Ottawa Chamber Music Society

Dominique Visse - countertenor
Bruno Boterf - tenor
Vincent Bouchot - baritone
François Fauché - baritone
Renaud Delaigue - bass
Eric Bellocq - lute, organ

Programme*

Nous sommes de l'ordre de saint Babouin Priere devant le repas : O souverain Pasteur Lucescit Maulgre moy Martin menoit son pourceau La chasse du lievre Branles d’Ecosse & Romaine lute/luth solo	Loyset Compère c1445-1518 Clemens non Papa c1510-1555/6 Roland de Lassus ?1530-1594 Tylman Susato c1510/15-1570 Clément Janequin c1485-c1558 Nicolas Gombert c1495-c1560 Guillaume Morlaye c1510- c1558
N’as tu poinct mis ton haut bonnet Une fillette bien goriere Plaindre ny vault Du beau Tétin Déploration sur la mort de Jehan Ockeghem	Ninot le Petit c1500 Clemens non Papa Rocourt fl.1540-50 Clément Janequin Josquin Despres c1450/5-1521
I n t e r m i s s i o n
Musæ Jovis Du laid tétin Plaisir nay plus Il estoit une fillette Mon amy m'avoit promis	Benedictus Appenzeller c1480/88 ap.1558 Clemens non Papa Christianus de Hollandre c1510/15-1568/9 Clément Janequin Ninot le Petit
Prélude & Romaine lute/luth solo	Guillaume Morlaye
La chasse du cerf Je ne mange point de porc Pour quelque paine que j’endure Hau, hau je boys Priere apres le repas : Pere esternel	Clément Janequin Claudin de Sermizy c1490-1562 Eustache Barbion b./né c1556 Claudin de Sermizy Tylman Susato

*Note: spelling and accents are in old French

Biography

"The Ensemble Clément Janequin... gave a vivid performance...with singing that was sometimes sweet and smoothly blended, often raucous, frequently very funny and always virtuosic... Early music flourishes in Washington, but the city seldom hears a concert like this one. - The Washington Post

Founded in Paris in 1978, the Ensemble Clément Janequin, directed by Dominique Visse, has become one of the world's most renowned ensembles performing sacred and secular vocal music of the Renaissance, from Josquin to Monteverdi. The Ensemble's inimitable performances of the 16th-century French chanson have brought to light a golden age in the history of French music, and their recordings for Harmonia Mundi are considered benchmark interpretations of this repertoire.

With tremendous appeal to a broad audience, these works by Janequin, Sermisy, Bertrand, Costeley, Lassus, Le Jeune and others abound in the stylistic contrasts so dear to the Renaissance: the touching lyricism of the chanson amoureuse, the earthy humour of the chanson rustique that draws on popular farce, the sounds of war, nature and street cries - a unique marriage of popular and high Renaissance culture.

The Ensemble has performed throughout the world and their appearances are among the highlights of many concert seasons in premiere venues such as London's Wigmore Hall. In 2003, the Ensemble performed to acclaim in the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival. Extensive tours in collaboration with the French Foreign Ministry most recently included Australia, Hong Kong and China.

Program Notes

"Les plaisirs du palais"

Drinking, feasting, drinking, hunting, more drinking, and seduction (or downright
debauchery) were the sensual pleasures of a Renaissance court. But there were
subtler, more intellectual pleasures too: music, dancing, comedy, poetry, and a
love of cleverness or caprice – what a 16th-century Englishman might have called
a fancy or conceit. In this programme we have a banquet of these sensual and
intellectual pleasures, captured in music and dressed in the sort of conceit a
Renaissance mind would have adored – a palindrome around the interval such
that the second half of the concert is a mirror image of the first. (Compare the
positions in the programme of 'Du beau Tétin' and 'Du laid tétin' or 'La chasse du
lievre' and 'La chasse du cerf' to see the palindrome at work.) And to push the
conceit a step further, the reflections in this mirror are sometimes reverse images:
the beautiful and the ugly, for instance, or a musician at one moment the source,
the next the object, of a lament on the death of a composer.

