For decades, stretching far back before Janequin was born, the three-voice chanson was the norm, first as quasi-independent melodies with supporting lines that were frequently untexted, and subsequently as works with integrated and interdependent vocal lines. Then, as the sixteenth century approached and four voices increasingly became the texture of preference, independent three-voice writing was less practiced, so that by the time of the great explosion of chanson printing in the 1530s, four-voice texture was the unchallenged norm.

Three-voice texture was never completely neglected, however. It occurred quite naturally in four-voice textures as composers varied the density for purposes of contrast, as a consequence of starts and stops in the imitation, and as a method for articulating internal sections. Three-voice texture was also an effective means for achieving structural variety in larger works, as in mass settings. Among works securely attributed to Janequin, there are four instances of such quasi-independent units that use three-voice texture: “Benedictus” and “Pleni sunt coeli” from the “Sanctus” (LMN295d) of the Missa L’Aveuglé dieu of 1554, and the last two sections of the Lamentations of 1556, “Nous sommes en semblable affaire” (LMN315) and “Tout mal et travail” (LMN316).^[1]

Parallel to the flood of four-part collections that began to appear, music publishers realized that there were sales opportunities for works that were easier to perform or which required fewer participants, and three-voice pieces were promoted to meet the needs of the so-called “pedagogical” market. Publishers had at least three potential sources for assembling collections of this type: they could commission new works; they could reprint old favorites, even those somewhat out of style; or they could adapt existing four-part works. All three of these procedures are evident in collections that Pierre Attaingnant released in 1529, 1535 and 1550.^[2]

In the case of Janequin, a total of forty-two independent three-voice settings were attributed to or associated with his name during the sixteenth century. Counting backwards, we find two pieces in a Le Roy and Ballard print from 1578, nine pieces in two Susato prints from 1552, thirty units in a Gardano issue from 1541 and the anonymous “L’Alouette” printed by Andrea Antico in 1521. Lesure and Merritt included twelve of these chansons in their edition of Janequin’s secular works, but as a closer examination of this repertory will show, even this may have been unnecessarily generous.

Antonio Gardano and RISM 1541-13

In 1541, Antonio Gardano published a music book the title of which promised “by Constantio Festa the first book of madrigals for three voices, joined by forty madrigals of Jhan Gero, newly printed and with many corrections. Added as well thirty French chansons by Janequin.”^[3] There are indeed forty madrigals by Jhan Gero in the book, and it could very well be that in these, “molti errori” have been corrected. However, the fact that there is only one madrigal by Festa in the collection, sandwiched in without further identification among the works by Gero, and that the majority of the pieces attributed to Janequin can be shown to be by other composers have caused people to wonder about this collection ever since.

Antonio Gardane (he Italianized his name to Gardano first in 1555) was born in the south of France in 1509, probably in the town of Gardanne, just outside Aix-en-Provence. In 1532, when Gardano was only 23 years old, a mass of his was printed by the Lyonnais publisher Jaques Moderne,^[4] indicating both that Gardano had acquired a solid musical background and that he was a young man of some energy. On the rather slim grounds that both were from southern France, and that Moderne published six of Gardano’s chansons (in 1538), it has been proposed that the young Gardano served as one of Moderne’s music editors for a time.^[5] If he did so, it must have been well in advance of 1538, for in that year we find him in Venice, married to a member of a Venetian printing family, and busily producing both children and music books. Son Allesandro was born in 1539, and son Angelo in 1540: they would subsequently extend the family’s music printing fortunes well into the next century.

The fruits of Gardano’s first year as a music publisher were a book of 25 French chansons (“borrowed” from Attaingnant), a “First book” of motets, and a book of madrigals by Verdelot (died ca. 1530.) The following year, 1539, was extremely busy, with 8 volumes of music appearing. Then, for some reason, in 1540 nothing at all appears with Gardano’s name on it. Mary Lewis has pointed out that the relationship between Gardano’s shop (who printed only music) and Scotto’s shop (who printed other kinds of titles as well) was complex: they seem variously to have been intense competitors and close partners, and it is worth noting that while nothing appears from Gardano’s presses in 1540, Scotto found room in his production schedule for five volumes of music. There is the possibility that Gardano was working for or with Scotto during this period.^[6]

In 1541, Gardano is back, in spades: eight volumes appear, including among other things fully 117 pieces by Arcadelt alone, and from that time on it would seem that the transplanted Frenchman thrived in Venice, making a significant contribution to the growth and spread of the Italian madrigal as well as prospering financially.

