De La Réforme

Chansons et psaumes de la Réforme The Awakening of Protestant Music. The Catholic Church had confined the execution of liturgical singing to a single ecclesiastical body: the ‘schola’. The Reformation, however, aimed at returning it to the congregation of the faithful. This musical practice did not end at the doors of the church or the schools, but the singing of the Psalms could be heard in the streets, the shops and in the homes of those who practised domestic polyphonic music. It was here that the Psalms and religious chansons were soon to dethrone – sometimes by simply changing the words – the popular Renaissance secular chansons, now considered ‘foolish, vain and unseemly’ – in a word, HMA 1951672 immoral. We know that the 16th century Reformation introduced a more ‘democratic’ approach to the performance of music in the Church by entrusting the execution of the liturgical singing to the con gre gation instead of to the specially trained singers of the ‘schola’, who from a very early period had reduced the Christian people to silence during the celebration of the religious service. In Protestant Churches it became customary from the very beginning for the entire congregation to respond to the offici ating priest with hymns in the vernacular sung in unison to melodies that were easy to memor ise and to sing. This gave birth in the Lutheran Church to the immense treasury of German chorales initiated by Martin Luther himself, and in the French Calvinist Church to the 150 Psalms of David translated and put into rhyme by Clément Marot and Théodore de Bèze. All of the verses of this closed, but essentially bib lical cycle were sung over a period of about six months, i.e. twice a year, during the services on Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday, which was a day of prayer. But we also know that among French Protestants this musical practice did not end when the faithful left the church or the schoolroom, because a place was allocated to the singing of the Psalms, in which children very soon participated, side by side with the family reading of the Bible, for the enhancement of domestic piety. It was also heard in the streets and shops and often punctuated the professional activity of craftsmen and artisans. Among the more cultivated classes of the population who practised polyphonic singing and playing at home as a learned entertainment, psalms and then sacred chansons gradually made their way into the repertoire and dethroned the secular chansons, now deemed foolish, vain and unseemly – in other words, immoral. From 1542 to the end of the 16th century many composers dipped into the literary and spiritual treasury of these Huguenot Psalms and their rele vant church melodies, using them in compositions of extremely varied forms, vocal and instrumental forces and length, ‘not for the purposes of being sung in Church, but to rejoice in God, especially at home’ (Claude Goudimel, 1565). Some of these Psalms were developed into motets in which all of the stanzas were set to music, resulting in large-scale compositions in several parts. The most illustrious practitioners of this form were Claude Goudimel (eight books of Psaumes en forme de motets, 1551-1566) and Claude Le Jeune (Le Dodécacorde, 1598). Benedictus Appenzeller’s four-part setting of Psalm 130, Du fond de ma pensée (1542), is one example, although not very characteristic, because it does not yet make use of the ecclesiastic melody. Most of the Psalms, however, were treated in a more concise style, with the melody in the tenor or the soprano, all the stanzas being sung to the melody of the first one (Clément Janequin, Claude Goudimel, Claude Le Jeune, Paschal de l’Estocart). The most innovative form, the source of what we call the chorale, consisted in the note for note harmonisation of the customary melody. The most notable composers of this type were, once again, Claude Goudimel and Claude Le Jeune. Only one example is given on this recording, Clément Janequin’s setting of Psalm 23, Mon Dieu me paist. It is in the simplest style imaginable, intended for the widest pos sible distribution among musicians and clear enough for the text to be understood and remembered by any audience. Because this is not concert music, but music destined for the ‘re- creation’ of those who practice it, as Jean Calvin wrote in his preface to the Psalter of 1543, ‘For, among the things that are proper and able to recreate man and to give him sensuous enjoyment, music is either the first, or one of the principal ones, and we must consider that it is a gift of God intended for this purpose.’ Neither is it choral music, but personal and intimate music in which each part is taken by a single singer who, if need be, may be replaced by an instrument. An example of this practice is Pierre Certon’s four-part setting of Psalm 32, O bienheureux celuy, the 1 performance of which unites two voices and two instruments. Purely instrumental music, too, was developing rapidly at this period, as witnessed by the pieces for lute or for organ written to Psalm melodies, like the Fantaisies by Eustache du Caurroy heard on this recording. The art music of the Reformation is not, however, limited to the polyphonic psalm settings. The ‘chanson spirituelle’ is another, quantitatively no less import ant, aspect of it. The term denotes all of the music written to religious or moral istic texts other than paraphrases of the Psalms. Not compelled to use a pre-existing melody, they assume a freer, often more audacious character and are stylistically closer to the secular chanson. An outstanding example can be heard in Claude Le Jeune’s five-part chanson Hélas mon Dieu, ton ire s’est tournée. On the words ‘Hélas mon Dieu’ it presents two expressive passages using the chromatic technique of the ‘Anciens’, considered as particularly appropriate to the ex pression of lamentation. Among the large number of these ‘chansons spirituelles’ mention must be made of the Octonaires de la Vanité du Monde , short eight-line moral poems by three Protestant poets, the pastors Antoine de la Roche-Chandieu and Simon Goulart, and Joseph Du Chesne, a chemist and physician to Henry IV. The subjects of these poems are inspired by a theme common to religious thinking of the time, the renunciation of the world and its allurements, a world that the poets endeavoured to depict by employing colourful images and conceits, which in turn furnished composers like Paschal de l’Estocart and Claude Le Jeune with the occasion for vigorous and picturesque musical de scrip tions which endow their Octonaires with a richness of invention and originality quite uncommon for the period. They could be defined as French spiritual madrigals. Paschal de l’Estocart’s fifty Octonaires de la Vanité du Monde were published in 1581. Three of them may be heard on this recording. As for Claude Le Jeune’s Octonaires, published in 1606, six years after his death, they are grouped into twelve suites of three chansons each, and correspond to the twelve Renaissance modes. The first and second are in four parts and the third in three. He intended adding two more pieces in five and in six parts, but his death prevented him from completing the project. These Octonaires take us far from the melodic and contrapuntal style of the Franco-Flemish school. With them we have already entered the Baroque era and one can only dream of what the Reformed musical tradition might have become if the restrictions on religious freedom, the progressive shrinking of French Protestant ism and the ensuing persecutions in the 17th century had not definitively put an end to the brief but astonishingly rich history of which the above is a broadly sketched outline. Marc Honegger Translated by Derek Yeld 2 PASCHAL DE L’ESTOCART CLAUDE GOUDIMEL Psaume XXXIII Psaume CXXXVII 1 | Réveillez vous chacun fidèle,* 5 | Estans assis aux rives aquatiques Menez en Dieu joye or endroit, De Babylon, plorions mélancoliques, Louange et très séante et belle Nous souvenans du pays de Sion : En la bouche de l’homme droit. Et au milieu de l’habitation, Sur la douce harpe Où de regrets tant de pleurs espandismes, Pendue en escharpe, Aux saules verds nos harpes nous pendismes. Le Seigneur louez, De luts, d’espinettes, Lors ceux qui là captifs nous emmenerent, Sainctes chansonnettes De les sonner fort nous importunerent, A son nom jouez. Et de Sion les chansons reciter : Las, dismes-nous, qui pourroit inciter Nos tristes coeurs à chanter la louange BENEDICTUS APPENZELLER De nostre Dieu en une terre estrange ? Psaume CXXX Or toutefois puisse oublier ma dextre 2 | Du fond de ma pensée, L’art de harper, avant qu’on te voye estre, Au fond de tous ennuyctz Jerusalem, hors de mon souvenir. Dieu, je t’ai adressée Ma langue puisse à mon palais tenir, Ma clameur jours et nuyctz Si je t’oublie, et si jamais ay joye, Entends ma voix plaintive Tant que premier ta delivrance j’oye. Seigneur, il est saison Ton aureille ententive Aussi seras, Babylon, mise en cendre : Soit a mon oraison. Et tres-heureux qui te saura bien rendre Le mal dont trop de pres nous viens toucher : Si ta rigueur expresse Heureux celuy qui viendra arracher En nos peschez tu tiens Les tiens enfans de ta mamelle impure, Seigneur, Seigneur qui est ce Pour les froisser contre la pierre dure. Qui demourra des tiens Si n’es tu point severe Mais propice à mercy. CLÉMENT JANEQUIN C’est pourquoy on revere Psaume X Toy et ta loy aussy.

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