Music and death mark the turning-points in this palindrome. Josquin's Nymphes
des bois is a celebrated lament ('déploration') on the death of the composer
Ockeghem, reproducing the introit of the Requiem mass in the tenor and finding
several other echos of the older composer's musical style. Then Appenzeller
similarly cites Josquin's own demise in his Latin motet Musae jovis. Clemens non
Papa and Janequin each supply ruminations on a more earthy theme – the female
breast (the tétin songs) – an object of delight for Janequin, but the very opposite
for Clemens. Four songs on the pains of life (Maulgre moy, Plaindre ny vault,
Plaisir nay plus and Pour quelque paine) are balanced by four songs on the
pleasures of love (Une fillette and Il estoit une fillette) and its perils (N'as tu poinct
mis and Mon amy m'avoit promis).

Pigs have been inexplicably underused as a source of great inspiration for songwriters
over the centuries, but two make comical appearances in these songs. In
each case there is a cautionary tale. In Sermizy's Je ne mange point, the indelicate
eating habits of a pig are cited as a good reason for not eating pork, whilst in
Janequin's narrative Martin menoit, Martin's amorous interlude on the way to
market is interrupted at the moment of truth when the pig, tied to his lover's leg
for safekeeping, understandably takes fright. Animals fare little better in the two
hunting songs, La chasse du cerf (the stag hunt) and La chasse du lievre (the hare
hunt), though it is the hunting dogs which take centre stage and provide many of
the vivid sound effects in the songs. In fact, much of each chanson is a dialogue
involving the hound and his master with the hound having plenty to contribute.
The hare hunt ends in a tavern for a feast within a feast, and no doubt the perfect
opportunity for a pair of drinking songs such as Sermizy's Hau, hau je boys or, for
that more discerning drunkard, Lassus's half-Latin Lucescit.

Of the list of courtly pleasures only dancing is under-represented. But Guillaume
Morlaye's Branles d'Ecosse (Scottish branle) was a regional variant of a popular
circle or paired dance, and the Romaine (Romanesca) was a repeating chord
sequence that was frequently used as the basis for dance music.

This musical banquet is framed by two prayers (O souverain and Pere esternel)) for
before and after the meal. They are the start and end-points of the palindrome
and, along with the déplorations surrounding the interval, are opportunities for a
little more serious-minded reflection on the joys and tribulations of life. But it is
Compère's appetizer Nous sommes de l'ordre de Saint Babouin ('We are of the
brotherhood of drunkards') with its offerings of food, wine, sex and music, which
best captures the spirit of the occasion: 'good wine … red herring salad … a pretty
girl in our arms … and trumpets, bugles, and silver drums when we wake'.

Most of the composers featured here came from the region we now associate with
northern France and the Netherlands, a legacy of the great musical culture that
had surrounded the 15th-century court of Burgundy. Only Morlaye, Sermizy and
Janequin were of certain French origin. Of Ninot le Petit we know too little to be
sure. Most learned their craft and partly made a living as church and Cathedral
musicians, such as Barbion at Notre Dame in Courtrai, and Rocourt at Liège
Cathedral. They were sometimes closely connected: Gombert was probably
Josquin's pupil; Appenzeller, at the Flemish court, helped secure printing rights for
Susato (who, like Guillaume Morlaye, was an instrumentalist as well as a music
publisher and composer); Susato in turn had a business relationship with Clemens
non Papa. Above all, most of them were employed by a royal or noble patron at
some time or another in their careers, and would have witnessed courtly pleasures
at close quarters. Thus Josquin and Loyset Compère both worked for Sforzas of
Milan amongst others, Nicolas Gombert for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V
(before being sent to the galleys for inappropriate conduct with a choirboy),
Clemens non Papa worked for one of Charles's greatest generals, Philip Duc de
Croy, Lassus for Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria, and Sermizy and (late in his career)
Janequin for the Valois Kings François I and Henri II, the former amongst France's
greatest Renaissance patrons of the arts.

The distinction between Netherlandish and French composers is often seen as
being partly one of musical style, with the Northerners masters of a severe and
richly elaborate imitative counterpoint (Josquin's 'Déploration' being an example),
and the generation of Sermizy and Janequin ushering in a new style of lighter and
simpler, more melody-based song, sometimes called Parisian chansons because of
where they were published. But the nature of most of these works, richly
descriptive and evocative as they are, plays down such differences. The
programmatic chanson calls for inventive textures, rhythmic dynamism, and skilful
interaction of voices that is no less impressive in the hands of Janequin, say, who
acquired a considerable reputation for this type of song during his career, than any
of the Netherlanders.