In the course of his career, Gardano (and his sons) published a smattering of pieces by Janequin, but works by Janequin were never a mainstay for the Gardano firm. In fact, if we put occasional instrumental arrangements to one side, Gardano’s truck with Janequin is by and large limited to three projects: (1) a clump of four voice chansons in one of Gardano’s very first prints, the Venticinque Canzoni Francese of 1538; (2) the three voice event of 1541 under consideration; and (3) a collection of the bread-and-butter program chansons in 1545. That is not to say that Janequin never earned any money for his onetime countryman. The Venticinque Canzoni is a good example. Despite the relaxed reliability of its attributions (10 pieces are credited Janequin, of which 4 are not by him, as well as one more which is probably by Janequin, but is credited to Passereau^[7]), Gardano reprinted it twice, once in 1548 and once in 1560, and apparently loaned it to Scotto as well, who printed it in 1549. This, according to Lewis, is consistent with what seems to have been Gardano’s general approach to profitable music printing – namely, many small press runs, keeping overhead down, and not wasting the most valuable of the involved commodities, which was neither costs connected with the creative process nor the printing itself, but the paper. This approach had also the advantage that it allowed for small adjustments underway, in which less popular or less successful items could be replaced, and new ones inserted. Less advantageous are the wealth of opportunities for confusion that this constant shuffling of individual pieces, attributions and even title page information opened up.

With this in mind, we return to the collection of 1541, where, as mentioned, the title page and what subsequently appears are not a good match. An unspecified number of madrigals by Constanzo Festa are promised, but in the end, there is only one, “Spiriti mieie”, about which the sneaking suspicion intrudes that this, sandwiched as it is amid a sea of works by Gero, slipped in by mistake. The title then promises forty madrigals by Jhan Gero, and this promise is kept.^[8] A companion piece to the sandwiched and unattributed “Spiriti mieie” is also included. This is “Ben madonna a che siamo son pur,” which is identified as being by “Parabosco”, perhaps the Bolognese composer Domenico Ferrabosco (1513-1574.)

Completing his title, almost as an afterthought, we are then tempted with thirty French chansons by “Ianequin,” which have been “similarly added.” What exactly are these pieces and where did they come from? What they are seems clear: they are primarily three-voice arrangements of pieces which began their lives as four-voice chansons. A typical example is “Amour, tu es par trop cruelle” which began its career in print in Attaingnant’s Trente chansons for four voices of 1529,^[9] reappears arranged for three voices in the same publisher’s Trente et une chansons of April 1535,^[10] and then is incorporated in Gardano’s collection. Similarly, “Mauldicte soit la mondain richesse” appears first in the Attaingnant Trente et une chansons of 1529, before being converted to three-part harmony by Cosson for Moderne’s Parangon Quart livre of 1538, and subsequently moving on to Gardano. While a handful of unica can’t be checked, and another handful are older pieces carrying a genuine three-voice pedigree, the majority of the pieces are adaptations of earlier works. None of the pieces appear to be “new” except in the sense that they may have been “new to Venice.”

A second characteristic of the pieces in this volume is that a conscious effort has been made to keep the tessitura low. Of the 18 pieces which Gardano took from Attaingnant’s Trente et une chansons musicales a troys, fully 16 have been transposed down a perfect fourth or a perfect fifth. Clearly, the musical offerings were meant to present as few challenges as possible to the potential user.

