The Huguenot Psalter in the Low Countries: a Study of Its Monophonic and Polyphonic Manifestations in the Sixteenth Century
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This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly as received 1841 SLENK, Howard Jay, 1931- THE HUGUENOT PSALTER IN THE LOW COUNTRIES: A STUDY OF ITS MONOPHONIC AND POLYPHONIC MANIFESTATIONS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. (VOLUMES I AND H). The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1965 Music University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE HUGUENOT PSALTER IN THE LOW COUNTRIES* A STUDY OF ITS MONOPHONIC AND POLYPHONIC MANIFESTATIONS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY VOLUME I DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Howard Jay Slenk, B.A., M.A. The Ohio State University 1965 Approved by Adviser Department of Music ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Although scores of people have helped me in the pre paration of this dissertation, I owe the largest measure of gratitude to my adviser, Richard H. Hoppin, who guided my entire program of doctoral studies. He spent literally hundreds of hours helping me improve the final manuscript; thanks to his sharp eyes and profound knowledge of music history many errors were removed. I should like to thank the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare of the United States Government for a National Defense Graduate Fellowship during the years of my doctoral study at the Ohio State University. And I am grateful to the Belgian-American Educational Foundation for a C.R.B. Fellowship that allowed the pre paration of this dissertation in Belgium. Several Ronaissance scholars in Europe and the United States have aided my research. Canon R. B* Lenaerts of the University of Louvain guided my work in Belgium. Leon Voet, curator of the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp, and H. D. Vervliet, his deputy, led me into the fascinating world of Christophe Plantin and gave invaluable assistance in the preparation of Chapter II. François Lesure, Howard M. Brown, and Daniel Heartz made helpful suggestions and ii sent useful material. The guiding light of my research, however, was Pierre Pidoux. The publication of his monu mental Le psautier huguenot in I962 saved me months of preparatory work. In Europe he was father-confessor to my problems of research and organization, always answering my letters of enquiry by return post. The occasional foot notes in this dissertation that correct Mr. Pidoux's find ings are dedicated to him in deepest respect. Without his publications and stimulating advice, this dissertation would have been much smaller in scope. In the preparation of the final draft, 1 enjoyed the suggestions of Alexander Main and Norman Phelps. My sister Thelma was in charge of the make-up of Volume II, and Edward Largent copied the music. Andrew Broekema gave immeasurable assistance in typing and proofreading. Let me end with a tribute to my wife, who read large portions of the manuscript and suffered with me the birth- pangs of the Ph. D. Her most important service, however, was that of doorkeeper to my study, where she held at bay two affectionate children determined to lure their father from his books. Howard J. Slenk August 1965 iii VITA 29 June 1931 Born - Holland, Michigan 1953 .... B.A., Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan I953-I95U . Fulbright Scholar, Royal Conservatory, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 1957-1960 . Instructor, Department of Music, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan 1960-1963 . National Defense Graduate Fellow, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1961 .... A. M., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1963-1964 . C.R.B. Fellow (Belgian-American Educa tional Foundation), Antwerp, Belgium PUBLICATIONS A Well-Appointed Church Music. Grand Rapids: kfm. B. Eerdmans, I960. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field; Musicology Professors; Richard H. Hoppin and Rend B. Lenaerts Minor Fields; Organ and Choral Conducting Professors; Robert Fountain, Marilyn Mason, and Anthon van der Horst iv CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii VITA i V ILLUSTRATIONS vii INTRODUCTION 1 Chapter I. PSALMS PUBLISHED WITHOUT MUSIC 8 The Early Religious Poetry of Clément Marot The Trente Pseaulmes of Marot The Cinquante Fseaumes of Marot II. THE COMPLETE HUGUENOT PSALTER 37 The Edition of Christophe Plantin, 1^6U The Influence of the Huguenot Psalter on Dutch Psalmody III. POLYPHONIC HUGUENOT PSALMS IN THE CHANSON COLLECTIONS (15^2-1556) 69 The Composers The Music IV. THE PSEAULMES CINQUANTE OF JEAN LOUYS 120 Biography The Monophonic Source for the Pseaulmes Cinquante The Style of Jean Louys* Polyphonic Psalms V. POLYPHONIC HUGUENOT PSALMS IN THE CHANSON COLLECTIONS (Ij64-1389) 1?0 The Composers The Music VI. THE ROLE OF THE HUGUENOT PSALM IN THE 200 LOW COUNTRIES Psalm-Singing and the Beginnings of the Calvinist Struggle in the Low