fourteenth century French literary societies held poetry contests, where poets competed in composing ballades upon a shared refrain. Poetry competitions were organized in particular by the Cour

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Mille regretz as the Progenitor of Gomberts Regretz Nicolas Gombert must have been a devout follower of Josquin. For he not only composed a dploration on the death of the composer, who was presumably his teacher during the latters last years in Cond, but also openly reworked Josquins compositions.64 An expert of the parody technique, with eight out of his ten masses based on preexisting models, Gombert composed reworkings of his teachers chansons Mille regretz and En lombre dung buissonet. The latter he worked into a triple canon, most likely in tribute to Josquins preoccupation with canonic structures.65 Gomberts reworking of Mille regretz resembles an intricate and dense patchwork largely woven out of motives of Josquins model, arranged in quotation and variably transposed, paraphrased, elongated with short melismas, and rhythmically varied into a thick texture. All six parts are saturated with melodic snippets of quoted material. Distribution of migrated fragments within larger sections (corresponding to settings of individual verses) is clearly deliberate and skillfully planned. Yet, there is an apparent

amoureuse, an aristocratic institution in Paris, in the early fifteenth century where poems were composed on designated refrains. See Plumley, Playing the citation game, 21-22. Plumleys idea of literary intertexts as products of citation contests is also central in her Intertextuality in the 14 th century chanson. Here, she mentions poetry contests flourishing in as late as 1469, when famous poets such as Villon and Charles dOrlans competed in Concours de Bloison the refrain Je meurs de soif aupres de la fontaine (ibid., 369). We might imagine that certain contests engaged the writing of new poems upon a shared incipit instead of a refrain or asked for a paraphrase on a given incipit or theme Mille regretz and Cent mille regretz may be the outcomes of such a contest. 64 On the possibility of Gombert being a pupil of Josquin, this was mentioned by the theorist Hermann Finck in his Practica musica (1556) (see George Nugent and Eric Jas, Gombert, Nicolas, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. [2001], 10: 118-19). Gomberts dploration on the death of Josquin cited the cantus firmus Circumdederunt which Josquin previously employed in his sixpart chanson Nymphes, napps. It was printed in Susatos collection of Josquins chansons of 1545, along with two other laments by Flemish composers. 65 Ibid., 120-21. For an edition of Mille regretz, see Nicolas Gombert, Opera omnia, ed. Joseph SchmidtGorg, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 6 (Rome : American Institute of Musicology, 1975), vol. 11, 160-63.

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freedom in Gomberts redistribution of material within individual sections.66 For example, the opening section of Gomberts (Ex. 3.13), set on the words Mille regretz, is built on material drawn from the first four measures of Josquins. Echoes, threaded into an extensive grid of imitative entries, are so pervasive that the opening section of Gomberts reworking has swollen to fifteen measures.

Ex. 3.13: Gombert, Mille regretz, m. 1-14.

66

As Ignace Bossuyt also observes, Gombert transforms his model into a complex contrapuntal whole by drawing material from all voices; the original composition is not transplanted or integrated as such in a new polyphonic complex, but serves as the starting point for a wholly new composition (Nicolas Gombert and Parody, 114).

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Ex. 3.13 (cont.): Gombert, Mille regretz, m. 1-14.

Intense borrowing occurs throughout Gomberts parody. Imitative calls at the beginning of phrases are saturated with motives at times drawn from the bassus of Josquins model (instead of the superius, which is most commonly borrowed). For instance, the polyphonic passage set on the words Et deslongier (Ex. 3.14a) draws extensively from Josquins four-note bassus motive (m. 7-9). All voices but the sextus

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feature echoes of the bassus motive in its original pitch classes.67 What is most interesting, though, is that the sextus, the sole voice not drawing material from Josquins model during this particular phrase, features a motive that also circulates in another regretz chanson of Gombert. The regretz in question is his five-part Regret ennuy, a chanson that also bears signs of allusion to Josquins Mille regretz (see discussion in the following paragraph).68 The motive is featured in the two lower parts of Gomberts Mille regretz, sextus and bassus, in imitative entries at the unison (Ex. 3.14a, m. 21-23). It mirrors the rhythm and interval structure of the rising fifth gesture opening in m. 20 of Regret ennuy (Ex. 3.14b), which further echoes in imitative entries.
C Q A T S B

Ex. 3.14a: Gombert, Mille regretz, m. 20-24.

67 68

The tenor and the bassus quote the motive during the second statements of the hemistich. An edition of Regret ennuy is in Gombert, Opera omnia, vol. 11, 142-45.

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Ex. 3.14b: Gombert, Regret ennuy, m. 19-23.

Apart from the fleeting and rather inconspicuous moment of intersection discussed above, I have only observed a single notable point of association shared among Regret ennuy and the two Mille regretz chansons. The opening four-note gesture of Regret ennuy, imitatively distributed to all five parts of the chanson in an orderly fashion from highest to lowest, is an inversion of the bassus opening motive of Josquins chanson. It is also in retrograde with the bassus of Gomberts reworking of Mille regretz starting on m. 9,69 and in inversion with further statements of the motive in the cantus and sextus. Although other shared gestures suggesting reliance of Regret ennuy on Josquins chanson have not been observed, Owen Rees has tracked down some striking evidence that hints to such a connection. Regret ennuy, as published in Susatos edition of 1549, bears the inscription responce and is preceded by another chanson of Gombert, Tousiours souffrir, whose dependence on Mille regretz is quite remarkable.70 If Gombert conceived Regret ennuy as a responce to Tousiours souffrir, then the latter, by means of
This is the only instance of shared pitch classes (A, B flat, and G). Rees, Mille regretz as Model, 51 and 55. As Rees has shown, Tousiours souffrir demonstrates the most concentrated reliance on Josquins Mille regretz. The opening motive of Mille dominates the whole chanson, being used in the setting of almost every phrase of text (ibid., 51).
70 69

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its close resemblance with Josquins Mille regretz, functions as a conceptual bridge to virtually allude to an intertextual play between Josquins chanson and Gomberts Regret ennuy. Apart from Regret ennuy and Mille regretz, Gombert composed two other regretz: O doulx regretz and Tous les regretz. Examining their intertextual dimensions may provide further clues in tracing the impact of Josquins Mille regretz in Gomberts regretz output. The opening of O doulx regretz (Ex. 3.15) resembles in its rhythmic structure and homophonic texture that of Josquins Mille regretz.71 Both regretz commence in an exclamatory fashion to introduce the regretz by means of a sequence of chordal writing in dactylic rhythm (brevis/two semibrevis). The openings also follow a similar harmonic progression; the third measure returns to the harmonic identity of the first. All parts of O doulx regretz begin with motives of a retrograde structure. Even though that is not exactly the case with the opening gestures of Mille regretz, those of the contratenor and the bassus begin and end with the same pitches. The palindromic gesture in the bassus of O doulx regretz is echoed in the bassus of Mille regretz (opening of third phrase, m. 17-19 in Ex. 3.13).72 In fact, the intertextual association at that particular moment goes beyond the single echo of the bassus line. In addition to displaying a rhythmic and harmonic resemblance, the entire polyphonic motive set on the words Jay si grand dueil matches the melodic profile of the opening of O doulx regretz. The central measures of the related

71

The resemblance as an instance of loose and likely unconscious connection is also briefly mentioned in Rees, Mille regretz as Model, 63. See an edition of O doulx regretz in Gombert, Opera omnia, vol. 11, 97-99. 72 Even the harmonic functions of the shared gestures coincide. The opening pitches (C and E) are the finalis of the modes (Ionian and Phrygian respectively).

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passages (m. 18 of Mille regretz and m. 2 of O doulx regretz) are identical in their arrangement of the three parts to form triads and to echo the same pitches in repetition (FF and A-A in O doulx regretz; A-A, C-C, E-E in Mille regretz). The fourth part (superius of Mille regretz and tenor of O doulx) features a descending minor third made up of the exact same pitch classes (C to A).

Ex. 3.15: Gombert, O doulx regretz, m. 1-3.

Such kinds of interrelations between Mille regretz and O doulx regretz are rather marginal and are only loosely suggestive of Gomberts reliance or broader reference to Josquins chanson. Yet, the fact that shared passages occur in parallel moments (opening three measures, and later, at the beginning of a phrase) can be indicative of an explicit connection. Even more, homophonic writing with motives of longer rhythmic values happens only during the opening of O doulx regretz; apart from the opening measures, the chanson employs a dense contrapuntal writing of shorter values (mostly minimas). If then the opening whose text carries the word regretz is so stylistically distinct from the remaining chanson and yet closely similar with that of Mille regretz, I am led to believe that we have here some strong indications of conscious affinity. It is as if the

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opening of O doulx regretz exposes its migrated status by means of its contrast in style with what follows declamation is used as a rhetoric device to point out and elevate a passage of importance. In fact, it is my impression that most motives of O doulx regretz derive from the melodic cells of the three opening measures.73 From this perspective, the opening, viewed as the springboard for the composition of the chanson, acquires an even higher significance. Gombert not only borrowed the polyphonic opening of Josquins Mille regretz and transplanted it to the very beginning of his own regretz chanson, but also celebrated his allusion and reverence to his teacher by weaving and developing the melodic cells of the quoted passage into the complete grid of the song. The thread of intertextual associations within Gomberts regretz output includes a consideration of those arising from his Tous les regretz, albeit quite limited. The only instance of intersection I have located occurs with O doulx regretz. Tous les regretz commences with a stepwise rising fourth resounding in all six parts in imitative entries (see Ex. 3.16).74 The rising fourth incipit assumes the role of a generative cell that, by being presented in variable facets of paraphrasing, pervades the overall texture of the chanson. Now, considering the opening section of the chanson (m. 1-19), one can observe a textbook example of Gomberts intricate counterpoint. Set to fit in the textual incipit Tous les regretz, the rising fourth motive, varied in its rhythm and further development, is echoed profusely not only during the initial measures, but right up to the closing of the section, superimposed along gestures set to the second hemistich.
Compare, for instance, m. 1-3 of tenor (C-C-A-C) with the opening motive of the second phrase (starting on m. 11); and opening bassus motive (C-F-F-C) with scattered motives in the 3rd and 4th phrase (m. 19-38) composed of a rising fourth and a descent. 74 Measure numbers refer to the edition in Gombert, Opera omnia, vol. 11, 175-80.
73

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Ex. 3.16: Gombert, Tous les regretz, m. 1-9.

The haunting presence of the opening motive of Tous les regretz is similarly noticeable in O doulx regretz, whose third phrase (m. 19-32) features a motive beginning with a stepwise rising fourth (see Ex. 3.17). The first statement of the shared motive, in both chansons, commences on pitch class G. And even though the two renderings of the motive differ in intervallic structure due to the use of B flat in O doulx regretz, the fact that a great number of reiterations of the motive employ the G-A-B(flat)-C version (see

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especially both superius parts) leads me to think that the choice of these particular pitch classes may not be coincidental but suggestive of some connection between the two regretz. Moreover, upon closer scrutiny, one may also observe that certain reiterations of the motive are mostly comparable. For instance, the second statement of the motive in the superius of O doulx regretz (m. 24-26) is identical both in its rhythmic structure and intervallic order to the statement of the motive in the altus of Tous les regretz starting on m. 13.

Ex. 2.13: Gombert, O doulx regretz, m. 19-29.

Nevertheless, the most intriguing clue in regard to a possible thread of allusion stemming from the use of the shared motive in O doulx regretz and Tous les regretz lies in the parallel reading of the texts attached to the two regretz. In O doulx regretz, the motive is set on the hemistich Pour mon tresor. This phrase, when read against the 130

textual incipit Tous les regretz, reveals further signs to argue for an intertextual communication of the chansons. Most specifically, the interplay between the words tresor and regretz and their semantic interconnection is of particular importance, as pointed out by Marvin. In her significant work on the literary dimension of the regretz chansons of the late fifteenth century, Marvin has brought to light a quite intriguing regretz-tresor bonding inherent in the emergence of the regret as a poetic motif.75 Observing that these words, regretz and tresor, engage in an interplay triggered by a shared musical gesture in Gomberts regretz chansons is in itself intriguing. It would be compelling to speculate whether Gombert was aware of the early literary connection between tresor and regretz. Gombert was highly regarded for his compositional skills and was, together with Thomas Crecquillon, the most renowned composer in the service of Charles V.76 Judging from his important position in the court chapel as matre des enfants and his canonry at the prestigious Tournai Cathedral, I find it reasonable to assume that he must have been well educated.77 It is also tempting to think that Gombert consciously set the two words, originally related by literary convention, to parallel

See Regrets in French Chanson Texts, 195-97. The origin of the regretz, Marvin argues, is traced in the genre of complainte, and most especially in a series of poetical responses between the famous poets Alain Chartier, Jean de Bourbon, and Charles dOrlans. The regretztresor association was first initiated in Chartiers Complainte (ca. 1424) with the expression tresor de regres. It was then grafted in Jean de Bourbons bergerette Jamasse ung tresor de regres, which in turn instigated a rather ironic response by Charles dOrlans whose opening verses read: Cest une dangereuse espergne, damasser tresor de regres. For more on the literary origins of the regretz, see the opening part of Chapter 5. 76 Bruno Bouckaert, The Capilla Flamenca: the Composition and Duties of the Music Ensemble at the Court of Charles V, 1515-1558, in The Empire Resounds, Music in the Days of Charles V, ed. Francis Maes (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 1999), 40. 77 The possibility that he may have owned a university degree is all too plausible considering that the young singers of the chapel whom he was directing used to be sent to study at places such as the university of Leuven (see ibid., 42) For an account of Gomberts status and fame at his own time, see Alan Lewis, Nicolas Gomberts First Book of Four-Voice Motets: Anthology or Apologia? in The Empire Resounds, 47-48.

75

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melodic motives with the intention to showcase his erudition and competence in the literary tradition of his immediate past.

The Other Way Around In some of the regretz chansons intertextually related with Mille regretz, the possibility that it was Josquins chanson that acted as the archetype for further allusions cannot be discarded. Mille regretz could potentially have had an influence on some of Josquins own regretz chansons and certainly on a few of Gomberts regretz chansons. Yet, there is, as Rees has suggested, a case of intertextual association in which the modeling may well have operated the other way round.78 The chanson in question is Ghizeghems Les grans regretz, a piece that most likely predates Mille regretz, judging by its appearance in surviving sources and its stylistic facets.79 It is in the openings of the chansons that signs of interconnectedness are mostly observed. Rees has pointed out that an unusual harmonic gesture, commencing with the progression of a rising semitone in the lower parts, links the openings of the chansons.80 The gesture is particularly significant in Les grans regretz since it breaks away from the mode of the piece (G Dorian) and recalls, momentarily, the Phrygian modality of Mille regretz (see Ex. 1.12 and Ex. 3.1a). The superius parts also feature comparable incipits, composed of a rising fourth (which in Les grans regretz is gradually reached with the

78

Rees, Mille regretz as Model, 47. Rees suggests that there is also the possibility of both Mille regretz and Les grans regretz drawing upon a similar motivic convention or archetype. 79 The majority of its sources date from the 1490s. Its earliest transmission occurs in the third layer of Laborde with a suggested date of 1480s. For a list of sources, see Fallows, A Catalogue, 255. 80 Rees, Mille regretz as Model, 47.

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addition of crotchets), the second measure made up by two semibrevis of the same pitch, and followed by a gradual descending gesture of a fifth, doubled in another voice. Les grans regretz features a dactylic rhythmical pattern at the opening of the tenor that resonates with the contratenor and bassus of the opening two measures of Mille regretz. I need to note that these instances of intertextual relationship cannot securely account for a conscious affiliation between the chansons. Their parallel openings can, however, suggest of a certain degree of relatedness, probably not direct, but one that arises out of shared musical stereotypes within the regretz network.81 An additional hint of relatedness may surface from scanning the literary components of the chansons. In considering the poetic text of Les grans regretz against that of Mille regretz, one can easily observe that both chansons, although different in length, form, and overall scheme of narrative, progress towards the same resolution. Qu je vaulx mort a vous je men raporte, the concluding line of Les grans regretz, though certainly more affirmative in its intention, scarcely differs from the concluding verse of Mille regretz, Quon me verra brief mes jours definer.82 The latter, less forthrightly, but equally decidedly, suggests death as the outcome to an unbearable situation. Additionally, the hopeless situation driving the suffering characters to putting an end to their lives is commonly illustrated:

If Mille regretz explicitly engaged in grafting Les grans regretz, it was not the only instance of a Josquin-Ghizeghem intertextual alliance. Josquin also composed two instrumental reworkings of Ghizeghems De tous biens plaine (see Litterick, Chansons for Three and Four Voices, 340). 82 Translated respectively as Or I want death to take me back to you and That my days will soon be seen to end.

81

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Jay si grand dueil et paine douloureuse (Mille regretz); Le cueur mestraint et me tient en rigueur (Les grans regretz).83 Conclusions The impact of Mille regretz within the regretz complex is undeniable. Beyond apparent allusions in the work of Gombert, Mille regretz seems to engage in a wide network of intertextual associations with various regretz chansons of La Rue as well as Josquins own regretz. Within Josquins own regretz group, threads of interrelation are observed among Mille regretz, Parfons regretz, and Plus nulz regretz, chansons which appear connected by means of shared incipits, melodic motives, and rhythmic patterns. A shared gesture, composed of a rising step and a gradually falling sixth, is prominently featured, and similarly positioned, in all regretz of Josquin but his Regretz sans fin. Migrations of this gesture are also observed in La Rues Plusieurs regretz and Aprez regretz, chansons which also intersect with Mille regretz by way of a substantial network of paraphrased motives, inconspicuous gestures, and instances of textural interplay. Moreover, contrary to the widely accepted idea of Josquin acting as an influential figure for La Rue, threads of association noticed between Mille regretz and Tous les regretz the latter belonging to the earlier output of La Rue suggest that Josquin, on his part, was likely involved with the music of La Rue. Indeed, as Jesse Rodin has recently observed the revised biographical picture invites us to perceive Josquin in a new position relative to his contemporaries [] for he did not emerge fully formed from the head of Zeus

83

Translated as I have such great sadness and painful distress and My heart is torturing me and keeps me in harshness.

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like everyone else, he absorbed musical ideas from all around him in the process of developing a distinctive compositional voice.84

84

Rodin, When in Rome, 358, 364.