Finally, what has inevitably attracted attention to this collection is the circumstance that of the 30 chansons that are offered as the labor of Clément Janequin, concordances exist which link fully 21 of these works to other composers: 11 to Claudin de Sermisy, plus attributions to Le Heurteur, Gascogne, Gosse, Ysore, Févin, Ninot le Petit, Roquelay, Gero and Cosson. Worse yet, for the 9 remaining chansons, sources that repeat the attributions to Janequin all post-date 1541, and as such, are likely Gardano-derivative.

From where did Gardano gather his repertory? 18 of 30 chansons would seem to have come straight from Attaingnant’s Trente et une chansons of 1535, a repository of two and three voice chansons tinkered together for the “easy-to-sing” market. These largely build on 4 voice chansons from Attaingnant’s previous editions, and may have been done by Pierre Regnes, who later served briefly as editor for Nicolas du Chemin. Another possible source for loaned material was that inveterate borrower Jacques Moderne in Lyon. RISM 1541-13 contains 8 concordances with Moderne’s 3-voice Parangon…a troys collections^[11] of 1539, of which 6 already had been printed in Attaingnant’s collection from 1535. There were also slightly older sources, containing pieces probably originally scored for 3 voices. Among these are Antico’s 1520 print Chansons a troys (two concordances), and the manuscript Cambridge 1760, containing pieces by Gascogne and Févin.

Whether one regards Gardano as a cynic, as some have, attempting to profit from Janequin’s renommé to sell more music books, or, considering the myriad errors of presentation in the collection, as supremely confused and/or callously careless, there would seem to be little if anything in this volume for which Janequin was initially responsible. This being the case, in an article in 1959, Francois Lesure threw out the lot, and there seems to be no good reason to question his judgement. ^[12]

Tylman Susato and the La fleur series

In May and June of 1552, Janequin was alive and well and living in Paris. He had been mentioned in the latest book by Rabelais, he was busy cultivating favor at court (which in a while would lead to an appointment), he had been asked to join Certon in a project setting sonnets by Ronsard and he was publishing finely wrought chansons on a regular basis with Nicolas du Chemin. During these same months of May and June 1552, up the road in Antwerp, Tylman Susato was publishing three-voice chansons under Janequin’s name which range from moderately inspired to excruciatingly incompetent. Pray, how does this compute?

Tylman Susato (ca 1510-after 1570) is a fascinating figure, a musician of some talent who rose through the ranks as a member of the town band (he played the trombone), an astute businessman with an impressive track record as a music publisher, and a man of principle whose last years were spent as a diplomatic envoy to the court of Sweden. He was not, however, a publisher to whom Janequin regularly entrusted his newest compositions. He was not even one of the many music printers outside of Paris who regularly reprinted large chunks of Janequin’s production without permission. Susato borrowed only infrequently from Parisian publications, holding company primarily with Netherlands composers, in particular Gombert and Crequillon. In fact, pieces attributed to Janequin appear from Susato’s presses on only three occasions: a version of “La Bataille” with an added fifth voice by Verdelot in 1545;^[13] instrumental arrangements of “La Bataille” (LM3) and “Il estoit une fillette” (LM77) in 1551;^[14] and the three-voice pieces in the 1552 La fleur series mentioned above.

Susato was keenly aware that there was not just one market for music, but several: there was a market for chansons; there was a market for instrumental arrangements, to which the former town musician had a special affinity; and there was a market for music in pedagogical contexts, where two and three-part music filled a need. The La fleur des chanson series was aimed at this last market. The six volumes of the series were a collection of easy pieces, printed in the tiny 16^o format, with three staves to a page. The first, second and fourth books of the series were in four parts, while the third, fifth and sixth volumes contained works for three voices, all of which, as Susato is at pains to underline on his title pages, are suitable for instruments as well as voice.^[15]

La fleur des chansons et cincquiesme livre a troix parties, contenant xxvi nouvelles chansons, propices a tous instrumentz musicaulx. composees par plusieurs bons maistres musicians.

(A bouquet of songs, book five, in three voices, containing 26 new chansons, suitable for all musical instruments, composed by several excellent musical masters.)