Countries Music in the Established Calvinist Church, 1578-1585 On the Use of the Polyphonic Huguenot Psalms Vi ILLUSTRATIONS Table Page 1. Timbres for Cltfment Marot’s Psalms 25 2. The Timbres in Psalmes de David (Antwerp, 15^1) 27 3. Huguenot Psalters Containing the Melodies Used in Jean Louys* Pseaulmes Cinquante 138 Figure 1. A Print by Frans Hogenberg Showing a Hedge- Sermon Outside the Walls of Antwerp 210 vii INTRODUCTION '.vhen Marguerite of Navarre wrote Le miroir de 1res- chrestienne princesse Marguerite de France in 1^33» she included a rhymed version of Psalm 6 by the poet element Marot. Although the princess probably had pious reasons for selecting Marot*s poem, her choice shows that she was in step with the latest fashions of the French court, where Marot's psalms, among other, more worldly pursuits, were ail the rage. Monarchs, courtiers, and courtesans sang the psalms of David to popular tunes. Francis 1 as well as Henry II and his queen Catherine de Medici were known to be fond of Marot*s psalms, and Emperor Charles V during his Parisian visit in l^UO urged the poet to continue his work. The gay. Catholic court of France is, ironically, the setting in which opens the history of the sober Cal vinist Psalter. The origin and growth of the psalter form a short but intense episode in the history of music. In less than a century the poetry was written, the psalm melodies were composed, and the main corpus of polyphonic music inspired by the psalter was created. This period of growth paral lels the growth and spread of Calvinism in Western Europe. 1 2 When Marot began writing his psalms in the early 1530's, the works of Calvin were first being published in France* In the following decades Calvin's new doctrine, accompanied by the texts and melodies of the Huguenot Psalter, spread over all of Western Europe, finding an especially receptive audi ence in France, Switzerland, and the Low Countries. A century later most of the boundaries dividing Catholic and Protestant countries had been established, and the last com poser of distinction to find inspiration in the Calvinist Psalter had died. Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck's four books of polyphonic psalms signal the end of an era in two respects. His vocal music in general is the "brilliant and noble sun set" of the great production of the Netherlanders in the field of vocal polyphony;^ his psalm settings mark the twi light era of the music of Calvinism. The Calvinist churches of Western Europe continued to use the psalter, but the pe riod of creative activity begun in Paris by Cldment Marot ended in Amsterdam with Sweelinck's contrapuntal master pieces. The history of Protestant psalmody in the Low Coun tries can be divided into two main categories— psalms in Dutch and in French. There were, and still are, two lan guages spoken in the delta provinces of Western Europe, and rhymed translations of the psalms in both languages ^Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance (rev. ed.; New York, 1959), P» 518. 3 were sung by the adherents to the new religion. The docu mented musical history of these psalms begins in l^kO in Antwerp when Simon Cock published the first edition of the Souterliedekens, a collection of Dutch psalms fitted to popular melodies. One year later, Antoine des Gois, an other Antwerp printer, published Psalmes de David, a French psalter stipulating popular melodies for some of its psalms. The two streams of psalmody that began with these publi cations followed parallel channels. The Souterliedekens enjoyed great popularity. The monophonic edition was republished many times, and its texts and tunes were set polyphonically by several Netherlandish composers. Gradually, however, both the texts and the melo dies were replaced by psalms from later Dutch psalters, which had fallen under the influence of the Calvinist strong holds to the southeast. The psalters of Jan Utenhove and Lucas de Heere contain many psalms patterned after those of Cldment Marot and Theodore de B&ze, and also take some of p their melodies from the psalters of Geneva and Strasbourg. The complete triumph of the Genevan tradition occurred in 1566 with the publication of Psalmen Davids, the work of the Calvinist minister Petrus Dathenus. Dathenus translated the Marot-De B&ze texts and fitted his translations to the standard Genevan melodies. This psalter was accepted in p This process is explained in more detail in Chap ter II. u 1568 as the official version by the Dutch-speaking Calvinist churches of the Netherlands.3 Polyphonic settings of early Dutch psalms other than the Souterliedekens are very scarce. The few that have come down to us do not have texts by the well-known psalter poets, but by unknown authors.^ Although there is some evidence that the Dathenus texts were set polyphonically in the six teenth century,-5 the first polyphonic publications to contain the official Dutch texts are from the following century. These were Dutch editions of the note-against-note detailed study of early Dutch psalmody is S.