Singing French Music of XVI century

French Music of XVI century

I think this article can be interesting for people who are professionally engaged with music (mainly singing), who know the meaning of such terms like fugue, music period etc.

France of the 16th century had a move from the Renaissance to the Baroque era. In that time classical fugue form did not set yet and by the period musicians of Renaissance meant a phrase, human speech, which was "integrated" into the music.

If you take a look at scores of vocal music of 16th century, for example, Pierre Guédron, Claude Le Jeune, Eustache Du Caurroy etc. you should pay attention to the fact that many their works have no bar. It was assumed that a singer and an accompanist had to be guided by the literary text, which was a developing story plot.

In Renaissance vocal music - text, phrase, word, poetry are very important. Pierre Guedron gave next recommendation concerning the interpretation of his music: rhythm, word, pleasant voice. Moreover, for compositing a song (air de cour/court aria) the peculiarities of the French language (with its long, short and dumb syllables) were also taken into consideration.

Composers of Renaissance era took as an example culture of Hellenes and Romans, who had realized the strong connection between the text and the music. This implies that Guedron, Le Jeune, Du Caurroy etc. sought to subordinate the rhythm of the melody to the metrical structure of the verse.

And now imagine, for singing court aria (air de cour) of 16th century, you must clearly understand, where should you make music accents, pauses, where one thought ends and another begins; it is needed to pay attention to punctuation marks and, for sure, you have to know WHAT ARE YOU SINGING ABOUT. Thus, I can say it is not mainly about singing, but about such skills like feeling and reading the music.

Author: Alisia Holainen

My page on Facebook: Musique de Cour