1 LP - 1C 063-30 935 Q - (p) 1977

1 CD - 8 26503 2 - (c) 2000
1 CD - CDM 7 63070 2 - (c) 1989

AIR DE COUR - Airs à Boire, Chants sous la Règne de Louis XIII




- Eau vive, source d'amour (Jacques Mauduit, 1557-1627) 3' 09"
- C'est un mant, ouvrez la porte (Anonym) 1' 07"
- Si je languis d'un martire incogneu (Joachim Thibaut de Courville, um 1535-1581) 2' 27"
- Un jour que ma rebelle (Gabriel Bataille, 1575-1630) 1' 19"
- Si jamais  mon âme blessée (Pierre Guédron (?), 2. Hälfte des 16. Jhdt. - 1621) 2' 44"
- Cessés mortels de soupirer (Pierre Guédron (?), 2. Hälfte des 16. Jhdt. - 1621) 5' 55"
- Ma bergère non légère (Gabriel Bataille, 1575-1630) 2' 21"
- Quel espoir de guarir (Pierre Guédron (?), 2. Hälfte des 16. Jhdt. - 1621) 3' 50"
- Qui veut chasser une migraine (Gabriel Bataille, 1575-1630) 2' 36"



- Petit sein où l'Amour a bâti son séjour (François le Fegueux, ?-?) 1' 25"
- Paisible et ténébreuse nuit (Étienne Moulinié, um 1600 - nach 1669?) 2' 59"
- Plaignez la rigueur de mon sort (Antoine Boësset, 1585?-1643) 1' 54"
- Quelque merveilleuse chose (Étienne Moulinié, um 1600 - nach 1669?) 2' 22"
- N'espérez plus, mes yeux (Antoine Boësset, 1585?-1643) 3' 11"
- Lors que tes beaux yeux mignonne (Grand Rue, ?-?) 1' 30"
- Ennuits, désespoirs et douleurs (Antoine Boësset, 1585?-1643) 4' 32"
- Je suis ravi de mon Uranie (Étienne Moulinié, um 1600 - nach 1669?) 2' 23"
- Enfin la beauté que j'adore (Étienne Moulinié, um 1600 - nach 1669?) 6' 08"



 
Nigel Rogers, Tenor
Anthony Bailes, Laute
 






Luogo e data di registrazione
Evagelische Kirche, Séon (Svizzera) - 6-9 settembre 1976

Registrazione: live / studio
studio

Producer / Engineer
Gerd Berg / Johann-Nikolaus Matthes


Prima Edizione LP
EMI Electrola "Reflexe" - 1C 063-30 935 Q - (1 lp) - durata 52' 36" - (p) 1977 - Analogico (Quadraphonic)

Prima Edizione CD
EMI "Classics" - CDM 7 63070 2 - (1 cd) - durata 52' 36" - (c) 1989 - ADD

Edizione CD
EMI "Classics" - 8 26503 2 - (1 cd) - durata 52' 36" - (c) 2000 - ADD