When Susato says that these chansons are “new,” we are a little bit on our guard. When compiling anthologies, publishers frequently salted their collections with chansons having antecedents of some kind or another – old favourites that had been reworked, or old favourites that hadn’t been reworked in the least but were being “newly presented.” Janequin is credited with 8 chansons in Volume 5 of La fleur (which also contains 16 pieces by Thomas Crequillon plus one each by Gombert and Baston) and with two addtional settings in Volume 6, which is otherwise devoted to a wide variety of Netherlands composers.^[16] Irrespective of the age of the companion settings in these volumes, the ten titles attributed to Janequin are clearly not all “new” efforts, since two of the offerings have been literally scissored from an Attaingnant print that had been published twenty years previously. The following chansons are attributed to Janequin in the fifth and sixth volumes of the La fleur series:

Volume 5 (RISM 1552-10)

15. Je demande comme tout esbahy f. 15v (LM220)

16. Paine & travail med tient en la malheure f. 16r (omitted from LM)^[17]

17. M’en allé veoir la belle au corps joly f. 17r (LM221)

18. J’ay trop soudainement aymé f. 17v (LM222)

19. Quant ne te veoy mon cueur det tout se pasme f. 18v (LM223)

20. Toy Cupido qui as toute puissance f. 19r (LM224)

21. De son amour me donne jouyssance f. 20r (LM225)

22. S’il est si doulx parquoy n’est doncques moindre f. 20v (LM226)

Volume 6 (RISM 1552-11)

–. Incessament je suis a dire tien f. 17v (LM227)

­­–. Dictes moi doncq f. 18r (LM228)

Reflections about LM227 “Incessament je suis a dire” and LM228 “Dictes moi doncq” are necessarily limited by the condtion that only the bass partbook for Volume 6 has been preserved. Looking at the bass lines for these chansons (transcribed in this website in the section “Secular music: fragments”) we find the blend of syllabic and melismatic phrases that characterizes much of sixteenth century chanson writing, but (unfortunately for our purposes) no features so unique or remarkable that they provide significant clues about the age, the scoring or the style of the missing voices.

Indeed, “stylistically unremarkable” is perhaps not an injust description for the four settings numbered 16, 18, 19 and 20 in Volume 5 (“Paine & travail”, “J’ay trop soudainement”, “Quant ne te veoy” and Toy Cupido”). Intermittently pleasant and pedestrian, these are settings that could conceivably have been done by Janequin, but they could as well have been committed by any one of a multitude of journeyman editors interested in cranking out relatively unchallenging merchandise for the pedagogical market.

In contrast, “stylistically unremarkable” is not a description that suits by any means number 16 (LM220 “Je me demande”) and number 18 (LM221 “M’en allé”) in Volume 5. These curious cousins are in fact two separate harmonisations of a tenor line copied from a chanson published by Attaingnant in 1528, “A mon reveil.”^[18] The tenor line of this anonymous chanson has been loaned in its entirety and serves as the basis for what are essentially two new compositions based on the same “cantus firmus”: in “Je me demande” the theme is placed in the top voice, in “M’en allé” exactly the same tenor line appears as the middle voice. Calling this extrapolated tenor line a “cantus firmus” risks conjuring up associations which in this case do not apply: the material which serves as a basis for both of compositions is not a melody which at some time enjoyed an independent existence, either in a secular or sacred context. It is simply one of four vocal lines from what was originally a polyphonic texture, where this voice participated on equal footing with the other three voices in the imitation, cadence preparation and the filling out of chords. No changes or adjustments to the tenor have been made in either of the two harmonisations (which incidentally are not harmonically compatible, i.e. performance as a five-part piece was not an intended alternative.) Rather, they would seem to be alternate settings for the second and third verses of “A mon reveil:” their texts have the same rhyme scheme, the same rhymes, the same meter, and share the same ritornello (“Tu auras jouysance.”) These two “verses” (if that is what they are) are not, however, in the same style. LM220 “Je me demande” puts the tenor in the highest voice, and adds a second tenor and a bass underneath, in a style consistent with chansons appearing around 1530. LM221 “M’en allé,” despite sharing both cantus firmus (in the middle voice this time) and text features, is composed in what Adams calls the “mid-century” style, featuring frequent voice-crossings in the two high voices. One of the leading exponents of this style was Tylman Susato himself. Susato was an inveterate arranger, both of his own works and those of others, and LM221 “M’en allé” has more affinity with Susato’s arrangements than with anything securely ascribed to Janequin.