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CHAPTER 4 FURTHER MUSICAL ALLIANCES WITHIN THE REGRETZ COMPLEX

The Referential Aspect of Josquins Plus nulz regretz Judging from its wide dissemination in contemporary sources, Plus nulz regretz must have been regarded as one of Josquins most celebrated chansons in the first half of the sixteenth century. It survives in 20 manuscripts, 3 printed sources, and 3 intabulations, an extensive transmission without parallel in Josquins secular oeuvre.1 Its special status stands out in BrusBR 228, where it is featured as the only chanson with a composers ascription attached in the otherwise anonymous collection.2 It is thus quite surprising, as Fallows has previously commented, that despite its popularity, Plus nulz regretz did not infect others.3 Indeed, neither chanson reworkings nor cantus firmus masses or motets openly influenced by Plus nulz regretz are known to have been composed by contemporary composers of Josquin or his posteriors. Yet my quest for threads of connections within the regretz complex has brought to light several instances of correlations with Plus nulz regretz, especially in La Rues regretz chansons. La Rues chanson Tous les regretz demonstrates a remarkable network of interconnections with Plus nulz regretz that
1

For a complete list of sources, see The Josquin Edition, vol. 28, Critical Commentary, 343-347. For a modern edition, see Picker, The Chanson Albums, 280-84. 2 Remarked in Meconi, Pierre de la Rue, 173. BrusBR 228 is the core musical source for Plus nulz regretz and also stands out as the only source to include the complete poem. In LonBLR A41-4 and FlorC 2442, it is prominently positioned in the opening folios (fol. 3v-4 and fol. 2v-4 respectively). The latter dates from ca. 1510 and it is most likely of French origin. If the dating is correct, this means that the popularity of Plus nulz regretz rose remarkably soon after its composition in early 1508. 3 The Josquin Companion, vo.28, Critical Commentary, 368.

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exceeds generic musical norms and shared musical features common in the style of Josquin and La Rue, such as the frequent use of canonic writing and coordination of music form with poetic structure.4 Contrary to the general pattern of influence between the two composers pointed out by Meconi, which supports a high estimation of La Rue for the work of Josquin,5 the interrelations between Plus nulz regretz and Tous les regretz considered along the contextual facets of the chansons suggest a path of influence originating from La Rue. Other regretz to be intertextually considered with Plus nulz regretz include La Rues Secretz regretz, Josquins Regretz sans fin, and Prioriss motet chanson Dueil et ennuy / Quoniam tribulatio.

Discourses with La Rues Tous les regretz Canonic writing of an overtly free but intrinsically idiosyncratic nature is actively pursued in both Plus nulz regretz and Tous les regretz. Termed by Picker a quasicanon, confined mainly to the two lower voices, the canonic element in Plus nulz regretz permeates all eight musical phrases (here a phrase equates to a verse setting) and materializes in varying relationships of temporal and pitch intervals among the canonic voices.6 As Reynolds stressed, it is more precise to think of multiple canons, each one

For a discussion on similarities and differences between La Rue and Josquin, especially in regard to settings of shared texts, cantus firmi, and paths of modeling, see Meconi, La Rue, 172-83. See also, Walter H. Rubsamen, Unifying Techniques in Selected Masses of Josquin and La Rue: A Stylistic Comparison, in Josquin des Prez: Proceedings of the International Josquin Festival-Conference held at the Julliard School at Lincoln Center in New York City, 21-25 June 1971, eds. Edward E. Lowinsky and Bonnie J. Blackburn (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), 369-400. 5 See Meconi, La Rue, 169-72. 6 Picker, Chanson albums, 72. Pickers analysis of Plus nulz regretz (pp. 72-73) is mostly focused on discussing its distinctively consistent melodic direction and its strong sense of harmonic progression that differs from La Rues motivic/harmonic organization (esp. when compared with that of Secretz regretz).

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and in certain verses a double canon unfolding at the opening of a new phrase.7 Yet, the scheme of canonic planning in Plus nulz regretz is anything but erratic. A symmetrical organization governs the order of canons, described by Reynolds as concentric.8 Most notably, the settings of the first and last couple of verses (1, 2, 7, 8) use double canons and are realized at the interval of the fourth, while those of the 4th and 6th verses have canons at two different pitch intervals. The structural hierarchy that governs the canonic writing is also in correspondence with the concentric order of the rhyming pattern of the text (a b a b, b c b c / 1st stanza . . . c b c b, b a b a / 3rd stanza). The canonic element in La Rues Tous les regretz is realized independently within individual phrases and with freedom in regard to the choice of voices involved, as in Plus nulz regretz. Canonic instances differ in regard to their temporal span, a feature that is also applied to Josquins chanson. Thus, in Tous les regretz the canon of the second verse between the two lower voices lasts for 7 measures, while the opening canon expands over 4 measures. Similarly, Josquin designs the opening double canon to cover 7 measures, yet the canonic opening in the two lower voices of the third phrase (beginning on m. 16) employs a four-measure motive. No apparent symmetrical design seems to rule the canonic writing in Tous les regretz. Yet a certain degree of organization can be observed, one that mirrors, to an

Musical Evidence of Compositional Planning in the Renaissance, 56-57. Reynolds argues that Josquin was conscious of reflecting the symmetrical rhyme and circular structure of the poem in the concentric structural order of cadences, canons, and motives. Thus a wider grid of musical elements, not only the canonic structure, is governed by a concentric symmetry. For instance, as Reynolds demonstrates, the motives in the first half of the chanson recur in reversed order in the second half (A B C C B A). Motivic mirroring is mostly realized by means of rhythmic variation and inversion of voices so that motives set in upper voices are later heard in the lower ones. A concentric organization applies to the poetic scheme too (A B A B A). See ibid., esp. 55-66.
8

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extent, the rondeau structure of the chanson. The opening phrases of the corresponding sections (i.e. first and fourth) use canonic imitation at the octave between the superius and the tenor. Not all five verses are set in canonic phrases; the concluding phrases of the two sections of the rondeau, i.e. the third and the fifth, feature short imitative entrances, each lasting for a couple of measures. In overall, the textural layout of both Josquins as well as La Rues chansons can be viewed as a patchwork made up of multiple, mostly free, canonic passages, some relatively developed and others obscure. Apart from their noticeable textural intersection, the chansons share a remarkable number of facets of musical alliance. Both chansons are written in the D-dorian mode, yet their dorian modality is not clearly established until the end and modal ambiguity is apparent. In Tous les regretz, all cadences but the final are on F and mostly on A. Similarly, in Plus nulz regretz, several cadences occur on A. Due to the dense contrapuntal weaving among voices, cadences, in both chansons, occur not only at the closing of each verse but can be observed within duets in the middle of a verse setting. Momentary cadences also occur a few measures before a strongly articulated cadence. For instance, three measures before the medial cadence in Tous les regretz, an inconclusive pause on A occurs between the cantus and tenor. Likewise, three measures before the medial cadence on D in Plus nulz regretz, the cantus and tenor are led to a transient cadence on A. Several motivic interrelationships pervade the texture of the chansons. The settings of their opening verses feature canonic writing: a double canon in Plus nulz regretz divided among the upper and lower voices (see Ex. 4.1); a canonic interplay

139

between cantus and tenor in Tous les regretz (see Ex. 3.12), momentarily disturbed by an instance of minor paraphrasing (m. 9-10 in the tenor). Although not explicitly comparable, the opening of the bassus motive in Plus nulz regretz bears some resemblance with the incipit of Tous les regretz. The two motives feature the same pitch classes (after the two semiminimas, pitch classes G and A are inversed), similar gestures that also carry similar rhythmic values, and close with a downward movement (A to D in Plus nulz regretz; G to C in Tous les regretz filled in with crotchets). Right after, the second hemistichs are set, in both the two lower canonic voices of Plus nulz regretz and in the cantus and tenor of Tous les regretz, on identical motives, the only divergence being the rhythmic variation on the second and third reiteration of pitch class C. Moreover, the statements of the shared motive in the two tenors are lined up in bringing the opening phrases into a cadence (see m. 10-13 in Tous les regretz and m. 7-9 in Plus nulz regretz).9

Observe that the superius on the penultimate measure of the cadence in both chansons shares the same cadential gesture.

140

Ex. 4.1: Josquin, Plus nulz regretz, m. 1-10.

The affiliation between the tenors of the chansons is carried on in the settings of the second verses. Again, no direct similarity is observed, but the tenor parts demonstrate parallel melodic curves and rhythmic patters. In both chansons, the tenor is divided into two melodic gestures matching with the hemistichs of the verse. The first gesture is set syllabically, commences in the second half of a measure, and shows similar rhythmic patterns and melodic contours in both chansons (rising/falling shape). The second gesture, likewise syllabic and starting off in the second half of a measure, begins with a

141

rising step (semitone in Plus nulz regretz vs. whole tone in Tous les regretz) and proceeds to a gradual descent (sixth versus fourth). Most notable though, beyond the striking resemblance of the tenor gestures, is the fact that the two lower parts engage in imitation, demonstrating a scheme identical to the opening entries in the bassus parts, followed by echoes in the tenor.10 The correspondence between the chansons of Josquin and La Rue is nowhere more evident than in the settings of their third verses. Both settings are heavily imitative with entries not only occurring in all four parts but also following an identical framework of intervals (tenor enters a fifth above the bassus, contratenor at the octave, and superius a fifth above). The opening motive D-F-F-E (and its transposition A-C-C-B), featured in imitative entrances in Plus nulz regretz (see Ex. 4.2a), is openly echoed in the two upper voices of Tous les regretz, and in paraphrase (D-D-C-F-E) in the two lower voices (see Ex. 4.2b). Furthermore, the second hemistichs of the third verses make use of paraphrased melodic cells of the core motive. Josquin also builds the setting of verse 4 (m. 22 onwards) on the core D-F-F-E motive and various melodic transformations of it.

10

The imitative entrance of the tenor in Plus nulz regretz is temporarily obscured in the first half of m.10 with pitch c instead of B.

142

Ex. 4.2a: Josquin, Plus nulz regretz, m. 16-25.

143

Ex. 4.2b: La Rue, Tous les regretz, m. 21-30.

Extensive dependence on the core motive occurs further on in Plus nulz rergetz with a reworked version of it prominently featured in the fifth and sixth verses. The transformed version of the motive (D-F-E-D) is predominant at the opening of the fifth section following the signum, and later on at the opening of the sixth phrase on the setting of the words Batuz, pugniz (see Ex. 4.3a for paraphrased instances of the core motive in settings of the fifth and sixth verses). Looking for additional swaps of the transformed motive, this time in Tous les regretz, I think that remnants of it can be observed in the 144

section following the signum (see Ex. 4.3b). First the tenor and then the cantus, in imitation, carry a gesture whose outline can be reduced to A-C-B-A (G).

Ex. 4.3a: Josquin, Plus nulz regretz, m. 31-45.

145

Ex. 4.3a (cont.): Josquin, Plus nulz regretz, m. 31-45.

Ex. 4.3b: La Rue, Tous les regretz, m. 31-40.

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Not only do the imitative and motivic frameworks of Plus nulz regretz and Tous les regretz share a number of obvious correspondences but, even more so, contextual facets seem to bring the chansons together in a kind of virtual discourse. First, it is worth noting that they belong among a small number of chansons whose poetic texts are securely attributed to venerable poets of the time Lemaire and Saint-Gelais.11 Their texts, one a definite rondeau, the other resembling to a certain extent the structure of a rondeau,12 were written by the celebrated rhtoriqueurs for the purpose of specific courtly occasions. In fact, their strikingly opposing narratives were prompted by occasions in which Marguerite of Austria played a definite role and whose common core incident was that of an engagement. As previously mentioned, Tous les regretz was written as a farewell poem by Saint-Gelais to Marguerite on the event of her departure from the French court after her broken engagement to Charles VIII.13 Plus nulz regretz, a political poem commemorating the Treaty of Calais that sealed the alliance between England and the Habsburg-Burgundian empire after the engagement of Archduke Charles and Mary Tudor, was commissioned by Lemaire, official poet in the Burgundian court, which was at the time under Marguerites regency.

Plus nulz regretz is attached to the end of Lemaires De la nouvelle aliance dAngleterre. The complete poem survives only in one early poetic edition (La pompe funeralle des obseques du feu Roy dom Phelippes par Jehan Lemaire Belgijen) printed on 15 February 1508, a period less than two months after its completion. The text of Tous les regretz, although ascribed to Henri Baude in Canti B, is now securely attributed to Saint-Gelais. For a list of poetic sources of the complete text, see Meconi, Pierre de la Rue, 144. 12 Picker describes the poetic form as a reduced rondeau lacking a refrain (ABAAB) (Picker, Chanson albums, 72). 13 On the Complainte for Marguerite, part of which is Tous les regretz, see Mary Beth Winn, Octavien de Saint-Gelais: Complainte sur le depart de Marguerite, Le Moyen Franais 5 (1979): 65-80; and her earlier study, Regret Chansons for Marguerite d Autriche by Octavien de Saint-Gelais, Bibliothque dhumanisme et Renaissance: Travaux et documents 39 (1977): 23-32.

11

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Shared sources of transmission amplify the connections between Plus nulz regretz and Tous les regretz. The shared transmission of the chansons in BrusBR 228 is overtly highlighted by means of their positioning and the use of special scribal marks of identification. If a reader of the chansonnier was meant to single out certain chansons on the grounds of material insignia, both Tous les regretz and Plus nulz regretz would be among those chansons to attract the eye. Tous les regretz is the opening chanson, and according to Picker, it was originally the first piece of the opening gathering of the manuscript, before the initial Marian motet, Ave sanctissima Maria, was added on a separate leaf.14 Plus nulz regretz stands out as the only chanson with an authorial ascription, with the name JOSQUIN DES PRES appearing on an illuminated ornamental sort of rolling papyrus on the upper left corner of the folio.15 Furthermore, the chansons share transmission in VienNB Mus. 18810 (ca. 1530) and in FlorC 2442 (ca. 1510), sources of correspondingly German and French origin.16 The evidence reviewed so far to suggest a close bond between the chansons is overwhelming. Even though no distinct instances of exact quotation exist to securely confirm a conscious influence, the extensive network of shared musical devices and peripheral contexts of composition and transmission make it hard to escape the likely conclusion of a La Rue-Josquin connection. If a line of influence had indeed occurred, it must have originated from La Rue, for, based on the chronological evidence of sources

14 15

Picker, Chanson Albums, 3. For a facsimile illustration, see ibid., pl.6. 16 For a dating/repertory of FlorC 2442, see NJE, vol. 28 commentary, 141; for studies on VienNB Mus. 18810, see ibid., 16.

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and the incidents that prompted the composition of the chansons, Plus nulz regretz was composed fifteen years after Tous les regretz. Why would Josquin resolve to make reference to La Rue? Did he intend to compose his regretz as a hopeful response to La Rues regretz of suffering? In discussing possible patterns of influence in the work of La Rue and Josquin, Meconi suggests a kind of one-sided competition, with La Rue in his own way trying to match or outdo Josquin.17 Under this light, a possible La Rue-to-Josquin path of reference is all the more intriguing. For, in contrast to what seems to have been an established pattern, La Rue in this specific case seems to have provided Josquin with a model for inspiration. Josquin, having reached a high status by the early sixteenth century and having been granted the Burgundian-controlled provostship of Cond (starting in 1504), was all too well aware that he was commissioned by the Habsburg-Burgundian court to set Lemaires poem specifically written for a political event of special importance. If Josquin was also aware of La Rues special relationship with Marguerite through his employment at the court at times she was also there (1493-1497, 1499-1501), and that La Rue had written more than one piece intended for her, he might have considered it appropriate to showcase a certain line of influence from Marguerites favored composer, or at least one that was officially linked with the court. BrusBR 11239, the earliest surviving source of Tous les regretz dating from ca. 1500 or slightly later, may have reached Marguerites hands as

Meconi, Pierre de la Rue, 183. She discusses at length La Rues tendency to model some of his masses and motets on Josquins, and his choice to set religious texts and use cantus firmi also employed by Josquin (esp. 172-180). Studies on the stylistic differences/similarities between Josquin and La Rue are cited in Meconi, n. 14.

17

149

early as 1504 or as late as 1506.18 Through Lemaire, with whom Josquin likely had contact in 1505 when he set to music the poets Soubz ce tumbel written on the death of Marguerites pet parrot, the composer may have come to know more on La Rues output and connection with the court, or even somehow got to know Tous les regretz. In that case, he would have hardly missed the intriguing pun of antithesis between the two incipits (Tous les regretz vs. Plus nulz regretz [All sorrows vs. No more sorrows]), an interplay that may have propelled Josquin to deliberately cultivate a musical connection with La Rue.

Ties with Secretz regretz As mentioned above, the two lower voices of Plus nulz regretz are closely related by means of idiosyncratic canonic writing, exercised with freedom in changing temporal and pitch intervals and also obscured by momentary paraphrasing of motives. Similarly to Josquins chanson, the two lower voices of another regretz chanson by La Rue, his Secretz Regretz,19 are also bound in canonic relationship that is likewise inconsistent in its

18

BrusBR 11239 is problematic regarding its ownership and exact dating. See the relevant discussion in Meconi, Pierre de la Rue, 135-7. 19 The piece survives in 3 sources: BrusBR 228, MunU 328-331 (dated from 1527 or before), and VienNB Mus. 18810 (ca. 1533). (The two latter sources provide the alternative title Carmen.) Only Vienna 18810, a not consistently reliable manuscript, contains an attribution. It is easy to argue on a secure attribution to La Rue, as his stylistic fingerprints pervade the chanson. For a detailed stylistic description of Secretz regretz, see Meconi, Style and Authenticity, 90-91. The text of the chanson, as Picker first suggested, may have been written by Marguerite. See Picker, Three Unidentified Chansons by Pierre de la Rue in the Album de Marguerite dAutriche, Musical Quarterly 46 (1960): 329-43, at 334. For an edition, see Picker, Chanson albums, 192-94.

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temporal alignment and momentarily breaking free, mostly in cadential closures at the end of phrases.20

Ex. 4.4: La Rue, Secretz regretz, m. 1-6.

Secretz regretz shares a couple of parallel motives with Plus nulz regretz. The bassus parts of both chansons, later in imitation with the tenor, open at the fifth above the finalis with a gesture that is rhythmically identical (for a duration of 3 semibreves) and progresses on the same scale degrees (see Ex. 4.4 and Ex. 4.1).21 The stepwise falling gesture on the words Par grief tournens (opening of the second phrase of Secretz regretz in the bassus and imitated by the tenor in a ladder scheme; see Ex. 4.5a) is echoed in inverted form (ascending direction) later on in the piece on the words Par le secours

20 21

Yet the canon in Secretz Regretz is consistent in its pitch interval (fifth). The opening motive of Secretz regretz bears an inconspicuous resemblance with the opening motive of Agricolas Revenez tous, regretz / Quis det ut veniat (see especially the first couple of tempora of the motive that are rhythmically identical, using the pattern of a dotted semibrevis2 semiminimas2 minimas). Both chansons feature imitative entrances on the shared motive in an ascending order of presentation from the lower to the upper voices. Further echoes of the motive occur in m. 16-18 of Revenez tous, regretz. They are both hosted in the opening gathering of BrusBR 228 (Secretz in fol. 6v-7; Revenez in fol. 19v-20).