Note
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AIRS DE COUR
At first sight the French air de cour of the 18th century seems to be the most spontaneous musical expression of the time. The clarity of its structure, the fullness of inspiration - despite of its poetical preciosity, its intimate atmosphere make us forget that in actual fact there had been a long process of hard work during which the polyphonic music of the Renaissance was gradually receding into the background, eventually making way for the accompanied air, which was enthusiastically cultivated during the reign of Louis XIII. The history of vocal music in France in the course of the 16th century is rather complex. Around 1530 we find two simultaneous, antagonistic tendencies, which are most likely subject to the literary evolution of the time: There is, on one side, the old polyphonic song, sumptuous setting for the most distinguished poetical forms, and, on the other, those voix de ville or vaudevilles coming from Paris, polyphonic or monodic works which are light, easy to understand and in keeping with the mentality of the people, and by the end of the century they had become entirely successful. These sort of songs make a big point of the text or even each word, which fact is perhaps the result of the influence exerced upon the type by French humanists and Italian madrigalists. From this time on the advocates of the new style did without the traditional poetic forms and preferred strophic texts with or without refrain sung to only one melody; the syllabic notation favoured homophony, while great importance was attached to the upper voice in the vocal setting. In about 1570 the Académie de Poésie et de Musique was founded by Jean Antoine de Baïf, and they tried to unite these two styles, applying a standard as strict as it was the rule in the lyric poetry of antiquity. So it was in the course of some decades that French vocal music brought about a quite new style: the air whose rhythm sometimes a little rigid would become more and more flexible in contact with a more and more subtile literary style.
In this short review of the aesthetic and formal transformations conditioning the development of the air de cour we did not make mention of a practice that gave the type its own peculiar coloration and charm. The lute song had actually existed for quite a long time, and we do not have to go back to the age of the troubadours, because the publications by Franciscus Bossinensis (1509), Arnolt Schlick (1512), Pierre Attaignant (1529) or Pierre Phalèse (1553) furnish evidence of a refined art having for the most part developed from polyphonic vocal works, which were adapted and so to speak miniaturized for the stringed instrument, which is an ideal support of the voice. As to the term air de cour, it appears for the first time on the front page of the anthology published in 1571 by the Paris editor, composer and lutenist Adrian Le Roy, an anthology in which he confines himself to adapting the polyphonic airs which the royal organist Nicolas de la Grotte had composed on poems by Ronsard and his contemporaries. The choice of the term shows how enthusiastic the nobility felt for this new song form: Outside of France we must mention Emanual Adriaenssen, who published his books in Antwerp, and Jean-Baptiste Besard from Besançon, whose copious anthology appeared in Cologne; both made this repertory known and invited others to imitation. But in its country of origin the song-book entitled Livre d’Airs de cour, miz sur le luth had been the only of its sort for a long time. For it was not only an age of political and religious troubles, it was also a period of transition in the field of language, poetry and music. The position of the lute, however, symbol of instrumental perfection, was jeopardized again by its most illustrious masters. Its stands to reason that this climate of insecurity hardly encouraged the publication of such costly works as were the lute tablatures. But this period of obvious barrenness enabled at least some printers such as Ballard, for instance, to produce a typography distinguished by its clarity and adequacy to the new style which was developing. This new typography gave all the anthologies that were going to be published an aspect of uniform beauty.
This period, which began during the reign of King Henry IV, continued under Louis XIII and finished as later as with Louis XV’s accession to the throne, was a second Golden Age in the history of the lute. This was the moment when France, striking up her own song in the concert of nations, put an end to the Italian supremacy and dictated her own laws to the artists from all over Europe. From now on the lute was the French instrument par excellence, which enthused all classes of the population. The instrument was worshipped like a God, it was “the arbitrator of love, peace and war”, and Abraham Bosse represented it on the front page of his book Rhétorique des Dieux,* a worshipping which the distinguished society as well as the common people indulged in so passionately that they all were severely criticized by the moralists of the time. We must mention that the lute, emblem of poetry, was also the symbol of the historic fashion which was so often decried and which we know under the name of préciosité. We will look out in vain for the sense of harmony and moderation in the first generation of the précieux, the particular taste that made them of all people the forerunners of the classics. On the contrary, the stiltedness, hyperbole, affectedness of the style entered into competition with an antiquated, pithless, out-of-date Petrarcism. When in 1608 the song-book Airs de différents autheurs, mis en tablature de luth par Gabriel Bataille was published by Pierre Ballard, first instance of a long series of similar anthologies, the texts chosen by some of the most illustrious musicians during the reign of Louis XIII showed only few exceptions to the rule. Songs, recitatives and stanzas carelessly rhymed by poor poets whose anonymity is often hard to penetrate were most frequent; and if some of the pieces happened to go by the name of a Desportes, Malherbe or Rapin, they rarely did credit to their authors. Following the example of their colleagues in England, the composers of French airs were in quest of ductile material in the texts conditioning the liberty and fluidity of their songs: What had been only dullness and convention was now going to be transformed into a flexible form of subtile unity: The lute song, often integrated into the ballets of the court, which was a throughout national institution, represented from then on the most authentic expression of the musical art in France. In England, Guédron appeared beside John Dowland and Giulio Caccini in the song-book entitled A Musicall Banquet (1610) by Robert Dowland, the son of the famous lutenist, and some years later Edward Filmer published a remarkable anthology containing nineteen French Court-Aires, with their Ditties Englished, of four or five parts, together with that of the lute... (1629). In the German-speaking countries, Heinrich Albert, father of the German lied, also made a contribution to the French school in his book Arien oder Melodeien (1638-1650)... and numerous were also the amateurs who, eager for novelties, copied the airs de cour into small note-books, the conventional repertory of “Hausmusik”. Mention must also be made of the Netherlands, where this kind of music was greatly appreciated as becomes aparent from Constantin Huygens’s correspondence; in the third part of his Parthodia sacra et profana, he took a pride in disclosing the source of his inspiration. In our days libraries all over the world remind us of this exceptional fashion, since at all times these anthologies with French airs for voice and lute have belonged to the best represented works of the musical bibliograhy.