Neither “Je me demand” nor “M’en allé” are shoddy endeavours: they are well-wrought and effective, each in their own way. Inevitably, however, they raise questions about how Janequin came to be related to these two pieces and to the 1528 tenor line on which they are built. Was perhaps Janequin responsible for the four-part chanson from which the tenor line has been extracted? “A mon reveil” is one of 31 chansons in Attaignant’s Chansons nouvelles of 1528. Of these, Attaingnant identifies 16 as belonging to Claudin, one as belonging to Jacotin, and leaves 14 pieces without identification. Of these remaining fourteen, one chanson (LM1 “Réconfortez le petit cueur de moi”) is connected to Janequin in other sources. As such, it is not unthinkable that also the four-voice “A mon reveil” might be his work. Certainly, from a stylistic point of view, it would fit right in, since both the 1528 original and the subsequent treatments feature extended sections of birdcalls (“tu-tu-tu-tu-tu auras”). (In the “Sources: Candidates to the Canon” section of this website I present arguments for making room in the Janequin canon for “A mon resveil”.)

The two remaining settings in Volume 5 of the La Fleur series, LM225 “De son amour” and LM226 “S’il est doux” are not well-wrought and effective settings of a pre-existing cantus firmus, and not even clumsily adapted editorial downsizings. Instead, they are extrapolated middle sections of Janequin chansons published by Attaingnant in 1533, LM21 “En attendant son heureuse précieuse” and LM26 “Qu’est-ce d’amour” respectively. In both of these quasi-rondeaux settings, Janequin moves from four-voice textures in the main body of the chanson to three-voice textures in the contrasting middle sections. What the eager anthologizer who culled these sections failed to take into consideration, however, was that in neither of these middle sections did Janequin remain in three voices through-out. The tenor rejoins the fray for the final measures of section two of “De son amour” and the bass sticks his head in at regular intervals in “Qu’est-ce d’amour.” As a result, in both of the Susato three-voice versions large numbers of important chord members are simply missing, while “S’il est si doux” ends on an utterly improbably e-minor 6/4 chord. What seems to have happened is that these two selections were not edited, much less arranged, but simply extracted directly from three of the original 1533 partbooks and slapped into place.

That leaves us, in sum, with two examples (LM225 and LM226) of consummate editorial sloth, a pair of quirky pieces (LM220 and LM221) that look like the work of a dedicated contrapuntalist amusing himself, and a handful of generally unremarkable other chansons for which we have no earlier confirming concordances, neither as three-part chansons nor as editorial reductions of 4-part originals. Under the circumstances, doubts about the paternity of some of these units may perhaps be forgiven.

Le Roy and Ballard’s Second livre de chansons a trois parties (RISM 1578-15)

In 1578, Le Roy and Ballard published three books of three-part chansons, the repertory of which is largely retrospective. The first of these collections, the Premier livre de chansons a trois parties (RISM 1578-14) attributes eleven pieces to Crequillon, as well as pieces attributed to Claudin (3), De Bussi, Fevin, Hesdin, Millot, Moulu, Nicolas, Hil. Penet (3) and Rennes. The Second livre (RISM 1578-15) attributes pieces to Claudin (2), Di. le Blanc, Consilium, De Bussi, Du Buisson (2), Fevin, Gascongne (5), Hesdin, Hurteur, Millot (2), Richafort (5), Janequin (2), Josquin (4), and De Villiers. The Tiers livre (RISM 1578-16) attributes one piece each to Josquin and Mouton, three to Gascongne and nineteen to Adrian Willært.^[19] Stylistically, the pieces in the three-part books of 1578 are a mixed bag: some are old favorites from close to the start of the century; some, like those attributed to De Bussi, are clearly reworkings of previously existing four-part chansons; and some are attributed to composers (Millot, for example) thought to have been active first after the middle of the century.