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(Ex. 4.5b). 22 The second statement of the gesture does not begin on the same pitch class as the first; however, both the intervallic order and the temporal distance between the bassus-tenor imitation is duplicated (both statements begin with a semistep; the tenor takes over in the last tactus over the bassus). In Plus nulz regretz, the gesture in its ascending version and with the exact same rhythmic values (3 semibreves1 brevis starting on the second half of the measure) can be seen in the opening of verse 7, first in the bassus and followed in a ladder-scheme and exact temporal distance in the tenor (m. 53-57; see Ex. 4.5c). The verse initiated by the inverted form of the gesture in Plus nulz regretz can be seen as engaging in both semantic and musical counterpoint with the original descending statement in La Rues chanson. Syllabically emphasized by the ascending statement of the shared gesture, the opening expression Mais maintenant sets about to profess the arrival of espoir with which sommes garniz (we are adorned), that in itself an inverted sentiment compared to the grief tourmens of Secretz Regretz and introduced by means of a melodic descent in an explicit stroke of word painting.

Ex. 4.5a: La Rue, Secretz regretz, tenor and bassus, m. 7-18.

22

La Rues choice to set the openings of the second and fifth verses with the same gesture corresponds to both their common rhyme and shared opening word (par).

152

Ex. 4.5b: La Rue, Secretz regretz, m. 37-42.

Ex. 4.5c: Josquin, Plus nulz regretz, m. 51-61.

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It is worth mentioning that, following the descending and ascending fourth motives, the bassus parts (second hemistichs of the second and seventh verses in La Rue and Josquins chansons respectively) are set on a gesture composed of a rising fourth and a stepwise descent of a seventh or octave (the gesture is more melismatic and twisted in La Rue). Lastly, a similar, gradually falling octave repeated twice in both the bassus and the tenor brings Plus nulz regretz to a closure (m. 63-73).

Further Subtle Connections Inconspicuous instances of motivic correspondence can be observed between Plus nulz regretz and Josquins utterly doleful Regretz sans fin.23 The latter commences with a dragging and somber polyphonic opening, progressing within three measures from a dorian opening to a rest on E (see Ex. 3.7 in Chapter 3). The duet of the two lower parts, built on a D-D-F-E motive in the bassus and duplicated in the tenor a fifth above (A-A-CB), is next imitated by the two upper parts. The rhythmic profile of the motive undergoes minor transformations in each statement, caused by the interchanging of semibrevis and brevis values. A motive of identical pitch classes animated by imitative entrances at the fifth and the octave is employed at the setting of the third verse of Plus nulz regretz (see discussion on p. 140; refer to Ex. 4.2). It is here rhythmically consistent (solely built on semibreves) and of a somewhat varied order of pitches (the second instead of the first pitch is repeated).

23

These are the only regretz chansons of Josquin that set a text of eight verses (all other regretz poems have a single stanza of a quatrain or cinquain rhyme).

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The distinctive gesture comprising a rising fourth and a falling seventh featured in the two lower parts of the seventh verse of Plus nulz regretz (Ex. 4.5c), additional migrations of which are heard in the two regretz of La Rue previously discussed, is also cited in Regretz sans fin (see tenor in setting of fourth verse in Ex. 4.6). In fact, the two tenors are even more explicitly interrelated by the use of identical pitches. The musical bond of the tenors is all the more compelling after a parallel reading of the texts which reveals that the abundant espoir of Plus nulz regretz (despoir sommes garniz) is arranged in a virtual clash with the profoundly inconsolable longing for death declared in Regretz sans fin (Mieulx me vouldroit de brief finer ma vie).24

Ex. 4.6: Josquin, Regretz sans fin, m. 32-38.

Both of the motives shared by Regretz sans fin and Plus nulz regretz are also fleetingly present in Johannes Prioriss Dueil et ennuy / Quoniam tribulatio,25 a motetchanson not immediately recognized as a regretz the regretz are only mentioned near
24

Translated as It would be better to end my life quickly. The bassus line carrying this particular text (m. 32-39), composed of a triple reiteration of pitch class G and a leap of a fourth to C, followed by a repetition of the four-note motive a step above (A A A D) and concluding with a gradually falling fifth, is reminiscent of a recurrent gesture heard in the third and fourth verses of Cent mille regretz (see esp. tenor m. 25-28 and m. 40-43; bassus 42-45 and elsewhere). 25 Apart from BrusBR 228 (fol. 22v-23), only one concordance of the chanson is found (FlorC 2439, fol. 32v-33). The tenor carries the text and melody of the plainchant responsory verse Quoniam tribulatio, whose message (For trouble is near and there is none to help) underlines the sorrowful narrative of the rondeau text. For a stylistic description, see Richard Mark Wexler, The complete works of Johannes Prioris (PhD diss., New York University, 1974), 265-7. The musical examples refer to the edition of Dueil et ennuy in Picker, Chanson albums, 253-57.

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the end of the first verse and in singular form.26 Yet the narrative conveys a number of literary stereotypes detected in regretz texts, such as the association of the regretz with dueil and paine, causing the affected narrator to me plains et tourmente (cry and torture myself) and ultimately summon him to death (qui ma vie a fin maine). The chansons plaintive opening (see Ex. 4.7) sets out a D-F-F-E incipit that is reminiscent in its syllabic setting and rhythmic pattern of the D-F-F-E motive of Plus nulz regretz and Regretz sans fin. The contratenor opening echoes the opening measures of the contratenor in Regretz sans fin (refer to Ex. 2.7). In fact, additional statements bearing a similar opening with the contratenor and heard later in Regretz sans fin (see bassus and quintus on the words Quainsi sans cesse), feature an even closer affinity with the contratenor opening of Prioriss chanson.

Ex. 4.7: Prioris, Dueil et ennuy, m. 1-5.

Secondly, a rising fourth and descending stepwise seventh gesture of similar rhythmic opening as in Plus nulz regretz (bassus m. 56-59 in Ex. 4.5c, see esp. the common

26

Dueil et ennuy soucy regret et paine, translated as Mourning and grief, worry, sorrow and pain. 156

semibrevisdotted minimasemiminima pattern) is featured in the cantus of Dueil et ennuy (m. 8-11 in Ex. 4.8).

Ex. 4.8: Prioris, Dueil et ennuy, m. 8-11.

Josquins Regretz 5 Examination of parallel compositional threads between Parfons regretz and Plusieurs regretz, the only regretz chansons of Josquin for five voices, reveals several shared attributes that suggest, if not explicit associations, at least Josquins conscious recognition of regretz as a literary topos and a compositional complex. As mentioned in Chapter 3 (see n. 32), the two chansons share a number of broader characteristics; apart from being composed for the same number of parts, they are both settings of a single stanza rondeau cinquain, are written in the Dorian mode, and develop in a A A B B C form in response to the rhyming pattern of their texts (a a b b a). The shared earliest transmission of the chansons in VienNB Mus. 18746, a source that was compiled in 1523, a few years after Josquins death, may serve as an additional sign of connection.27

VienNB Mus. 18746 is counted among three major chansonniers coming from the Habsburg-Burgundian court scriptorium (the other two are FlorC 2439 and BrusBR 228). It is a set of partbooks of five-voice works owned by and most likely compiled for the music collector Raimund Fugger the Elder of Augsburg. It contains not only a substantial number of regretz chansons, but hosts a series of regretz in the opening folios, like BrusBR 11239. The first four are Cent mille regretz, Plusieurs regretz, Dueil et ennuy (attributed to la Rue), and Je nay regretz (which is a unicum). Jay ung regretz and Parfons regretz are featured in neighboring folios (separated by Josquins Plaine de dueil).

27

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Comparing the proportional measurements and durations of longer musical phrases that correspond to settings of individual verses, I have observed that these are relatively equivalent (see table below). Parfons regretz appears somewhat longer than Plusieurs regretz (67 versus 60 measures), but fluctuations of duration among phrases are to some extent compensated; for instance, the middle phrases (2, 3, 4) are slightly shorter in Parfons, but the first and last phrases last longer. Segments of equal duration within the chansons reflect phrases of exact repetition. The settings of the third and subsequently the fourth verses are shorter than those of the first and second, while the last parts (settings of the fifth verse) are significantly longer in both chansons. As seen in the table, the formal planning is particularly consistent in the case of Plusieurs regretz; the settings of verses 2 and 4 are designed note for note on those of verses 1 and 3, and the last verse clearly breaks into two equal shorter sections (the second being a direct repetition of the first). Parfons regretz, on the other hand, breaks free from the strict formal squareness of Plusieurs. Contrapuntal interlocking within the polyphonic texture near the closing of phrases leads to cadences, usually between two of the voices, the rest prolonged into the opening measures of a new phrase or ended earlier. Thus, the sense of synchronized closure is obscured in Parfons regretz. Symmetrical durations of the sort clearly featured in Plusieurs are also tweaked in Parfons. The second verse, for instance, repeats only a part of the setting of the first verse (10 vs. 18 measures). Inner repetitions in the last, longest part of the chanson are not as clearly delineated, and, for the most part, not as apparent as in Plusieurs. The segmentation of the setting of verse 5, which I have suggested to be 8+8+3+3+2, follows the phrasing of

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the bassus (and partially that of the tenor and the quintus); the second round of 8 measures echoes the melodic phrase of the first, now a fifth lower.
v.1 Parfons regretz Plusieurs regretz 18 12 v.2 10 12 v.3 8 9 v.4 8 9 v.5 23 (8+8+3+3+2) 18 (8+8+2) 67 60

Table 4.1: Number of measures per verse setting in Parfons regretz and Plusieurs regretz.

(Total number of measures in last column to the right.) Several other traits related to the musical vocabulary (motives) and syntax (order and assignment of imitative entrances) are particularly suggestive of Josquins intention to create an alliance of some sort among his five-voice regretz chansons. The incipits of both chansons open with a rising fifth (stepwise in Plusieurs, leap in Parfons) and imitative entrances in most of their opening voices (refer to Ex. 3.1 and Ex. 3.5 in Chapter 3). Those parts that open independently of the imitative counterpoint mostly the contratenors feature a countermotive of similar melodic direction, that is, a gradual descending fourth starting from the pitch class of the finalis. Beyond instances of loose motivic association, the opening measures in both chansons showcase a similar polyphonic scheme: contrapuntal interplay between two voices for m. 1-2, additional voice(s) entering in m. 3, and the quintus as the last voice to sing in canon with one of the lower voices. With respect to the treatment of the text of the first verse, the two regretz chansons display schemes of reversed order. Plusieurs regretz opens with a threefold repetition of the first hemistich and a single statement of the second hemistich; Parfons

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takes up the two hemistichs in a retrograde motion of the three to one repetition, opening with a single statement of the first hemistich and a threefold repetition of the second. The setting of the third verse in Plusieurs regretz is headed by a four-note palindromic motive (A B B A) whose echoes animate not only the first hemistich but also part of the second (see Ex. 4.9a; see also the inversion of the motive in the tenor and quintus on the words envers ceulx que). A parallel motive is heard at the same structural moment in Parfons regretz (see Ex. 4.9b), though now featuring a semitone interval (A Bflat Bflat A), a matching intervallic mirror of which can be seen in the canonic voices of Plusieurs (m. 24-26 and m. 26-28).

Ex. 4.9a: Josquin, Plusieurs regretz, m. 24-30.

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Ex. 4.9b: Josquin, Parfons regretz, m. 28-30.

In Chapter 3 I noted the prominence of a rising (half) step and gradually falling sixth motive of a consistent rhythmic pattern (named sigh gesture) within the regretz of Josquin and also several others of La Rue and Gombert. Parfons regretz, as previously noticed (Chapter 3, pp. 93-95; see Ex. 3.2b), engages, during its concluding section, in a stream of multiple statements of the gesture, in what sounds as an exuberant contrapuntal weave of lamenting calls that embody the liquefied imagery of the text et larmes il se noye (translated as and in tears it may drown). Compared with such a profusion of statements, the presentation of the sigh gesture in Plusieurs regretz appears rather sparse. A single statement is featured first by the tenor (m. 46-49 in Ex. 4.10), imitated by the canonic quintus, and echoed thereafter at the repetition of the concluding section of the chanson. While there is no doubt that in Parfons regretz Josquin brings the gesture to prominence by means of its profuse

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repetitions, its stature in the last section of Plusieurs regretz is revealed discreetly; yet it is emphasized at a key structural moment, the final cadence, as it leads the tenor to a closure. A last piece of evidence of Josquins intention to emphasize the sigh gesture is noticed in the prolonged closing of Plusieurs regretz; a final echo of the gesture in the quintus (partially duplicated in the bassus) is sung above a series of triplets in the contratenor and long drones in the superius and tenor, which in turn accentuate the melodic and rhythmic prominence of the gesture.
S Q C T B

Ex. 4.10: Josquin, Plusieurs regretz, m. 46-60.

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Graftings and Echoes between La Rues Dueil et ennuy and Tous les regretz Signs of intertextual linkage between Tous les regretz and Dueil et ennuy28 are observed in their opening melodic motives which reveal comparable melodic contours and similar rhythmic activity. Observing the melodic progression of the superius for instance (see opening of Dueil et ennuy in Ex. 4.11 and Tous les regretz in Ex. 3.12), both settings begin on A tracking a stepwise descent of a sixth and a fifth respectively. In similar fashion, the rhythms proceed during the course of the incipit from longer to shorter values (minimas and semiminimas are commonly used in the descending gesture). The second hemistich is reached by a leap (octave versus sixth), subsequently progressing to a gradual descent.

Although transmitted anonymously (BrusBR 228 and VienNB Mus. 18746), Dueil et ennuy is widely attributed to La Rue. For a list of studies assigning attribution to La Rue, see Meconi, Pierre de la Rue, 327, n. 46. For an edition of the chanson, see Picker, Chanson albums, 195-99. I have observed that Dueil et ennuy bears inconspicuous similarities with Josquins Plusieurs regretz. The chansons share a number of broader characteristics such as a layout of five parts, a canonic structure with the fifth voice entering ad longum at the fifth, a D-Dorian modality, and a 5-line single stanza. Their incipits display a mirrorrelationship (Dueil tracks a falling fifth from A to D and Plusieurs follows an opposite direction from D to A). An ascending octave is also variously featured during the settings of their first verses.

28

163

Ex. 4.11: La Rue, Dueil et ennuy, m. 1-10.

The characteristic octave leap in the two higher voices of Tous les regretz that bridges the two hemistichs may not match intervalically with the leap at the corresponding point in Dueil et ennuy; however, during the repetition of the complete opening superius line, an octave instead of a sixth is used (m. 7). It is particularly telling that the repetition of the line in Dueil, transcribed a whole step lower, is copied note-for-

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note, apart from the point of caesura in the middle of the verse. The repetition of the complete opening line in only a single voice is also not particularly typical of La Rue. The polyphonic texture during the course of the opening verse is rather sparse, with the first complete phrase of the superius conveyed into a duet with the altus. Similarly thin is the presentation of the incipit motive in the tenor, whose imitative entry occurs relatively late (m. 7), contrapuntally supported by the superius. I wonder whether the repetition of the complete verse in the superius was used as a conduit for restoring the intervallic character at the caesura of the verse and thus emphasizing, by means of the change, the permanence of the octave. If that is a plausible hypothesis, then the intertextual link between the opening motives of Tous les regretz and Dueil et ennuy is all the more strengthened. Considering the parallel opening motives as a point of departure for further scrutiny of the possible links between the two La Rue chansons, a few macroscopic traits can be noted. Both chansons are written in the dorian mode with a finalis on D. Setting five-line stanzas, they feature comparable lengths (50 vs. 54 breves) and also closely equivalent lengths of individual verse settings (for instance, the last phrase measures 14 breves in Dueil et ennuy and 15 in Tous les regretz; the first phrase measures 12 1/2 vs. 13 breves correspondingly). Although only Dueil et ennuy is built on a canon, both pieces exhibit imitative activity between duets of adjacent voices. Instances of motivic resemblance between the two chansons of La Rue are not only apparent in their opening parts. The third and fifth verses of Tous les regretz and Dueil et ennuy respectively parts of structural correspondence as both lead to the

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closure of a section (end of first rondeau section / end of chanson) reveal the prominence of a common motive (A C C B). First attached to the four syllables of the first half of the verse (Pour abregier / Car en mon cas), this motive occurs variedly both in its original rhythmic values (semibrevis [Tous]/minima [Dueil]2 minimas semibrevis) and also disguised in subtle rhythmic and melodic paraphrases within the texture of the related parts (see the segment of Tous les regretz in Ex. 4.2b; see Ex. 4.12 below for the related section in Dueil et ennuy).

Ex. 4.12: La Rue, Dueil et ennuy, m. 36-40.

Nevertheless, the most signifying moment, both musically and textually, in Dueil et ennuy occurs in the setting of its third verse. The verse opens with the words Tous les regretz, openly alluding to La Rues earlier chanson of the same incipit. In addition, the arrival of Tous les regretz is strikingly emphasized by a synchronized syllabic exclamation on a series of repetitive pitches set on minimas that form major triads and harmonically progress from the fifth to the finalis (see Ex. 4.13). Since apart from this 166

single instance of syllabic writing Dueil et ennuy is entirely contrapuntal, I tend to believe that La Rue intended, by means of the change in texture, to call attention to the text and make the polyphonic exclamation serve as a musical signifier of its allusion.

Ex. 4.13: La Rue, Dueil et ennuy, m. 21-25.

If the few instances of motivic intersection discussed above hinted to a possible link between Tous les regretz and Dueil et ennuy, the grafting of the expression Tous les regretz in the latter chanson serves to confirm it.29 Both chansons are found in BrusBR 228, Tous les regretz (no. 2) positioned as the opening chanson of the manuscript after a dedicatory motet to Virgin Mary and Dueil et ennuy (no. 6) featured shortly after and preceded by another regretz of La Rue (Secretz regretz). For contemporary readers of the

29

The canonic voices of Dueil et ennuy, quite unusually, omit the second hemistich, an additional sign of La Rues intention to primarily highlight the first hemistich (Tous les regretz).

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chansonnier,30 the nested textual allusion within Dueil would surely bring to mind Tous les regretz, a chanson elevated by means of its position in the manuscript and its adornment with illuminated borders and capital letters standing for the naming of parts, all adorned with daisies and pearls both marguerites in French obviously in honor of its owner, Marguerite. The textual grafting could have served, from La Rues part, as a smart act of self-promotion through self-reference within a prestigious volume of secular works by several of his contemporary colleagues, which undoubtedly paid homage to his oeuvre, as its opening section spans from the secular works of his early maturity (1490s) to those of the early 1500s.31 From that point, I imagine that it would have been a small step for the reader of the manuscript to conform to the call of Dueil et ennuy by turning over to its opening pages, reading up on Tous les regretz, and possibly acknowledging a line of shared tradition embodied in the common regretz topos as it is conveyed in the two chansons.

