Antoine Busnoys, En tous les lieux ou j’ay este 4v

En tous les lieux ou j’ay este 4v · Busnoys, Antoine

Appearance in the group of related chansonniers:

*Dijon ff. 83v-85 »En tous les lieux ou j’ay este« 4v Busnoys · Edition · Facsimile

*Nivelle ff. 44v-46 »En tous les lieux ou j’ay este« 4v · Edition · Facsimile

Editions: Goldberg 1994, p. 351 (Nivelle); Busnoys 2018, no. 39 (Dijon).

Text: Bergerette by Jacques de Luxembourg; full text in both sources; also found in Berlin 78.B.17 ff. 181v-182, ed.: Löpelmann 1923, p. 352; Paris 1719 ff. 62-62v; Paris 9223 f. 101 “Mons Jaques”, ed.: Raynaud 1889, p. 157.

After Nivelle:

En tous les lieux ou j’ay este
n’ay veu dame qui vous resemble,
s’en ay je veu beaucop ensemble
qui n’aprochent vostre beaute.

Que pleust a dieu que vous sceussiez
tout ce qu’a plusieurs j’en ay dit,

affin que point ne voulsissiez
en riens m’avoir voulu desdit. 1)

Pour congnoistre ma leaulte
j’ay dit de vous ce qu’il me semble,
et qui ne le croit, si rassemble
ceulx a qui m’en suis acquicte.

En tous les lieux ou j’ay este
n’ay veu dame qui vous resemble,
s’en ay je veu beaucop ensemble
qui n’aprochent vostre beaute.

In all the places where I have been
I have seen no lady who matches you,
so I have seen many altogether
who do not come near your beauty.

May it please God that you should hear
all that I have told some people

so that you might not all desire
in any way to wish me to recant.

To proclaim my loyalty
I have said of you how it appears to me,
and who does not believe it, must be with
those from whom I have freed myself.

In all the places where I have been
I have seen no lady who matches you,
so I have seen many altogether
who do not come near your beauty.

1) Dijon, line 8, “... vouloir escondit” (error, a syllable too many)

Evaluation of the sources:

The flawless copy of the four-part song in Nivelle, entered by the main scribe without ascription to any composer, and the Dijon scribe's almost faultless version, which he attributed to “Busnoys”, are probably made on the basis of two independent exemplars, even though both sources report the same version of the song. In addition to the usual small variations in the use of coloration and ligatures and the fact that only Dijon ascribes it to Busnoys, there are differences in musical details and in the page layout.

In both sources, the two high voices are placed at the top of the pages, with the highest on the left page and the other one on the right, and the low voices are placed below. In Dijon, both low voices are labeled “Contratenor” and the higher of the two is on the left. In Nivelle, the two low voices are swapped so that the lower voice here is on the left, and it is named “Tenor”.

The first difference in musical details comes already in the first two bars, where the dotted figure in countertenor 1, which appears in Dijon (a-g) in bar 1.3, in Nivelle has been moved to bar 2.1 (b-a) – both versions seem valid. Some of the variants are precisely that semibreves have been replaced by dotted figures in the Nivelle version (S2 bb. 8.3-9.1; C1 b. 16.1-2 and bb.19.3-20.1). Also in bar 49 in countertenor 2 the black notes have been replaced by a dotted figure. Nivelle has one-flat hexachordal signatures in superius 2 and in the two lower voices, while a signature appears only in the first staff of contratenor 1 in Dijon. In this way, the Dijon scribe has inserted only the signature absolutely necessary for a correct rendering of the opening sound, namely the b-flat at the start of the highest contratenor. Any other signatures are in reality superfluous as the music mostly moves within F- and C-hexachords.

It is obvious that the song must have circulated over a period of time before it reached the two chansonniers, and it is hardly possible to determine which version most closely reflects the composer's original concept.

A small note: In Dijon, the poem’s line 8 ends with the word “escondit”, which has the same meaning as “desdit” in all the other sources. The later big collection of poems in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, ms. f.fr. 1719 from around 1480, which contains long series of song texts, originally also ended this line with “desdit”, but the word has been corrected to “escondit”.

Comments on text and music:

The poem is a light-hearted bergerette praising the beauty of a lady and it is set in music for the boys and men of a maîtrise – perfect for an entertainment in a noble house. It is for two high voices (c'-f'' and c'-d''), which take turns in performing the functions of superius and tenor and in being the highest voice. They also take care of the passages in unison canonic imitation that adorn the last line of the refrain section and open both lines of the couplets. At the end of the refrain they offer a nice display of vocal virtuosity in a chase at the fifth in complementary rhythm. Likewise, in the second ending to the couplets they can demonstrate their ability to perform the triplets in black notation.

The two lower voices placed a fifth apart (f-g' and B-d') collaborate in creating an elegant foundation for the upper voices; they certainly both are contratenors regardless of the fact that the lowest voice in Nivelle is labelled “Tenor”. Together with the upper duo they create a lively and engaging setting of a bergerette, which includes the traditional contrast between the sections – double time versus triple and a compact word setting in the couplets versus the expansiveness of the refrain – and the catchy passages that play with standard hexachord-based improvisational motifs. (1) If the song is by Busnoys as stated by the Dijon chansonnier, it must be quite early, from his years working with the boys in Tours or even earlier.

PWCH December 2024

1) Further on such motifs in my article ‘An experiment in musical unity, or: The sheer joy of sound. The anonymous Sine nomine mass in MS Cappella Sistina 14’, Danish Yearbook of Musicology 42 (2018), pp. 54–78 (also in The Sound of Music and Composing with Hexachords. A collection of articles and papers on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century music, 2001-2019, February 2024)