Acueilly m’a la belle au gent atour 3v · Caron
Appearance in the group of related chansonniers:
*Dijon ff. 10bisv-11 »Saoulé m’a la belle au gent atour« 3v · Edition · Facsimile
Other musical sources:
Escorial IV.a.24 [f. 127b] »Aquelge mala belle« (Missing, only in index) · Facsimile (006)
Florence 176 59v-60 »Aculie« 3v Carom
Florence 2356 ff. 49v-50 »Acoeullie« 3v
New Haven 91 ff. 3v-4 »Accueillez moy la belle au gent atour« 3v (low C) · Facsimile
Paris 15123 ff. 6v-7 »Accueilly m’a la belle au gent atour« 3v Caron · Facsimile
Paris 676 ff. 47v-48 »Acui male bella« 3v (low C)
Trento 1947 ff. 4v-5 [Without text] 4v [low C + Triplum) Caron
Trento 91 f. 12v »Da pacem Domine« 3v [Low C) · Facsimile
This page with editions as a PDF
Lauda, citations and use in other compositions, see Fallows 1999, pp. 68-69.
Edition: Droz 1927 no. 6 (Dijon).
Text: Rondeau cinquain, full text in Dijon; also in Jardin 1501 f. 71. After Dijon and Jardin 1501:
Acueilly m’a la belle au gent atour, 1) Tourner n’y scay tournant voie ne tour Acueilly m’a la belle au gent atour, 4) Recueillir fault tous ses griefz a l’entour, 5) Acueilly m’a la belle au gent atour, |
She has scorned me, the fair of gentle manner, I do not know where to turn; there is no winding path nor turn She has scorned me, the fair of gentle manner, I must accept carefully all her grievances, turning my happiness into a painful detour she has denied me her loving greeting; amassing rejection when on the road of despair by eye and heart she has banned me from her tower. |
1) Dijon, line 1, "Saoule ...” (error); Paris 15123, “Accoeullie ...”, Jardin 1501, “Acueilly ...”
2) Dijon, line 5, “de oeil et de cueur et de sa tour" (error); Jardin 1501, “et de courage m’a banny de sa tour”
3) Jardin 1501, lines 7-8, “ne tournement que n’aye tout autour / tournant en plains en ...”
4) Dijon, line 9, rentrement “Saoulle” (error)
5) Dijon, line 12, “Reculer ...”
Evaluation of the sources:
Entered without any errors in the music in the Dijon chansonnier by its main scribe; in his rendering of the poem he did not show a similar precision, see below. This is its only appearance in the ‘Loire Valley’ complex, but the song enjoyed a wide circulation in different versions during a long period as attested by the other sources.
Dijon may be the earliest source for Caron’s song, but it must have been known for decades. Already in the early 1470s it appeared in the Trienter Codex 91 as a Latin contrafactum with a new low contratenor, and this “modernized” contratenor appears in the Mellon chansonnier with French text. Later it further acquired a fourth voice, a “si placet” triplum, and was used as timbre for an Italian lauda. Three Italian/French chansonniers created some years later than Dijon transmit “Acueilly m’a la belle” in versions showing only minor variants – if we disregard the poem –, the music in Pixérécourt chansonnier (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, ms. f.fr. 15123) is nearly identical to the Dijon version. (1)
In all sources the music starts with a general pause consisting of a brevis and two semibreves. The introductory brevis bar was not meant to be performed in the realized rondeau form, and therefore it is not counted in the edition. It seems to be a device meant to insure absolute notational clarity in the cases where a song starts with an upbeat in all voices, and the opening is homorhythmically designed (see further my note ‘On chansons starting with a general pause’).
Comments on text and music:
The poem is an ambitious love complaint sung by the rejected lover in rimes retrograde equivoque, where the first word in a line must sound the same as the rime word of the preceding line, but in a different meaning: “.... destour / destourne ...” – a constant ‘going back’ a word, retrograde. Therefore the poem is an exercise in the many combinations and meanings in which “tour” and “cueil” can appear. The scribes may not always have understood the formal implications. The Dijon scribe did not. He started the text with and has as rentrement the word “Saoule” (She is fed up with me, ...), which may fit the meaning, but not the formal layout. After the end of the couplet (line 8) with “... bel acueil.” the refrain has to start again with “Acueilly m’a ...”, as indicated in the majority of the sources. As Howard Garey noted (Perkins 1979, vol. 2, pp. 197-198), the tierce ends with a pun (line 16): “...il n’y a nul retour” – there is no return. This time the refrain starts with a wrong word “Acueilly”!
The rather sad and heavy poem is set in exquisite airy and lighthearted music, which involve three high voices, an upper voice d'-f'' and tenor and contratenor in the same ranges g-g' and f-a'. It is in quick triple time, starting in homophony with an upbeat, next line is a free unison/fifth canon between superius and tenor. Remark how the voices traverse their entire ranges, then in the third line the descending triadic motives, that colour the melodies and are presented by the contratenor at line beginnings, are suddenly condensed into a shimmering voice exchange imitation (bb. 13-15) with all three voices singing a C-triad within the fifth, c'-g' – a striking effect! The second section is a bit more dense in staggered free polyphony perfectly balancing the first half.
PWCH October 2022
1) All versions are published in a conflated edition in Caron 1974, vol. 2, p. 165; the Mellon version is published in Perkins 1979, no. 3.