30

The manuscript must have been accessible mainly to Marguerite and her immediate court circle (including musicians of her chapel). In general, chansonniers served not as tools for direct performance but mostly as political gifts or reference points from which performers memorized chansons. They were particularly private, intended for the personal library collections of people who commissioned them or to whom there were offered. For a discussion of the possible uses of the manuscripts originated from the Alamire scriptorium, see Meconi, The function of the Habsburg-Burgundian Court Manuscripts, in The Burgundian-Habsburg Court Complex of Music Manuscripts (1500-1535) and the Workshop of Petrus Alamire, eds. B. Bouckaert & E. Schreurs (Leuven-Neerpelt: Alamire Foundation, 2003), 117-24. 31 BrusBR 228 contains 15 chansons attributed to La Rue in concordant sources, this figure making him the most extensively represented composer (composers next represented in rate of frequency include Agricola and Compre with four chansons each). According to Meconi, the manuscript was compiled before March 1516 (see Style and Authenticity, 7-10), the time of La Rues resigning from his post as singer of the chapel (he must have left the court by late May at the latest; see Meconi, Pierre de la Rue, 43-44). Is there a possibility that La Rue was involved in the preparation of the manuscript? Most likely Alamires scriptorium was made up of members of the court personnel. The possibility that they were chapel musicians is even higher (see Herbert Kellman, Openings: The Alamire Manuscripts after Five Hundred Years, in The Burgundian-Habsburg Court Complex, 13). Since La Rue resided at the court at the time Alamire and his scribes were working on the chansonnier, I assume it is likely, especially due to his extensive representation, that he was somehow involved.

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Marguerite of Austria and More Musical Threads Marguerites unfortunate departure from the French court in May 1493 due to her broken betrothal with Charles VIII, the first stroke of unhappiness in her long line of future misfortunes, must have provided the ground for a farewell ritual suitable to her status as a royal person and a symbol of pacification between the French and the Netherlandish courts. The composition of a complainte by the court poet Saint-Gelais on the eve of her departure as a sign of farewell is suggestive of the importance of the event dressed with not only political formality but also with some degree of cultural splendor.32 The rondeau cinquain Le cueur la suyt was one of the three rondeaux written for the occasion by Saint-Gelais and allegedly sung, according to his allegorical poem in which it was hosted, by Beault en triste voix et lamentable.33 Marguerites presence in Le cueur la suyt is all too apparent. She is celle qui est des parfaictes la fleur, a direct allusion to the floral connotations of her name, whom Fortune has taken away from the lamenting poet who in his turn declares that the ladys valeur will never be forgotten and that his heart will follow her as she departs.34

32

For the particulars of the treaty indicating with absolute detail the way Marguerite was to be handed in, see Picker, More regret chansons, 81. 33 Ibid., 84. In the lengthy allegorical poem titled La nuict aprs que la claire bussine, Saint-Gelais expresses his regretz et plaintz at Marguerites departure. Three sorrowing ladies (Noblesse, Beault, and Prudence) supposedly visit the poet in a dream and each sings a chanson piteuse in the form of a rondeau (Tous nobles cueurs, Le cueur la suyt, Tous les regretz). For a discussion of Saint-Gelaiss complainte, see Winn, Octavien de Saint-Gelais: Complainte. Winn was first to discuss the rondeaux interpolated into the allegorical poem, their regretz dimension, and association with Marguerite in Regret Chansons. 34 Mary Beth Winn, Le cueur la suyt. Chanson on a Text for Marguerite dAustriche. Another Trace in the Life of Johannes Ghiselin-Verbonnet, Musica Disciplina 32 (1978): 69-72, esp. 70. The complete rondeau text survives anonymously in several literary manuscripts (see Winn, ibid, 69) and in two manuscript collections with Saint-Gelaiss work. For a transcription of the text, see ibid., 72.

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A single musical setting of Le cueur la suyt composed by the Flemish composer Johannes Ghiselin (fl 1491-1507)35 demonstrates a series of intertextual threads with Pour ung jamais, a regretz chanson by La Rue whose text is not merely associated with Marguerite, but, most intriguingly, penned by her.36 Even though no extensive reference occurs between the texts of the chansons, the sorrowful context of the regretz theme triggered by an abandonment of some sort and conveyed by grievous expressions of ultimate languish are unmistakably present. The poems intersect in the first hemistichs of their third stanzas, where Fortune is mutually summoned. Apart from this intriguing moment of convergence, which is, furthermore, musically bridged by a shared motive (see below), the texts are profusely replete with a vocabulary evocative of languish (indicated by underlined words in poems below).

35

Contemporary records indicate that Ghiselin was active in Ferrara and Florence in the early 1490s. As of 1501, he was employed by the French court (Louis XII). His affiliation with the French court may have started quite earlier, since Crtin cites his name (Verbonnet) along with other French court musicians in his Dploration on the death of Ockeghem (1495). For his biography, see Clytus Gottwald, Ghiselin, Johannes, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (2001), 9: 813-14. 36 In arguing about Marguerites authorship, Picker brings evidence related to a literary source of her private library, Livre des Ballades (Brussels, Bibl. Roy. MS 15072), which hosts the poem (without its middle stanza and with slight variants) entitled as Chanson faite par semadams. See Picker, Three unidentified chansons, 331. A four-voice setting of the poem (essentially a reworking of La Rues with an added voice below the superius) appears in Regensburg cod. C. 120 (Pernner Codex) under the suggestive title Fraw Margretsen Lied (ibid., 331).

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Le cueur la suyt et mon oeil la regrete Mon corps la plainct mon esperit la guecte Celle qui est des parfaictes la fleur dont jamais jay ordonn ung pleur perpetuel en pense segrecte Tous en font dueil et chascun la soubhaicte Plusieurs en ont dure complaincte faicte Car elle avoit gaign de meintz seigneur

Pour ung jamais ung regret me demeure Qui san cesser nuyt et jour toute heure Tant me tourmente que bien vouldroy morir Car ma vie est fors seulement languir Parquoy fauldra en la fin que je meure Den eschapper latente nest pas sceure, Car mon las cueur en tristesse labeure Tant que ne puis celle douleur souffrir Et sy mest force devant gens me couvrir Parquoy fauldra en la fin que je meure De mes fortunes pensoie estre au deseure, Quant ce regret mauldit ou je demeure Me couru sus pour me faire morir. Delaissee fuz, seule, sans nul plaisir, Parquoy fauldra a la fin que je meure38

Fortune la de noz veues fortraicte Non sans regret pour sa beault parfaicte; Mais de deux biens prandre fault le meilleur Sy ne sera en obly sa valeur En quelque part quelle aille ou quon la mecte37

Yet the regretz do not visibly appear in the incipit, as in most regretz chansons, but later. It is suggestive that not only are they mentioned twice in each chanson, but are also positioned in parallel textual positions (second hemistich of opening line and first hemistich of second line in third stanza).39 Such a textual correspondence seems too structured to have occurred by coincidence. In fact, it makes me wonder whether there

My heart follows her and my eyes lament her || My body cries for her and my spirit guards her || She who is the most perfect of flowers || Of whom forever I have ordered a a perpetual crying in secret thought. || Everyone is in mourning || and each and everyone claims her ||Several harsh laments have been made || For she had gained the lords hand. || Fortune weakens from our sight || Not without sorrow for her perfect beauty || But of two goods one must choose the best || Her value will not be forgotten ||Wherever she goes or she is placed. 38 One sorrow forever stays with me || Which, without ceasing, night and day, at every hour || Torments me so much that I would gladly die || Because my life is nothing but a languishing || With the result that in the end I must die. || To escape the waiting isnt certain || Because my weary heart labors so much in sadness || That I can not endure such grief || And so I have to hide myself from people || With the result || Of my fate I thought myself to be in control || Then this cursed sorrow when I dwell || Overtook me to make me die || I was abandoned, alone, without any diversion || With the result Translated in Meconi, Style and Authenticity, 236. 39 Besides, the regretz are only called on in the singular (see also the verb form regrete), an irregularity to their prevailing appearance in plural form.

37

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may have existed a line of direct intersection between the texts of the chansons beyond the suggestion that they share in a common regretz literary tradition. Could Marguerite have written Pour ung jamais following the model of the regretz poem Saint-Gelais composed for her? Marvin has suggested that Marguerite brought Saint-Gelaiss Complainte with her to the Netherlands court upon her departure.40 Saint-Gelais may have presented the manuscript of the Complainte to Marguerite as a material gift of adieu to complement his literary creation in her honor. Taking into account that the Complainte is the earliest documented regretz written for Marguerite and assuming that she owned a manuscript of it, we may speculate that she may have turned to Saint-Gelaiss poem as a source of inspiration when recounting her own misfortunes la regretz in Pour ung jamais. Moreover, Le cueur la suyt seems a more plausible inspiration than the other two rondeaux since it is this chanson that most directly alludes to Marguerites presence (see the floral association noted earlier). Considering also that the regretz are structurally aligned within the poems, we may further speculate about Marguerites intention to showcase her dependence on the Complainte by treating the signifiers-regretz as explicit markers. If the textual associations shared between Pour ung jamais and Le cueur la suyt, mostly contextual rather than motivic, suggest a deliberate relationship of some sort, their musical interrelationships present an additional dimension to their common intertextual grid.41 Here again, the chansons are mostly related in the intersection of their broader

40 41

Winn, Le cueur la suyt, 70. Ive also observed that Le cueur la suyt shares weaker intertextual connections with Compres Sourdez regretz and Richaforts Sur tous regretz. The second phrase of Le coeur opens in the superius with an

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elements of musical structure than by means of shorter building materials (motives, gestures). Written for three voices, their textures are surprisingly comparable in featuring a nearly canonic relationship more in Pour ung jamais than in Le cueur la suyt between the superius and tenor, above a lively bassus of instrumental character. The tight imitation between the upper voices commonly occurs at the interval of fifth and is realized with freedom in changing temporal intervals and order of entries. The length of the chansons is remarkably similar too; Ghiselins setting lasts for 55 breves versus 56 breves of La Rues. Judging from their readings in the surviving musical sources, neither of the chansons suggests the employment of a forme fixe. Le cueur la suyt is transmitted without additional text apart from a single 5-line stanza and without a signum to mark a rondeau division. Yet, Picker argues that, taking into consideration that Saint-Gelaiss text is a rondeau and also that a medial cadence is possible to occur at the closing of the third verse with the addition of a fermata, the possibility that Ghiselin composed his setting with the intention to be performed as a rondeau grows more likely.42 La Rue, on the other

arpeggiated gesture from D to A, set on longer rhythmic values and followed by a melismatic gesture that rises to B flat and gradually falls to D. The opening phrase of Sourdez tracks a similar melodic progression. The tenor, in both chansons, enters, in imitation of the arpeggiated figure, a fifth below the superius. They are both three-voice rondeaux and of G-Dorian modality (no additional stanzas survive in their musical manuscripts in fact, the additional strophes attached to Sourdez in BrusBR 228 belong to Les grans regretz). Their shared transmission in FlorC 2442 as well as their possible common origin by composers active in the locale of the French court during the 1480s are indicators of a potential thread of influence, all the more so since the texts of the chansons intersect in their shared lamenting theme over the parting of a lady. The thread between Le cueur la suyt and Sur tous regretz concerns a passing motivic resemblance: the gesture set on the words mon esprit (m. 15-17) in the superius of Le cueur la suyt echoes that on les miens plus piteulx (m. 8-9) in the superius of Sur tous regretz. The gestures open with the same pitches and carry a similar rhythmic pattern. (Further paraphrased echoes in Sur tous regretz occur in the superius in m. 13-14 and 18-19, and also in the bassus and tenor.) Lastly all three chansons are also strikingly related in the level of their texts (see discussion in the last section of Chapter 5). 42 Picker, More regret chansons, 84.

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hand, demonstrates a more progressive formal choice, by setting Marguerites text in a strophic form. Yet, the text itself, composed with a refrain verse at the closing line of each of the three five-line stanzas, is in some way reminiscent of the shared refrain line of the ballade.43 Both chansons are written in the Dorian mode with a finalis on G (Ghiselin) or A (La Rue). Certain shared cadential tendencies are also observed. For instance, only the first cadence occurs at the finalis. Examination of the second cadences opens the ground for discussion about possible adjustments in the aligning of text in Pour ung jamais, which, when applied reveal parallel cadential patterns with Le cueur la suyt. According to Pickers transcription of Ghiselins chanson,44 the cadence at the end of the second verse falls on B flat, that is, the third scale degree of the G-Dorian (Ex. 4.14b, m. 22). In La Rues setting, according to the transcription made by Picker after BrusBR 228, the second cadence occurs in m. 24-25 (Ex. 4.14a) on pitch class G (seventh scale degree).45 Yet the double-leading cadence that occurs a couple of measures ahead on pitch class C (m. 2728) sounds more definite for the closing of the second verse. In addition, the motive set on the words que bien vouldroy (c-c-c-b-g), opening syllabically with repetitive pitches of longer values and in tight imitation between the upper voices, comes across as more suitable for the opening of the third verse in comparison to the melismatic cadential gesture lined in the first hemistich (m. 25-28).
The fact that the poem is included in a literary manuscript of her private library titled Livre des Ballades (Brussels, Bibl. Roy. MS 15072) may indicate that Marguerite was indeed attempting to model her poem on the formal aspects of the ballade. 44 The transcription is included in Picker, More regret chansons, 93-96. Measure numbers refer to this transcription. 45 See edition in Picker, Chanson albums, 368-70.
43

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Ex. 4.14a: La Rue, Pour ung jamais, m. 22-33.

Ex. 4.14b: Ghiselin, Le cueur la suyt, m. 20-24.

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I suspect that the closing of the second verse was meant to occur later in m. 28, subsequently shifting the opening of the third verse. The gesture in the tenor currently aligned with the opening of the third verse (m. 24-28) sounds rather like a paraphrase of the preceding gesture (m. 22-24), meant to duplicate the preceding text (nuyt et jour toute heure) rather than convey a new opening motive. Moreover, a shifted opening of the third verse that would be set to the C-C-C-B-G motive (m. 29 in superius) appears to match in rhythm and contour with the cantus / tenor motives of most other verse openings (note, for instance, that the opening measures of the second and fourth verses share a similar rhythmic pattern with the shifted opening of the third verse, composed mostly of semibreves). In accordance with the reconstructed alignment of the text, the cadence at the closing of the second verse falls on the third scale degree of the A-Dorian (pitch class C), thus matching with its corresponding cadence in Le cueur la suyt. In fact, the two cadences do not only fall in the same scale degree but also share identical gestures in the tenor during the penultimate measure of the cadence (see m. 27 in Pour ung jamais vs. m. 21 in Le cueur la suyt).46 The intertextual network between Pour ung jamais and Le cueur la suyt may be further reflected in the musical incipits of the chansons. Indeed, they both open with motives that are closely related. As seen in Ex. 4.15a and Ex. 4.15b, the two incipits are rhythmically alike (the only minor variant occurs in the opening of the third tempus of the motive) and share an almost exact melodic contour, beginning on the second scale degree
46

No additional cadences in Le cueur la suyt use this gesture in the tenor. In Pour ung jamais it is extensively used as a cadential gesture in the tenor.

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and progressing with a rising semitone and an almost identical gesture of a falling fourth. The archetypical character of the motive is undeniable; indeed, it sounds rather common. Yet, the fact that the incipits are part of a wider grid of shared motivic and textural elements is indicative of a connection that did not merely occur without any sort of compositional planning. In both chansons, the tenor begins similarly, presenting the motive in strict imitation at the fifth below the superius and accompanied by the bassus, which presents a paraphrased version of the motive an octave below (the opening pitch class of both the tenor and the bassus begins at the fifth above the finalis).

Ex. 4.15a: La Rue, Pour ung jamais, m. 1-11.

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Ex. 4.15b: Ghiselin, Le cueur la suyt, m. 1-9.

Closing comments Plus nulz regretz has not been recognized for its referential dimension. Yet it appears to possess intertextual associations with La Rues Tous les regretz and Secretz regretz as well as with Josquins own Regretz sans fin. If, in Chapter 3, I speculated on a likely string of communication from La Rue to Josquin viewing the intersection between Tous les regretz and Mille regretz as arising from the former chanson the intertextual discourses between La Rues regretz chansons (especially his Tous les regretz) and Plus nulz regretz further attest to the suggestion that Josquin may have been engaged with the regretz of La Rue. Apart from shared overall features, motivic interrelationships, and sources of transmission, the chansons, I have speculated, must

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have participated in a virtual interplay of parallel contextual facets, intersecting in their common association with Marguerite of Austria.

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CHAPTER 5 THE LITERARY DIMENSION OF THE REGRETZ

Literary Roots Mary Beth Marvins scholarship, unique in its exploit of the literary facets of the regretz chansons, situates the origin of the regretz as an emerging theme of the late medieval French lyric poetry in the work of the poet Alain Chartier (ca. 1390-ca. 1440).1 Chartier, as Marvin points out, seems to have variously implored the regretz, commencing with a Complainte contre la mort (ca. 1424) in which he writes: Je faiz tresor de regrez que j amasse.2 In what seems the first documented appearance of the regretz in the literary tradition of the early fifteenth century, Chartier, Goldberg remarks, connected his notion of regretz with the lament over death, thus employing it as a synonym of mourning.3 The association of the regretz with the topos of departir4 in Chartiers oeuvre is further manifested in his later short lyric poems, the ballade Quant je ne voy ma doulce dame en vie and the rondeau Joye me fuit et desespoir me chace, poems that deal with

Marvin, Regrets in French Chanson Texts, 195. The significance of regretz as a code-word is underlined in the incipit of his Complainte, which reads: La complainte et regretz maistre alain chartier contre la Mort que luy a tollu sa maistresse (from the late fifteenth century manuscript BNF ms. fr. 924 Pb); it is mentioned in Joan McRae, Alain Chartier: The quarrel of the belle dame sans mercy (New York, NY: Routledge, 2004), 36. The complete poem is included in J.C. Laidlaw, ed., The Poetical Works of Alain Chartier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 325. 3 Goldberg, Was zitiert Compre, 89. 4 I have borrowed the term Departir-Topos from Goldberg (ibid., 89) and use it to express the theme of parting and separation in a broader sense as the result of various causes, including that of death.
2

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the sorrow caused by the death of his lady.5 Expressions of constant movement and abundant quantity, such as ne cesse and mon plus riche, that are stereotypical of the regretz topos, as I will later discuss, are identified early on in Chartiers notion of regretz: Mon cuer la plaint et mon regret ne cesse6 he cries out in the ballade, while in the rondeau he confesses that Plains et regrez sont mon plus riche avoir. Marvin traces the next step in the lineage of regretz as a literary topos in the work of Jean II de Bourbon (1426-1488). The poet of the cult chanson Allez regretz penned a bergerette that bears witness to its affiliation with the regretz of Chartier in its incipit with the expression Jamasse ung tresor de regres, which characteristically combines the regretz with the word tresor. Indeed, the latter openly paraphrases that of Chartier (only the opening lines are quoted below7):
Jamasse ung tresor de regres Que ma tant amee menvoie Mais jusqua ce que je la voye Ne partiront de mes segres8

Here the regrets are certainly not triggered by death; yet the interpretations of Marvin and Goldberg differ in their consideration of the driving force and cause that addressed the return of the regretz. Marvin interprets the opening verses of the Duke of Bourbon as