The structure of the air de cour is quite simple. Its syllabic character excluding textual repetition produces phrases that are in conformity with the verses and therefore all of different length. The bar-lines, which appear only at the end of the verse, give an impression of liberty and are often misleading to those who ignore the problems of prosody and rhythm of the period. The melodies are often divided into parts the first of which may be repeated; if the text has a refrain, it is only this part that is repeated. Sometimes it is the composer himself who ornaments these restatements, but most frequently they are improvised by the performer who is out for displaying his inventiveness and virtuosity. This practice - it was the standard that had been applied to a singer’s quality until very recently - bears upon mainly two complimentary elements:
1) the ornamentation which, by means of accents, portamenti, tremolos, passage notes, cadences and all other vocal artifices, emphasizes one syllable, one significant word ofthe text -
2) the diminutions embracing more and more important parts of the melody (if it consists of long notes) and, early in the century, almost automatically produce doubles, real variations allowing the virtuosos to transform their songs in a way that was to extort infinite admiration from the baroque audience. It stands to reason that we must make a big point of the influence that came from Italy: In the winter of 1604/05, Giulio Caccini was staying at the court of
King Henry IV with his wife and two daughters, and they must have left a lasting impression on those who had the chance of listening to the celebrated advocates of the nuove musiche. And even if Père Mersenne could not but accept the Italians’ supremacy in the sixth volume of his Harmonia Universelle (1636), where he stated that they were “piquing themselves on singing well and knowing music much better than the French”, even if he referred to the works by “Jules Caccin, called the Roman” and Jiacopo Peri, he also suggested in which way the theatrical, passionate declamatory style he had just described ought to conform to the French douceur so as to suite his compatriots’ taste. It is most interesting to see that the Italians were not at all indifferent to their neighbours' researches and went to the source so as to study the bel canto a la francese.
The differences between the two conceptions, with the Italian monodic style cultivated by the “Camarata” in Florence on one side and the French air of the first third of the 17th century on the other are also to be found in the field of accompaniment. Beyond the Alps, they preferred the glorious timbre of the chitarrone so as to realize, al arbitrario del sonatore, a bass accompaniment with at times scrupulously exact figuring, whereas the French, faithful to the intimate, mysterious sound of the lute with its gutstrings, had the accompanying parts to their airs engraved in tablature. Despite of the higher tessitura used in favour of the “extraordinary chords” the lute maintained the "old sound" of its origin, just as well as the theorbo, indispensable instrument to the air composers of the following generation. The instrument with ten duplicated strings, celebrated by Francisque, Nicolas Vallet or Robert Ballard, was appropriate for the accompaniment to the airs in a higher tessitura, which here and there adapted a detail from the polyphonic version published synchronically in these first years of the century. But most frequently we find a simple, independent, chordal accompaniment; easy to play for the amateur it might also have been the point from where the skilful lutenist could start to extemporize his part.
Lastly some remarks on the composers of the works in the present anthology some of which have been recorded for the first time. With the exception of Joachim Thibaut de Courville and Jacques Mauduit, both musicians in contact with Antoine de Baïf’s literary circle and here representing the air de cour at the beginning of its development; also with the exception of Jean-Baptiste Besard (c. 1567 - after 1617), universal genius and lute virtuoso, author of two invaluable methodical anthologies, all air de cour composers were born in the last third of the 16th century.
The oldest of the musicians, Pierre Guédron, in 1613 “Intendant des Musiques de la Chambre" of the King and Queen Mother was particularly active in the domain of the ballet de cour and polyphonic or monodic music. The 150 airs de cour or so with lute accompaniment, which he had published by his friends between 1608 and 1620, prove his dramatic temper and his preference for expressive declamation. The air Cessés mortels de soupirer the first phrase of which is not without a reminiscence of John Dowland’s famous work Lacrimae proved so successful that it was cited in Charles Sorel’s Histoire comique de Francion (1623).
Antoine Boesset, Sieur de Villedieu, Guédron’s son-in-law, succeeded him in all his offices when Guédron died. Being an excellent singer and most admired by Luigi Rossi, he gave his airs de cour the charm and flexibility we often try to find in vain in the pieces his father-in-law had composed. Seven books containing airs de cour with lute tablature present works whose genuine beauty seems to come up to Decartes’s ideal, who took the view that “music had to delight us and arouse a variety of feelings". N’espérez plus mes yeux gives us an idea of the range of vocal virtuosity commonly found in the 17th century: after the simple song without any ornamentation whatever there are three examples of diminutions chosen from those written down by Père Mesenne in accordance with the “best and most experienced masters and those meeting with public approval“: Moulinié, Le Bailly - who is said to have been the father of this kind of singing - and Monsieur Boesset.
And as to Gabriel Bataille, it redounds to his credit that he was the first to publish the first anthology of airs de cour, soon followed by other volumes which were published regularly until 1615. He was a lutenist and Marie de Médicis’s and Anna of Austria’s music teacher, and he played an important part in view of the royal ballets. Eager to contribute to the prestige of the air de cour, he avidly transcribed polyphonic works composed in the generation before him as well as by his contemporaries, and himself wrote about fifty airs in his own style, which are considered the gayest and wittiest songs of the type. The youngest of the group, Etienne Moulinié, born in Languedoc, was “Chef de la Musique de Monseigneur le Duc d‘Orléans, frère unique du Roy” in 1628, a position he held until 1660, when the prince died. As a singer he enjoyed a high reputation, and his six books of airs de cour discredited him with the public, for it was a style that had had its day. In vain did he try to flatter his audience when introducing into his book Italian, Spanish and Gascon melodies with guitar accompaniment, an instrument that was a great success at the time. The troubles of the Fronde caused a dangerous interruption to the publishing of his works, and some years later, his returning home in his native country marked the irrevocable end of the air de cour, this subtile, moving, frail and unique type of musical writing.
Claude Chauvel
Translation by Gudrun Meier

* This was the title of the sumptuous anthology “published c. 1650 and containing the finest pieces for lute by the illustrious composer Denis Gaultier” and Ennemond, his cousin.

EMI Electrola "Reflexe"