Of the chansons attributed to Janequin, LM229 “C’est mon amy” has an appealing tune, but the caliber of the setting is not such that Janequin seems a likely candidate. The melody is a charming and symmetric tune of the kind one has no trouble imagining a favorite at country and court dances alike and is presented straightforwardly in the superius without ornamentation or alteration.^[20] Already here, however, a warning light begins to flash. It is not that Janequin could not write or use charming and symmetric tunes, but only extremely rarely (once in 240 chansons) does he simply put the melody in the superius and let it run its course without subjecting it to some playful alterations or development.^[21]

Further questions arise concerning the plethora of archaic features – old-fashioned cadence turns in ms. 10 and 28, curiously irregular phrase metrics in ms. 7 and 13, a restricted ambitus in the altus, and ungainly leaps in the tenor – all a bit old-fashioned by the time Janequin began to compose. Most unsettling, however, is simply the consumate clumsiness of the whole: jerky and uncharacteristic rhythms, voice crossings and unisons in a squeezed vertical structure and a text underlay so abstractly applied as to raise suspicions about instrumental antecedents. Whether this is recent or dated incompetence is of little importance: the level of craftsmanship is simply not consistent with the rest of Janequin’s production.

LM230 “Si je me plain”, on the other hand, is a competent, if perhaps occasionally pedestrian setting of a poem which had been around from at least ca. 1525, when it appeared in an Alain Lotrain anthology. The musical style is not strikingly archaic, nor is it striking modern: it is in an idiom with features that remain in use across much of the 16th century. However, since reflections on style are seldom completely trustworthy as criteria for making attributions, we are left with an essentially unremarkable piece with no known concordances which surfaces first twenty years after the composer’s death. Without further support, “Si je me plain” remains another example of a three-voice chanson with no particularly convincing claim to place in the Janequin canon.

Janequin was not averse to using three-voice texture. He did so frequently in his four-voice chansons and as semi-independent sections of larger units (in multi-sectioned chansons, in the Lamentations, and as mass movements. However, when it comes to three-voice chansons as independent units, the pattern of publication argues against: all of Lesure and Merritt’s non-heterogeneous three-voice candidates were either printed outside of France or long after the composer’s death. The uneven quality of the pieces under consideration does nothing to dampen our skepticism: several of the units are clearly quick and dirty editorial fixes of a quality that cannot possibly be credited to a composer of Janequin’s standards. The editorial decision to include these pieces in the Chansons polyphoniques can perhaps be appreciated as an attempt to be as comprehensive as possible, but to my mind, none of them seem worthy of inclusion without reservation in the Janequin canon.