See Marvin, Regrets in French Chanson Texts, 195. The beginning of the second strophe of the ballade, the third verse of which includes the reference of the regretz, begins as follows: Jay perdu cuer, sentement et savoir || Plourer a part, cest mon oeuvre commune. It is remarkably similar to the opening of the third stanza of Fresneaus regretz chanson Nuit et jour which reads: Jen pers le sens et le savoir || Au lit de plours. Observe the opening with the personal Je and the use of the shared verb perdre followed by the words sens/sentement and savoir and, in the second verse, the reference to crying (plourer / plours). 7 For access to the complete poem, Marvin refers to Charles dOrlans, Posies, ed. Pierre Champion, vol. 2 (Paris: Honor Champion, 1966), 346. 8 Translated as: I gather a treasure of regrets || that my beloved sends me || but until I see her || they do not leave from my deep thoughts.
6

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an expression of the Dames unresponsiveness.9 Goldbergs reading, on the other hand, situates the regretz in a reverse context: they (regres) illustrate the sorrow of the lady herself who gives proof of her affection by means of a tresor de regres, which is probably a reference to billets-doux as messengers of a heart treasure.10 The addressed regretz, Goldberg continues, are here not painful, but a guarantor for the affection of the lady. Taking into consideration the complete poem instead of only the opening lines, I tend to agree with Marvins interpretation, even though I still find its meaning rather ambiguous. An air of mystery is registered with the narrators forthright question over the dwelling of the regretz in his segres, the latter used, to my understanding, as a locus of his deepest thoughts. La cause pourquoy? je la celle.11 He plainly indicates that he hides the cause of his regretz. Ses griefz maulx refers, I think, to the negative shade and the abominable qualities of the lady, and not to her sorrow as Goldberg sees it. They drive the poet to death (qui me font mourir), this being undoubtedly an anticipated effect of anyone afflicted by regretz and also an indication of his strong feelings for her. The following lines can only be an indication of unrequited love:

Marvin, Regrets in French Chanson Texts, 196. Goldberg, Was zitiert Compre, 90. 11 The word celle functions here not as a pronoun but as a verb (third person singular of celer, which translates as to keep a secret/to say nothing).
10

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La cause pourquoy? je la celle, Ses griefz maulx qui me font mourir Cest pour garder lonneur de celle Qui ne me daigne secourir. Plus leslongne, plus delle est pres Mon cueur, dont mon povre oeil lermoye12

He suffers because he is destined to guard her honor even though she does not deign to help him a rhetoric of chivalric connotations alluding to the male lover as an eternal servant and faithful guard of a noble ladys heart and honor.13 His situation is helpless, for the more she leaves, the more she is close to my heart, and crying is apparently his only response. In fact, reference to crying as an effect of her indifference is made twice in the closing lines: with the word lermoye and at the last line with the word plaint. The final line, Car quant jay assez plaint, aprs, acquires particular meaning when one takes into consideration the form of the poem, which requires the repetition of the opening lines after aprs. It is only then that the narrator confirms his crying and suffering as an outcome of his habit to amass ung tresor de regres. The literary exchanging of regretz among courtly poets around the mid 1400s is next witnessed in the work of Charles dOrlans (1394-1465) and most explicitly in his to

Translated as: What is the reason? I hide it || Her sorrowful troubles that make me die || They are to guard the honor of her || who does not condescend to rescue me. || The more she leaves, the more my heart is close to her, thus my poor eyes weep. 13 In the fifth chapter of his Discarding Images: Reflections on Music and Culture in Medieval France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), Christopher Page stressed the importance of chivalric culture in understanding the milieu of the fifteenth century chanson. The adherence of chanson texts of the mid and late fifteenth century to past rhetorics of chivalric imagery and courtly love ideals have often been described by means of negative hues (see especially Walter Kemp, Burgundian Court Song in the Time of Binchois (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). As Page notes, Kemps view of chivalry in the burgundian culture as escapist and nostalgic is outdated; in fact, all aspects of the chivalric culture from the twelfth century on were nostalgic, as it was based on models from the distant past (Hector, Julius Caesar). Page also addresses the association of chivalry with the ethics of perfection and the erotic, and underlines the central importance of love as stimulus to ambition and honor. The knights ardor for honor and praise of women was driven by a narcissistic and exhibitionist masculinity.

12

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Jean II de Bourbons bergerette. The responce opens with a didactic tone in paraphrasing the incipit of the earlier poem.14
Cest une dangereuse espergne Damasser tresor de regres Qui de son cueur les tient trop pres Il couvient que mal lui en preigne15

Similarly to the earlier poem that set in motion the poetic dialogue between Jean II de Bourbon and Charles dOrlans revolving around regretz within the material boundaries of the latters manuscript, the responce situates the regretz in a context other than one of death. As Goldberg remarks, Charless poem addresses the psychological facets of risk and distress enveloped by the regres.16 The choice of the verb couvient to illustrate the resulting burning that will eventually torment the lover who holds the tresor de regres too close to his heart has a moralistic hue. Could this be a direct warning directed to Jean II de Bourbon? In Goldbergs view, the risk of amassing a tresor de regres obviously refers to the discovery of the apparently illegal affair alluded in Jeans poem.17

For a transcription of the complete poem, see Charles dOrlans, Posies, 347. Both poems appear in the autograph manuscript of Charles dOrlans, the responce positioned right after Jeans bergerette. The manuscript (BNF fr. 25458) contains numerous poems written by Charles in response to earlier texts of fifteenth century poets and, reversely, responses addressed to Charles (Fredet, Jehan de Bourbon, Nevers, Secile, and others). The manuscript was progressively expanded with the addition of poems not only from Charless hand but others, composed by members of his court and visitors that were filled in in the available empty space in between his ballades. Described by Jane Taylor as a sort of common place book, the cumulative manuscript grew to become a collection of grand dimensions that treasured not only Charless own poetic self but a collective memory refracted through his own. See Jane H.M. Taylor, Courtly Gatherings and Poetic Games: Coterie Anthologies in the Late Middle Ages in France, in Book and Text in France, 1400-1600 Poetry on the Page, eds. Adrian Armstrong and Malcolm Quainton (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 17-18, and for a list of studies on the ms, see n. 10. 15 Translated as: It is a dangerous habit || to amass a treasure of regrets || whoever holds them too close to his heart || is taken over by suffering. 16 Goldberg, Was zitiert Compre, 90. 17 The regretz are brought upon in various other instances in the poetic work of Charles dOrlans. In a poetic dialogue between the rather unknown poet Fredet and Charles, both works open with the verb

14

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The genre of Complainte, descending from the Latin planctus, or regret upon the death of a loved one,18 seems to relate not only to Chartiers early reference but also to several other literary echoes of regretz, which, for the most part, postdate the regretz complex of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.19 Yet, although the function of regretz as a new embodiment of laments over death is observed in much lyric poetry set to music by several composers mostly active in the Burgundian-Habsburg and French courts in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the regretz are also encountered in other narratives, detached from death as an inspiration. Goldberg argues that, even though in the poetry of Charles dOrlans and Jean II de Bourbon, the regretz acquire a
formation of regretz and, similarly to the exchange of tresor de regres discussed above, Charless incipit quotes that of Fredet. The opening of Fredets poem reads: Je regrecte mes dolans jours || Comme celluy la qui tousjours || ne fait que desirer sa mort. Charles dOrlans opens his responce as such: Se regrectez vos dolans jours, Et je regrecte mon argent || Que jay delivr franchement || Cuidant de vous donner secours. In Charless ballade Jay fait lobseque de ma Dame, the regretz are evoked in a lament-overdeath context along with the stereotyped imagery of mourning: De regretz, tous de lermes pains, || Et tout entour, moult richement, || Est escript: Cy gist vrayement || Le tresor de tous biens mondains. Interestingly, the word tresor, previously attached to regres, is here used in reference to the deceased dame. Furthermore, the regretz, variously stated in Charless autograph manuscript, are portrayed as regretz privez, regret angoisseux, regret cappitaine, and regret merencolieux. 18 On the genre of Complainte and its connection with the renaissance genre of Elegy, see Norman Shapiro, Lyrics of the French Renaissance (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2002), 65. On the female complainte of the sixteenth century as a counterculture of oral transmission and popular song form dimensions, viewed against the writerly poetic canon authored by male poets such as Ronsard, see Kate van Orden, Female Complaintes: Laments of Venus, Queens, and City Women in Late Sixteenth-Century France, Renaissance Quarterly 54/3 (2001): 801-845. 19 The most interesting complainte worth mentioning in connection with the regretz chanson complex is Clment Marots Complaincte dune Niepce sur la Mort de sa Tante, which is part of his Complainctes and included in his first collected volume under the title LAdolescence Clmentine (published in 1538). Not only regretz are profusely echoed in Marots complainte, but the poem also quotes the opening verses of well-known chansons, among which are the following regretz: Tous les regretz, qui furent onc au monde and Dueil et ennuy, soucy, regret, et peine. Les regrets was one of the titles that were employed to designate myriad songs in the voices of anonymous French women lamenting bad fortune in life and love (Van Orden, Female Complaintes, 818). Various complaintes that were written in the sixteenth century to lament the deaths of kings, queens, or noblemen, and modeled to prescribe an official attitude and to create a sense of communal, public mourning, incorporate the word regretz: Des regretz dune dame de Rouen estant Iarticle de la mort, se repentant de sestre mal gouvernee durant sa jeuness; Les regrets des Princesses & Dames de la Court sur le decez de tresillustre Princesse, Madame fille unique de feu Roy Charles; Des regrets douloureux et pleurs lamentables de tres-haute et tres-verteuse dame, Elizabeth dAutriche, royne de France, sur la mort du roy Charles IX, son espoux, avec les doulences des dames de la court (ibid., 820).

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new dimension by breaking free from the mournful context of Chartiers, they are barely regarded as a real topos.20 The two dialogic poems, Jamasse ung tresor de regrez and

Cest une dangereuse espergne, showcase, however, the earliest stages of the regretz as
an emerging topos, which in the texts of later regretz chansons, as I will discuss, eventually evolves and develops a multifaceted quality and various constants. The early embodiment of the regretz as a synonym for mourning, as seen in Chartiers poem, is also observed, as Goldberg notes, in the rather isolated case of the rondeau Pour les regrets, set to music by the rather petit matre Jean Delahaye.21 Death is here not explicitly expressed; the regretz arise in connection with the topos of departir, and mourning communicates the despair of the narrator for not being able to see his seulle amour. Delahayes rondeau survives in the Nivelle chansonnier.22 While it is the only regretz chanson hosted in the chansonnier, it is interestingly neighbored, as Goldberg remarks, by chansons of Delahaye that treat the topos of departir in their texts, a theme that is also conveyed in various regretz chansons.23

Goldberg, Was zitiert Compre, 90. Ibid. 89. I have not observed any instances of interconnection between Delahayes chanson and any of the regretz. Pour les regretz seems to belong among a few regretz chansons that do not exhibit conspicuous musical alliances with others within my regretz complex. 22 For a critical edition of the chansonnier, see Jane Alden, ed. Johannes Delahaye: Chansons in Loire Valley Sources (Paris: Minerve, 2001). The manuscript facsimile of the chansonnier is published as Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chausse (Bibliothque nationale, Paris, Rs. Vmc. ms. 57, ca 1460) (Geneva: Minkoff, 1984) along with an Introduction by Paula Higgins that mainly addresses the provenance of the manuscript on the basis of authorial representation (composers and poets) and physical traits (decoration, inscriptions, etc). 23 As Goldberg remarks, Pour les regrets, although setting a text that is highly sorrowful, quotes the polyphonic opening of its preceding chanson, Puis qualtrement ne puis avoir, whose text is utterly humorous. The humorous text engages the topos of departir as such: when the singer cannot see his lady, he will take himself another. The chansons following Pour les regrets are: Puis quil convient que le depart se face and Comment suis je de voistre cuer; the former carries on the rhetoric of sorrow in virtue of the departure addressed in Pour les regrets, with references to death as desirable outcome and sole means of comfort, constants that are also met in the regretz topos. All four are the only chansons in Nivelle penned
21

20

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The literary pen behind the authorship of Pour les regretz is not known. In fact, although Nivelle shares numerous concordances with poetry manuscripts that originated in or around the Loire Valley and neighboring regions, only four poets have been identified, all notably associated with the literary circle of Charles dOrlans at his Blois court and actively engaged in the literary contests that he hosted there.24 More than that, the court of Blois has been suggested as a possible point of origin for Nivelle.25 Undoubtedly, Charles played a key role in the early stages of the emergence of the regretz as a literary theme. His prominent appropriation of the regretz as discussed above in regard to his Jamasse ung tresor de regres, considered alongside the numerous references to regretz as a major theme in his autograph manuscript, attest to the significant growth of the regretz topos in his literary circle. Charles thus stands as an intermediary link between Nivelle and indirectly Pour les regrets and the regretz as an emerging literary theme. And although it would have been impossible in the absence of documented evidence to securely associate Pour les regrets with the Orlans court, the likelihood that the text of the chanson originated by a poet under Charless immediate circle of influence seems plausible. The dating of Nivelle circa 1460-65 situates Pour les regrets as probably the earliest surviving regretz text set to music. Yet its relative obscurity as a chanson of scant representation in contemporary sources, by a composer of limited reputation, indicates
by a single composer to have been copied successively. This is possibly an indication from the part of the scribe of the shared topos among them. 24 For a list of these manuscripts, see the relevant discussion in Higgins, Chansonnier Nivelle, vii. The four identified poems are Villon, Jacques of Savoy, Antoine de Cuise, and Fredet (ibid., vi), the latter mentioned above in regard to his literary exchanges with Charles dOrlans, especially those that featured the regretz on their incipits (see this chapter, n. 17). 25 Higgins, Chansonnier Nivelle, xi.

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that Pour les regrets probably never had a major impact on the founding and evolution of the regretz.26 Indeed, it is particularly telling that the chanson does not exhibit any signs of interconnection with other regretz chansons. Allez regretz, on the other hand, has passed down in musicological scholarship as the earliest regretz chanson and, together with Mille regretz, as the indisputably most popular and exceedingly influential regretz chanson. 27 The text of Allez regretz was penned by Jean II de Bourbon, whose prominent involvement in the early literary exchanges of tresor de regres was previously discussed. It can be viewed as the fourth poem, after those of Chartier, Charles dOrlans, and Jean II de Bourbon, written around the mid 1400s in the line of virtual poetic discourse consisting of poems that prominently featured the regretz in their opening lines. It would be tempting to consider Allez regretz to have been prompted by Charless Cest une dangereuse espergne, in turn written in response to Jeans earlier Jamasse ung tresor de regres, and thus see the two poets bound in a threefold reciprocal creative momentum. Indeed, the imperative Allez in Jeans poem, a forthright command addressed to the regretz to go away, may have been evoked in response to Charless warning against Jeans dangerous habit of gathering regres, and in confession of the resulting torment he (Jean) suffered because of his earlier habit to gather the regres that his beloved had sent (envoye) him. It is certainly not impossible that Jean may have felt compelled to counter Charless poetic retort.

26 27

It appears as a unicum in the Nivelle chansonnier. For a discussion on the popularity of Allez regretz, see Chapter 2, p. 39-40, and n. 25.

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Virtual threads of communication can be located within the two poems of Jean II de Bourbon and that of Charles dOrlans (see table 5.1 for a comprehensive presentation of the intertextual instances). Le Cueur, a recurrent word in all three works, is used exclusively to outline the topographical boundaries where the regretz reside. It signifies, in other words, the locus of the regretz, and in this function it can mostly be seen in the Cest une dangereuse espergne and Allez regretz. Thus Jeans call to the regretz to make their acquaintance somewhere else because they have greatly tormented mon las cueur echoes Charless warning against the regretz which cause suffering to whoever de son cueur les tient trop pres. Moreover, the verb tourmente, another shared tag of Allez regretz, resonates with leurs tourmens segres of Charless poem, which refers to the torments caused by the regretz. Reference to torment in Jamasse ung tresor materializes in a physical way, in the form of cries (lermoye and plaint). A third constant observed in the first two poems is the word segrez. In Jamasse ung tresor, segrez acquires the role of cueur as the place of deep thoughts where the regretz dwell. In the responce by Charles dOrlans, the word appears in conjunction with tourmens and refers to the eventual consequences of the one who amasses regretz, that is, secret torments. The theme of warning is evident in the second and third poems. Charless response comes as a warning against Jeans habit to accumulate regretz, while Jeans counter-response communicates a much stronger warning, a threat really, against a third person who is, in all likelihood, a rival. Another thread of association among all three regretz poems is their shared rhetoric of hyperbole. Their common resort to some sort of

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extreme reaction or consequence is articulated by means of exaggerated expressions. In Jamasse ung tresor for instance, Ses griefz maulx qui me font mourir conveys the male personas resort to death as a measure of his uttermost feelings. The expression Non pas assez nuysans, mais tres in Charless poem refers to the destructive nature of the regretz that are not just harmful, but worse than that. Hyperbole materializes in Cest une dangereuse espergne in the form of an extreme reaction, as the male persona expresses his intention to harm the one (he) who will dare to come back (the identity of he, the third person in Allez regretz, is discussed later on in p. 193). The word that is used to express his threat is honneur (vous feray tel honneur) and it is employed in a negative, ironic sense to denote honor of another kind. Interestingly, it brings to mind lonneur, associated in Jeans earlier poem with the moral quality of his beloved. Apart from conspicuously shared utterances, various expressions of striking contrast juxtaposed among the three poems create an intriguing intertextual play. To begin with, the incipits of Jeans poems are obviously antithetical, each evoking a completely contradictory attitude towards the regretz in comparison to the other. Revulsion towards the regretz in the latter (Allez regretz, vuidiez de ma presence) suggests a surprisingly wide turn from the poet who seemed to have previously treasured them (Jamasse ung tresor de regrez). The contrast between Jamasse ung tresor and Charless responce materializes in the conceptual pair of hiding versus revealing. The action of hiding in the former text is plainly stated by the poet: je la celle. What is it that he hides? Apparently, it is his reason for keeping his regretz locked in his segrez. By contrast, an aura of exposure

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transpires in the responce. Charles thinks of his claims against the regretz as utterly truthful and as such he claims that Se je mens, que len men repreigne (If I lie, let me repeat it). Not only does he have no intention to lie (mens), but he also insists on his statements (repreigne). Further on, his insistence on truth is verbalized in the verse On saura leurs tourmens segres (We will know all of his secret torments); here Charles implies that Jeans torments due to his habit to Damasser ung tresor de regres will eventually be publicly revealed. Surprisingly, the concluding line of the responce further articulates Charless insistent rhetoric of exposure: Qui ne men croira, si lapreigne (Whoever does not believe me, will find out). And if one wonders how and where Charless claims against Jeans habit come into being, there is virtually no other literary place to look but Jeans Allez regretz. By considering the latter as a counter-responce to Charles, this concluding line can be seen as its virtual outset.

