Deletions

Lesure and Merritt’s edition of Clément Janequin: Chansons Polyphoniques is an example of outstanding scholarship, and the number of pieces which can be convincingly shown not to be by Janequin is small indeed, a tribute to the capacity and insight of the editors and to the quality of their work. The pieces which I recommend be removed from the canon are three 4-part pieces:

 LM 111 Helas mon Dieu ton ire

LM 114 Quelque frappart

LM 127 Le jeu m’ennuye

in addition to all of the 3-part pieces:

LM 5a Or sus, or sus (l’Alouette)

LM220 Je demande comme tout esbahy

LM221 M’en allé veoir la belle

LM222 J’ay trop soudainmant

LM223 Quand ne te veoy

LM224 Toy Cupido qui as toute puissance

LM225 De son amour me donne jouyssance

LM226 S’il est si doux

LM227 Incessament je suis a dire tien

LM228 Dicte moys donc

LM229 C’est mon amy

LM230 Si je m’y plain

“Helas mon Dieu”, as well as being a chanson spirituelle and not really at home in an edition which otherwise contains secular works, is by Jean Maillard, while more than likely “Quelque frappart” and certainly “Le jeu m’ennuye” belong to Pierre Fresneau.  These are discussed in Clément Janequin: Life and Works, “Chapter 45: Conflicting attributions.”

The perennial and convoluted case of “Or sus, or sus” has it’s own chapter (Chapter 23) in Clément Janequin: Life and Works, while the remaining three-part “chansons,” which might be more correctly referred to as “quick and dirty remakes by a variety of editors” are dealt with in “Chapter 24: Gardano and 1541-13” and “Chapter 25: Editors and Phantoms .”