1. Transcribed in whole or in part in the «Sacred» section of this website. ↑
2. Quarante et deux chansons (RISM 1529-4), Trente et une chansons (RISM 1535-6) and Quart livre contenant xxvi chansons (Heartz catalog 166). ↑
3. Di Constantio Festa il primo libro de madrigali a tre voci, con la gionta de quaranta madrigali di Ihan Gero, novamente reistampato & da molti errori emendato. Aggiuntoui similmente trenta canzoni francese di Ianequin. (RISM 1541-13.) ↑
4. In Liber decem missarum, RISM [1532]-8. ↑
5. Adams 74:128 wryly observes that if he had indeed done so, perhaps there would have been somewhat fewer errors in his subsequent endeavors. ↑
6. On Gardano and Scotto see Lewis, Mary S. 1984 Antonio Gardano: Venetian Music Printer and 1996 «Twins, Cousins, and Heirs: Relationships among Editions of Music Printed in Sixteenth-Century Venice.» ↑
7. Nr. 7 “Ung petit coup” is by Passereau; only the title of nr. 8 “My levay par ung matin” is the same as the piece published by Attaingnant in 1529-2; nr. 9 “Prenez le galland” is by Sohier, not Janequin; nr. 11 “Pourquoy voules vous cousturier” is probably by Janequin, not Passereau; and nr. 14 “Saincte barbe” is probably by Passereau, not by Janequin. In Gardano’s defence, however, it must be said that Attaingnant did a terrible job of clearly identifying his composers in the shared Janequin-Passereau edition of 1536 from which Gardano did his pirating, and that he (Attaingnant) could have shown a little more consideration to those who had plans for stealing his music at some future opportunity. ↑
8. How many of Gero’s works are original compositions and how many are arrangements of previously existing works is difficult to say, but Gero filled an entire volume with two-voice pieces in this same year, many of which were arrangements of earlier works, and presumably aimed at the “pedagogical” market. This applies to Jhan Gero Madrigali italiani et canzoni francese a due voci, printed by Gardano (RISM 1541-14) but perhaps assembled (the collection also includes pieces by Willaert and Festa) by Scottto, who signed the dedication. See Fenlon, Iain and James Haar. The Italian madrigal in the early sixteenth century: Sources and interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. ↑
9. RISM [ca.1528]-4. ↑
10. RISM 1535-16. ↑
11. RISM 1539-18 and 1539-19. ↑
12. Lesure, François. «Les chansons à trois voix de Clément Janequin.» Revue de musicologie XLIV (1959), 193-98. ↑
13. RISM 1545-17. On Verdelot and the fifth voice see «Verdelot, Susato and Janequin: Fanfares Without Politics» in the Authenticity Studies section of this website. ↑
14. “Het derde musyck boexken: Alderhande danseyre” (facs Alamire 1989, ed. Giesbelt 1936, Amherst 1990) (Krakov, Jagel. bib). Contains dance music arranged by Susato: “Il estoit une fillette” Nr. 19 fo9; Pavane “La battaille” Nr. 41 fo 13v. ↑
15. [1552]-7 (premier), [1552]-8 (second), [1552]-9 (quatriesme), 1552-10 (cinquiesme) and [1552]-11 (sixiesme.) 1552-10 is the only one of the prints to survive in a complete form (Vienna). The RISM brackets in [1552]-11 are unnecessary, as the date 1552 is clearly marked in the surviving bass part. The third book is not listed in RISM. ↑
16. Thomas Crequillon (ca.1505-1557) was a Netherlands composer and frequent contributor to Susato’s firm. His pieces are all in what Adams (“Some Aspects of the Chanson for Three Voices” Acta musicologia LXIX (1977), 227-50) calls “the mid-century three voice style,” with frequent voice-crossings between the two uppermost voices. ↑
17. «Paine & travail» is transcribed in Adams74:586-87. The chanson was mentioned by Lesure in an article from 1951, but was subsequently not included in Chansons polyphoniques, perhaps due to an editorial oversight, since the attribution to Janequin in the preserved tenor partbook was for a time covered by a bibliographical pasteover. ↑
18. No. 22, folio 22v in Chansons nouvelles en musique (RISM-I, 1528-2). ↑
19. The series draws heavily on Attaingnant’s Trente et une chansons (RISM 1535-16), Antico’s La couronne et fleurs (RISM 1536-1), Susato’s Fleurs (RISM 1552-10) and Le Roy and Ballard’s own Tiers livre (RISM 1553-22.) ↑
20. A branle gay with this title is in Attaingnant’s 18 Basses dances (RISM 1530-7, no 20). There is also a setting of the same text in the first of the three Le Roy and Ballard 3-voice collections (RISM 1578-14) by «Nicolas» (perhaps Guillaume Nicolas, active at the royal chapel 1532-33). Adams 1974:250-251 posits that the Nicolas version was «based on» the version attributed to Janquin, but it would seem preferable to regard both as independent responses to a traditional melody. ↑
21. LM110 «Ma peine n’est pas grande» is about as close as Janequin comes to using this procedure with any consistency, and even here, there are moments when the main melodic interest is farmed out to other voices. ↑