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JAMASSE UNG TRESOR CUEUR TOURMENTER SEGREZ

MAL

CEST UNE DANGEREUSE ESPERGNE

Qui de son cueur les tient trop pres leurs tourmens segres

ALLEZ REGRETZ

plus delle est pres mon cueur

Assez avez tourmente mon las cueur Assez avez tourmente mon las cueur

Ne partiront de mes segrez Ses griefz maulx

leurs tourmens segres Il couvient que mal lui en preigne Cest une dangereuse espergne damasser tresor de regres Non pas assez nuysans, mais tres malle meschance Ny tournez plus

WARNING HYPERBOLE/ EXAGGERATION

Ses griefz maulx qui me font mourir Il nest point doleur que la moye

Qu est cellui qui point soit ne en France qui endurast ce mortel deshonneur; Se plus vous voy prouchain de ma plaisance devant chanscun vous feray tel honneur vous feray tel honneur mortel deshonneur Allez regretz, vuidiez de ma presence Allez ailleurs Ny tournez plus Que len dira que la main dun seigneur Vous a bien mis a la malle meschance Remply de duel

HONNEUR AMASS VS. EXPEL HIDE VS.

REVEAL

Cest pour garder lonneur de celle Jamasse ung tresor de regrez

La cause pourquoy? je la celle

On saura leurs tourmens segres Qui ne men croira, si lapreigne

REFERENCE TO PAIN/TEARS

mon povre oeil lermoye; jay assez plaint

Table 5.1: Shared vocabulary among Jamasse ung tresor, Cest une dangereuse espergne, and Allez regretz.

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Allez regretz and the Emergence of Regretz As Goldberg argues in his notable study of the Ghizeghem-Compre regretz chansons, Ghizeghems Allez regretz has been crucial to the growing significance of the regretz as a topos.28 Apart from its wide dissemination and its extensive popularity as a compositional model (discussed in Chapter 2), the literary text of Allez regretz appears as the earliest regretz poem in a line of chanson texts with an incipit that features a shared grammatical structure.29 This structure is composed of an imperative followed by the word regretz. The regretz network considered in this dissertation includes eight chansons that, similarly to Allez regretz, begin with a verb of movement in the imperative mood (va ten, sourdez, vens, etc) followed by the regretz. TEXTS THAT BEGIN WITH IMPERATIVE VERB + REGRET(Z)
Allez regretz

NO. OF MUSICAL SETTINGS

5

COMPOSERS
Ghizeghem Agricola Senfl Bartolomeo degli Organi Anonymous Agricola Compre Agricola Compre Compre Fvin Longueval Anonymus Anonymus

Va ten regret Revenez tous regretz Sourdez, regretz Vens, regretz, vens Fuyes regretz Alle regres Venez regretz, sourdez en habondance Vides regret

2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Table 5.2: Regretz sharing the Imperative+regretz incipit.

28 29

Goldberg, Was zitiert Compre, 91. This was first pointed out in Marvin, Regrets in French Chanson Texts, 197. She calls attention to the dramatic and catchy hues of the particular grammatical structure, as the word regretz is particularly emphasized and was probably employed to attract the attention of the public.

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The text of Allez regretz as the earliest influential regretz set in music and thus the musical starting point of the regretz intertextual network demands a thorough consideration of its narrative and its representation of the regretz concept. Moreover, as Ghizeghems setting sparked off a remarkable web of musical intertextualities with other early regretz (see Chapter 2), a discussion of the ways the text of Allez regretz communicates with that of its musically-related chanson Vens regretz will enhance our understanding of the earlier notions of the regretz topos.
Allez regretz, vuidez de ma presence Allez ailleurs faire vostre acointance Assez avez tourmente mon las cueur Remply de duel pour estre serviteur Dune sans per que jay amee denfance Go sorrows, leave my presence Go and make acquaintance elsewhere You have tormented my weary heart enough I am full of sorrow, being the servant Of one matchless that I have loved from my childhood Make him suffer longer this offence Where is he not born in France Who would endure this mortal disgrace Do not come back, for, by my conscience If I see you near me more Before everyone I will do you such honor That they will say that a lords hand Has really done you mischief

Fait lui avez longuement ceste offence Qu est cellui qui point soit ne en France Qui endurast ce mortel deshonneur Ny tournez plus, car, par ma conscience Se plus vous voy prouchain de ma plaisance Devant chanscun vous feray tel honneur Que len dira que la main dun seigneur Vous a bien mis a la malle meschance

Marvins analysis of the rondeau highlights the elements of its narrative: the unhappy lovers address to the regretz that have arisen from unrequited love (stanza 1); his anger conveyed in the language of the aristocratic honor code (stanza 2); and his threats against the regretz (stanza 3).30 Her interpretation situates the emergence of the regretz as an embodiment of sorrow and grief caused by the loss of love. The first stanza, probably with the exception of the lovers intention to discard the regretz, is reminiscent

30

Marvin, Regrets in French Chanson Texts, 197-8.

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of the rhetorics of amour courtoise31 and fits, in general, Marvins interpretation. Yet, how is the poets resentment towards the regretz justified? I would think that a faithful servant, abiding to the rules of courtly love, would continue declaring his passionate devotion and, most likely, would not have taken bold action to relieve his sorrow, as it seems to be the case in Allez regretz. In regard to this point, Goldberg offers a highly intriguing suggestion. As he notes, indeed, the opening refrain moves in familiar ground: the lover is tormented by recurring tortures of regretz caused by the fact that the lady, adored ever since childhood, is apparently unapproachable. Yet, the narrative caesura that lies in the opening of the first strophe (Fait lui avez longuement) creates a momentary disruption of meaning. The pronoun lui refers, I think, to a real, third person, and not to the regretz, who seems to have caused a mortel deshonneur. The complete second strophe, Goldberg argues, discloses ominous blows not towards the regretz, as claimed in Marvins analysis, but towards that third person, who in all possibility must have been a competitor of the lovestricken poet.32 The insult hinted at by morter deshonneur, as well as the slap in the face threatened to be given in public to the person hidden behind vous, suggest the presence of a rival. After the reading of the second strophe, which Goldberg sees as the culmination of the narrative, the returning regretz in the refrain are to be seen under a new light. It may be the case that they are not only meant to merely personify the poets
31

The two ending lines of the first stanza project a number of commonplaces (servant, long lasting love, praise of the lady) that are characteristic of the discourse of courtly love. I need to point out that the propriety of term has been questioned, as it mainly refers to the earlier troubadour poetry and poets of the langue doil (for a short discussion and references, see Leonard Johnson, Poets as Players: Theme and Variation in Late Medieval French Poetry [Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1990], 38-40). 32 Goldberg, Was zitiert Compre, 92.

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pain of unfulfilled love, but also his sorrow after realizing that the lady, who was first openly portrayed as worthy of his suffering, is no more a worthy object of his regretz. His recurring regretz considered in the context of the recitation of the complete rondeau may also reflect his rage over the rival. Their plural form, a unique element of the regretz topos, is a further indication of their multiplicity. As Goldberg remarks, the regretz in their plurality as feelings of pain that grow and transform themselves to rage become to a certain extent multi-faced.33 Goldberg has identified the following constants that are intrinsic in Allez regretz as elements of the topos of regretz: a rhetoric of action versus location in the refrain, and mostly in the opening lines; tags related with time (temporal motives); and the words tourmente and dueil to signify the male personas state of mind.34 The constant of action versus location can be observed in the opening line; the caesura breaks the decasyllabic verse in 4+6 syllables. The first hemistich is imperative to the action (Allez), while the second indicates location (ma presence). The same pattern is featured in the second line, where the repetition of allez is followed by a reference to space (ailleurs). The concept of tourmenter, lined up with cueur and positioned

Ibid. 93. Goldberg has brought additional evidence attesting to the multi-faceted quality of the regretz in the form of parallel readings of the texts of Allez regretz versus that of Vens, regretz (for a discussion of the musical intertextualities between the chansons, see Chapter 2, pp. 43-47). The most striking moment in their parallel reading lies right on their incipits. The regretz, which in Allez regretz were asked to go, are appealed to come in Vens regretz. The narrative in the latter is less complicated and the theme of regretz is conveyed more conspicuously and in line with the earlier notion of the regretz as expressive of mourning over loss of ones beloved. The regretz topos has associations with the topos of dueil, yet although dueil expresses a feeling, the regretz are partners and personified feelings that come and go. Similarly to Allez regretz, the regretz in Vens regretz are multi-faced. Initially they embody mourning and later, after their recurring echoes materialize according to the realization of the rondeau plan, they connote a call to the listeners to bestow consolation to the narrator. 34 Ibid. 92.

33

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early on in the refrain, expresses the recurring tortures of regretz that, in the context of Allez, one can only forcibly scare away. Dueil signifies the pain and suffering felt at the loss of the beloved. Allez regretz features a remarkable number of expressions that indicate time and most specially endurance and continuity. The opening lines for instance convey a sense of aural stability by means of the repetition of the same verb (allez), as well as the use of vocabulary and assonances stressing the phoneme A (allez; ailleurs; acointance). The expression jay amee denfance is also suggestive of continuity and duration, as is likewise the word tourmente. An adverb of duration, longuement, is featured in the opening of the first strophe, while the ending, Qui endurast ce mortel deshonneur, registers a strong expression of endurance. Lastly, the second strophe opens with the word tournez, another utterance related to time and continuity. Motives of time, action, and location, parallel to those displayed in the text of Allez regretz, can also be observed in the text of its musical intertext, Vens regretz (see text and translation below). The threefold presentation of the opening imperative Vens structurally recalls the repetition of Allez and similarly projects a notion of continuity. The opening line of the refrain integrates expressions of action and time (vens vs. heure) while in the second verse, the same verb of action (vens) is followed by demeure, which, in parallel to acointance of Allez regretz, is a signifier of location. As a matter of fact, the interrelation of demeure and acointance to convey the positioning of regretz is further highlighted when one considers the overall syntactic and

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structural resemblance of the second verse in both poems.35 Another connection pointed out by Goldberg is le cuer, which, in the refrain of Vens regretz, is implied as the actual space of demeure. Apart from these time-space references that are shared in textual counterpoint between Allez regretz and Vens regretz, the latter employs a common motif of chansons dealing with sorrow and lovesickness that of death. The reference to death (je meure) in the closing verse as an irrefutable outcome is only one of multiple appeals to death suggested in the rondeau. In the first place, the expression il en est heure, charged with a religious connotation, alludes to the Last Hour, which in turn points to a sort of ending of mortal life.36 The words morte and fin openly evoke Death. Dueil refers to mourning; belle meure in connection with dueil and noir likewise recalls an imagery of mourning.
Vens, regretz, vens, il en est heure Vens sur moy faire vostre demeure Cest bein raison qu ce je vous enhorte Car aujourdhuy toutte ma joye cest morte Et si ne voy nulluy qui me sequeure A celle fin que mon cueur sente et pleure Le mal quil a et en quoy il labeure Je suis contraint vous ouvrir la grant porte Mais gardez bien quaprs vous ne demeure Labit de dueil plus noir que belle meure Plain de larmes affin que je la porte Ne tardez plus car mon sens se transporte Si vous voulez me voyr ains que je meure Come, sorrows, come, it is time Come, make your dwelling with me There is good reason for me to implore you For today all my joy is dead And, alas, I do not see a soul who might succor me To this end that my heart asks and weeps the pain that it has and under which it labors I am constrained to open the great door to you But make sure that behind you does not remain The habit of mourning, darker than the mourning clothes Full of tears, because I must wear them; Delay no more for my mind drifts If you wish to see me before I die37

A comparison of the first hemistichs suggests contrast (allez / venes; ailleurs / sur moy). The second hemistichs are almost identical, apart from the rhyming words, which are however identical in meaning. 36 Ibid. 93. Similarly, I assume that the expression ouvrir la grant porte may have been used to trigger religious associations with the gates of the kingdom of heaven. 37 The translation is based on those by Susan Jackson in Atlas, Anthology of Renaissance Music, 492, and Zuckerman Wesner, The Chansons of Loyset Compre, 400.

35

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The list of themes identified so far in the texts of the earlier regretz chansons Allez regretz and Vens regretz provide a general picture of the regretz topos. From the regretz of mid fifteenth century poets, such as Chartier and Jean II de Bourbon, to the rondeaux that inspired musically related settings (Allez regretz and Vens regretz), the regretz were bound to convey the sorrows of the lovesick poet caused by parting and/or denial. Beyond mere feelings, the regretz appear as personified actors, occupying their local architectural place in the opening line of the poem, carrying a deceiving multi-faced mask, and governed by concepts of movement and transformation (amasser/ allez/ vens).

Literary Archetypes in the Regretz Topos REGRETZ SUMMONED VS. EXPELLED. One of the central concepts developed in Goldbergs Was zitiert Compre? concerns the identity of regretz as multi-faced, nonlinear, and non-static. Instead of being fixed, their meaning is ambiguous and in virtue of that ambiguity, they are implemented in to participating in the network of regretz chansons, playing a part in the intertextual bonding of the literary regretz, and enhancing the interplay between music and text. This ambiguity of the regretz is also reflected in the attitude of the poet/male persona towards them; at times he expels them, but most frequently he summons them (see table). Undoubtedly, this notion of diversion Kommen oder Gehen as Goldberg describes it enhances the multi-faced character of the regretz.

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In chansons that convey banishment, the poet engages strong language to express his determination of taking action against the regretz. He invokes threats and makes public his intention to punish them, should they not leave him or dare to return. Va ten regret employs, I think, the fiercest wording; the poet calls the regretz trompeur (deceiver) and vows to beat them (A la parfin batu seras [In the end you will be beaten, deceiver]). When regretz are summoned, they are meant to act as partners to his sorrow that in itself is an indication of their personified identity; in other words, they are solicited to assist in the mourning process and serve him in the expression of his hitherto silent pain. At times, their gathering is invoked to assist the suffering male persona in ending his life.38

REGRETZ SUMMONED
Revenez tous, regretz Sourdez, regretz Venes regretz Tous les regretz Tous nobles cuers Parfons regretz Regretz sans fin Tous le regretz (quoncques) O doulx regretz Venez regretz, sourdez Table 5.3: Regretz summoned vs. expelled.

REGRETZ EXPELLED
Allez regretz Va ten regret Aprez regretz Sans regretz Fuys regretz

38

See for instance the opening of Saint-Gelaiss Tous les regretz that reads Tous les regretz qui les cueurs tourmentez || Venez au mien et en luy vous boutez || Pour abregier le surplus de ma vie. See also the ending verses of the one-stanza Parfons regretz, where the poet pleads the regretz to vous hastez sans point dissimuler || Pour promptement mon cueur executer || Affin quen dueil et larmes il se noye (translated as Make haste, with no dissembling || and with dispatch lay low my heart || that it may drown in mourning and tears).

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PARTING. Several regretz chansons deal with the topos of departir. Parting in these chansons comes as the result of either death or unspecified circumstances likely associated with insuperable class-distinction, as Goldberg suggests.39 The vocabulary of parting is articulated with words such as eslonger (to leave away), habandonner, and dlaisser (to abandon). In the chansons Mille regretz and Cent mille regretz, for instance, the regretz are offered as evidence of the poets sorrow after his unavoidable departure. The rising of regretz as the outcome of a ladys loss is explicitly manifested in such chansons as Revenez tous and Venez regretz, sourdez. The word perdu(e) (lost) is shared among several regretz that bemoan the loss of a lady (Sourdez, regretz; Tous les regretz; Sur tous regretz; Pour les regretz).40 REGRETZ AS PERSONIFIED PARTNERS. As I have previously discussed, the regretz as they come across in late fifteenth-century chansons are not merely representative of feelings of sorrow. Instead, following in the tradition of the French allegorical poetry of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in which allegorical figures were featured as actors in a virtual stage, the regretz come across as personified partners.41 Direct language is employed by the poet to converse with them. Thus in Va ten regret, the poets
Goldberg, Was zitiert Compre, 90. Lami perdu as an archetype of sixteenth-century chansons related with the topos of dueil, and particularly with the secular chanson Au boys de dueil and its religious contrafacta, is discussed in Dorothy Packer, Au Boys de Dueil and the Grief-Decalogue Relationship in Sixteenth-Century Chansons, Journal of Musicology 3/1 (1984), 19-54, and esp. 38. In these chansons about a lost sweetheart, Packer mentions, the laments are most often expressed by the women left behind. [] Their lovers are more often unfaithful than dead [] The women frequently show anger at having been abandoned rather than resignation. Such conditions differ from those conveyed in regretz; the latter are mostly sung in the masculine voice and express the male narrators true sorrow for having to abandon their ladies. 41 As the most famous literary paradigm of allegory and personification in the French medieval literature, I would cite the parade of personified seductive sexual forces in the Roman de la rose (Fair Welcome, Venus, Openness, Pity, Danger, Shame, Fear, Jealousy, and Foul Mouth). On the function of personification in the Rose, see David Hult, Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Readership and Authority in the First Roman de la rose (Cambridge: CUP, 1986), esp. 220-227.
40 39

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subjective I is forthrightly directed at the vous of the regretz, which appear to become corporeal as the poet threatens them and explicitly conveys his revulsion towards them while enumerating their harmful qualities. The second strophe of Vens regretz is overly expressive of the physical character of the regretz; they are capable of not only dwelling in dueil but even take possession of the mourning clothes he intended to wear. Lastly, in Plusieurs regretz, a physical gesture following a greeting of welcome metaphorically facilitates the entrance of the regretz in the poets residence (heart): Venez a moy, je vous ouvre la porte. REGRETZ AND UNREQUITED LOVE. Although unrequited love is not widely present as a defining cause for the arrival of the regretz, the ladys unresponsiveness as well as her pitilessness are hinted at in a few chansons as being responsible for the residing of the regretz in the poets heart (see Va ten regret; Sourdez, regretz; Tous les regretz [quoncques]; Regret ennuy). In the second stanza of Va ten regret, for instance, the heartbroken victim of the regretz alludes to his ladys unresponsiveness while shedding tears at the fact that he often asks to hear her speaking to him, yet nothing comes of this.42 The four-line text of Tous les regretz hints at the ladys pitilessness indirectly, avoiding any explicit reference to her qualities or attitude: by gathering Tous les regretz quoncques furent au monde in his heart, the lovesick poet hopes to make it break so that his lady beholds its sight.

42

Quant men souvyent, force est que je le voye || Souvent requiers que a moy parler je loye || Celle qui a le voloir de mon cueur || Riens ne sen fait dont ay fort doleur || Qui me contraint soyez se hault quoy loye.

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MORT. Taking into consideration the emergence of the regretz in the genre of Complainte as well as their association with the lament over death as observed in the work of Chartier, it is not surprising that death appears as a major theme in the literary texts of several regretz chansons. Nevertheless, the function of the regretz as a synonym of mourning over the loss of the lady is not a widely explicit idea in the regretz complex. It is only in two chansons, Revenez regretz and Venez regretz, sourdez that the regretz, in line with their literary origins, are implored to lament a ladys death. Revenez regretz in particular showcases a language stocked with a quintessential imagery of mourning sighs, cries, renouncement of happiness, and loss of sense and hope. In point of fact, the most prevalent manifestation of death in connection with the regretz emerges in the form of the redeemer. Death is implored to set the male persona free from his sorrow and suffering, elements that are embodied in the figure of the regretz. Such an association materializes in several regretz chansons, most evidently in Pour ung jamais, Regretz sans fin, Dueil et ennuy soucy, and Mon souvenir. Furthermore, attached to the male personas desire for death is often an expression that projects dispatch: brief mes jours definer (Mille regretz); Jay sans cesser qui ma vie a fin maine (Dueil et ennuy soucy); mort soudaine (Cent mille regretz). Projecting a subtle variation of the former narrative or a reverse, one may say the regretz in certain chansons do not precede the status of death. Instead, they are appealed to arrive for the purpose of facilitating the male personas intention and longing to die (see Tous les regretz and Vens regretz). Lastly, the invocation of death may act on a metaphorical level to convey the extent of the lovers languishing. In Cent mille regretz,

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for instance, the extremity of his langueur is compared with the effect of a sudden death (ma langueur vault pis que mort soudaine), caused, in part, by the assailing of one hundred thousand sorrows. DUEIL. The second stanza of Vens regretz opens with the following verses directed to the regretz: Mais gardez bien quaprs vous ne demeure labit de dueil plus noir que belle meure.43 Here, the habit of dueil is measured against the mourning clothes and it is portrayed as darker and, metaphorically, more cruel than the latter. Dueil, therefore, is implied as a word of its own meaning, distinct from that of the actual rituals of mourning. Indeed, the use of dueil in Vens regretz reflects the contemporary understanding of the word in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to denote the process of inner mourning and grief after the loss of a loved one.44 Dueil is a stereotypical word in the regretz complex, featured in half of the regretz chansons for which a text survives. It either registers the grief and sorrow that comes as an outcome of the regretz or pairs with the regretz to intensify the narrative of suffering. As part of a rhetoric that projects dolor of the highest degree, dueil is also interweaved with a vocabulary of comparable nuances: dueil et larmes; grand dueil et paine douloureuse; deuil et langueur; dueil et ennuy; deul et desplaisance; and dueil et douleur. THE ORATORY OF SUFFERING. Undoubtedly, the majority of regretz are infused with a language conveying profuse sorrow and deep melancholy, themes that have been
For a translation, see p.196. Quoting from Packer who cites from the Nouveau dictionnaire etymologique et historique by A. Dauzat, J. Dubois, H. Mitterand (Paris: Larousse, 1971): Dueil indicated the tormenting grief felt at the loss of one dearly loved. Whether the loss occurred through a misunderstanding, quarrel, or death, dueil meant the sharp emotion or pain of sorrow rather than mourning and its exterior garments as implied in the modern use of deuil (Packer, Au Boys de Dueil, fn.1).
44 43

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widely explored earlier in the poetry of Christine de Pizan, Franois Villon, and Charles dOrlans, among others, and expressed through the stereotypical vocabulary of the courtly tradition.45 One of the major literary labels of sorrow in the regretz complex is the word douleur. Douleur in the context of the regretz poems is expressive of pain, most likely, of the heart rather than somatic.46 Thus in Sourdez regretz, douleur is summoned to surround the piteous lovers heart;47 in Pour ung jamais ung regret, douleur is also implied to reside in his las cueur.48 Furthermore, sorrow is alluded by means of various expressions that convey unhappiness, loss of hope, and joy. The table outlines conventional expressions of sorrow interpolated in the regretz complex.

Grief and bereavement were major motifs in the lyric poetry of Christine de Pizan. The twin motifs deuil and douleur in her work were linked with her personal bereavement due to her widowhood, the communal grief of public figures, and the torments of finamors. On this subject, see Jean-Franois Kosta-Thfaine, Le Chant de la Douleur dans les Poesies de Christine de Pizan (Nantes: Editions du Petit Vhicule, 2007). 46 Douleur (suffering of the body or soul) is generally considered as the meaning of dueil in the sixteenth century. See Packer, Au Boys de Dueil, n.1. 47 Sourdez, regretz, avironnez mon cueur || Tout de souspirs de paine et de douleur 48 Car mon las cueur en tristesse labeure || Tant que ne puis celle douleur souffrir

45

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Pain/distress/grief

Douleur/dolant

Debility/languish

Langueur/languir

Despair Loss/absence of pleasure/joy

Desespoir Plaisir me delaisse Nest plaisir Passant ma vie desplaisente Tout plaisir doncqs ie veulx habandonner Desplaisance Je renonce a plaisance Toutte ma joye cest morte Nay plus espoir De mespjoyr nay jamais esperance Chassant tristesse Jay triste soing Mon las cueur en tristesse labeure Regret matriste

Pour les regrets Plusiers regretz Pour ung jamais Mille regretz Regretz sans fin Tous les regretz quoncques Mon souvenir Sourdez regretz Cent mille Sans regretz Dueil et ennuy soucy Pour les regretz Nuit et jour

Absence of hope Sadness

Table 5.4: Prevalent words signifying suffering in the regretz texts.

TOURMENTER. Tourmenter is another prevalent code-word signifying suffering within the regretz complex. It commonly indicates affliction that befalls the narrator as an outcome of the regretz, a motif that echoes in stock expressions such as: Regret matriste et me tourmente (Nuit et jour); [Plusieurs regretz] me tourmentant de si piteuse sorte; [Les grans regretz] tourmentent tant mon cueur, among others. Almost a third of the regretz texts that I have considered employ the word tourmenter. Besides, as the majority of these texts have been set to music more than once (Allez regretz, Plusieurs regretz, Tous les regretz, Pour ung jamais), I assume that 206

the exposure and prominence of tourmenter as a word of significance within the regretz topos must have been further enhanced by means of the multiple settings that were composed, performed, and circulated in manuscript sources near and after the turn of the fifteenth century. It is especially intriguing that in regretz texts fashioned in the rondeau form, tourmenter always lies in the refrain. In particular, I have observed that the third line of the refrain appears as the most likely position, followed by the second.49 This observation leads me to think that the regretz topos not only featured a panoply of archetypical words and themes, but it may also have been governed by a sort of stylized syntax in regard to the likely arrangement of its stock vocabulary.50 CUEUR. Reference to the heart in the regretz poems commonly emerges in association with tourmenter. If the regretz embody those personified agents among whose primary functions is to cause distress, the heart stands for the target of their action. The following expressions illustrate this idea: Assez avez tourmente mon las cueur (Allez regretz); Et nuyt et jour tourmentent tant mon cueur (Les grans regretz); Tous les regretz qui les cueurs tourmentez (Tous les regretz). The function of the heart as the primary residence of the regretz cueur acting as a locus or virtual target for the regretz to direct their arrows is plainly illustrated in the following verses: Sourdez, regretz, avironnez mon cueur (Arise, regrets, surround my heart); Pour promptement mon cueur executer (And with dispatch lay low my heart; Parfons regretz); Prennez
49

This consistency in regard to the actual location of tourmenter applies also to non-rondeau texts. For instance, tourmens in the single five-line stanza chanson Secretz regretz is positioned in the second line. The ballade Pour ung jamais cites the word tourmente in the third verse of the opening stanza. 50 Here I only speculate on an issue that would need further research before one reaches any conclusions. Apart from the regretz which are positioned in or close to the opening line and the word tourmenter featured in the refrain, I have also noticed that references to death, as either a desired or intended state, emerge in the closing lines of stanzas, and most consistently at the concluding line of the regretz chansons.

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mon cueur en sa dolleur parfonde (Take my heart in its profound grief; Tous les regretz quoncques); Mon souvenir me fait mourir pour les regretz que fait mon cueur. TEARS. As an archetypal utterance of the courtly love discourse denoting a somatic symptom of psychological suffering, larmes in the regretz complex refers either to the male personas act of mourning or to his despair caused by lovesickness. Tears in connection with bereavement and lament due to death are variously alluded in the regretz: Aprez sa mort que navoit deservie en luy donnant larmes habondance (After her death that led in giving him cries in abundance; Revenez tous, regretz); mon cueur sente et pleure (Vens regretz). Multiple references to the act of crying, both metaphorical and literal, can be observed. In the rondeau Nuit et jour, the suffering narrator engages in a brooding monologue which culminates in the second stanza with an imagery of ultimate despair: he is losing his mind and conscience on the bed of cries (lit de plours). Crying as a long-lasting gesture is portrayed in Sur tous regretz: je plains et plaindrai (I lament and will lament). TEMPORAL DIMENSION OF SUFFERING. The majority of the regretz poems are suffused with a rhetoric of temporal persistence associated with the language of suffering. A profuse array of expressions denoting duration suggests that the regretz are distinguished for their tenacity and constant attack. Sans cesser is featured as the most frequently used temporal expression, followed by nuyt et jour; longtemps / longhement; toute heure / en ample heure; sans fin / sans repos. Multiple expressions of duration are juxtaposed in certain chansons, thus further emphasizing the ruthless character of the regretz. It is worth mentioning, apart from Nuit et jour and Les

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grans regretz which both interpolate the expressions sans cesser and nuyt et jour, the abundance of temporal endurance in Pour ung jamais, the second verse of which reads: Qui [ung regret] sans cesser nuyt et jour toute heure.

Localized Intertextualities within the Regretz Texts Beyond the taxonomy of code words and themes I outlined as prominent constants within the literary topos of regretz, I would point to specific textual linkages among subgroups of regretz chansons. The exploration of the constituents of the regretz topos required a macroscopic consideration of narrative, vocabulary, and conceptual references. Here, on the other hand, I suggest that these constants, apart from their overall significance, are locally realized in individual regretz and also weave out paths of intertextual play among the regretz. While it is not feasible to present an exhaustive analysis of intertextuality among the texts of my regretz complex, certain striking instances of textual affinity serve to showcase the general and extensive interconnections.51 Consider the texts of Cent mille regretz and Regretz sans fin. To begin with, the closely related overall discourse shared between the chansons is not surprising. Emblematic of the regretz topos, both texts abound with expressions of anguish and sorrow as signifiers of the male personas misfortune. Although their narrative themes do
In previous chapters, I have addressed instances of textual affinity as an additional intertextual dimension to chansons that musically intersect. These brief discussions of intertextuality on the level of the regretz text include the following pairs: Allez regretz / Sans regretz (Ch. 2, pp. 55-56); Allez regretz / Nuit et jour (Ch. 2, p. 57-58); Les grans regretz / Mon souvenir (Ch. 2, pp. 79-81); Les grans regretz / Nuit et jour (Ch. 2, pp. 82-84); Mille regretz / Regretz sans fin (Ch. 3, pp. 101-102); Mille regretz / Tous les regretz (Ch. 3, pp. 116-17); Mille regretz / Cent mille regretz (Ch. 3, pp. 119-20); Dueil et ennuy / Tous les regretz (Ch. 4, pp. 166-67); and Le coeur la syut / Pour ung jamais (Ch. 4, pp. 170-71).
51

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not exhibit signs of direct correspondence Cent mille regretz recounts the attack of the regretz as an outcome of parting and Regretz sans fin suggests a rapport meschant (malicious rumor) as the cause of the poets infliction the chansons intersect closely as a result of their sharing of textual material. Their opening lines demonstrate an abundance of parallels (see texts below). Apart from the staple regretz positioned in the first hemistich, their portrayal as cent mille and sans fin suggests quantity. Sans fin also mirrors the expression sans cesse that occurs at the closing of the opening line of Cent mille regretz, the latter recurring yet again at the closing of the first stanza of Regretz sans fin. The verbs that are employed in the first verse of each, me poursuivent and me fault endurer, register infliction and are placed in the second half of the verse. A shared vocabulary of either identical or synonymic words contributes to the intertextual grid of the chansons: dueil, plaisir, delaisse / habandonner, and langueur / douleur. Mort soudaine interconnects with brief finer ma vie, as references to death that additionally project a sense of urgency; the expressions are also comparable in regard to their placement at the end of the fourth verse. Furthermore, as the shared plaisir is linked with verbs of similar denotation, an interesting reversal of meaning takes place: while in Cent mille regretz, plaisir abandons the narrator/male persona, in Regretz sans fin, it is he who abandons it. Additional interplay between the chansons in regard to the placing of shared vocabulary can be observed: dueil is positioned at the first hemistich of the second verses, while Pouisquil opens their closing verses.

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Cent mille regretz me poursuivent sans cesse Deuil me conduict et plaisir me delaisse Et fortune si tres mal me promene Que ma langueur vault pis que mort soudaine Pouisquil est force quainsi je vous delaisse52

Regretz sans fin il me fault endurer Et en grant dueil mes doulans iours user Par ung rapport meschant dont fuz servie Mieulx me vouldroit de brief finer ma vie Quainsi sans cesse telle douleur muer

Tout plaisir doncqs ie veulx habandonner Plus nulx soulas ie ne requirs donner Puis quil me fault souffrir par seulle envie53

Cent mille regretz seems to function as a focal regretz chanson in my current discussion of textual intertextualities. As I briefly argued in Chapter 3, the chanson may be viewed as engaging in textual communication with Mille regretz. Furthermore, the text of a third regretz chanson, Dueil et ennuy, bears evidence of an intertextual association with Cent mille regretz (see poetic text and translation below). The most intriguing point of connection between the two poems involves the sharing of a complete line: the penultimate verse of Cent mille regretz, Que ma langueur vault pis que mort soudaine, recurs as the opening verse of the second stanza of Dueil et ennuy. Indeed, the two verses are indistinguishable apart from a reworking of the opening que ma changed to ceste. Shared vocabulary that resonates between the chansons includes such words as plaisir / plaisance, dueil, fortune, and sans cesser. An interesting instance of textual cross-play occurs in the second lines of the chansons, as the verses intersect on a
52 53

For a translation of Cent mille regretz, see Chapter 3, n. 62. Translated as: I must suffer with unending regrets || And pass my doleful days in great grief || Because of malicious rumor about me || It would be better to end my life quickly || Than thus endlessly endure such grief || So I wish to abandon all pleasure || I do not want to be given any more solace || Since I must suffer through envy alone.

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conceptual level. Both plaisir and plaisance are linked with verbs that convey parting; thus, the image of pleasure is portrayed as one that deserts the poet (plaisir me delaisse vs. eslong ma plaisance). Another intriguing parallel occurs in reference to fortune. The shared word is accompanied in both chansons by verbs of similar sound, so that fortune me promene mirrors the expression fortune me pourmaine.54
Dueil et ennuy soussy regret et paine Ont eslong ma plaisance mondaine Donc a par moy ie me plains et tourmente Et en espoir nay plus ung brin dactente Veez la comment fortune me pourmaine Je nay pense qui me joye me ramaine Ma fantasie est desplaisirs plaine Car a tout heure devant moy se presente Ceste langueur vault pis que mort soubdaine Puis quil ny a sang, char, otz, nerf ny vaine Qui rudement et tresforte ne sen sente Pour abregier sans quen rien je vous mente Jay sans cesser qui ma vie a fin maine Mourning and grief, worry, sorrow and pain Have moved away my worldly pleasure So I cry and torture myself And there is no longer much expectation in hope See how Fortune walks by me I have no thought to give me joy to uplift me My fantasy is of plain pleasure That always presents itself in front of me This suffering is worse than sudden death For there is no blood, bone, flesh, nerve nor vein Which one feels roughly and forcefully To be brief without never lying to you Without ceasing I live a life which fades away

There is no doubt that the close textual affinity between Cent mille regretz and Regretz sans fin, and also in a smaller scale with Dueil et ennuy, is particularly striking suggesting that the chanson texts may have been related either by common authorship or emulation. Apart from the fact that the musical setting of Cent mille regretz was in the past attributed to Josquin, who is also the composer of Regretz sans fin, the musical settings happen to circulate in sources dated within a relatively narrow chronological

54

I have not been able to identify a translation for either pourmaine or a matching infinitive (pourmener?) in dictionaries of medieval French. I wonder whether pourmaine could be a misspelling of promene, as in that case the expression fortune me promene would be jointly featured in both Dueil et ennuy and Cent mille regretz.

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frame of thirty years (1520s-1550s).55 It is possible, then, that the poems themselves may also have been penned sometime in the early sixteenth century. While no evidence exists to confirm that one of the poems was deliberately modeled on the other, the textual linkage between the two chansons owes much to their shared participation in the regretz topos. Apart from the chansons previously discussed, several additional regretz intersect with each other by means of a common narrative and a shared body of code words. An interesting instance of a close textual relationship can be observed between Sourdez regretz and Sur tous regretz. The focal point of intersection between the texts occurs at their third lines, where the shared key word perdu(e) reveals the core of the narrative. Both lines open with a conjunction that denotes reason (Car vs. puis que). Perdu functions as a point of arrival; it justifies the gathering of the regretz that appear in the incipit. In both chansons, the object of perdu is the dame of the male persona, portrayed in Sur tous regretz as his amiable ligueur. Apart from the common cuer, which functions as the recipient of the regretz, the shared occurrence of souspirs positioned exactly at the same point in both texts (third and fourth syllables of the second verse) is particularly interesting. Both chansons also carry an expression of duration in their concluding verses to signify the extent of the suffering (en ample heure / longtemps). Profound suffering is variously illustrated in both poems. Most apparent is that the evocation of souspirs, paine, and douleur in the second verse of Sourdez regretz, as symptoms of a rather unbearable anguish, function in parallel to the perpetual

55

See Chapter 3, n. 38 and n.61.

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state of mourning that is conveyed in the last verse of Sur tous regretz. Finally, while announcing the rise of the regretz, the opening hemistichs of the two regretz engage in a kind of aural interplay. Sur tous regretz resonates with the sound of sourdez regretz, as the regretz are preceded by utterances that stress the consonants s and r (and occuring in the first syllable, too).
Sourdez, regretz, avironnez mon cueur Tout de souspirs de paine et de douleur Puis quainsy est quay ma dame perdue Jaimasse mieux jamais ne lavoir veue Pour en estre si longtemps en langheur56 Sur tous regretz, les miens plus piteulx pleure Jetans souspirs transpersans mon lasceur Car jay perdu lamiable ligueur Que tant je plains et plaindrai en ample heure57

The specific cases of intertextual play among regretz that I have discussed above are particularly enlightening in demonstrating the extent of textual affiliation within what I have called the regretz complex. From the earliest instances of regretz in the poetry of Chartier, Jean II de Bourbon, and Charles dOrlans, and beyond an overall consideration of major literary labels shared among the regretz, code words and archetypical expressions are not only extensively mirrored among certain regretz, thus defining the parameters of the regretz topos. They are in certain cases virtually aligned within the textual space, paraphrased (by the use of synonyms instead of the same words), or even transformed (as in the reversal of meaning attached to the word plaisir in Cent mille
56

Translated as: Arise, regrets, surround my heart || with all sighs, pain and grief || since it is true that I have lost my lady || I would have preferred never to have seen her || for having languished for so long. The translation is taken from Wesner, The Chansons of Loyset Compre, 392. 57 Above all regrets mine weep most piteously || uttering sighs, penetrating my weary heart || for I have lost the gentle companion || who I lament much and will always lament.

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regretz and Regretz sans fin). Textual intertextualities are thus not static, but organically embedded within the framework of the topos.

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CONCLUSION

The majority of discussions developed in this dissertation deal with facets of musical and textual intertextuality among regretz chansons of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The evidence presented suggests that the regretz communicated, in a great extent, on the level of their poetic texts, and also exchanged extensive threads of musical connection. To consider the individual regretz in isolation from their referential world is to deprive them of their cultural significance as intertexts and players within a network shaped up by literary codes and cultural practices. Tracking down or speculating upon musical connections within the regretz complex may help us to gain insight into the ways regretz composers acknowledged and shaped the regretz as a significant literary topos and cult musical tradition. Ghizeghem, for instance, must have been particularly committed to openly recognizing his fascination with the regretz as a poetic theme; not only did he set in music a regretz poem popular at the time (Allez regretz), but all of his regretz chansons, as was shown in Chapter 2, interrelate to a greater or lesser degree. The specific interrelations between Allez regretz and La Regrete, to which Goldberg had called attention, are so apparent and more extensive than first noticed, that we may now reconsider our understanding of La Regrete as a later work in its discursive context within the regretz of Ghizeghem. The popularity of Allez regretz as a widely appropriated model is also further supported by its intertextual ties with such chansons as Weerbekes Sans regretz and Fresneaus Nuit et jour, among others.

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Mille regretz, the central regretz chanson treated in Chapter 3, launched an extensive network of musical and textual intersections in the regretz of Josquin, La Rue, and Gombert. Motivic paraphrases of melodic incipits and a shared core gesture circulate especially among the majority of Josquins regretz and certain regretz of La Rue; such intertextualities suggest that both prominent composers were aware of the cult status of regretz and were eager to further contribute to its literary and musical consumption. The subtle intertextualities explored in Chapter 4 possess the potential to add new layers of meaning to individual regretz chansons. Josquins Plus nulz regretz, previously thought of as a solitary chanson, has been shown to share intertextual bonds with La Rues Tous les regretz. Moreover, intertextual links between Tous les regretz and the anonymous Dueil et ennuy, and also between La Rues Pour ung jamais and Ghiselins Le cueur la suyt, previously unexplored, contribute to our understanding of the affiliation of Marguerite of Austria with the regretz milieu. Finally, beyond their close intertextual bonds on the levels of music and text, the regretz constituted a literary topos, one that was composed of an array of archetypical vocabulary signifying, in a great extent, a rhetoric of sorrow and suffering. In conclusion, the intertextualities explored in this dissertation attest to the idea that late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century French and Franco-Flemish composers recognized the significance of the regretz as a literary topos and acknowledged the poetic ties among the regretz by means of musical connections. Apart from their individual meaning and standing within a composers oeuvre, each regretz chanson can also be

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viewed and appreciated for its contemporary significance as a participant in a culturally relevant topos and thereby, quite likely, as part of the regretz compositional complex. When dealing with issues of intertextuality within a group of compositions linked by a shared theme, it is most plausible that further scrutiny will uncover additional works and associations. Especially in regard to the textual dimension of the regretz, Marvin called attention to the existence of various literary manuscripts that include a wealth of regretz poems.1 Indeed, the literary significance of the regretz topos, scarcely developed in music scholarship, awaits further exploration. Looking, by way of illustration, at the text of the early sixteenth-century cult chanson Au boys de dueil, one may notice a verse relevant to this study: Venez regretz, venez tous en mon cueur.2 The first four verses of the third stanza of Au boys de dueil, which open with the above reference to regretz, were used in an anonymous four-voice polyphonic setting that survives in Attaingnants Trente et deux chansons musicales a quatre parties of 1529.3 The grafting of part of Au boys de dueil, a chanson popular for its continuous integration into musical, literary, and religious life throughout the sixteenth century, into a new chanson beginning with the words Venez regretz might be viewed as an indication of the popularity of the regretz topos. It may be possible that an early sixteenth-century composer familiar with the more popular Venez regretz of Compre extracted those particular regretz verses from Au boys de dueil motivated by a desire to engage in the regretz cult tradition.

Marvin, Regrets in French Chanson Texts, n. 27. She refers to the following literary manuscripts in Bibliothque Nationale: fr. 1719, 1722, nouv. acq. fr. 477, and 7559. 2 See Packer, Au boys de dueil, 3. 3 Mentioned in ibid., 5.

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Interesting for future research are the musical and poetic intersections within the regretz complex viewed against the wider background of intertextual bonds among other artifacts of late fifteenth-century and early sixteenth-century Franco-Flemish material culture. Intertextuality, and most specifically the practice of allusion, was not only manifested in music and poetry. French and Flemish manuscript illuminators indulged in intertextual play as well. Not only do we observe close affinities in technique, landscape, and decorative conventions among manuscript miniatures, but the extensive reemployment of identical patterns, figures, and complete pictures.4 If certain instances of intertextual bond within the regretz chansons can be read as exchanges among composers interested in showcasing their sharing in a common culture and/or under a common patron, the same can likely be said of artists. For instance, the musical and textual associations between Pour ung jamais and Le cueur la suyt, regretz, enhanced by their participation in a virtual interplay of parallel contextual facets and further intersection in their common association with Marguerite of Austria, can been

Susie Nash, Between France and Flanders: Manuscript illumination in Amiens (London & Toronto: The British Library and University of Toronto Press, 1999), esp. 105-6. The same technique applies to painting. I have, for instance, traced a string of paintings that not only employ the same figure (exotic-looking man with a thick long beard and a turban) but, most interestingly, appropriate it in similar iconographic narratives. Beginning with two paintings dating from around 1465, the Martyrdom of St. Erasmus by the Louvain-based Dieric Bouts and the Crucifixion by Justus van Ghent, the shared figure later appears in Justuss Communion of the Apostles (1474) and the folios of a celebrated Books of Hours, that of Mary of Burgundy (ca. 1470-75). The circulation of the cult figure among the four works of art brings to mind the migration of the shared sigh gesture observed in the regretz of La Rue and Josquin. See Otto Pcht, Early Netherlandish Painting from Rogier van der Weyden to Gerard David (New York: Harvey Miller, 1997), 146; Thomas Kren, Revolution and Transformation: Painting in Devotional Manuscripts, Circa 14671485, in Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe, ed. Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003), 137-8.

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seen as manifestations of the same cultural orbit which encouraged the visual discourse among painters, manuscript illuminators, and tapestry designers.5 Artistic exchange of ideas and imagery within the circles of painters and illuminators was natural and even inevitable. Not only were many active in both fields, interacting in common artists guilds, but they also joined forces in the creation of ephemeral works for lavish festivities of the Burgundian court during the mid and late 1400s.6 Beyond exchanging patterns, a practice which, apart from matters of convenience, suggests the level of esteem that allusion enjoyed within the Burgundian material culture, artists engaged in apparent and extensive borrowing of figures, narratives, and architectural spaces within artifacts of an interdisciplinary field.7 It may also be argued that the fascination of artists with building intertextual bonds, a practice
The extent of fascination with borrowing in the Franco-Flemish artistic sphere of the mid and late fifteenth century becomes evident when one considers the extensive circulation of patterns (iconographical sketches) in an interdisciplinary stratum. In a period when conventions of copyright were out of the question, patterns were borrowed, exchanged, rented or even illegally seized by painters, illuminators, glass-painters, tapestry designers and specialists in yet other media. See James Douglas Farquhar, Creation and Imitation: The Work of a Fifteenth-Century Manuscript Illuminator (Fort Lauderdale, FL.: Nova/NYIT University Press, 1976), 65-71. 6 Thomas Kren and Maryan W. Ainsworth, Illuminators and Painters: Artistic Exchanges and Interrelationships, in Illuminating the Renaissance, 35-57, esp.35-36. 7 One of the most fascinating and widely celebrated cases of intertextual alliance can be observed among three artworks of diverse media dating from the mid to late fifteenth century: Jan van Eycks Virgin with Canon van der Paele (1436), Grard Loyets acclaimed golden statuette ensemble of Saint George and Charles the Bold (dating from 1471 and now in the treasury of St. Pauls Cathedral in Liege), and a manuscript illumination of Lieven van Lathem found in a prayer book of Charles the Bold (for an illustration of Lathems illumination and relevant discussion, see Hugo van der Velden, The Donors Image: Gerard Loyet and the Votive Portraits of Charles the Bold, [Turnhout: Brepols, 2000], 124-25). All three artifacts address the same iconographical narrative. The duet of figures in Loyets statuette has been extracted from the right part of van Eycks painting. The iconographic resemblances, shared themes, and contexts of production between the two group compositions of saint/donor are striking. Both works of art were the result of commissions by donors and were to be displayed as tokens of their gratitude. Most interestingly, while van Eycks composition faithfully adheres to the iconographic paradigm of the sacra converzatione, in which the presentation of the donor by the saint is directed to a hierarchically elevated figure (God, Christ, Virgin Mary, mystery), that third person, visually absent in the statuette, is virtually suggested by the outward gestures of saint and donor as van der Velden has discussed (The Donors Image, 122-24). The intertextual dimension in this case extends beyond the boundaries of the material object.
5

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shared among musicians/poets of the same chronological and geographical resonance, functioned as a means of shaping and building upon a Franco-Flemish cultural heritage.

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APPENDIX TRANSLATIONS OF REGRETZ TEXTS

This is not a comprehensive list of regretz texts and their translations; it contains only those for which English translations are not readily available. The list is organized in alphabetical order according to the incipit.

Aprez regretz il se fault resjouyr Chassant tristesse et deuil et souvenir Car jay la grace de celle que jamoye Riens en ce monde certes je ne vouldroye Fors tousjours estre pres delle a monplaisir

After sorrow, one must rejoice Chasing sadness, and mourning, and memories For I have the grace of her whom I loved In truth I would wish for nothing in this world Except to have always the pleasure of being with her She has made me languish for a long time In a much great doubt that she made me to hate But now she wants me to rejoice

Bien longhement elle ma fait languir En trop grant doubte quelle me deubt hayr Mais maintenant veult que je me resjoye

A tousjour mais je la veulx bien servir Elle le vault plus que aultre, sans mentir Et par ainsi vivrons tousjours en joye Puis que samour ma donn et ottroye Sans plus avant penser a desplaisir

But I want to always serve her well Frankly she wants that more that anything else And thus we will always live in joy Since her love was given to me and provided Without further thinking of unhappiness

Dueil et ennuy me persecutent tant Que mon esprit comporter sestent Tous les regretz que lon scaroit penser Et nest vivant qui en sceut dispenser Car en mon cas personne riens nentend

Pain and grief persecute me much That my mind can not think of how to bear All the sorrows that one would think of And it is not alive but to provide [them?] Because in my case, nothing matters

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Dueil et ennuy soussy regret et paine Ont eslong ma plaisance mondaine Donc a par moy ie me plains et tourmente Et en espoir nay plus ung brin dactente Veez la comment fortune me pourmaine Je nay pense qui me joye me ramaine Ma fantasie est desplaisirs plaine Car a tout heure devant moy se presente Ceste langueur vault pis que mort soubdaine Puis quil ny a sang, char, otz, nerf ny vaine Qui rudement et tresforte ne sen sente Pour abregier sans quen rien je vous mente Jay sans cesser qui ma vie a fin maine

Mourning and grief, worry, sorrow and pain Have moved away my worldly pleasure So I cry and torture myself And there is no longer much expectation in hope See how Fortune walks by me I have no thought to give me joy to uplift me My fantasy is of plain pleasure That always presents itself in front of me This suffering is worse than sudden death For there is no blood, bone, flesh, nerve nor vein Which one feels roughly and forcefully To be brief without never lying to you Without ceasing I live a life which fades away

La Regrete, en tous biens accomplie Dhonneur, de los, et de grace remplie Je vous supplie Trs humblement quiil vous plaise Madame Navoir desdaing se ce lui qui vous ame De cueur et dame A vous louer sens etlangue desplye Pour le bon bruit qui en vous multiplie dont je voy France honoure et emplie Raison me plie Avous nommer se jamais le fut femme S vous aymer de bon cueur je memplie Amour le veult bonvouloir luy supplie Mais desamplie Vous voye dung los qui tarnit votre fame Cest que piti vostre cueur point nentame Qui vous est blame Mais en mon cueur ce mal tais et replie

Sorrowful one, with all goods supplied Filled up with honor, praise, and grace I implore you Very humbly that it pleases you my lady To not have disdain of him who loves you With heart and soul Wishes to offer you mind and tongue For the good reputation that in you multiplies Of which I see France honored and fulfilled Reason makes me To name you above all women If I am set to love you with good heart I want to beg for love at your pleasure But if denied You will see a praise that will tarnish your fame It is such a pity that nothing touches your heart So that it weakens you But in my heart this sorrow hides and folds

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Le cueur la suyt et mon oeil la regrete Mon corps la plainct mon esperit la guecte Celle qui est des parfaictes la fleur dont jamais jay ordonn ung pleur perpetuel en pense segrecte Tous en font dueil et chascun la soubhaicte Plusieurs en ont dure complaincte faicte Car elle avoit gaign de meintz seigneur

My heart follows her and my eyes lament her My body cries for her and my spirit guards her She who is the most perfect of flowers Of whom forever I have ordered a A perpetual crying in secret thought Everybody is in mourning and each and everyone claims her Several harsh laments have been made For she had gained the lords hand Fortune weakens from our sight Not without sorrow for her perfect beauty But of two goods one must choose the best Her value will not be forgotten Wherever she goes or she is placed

Fortune la de noz veues fortraicte Non sans regret pour sa beault parfaicte; Mais de deux biens prandre fault le meilleur Sy ne sera en obly sa valeur En quelque part quelle aille ou quon la mecte

Les grans regretz que sans cesser je porte Et nuyt et jour tourmentent tant mon cueur Que se de vous ne vient quelque liqueur Impossiblest que plus je men deporte Mais jespere que grace lon maporte Pour remede quil me vauldra bonheur Aujourdhuy nest plaisir que me supporte le cueur mestraint et me tient en rigueur Alegez moy et me donnez vigueur Qu je vaulx mort a vous je men raporte

The great sorrows that I incessantly bear And night and day much torment my heart Unless some sustenance comes from you It is impossible for me to go on But I hope that grace will return back to me as a remedy that will bring me happiness Today there is no pleasure to keep me alive My heart is torturing me and keeps me in harshness Relieve me and give me strength or I want death to take me back to you

Mon souvenir me fait mourir Pour les regretz que fait mon cueur dont nuyt et jour suis en labeur soubz espoir de le secourir Se sans cesser devoye courir Se sauray je par quel rigueur Sa doulceur me fault descouvrir Et le mettre hors de langueur En luy donnant port et faveur Sans plus dire ne soustenir

My memories make me die For all the sorrows that are in my heart Night and day Im in labor In hope of rescuing them Without ceasing they are led astray They are known of such harshness Their sweetness I must uncover And place them out of suffering By giving them harbor and favor Without saying more but supporting

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Nuit et jour sans repos avoir Regret matriste et me tourmente Tant que nay plus espoir natente A chose que je puisse voir Plus men souvient a dire voir Et plus mon cuer sen malcontente Jen pers le sens et le savoir Au lit de plours soubz noire tente Passant ma vie desplaisente En la chambre de desespoir

Day and night without rest A sorrow makes me sad and torments me much As long as I have no more hope nor waiting To see something The more I remember the truth to say the more my heart is unhappy I am losing my mind and my conscience on the bed of cries under the black shade passing my miserable life in the chamber of despair

O doulx regretz mon singulier plaisir Que i' ay voulu en ce monde choysir Pour mon tresor et plaisance mondaine Pencez a moy une foys la semaine Et mescripuez si vous auez loysir

Sweet sorrows, my only delight That I have wanted to choose in this world As my treasure and worldly pleasure Think of me once per week And write to me if you have the time

Plusieurs regretz qui sur la terre sont Et les douleus quhommes et femmes ont Nest que plaisir envers ceulx que ie porte Me tourmentant de si piteuse sorte Que mes espris ne schavent plus quilz font Craincte, plaisir et honneur me osteront Car pour le veul ilz men emporteront Venez a moy, je vous ouvre la porte Puisque je pers celle par qui seront En moy sans fin leur demeure y feront Amour le veult et aussi my enorte Et que de sens et raison me deporte Conclusion: ilz me demeureront

The many sorrows found on earth And the sorrows that afflict men and women Are as pleasures compared to those I bear Tormenting me so piteously That my mind knows no longer what it does Fear pleasure and honor combat against me since they will carry me away from my will Come to me, I open the door to you Since Im losing her for they will be Within me without end they will make their residence Love wants and also urges me And of my senses and reason deports me Conclusion: They will dwell in me

Regret ennui traveil et desplaisance Est le loyer du transi conquerant Combien quil soit iouyssance requerant Louyer damour nest pas ce que lon pense

Sorrow, grief, labor, and unhappiness Is the fee of a stiff conqueror how much it takes to implore for pleasure To pay for love is not what one thinks

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Revenez tous, regretz, je vous convie Revenez tost jay de vous veoir envie Plus que jamais je veuil vostre acointance Car de tous pointz je renonce a plaisance Puis que la mort a ma dame ravie Tousjours sera de mes souspirs servie Aprez sa mort que navoit deservie En luy donnant larmes habondance Je ne fay plus extime de ma vie Mon povre sens a tous coupz se devie Entre les gens ne scay ma contenance De mespjoyr nay jamais esperance Puis qua deul est ma personne asservie

All sorrows, come back, I invite you Come back quickly I have an urge to see you More than ever I want your acquaintance For in every way I renounce happiness Since death has stolen my lady She will always be served with my sighs After her death that led In giving him cries in abundance I dont respect my life any longer My poor senses drift all the time Among the people I do not know my place There is no hope of rejoice Since mourning has enslaved myself

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Munich, Universittsbibliothek der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt, MS 8o 328-331 (MunU 328-331). Paris, Bibliothque nationale de France, Dpartement des manuscrits, Fonds franais, Ms. 1596 (ParisBNF1596). Paris, Bibliothque nationale de France, Dpartement des manuscrits, Fonds franais, Ms. 1597 (ParisBNF 1597). Paris, Bibliothque nationale de France, Dpartement des manuscrits, Fonds franais, Ms. 2245 (ParisBNF 2245). Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 2856 (RomeC 2856). Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 461 (SgallS 461). Uppsala, Universitetsbibliothek, MS Vokalmusik i Handskrift 76a (UppsU 76a). Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Cappella Giulia XIII.27 (VatG XIII.27). Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MSS Palatini Latini 1982 (VatP 1982). Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS DCCLVII (VerBC 757). Vienna, sterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, MS Mus. 18746 (VienNB Mus.18746). Vienna, sterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, MS Mus. 18810 (VienNB Mus. 18810). Washington, D.C. Library of Congress, Music Division, MS M2.1.L25 Case (WashLC L25).

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