Bel Acueil, le sergent d’Amours by Antoine Busnois
Performed at St. Cecilia at the Tower VII on May 12, 2018 Performed by Kasha Alekseeva, Amelie d'Anjou, Robyyan Torr d'Elandris Roman de la Rose, by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, was an extremely popular and controversial book throughout the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. Christine de Pizan was outraged by it; Geoffrey Chaucer helped translate it into Middle English. Set in a dream world, it tells the story of the dreamer, who falls in love with a rose and tries to pick it; he is helped or hindered by characters who personify various concepts or forces relevant to a love affair. Our performance consists of three pieces by Antoine Busnoys with texts referring to these characters. The characters in these songs include: Amours (the God of Love): an archer god in the tradition of Eros and Cupid Bel Acueil (Fair Welcome): a sweet boy who is the personification of responsive love Dangier (Rebuff): the personification of rejection, sometimes portrayed as a guard dog Fortune: a whimsical force whose wheel can elevate or ruin people as she desires Male Bouche (Foul Mouth): a scandalmonger whose chief joy is ruining other people’s pleasure For the most part, the description of these characters in Busnoys’s song texts is compatible with how they appear in Roman de la Rose; however, a notable exception is the character of Fair Welcome in “Bel Acueil, le sergent d’Amours”. The original poem’s Bel Acueil is meek, charming, and compliant – at one point in the story he is locked in a tower, where he waits helplessly until the main character rescues him – but here, he is portrayed as stern, strong, and active. The epithet “sergent d’Amours” seems more appropriate for Dangier, and, in fact, another song found in the same manuscript does use the phrase to describe Rebuff. It seems likely that Busnoys, who uses anagrams and acrostics in many of his other texts, is playing with words here. The letters in “Bel Acueil le sergent d’Amours”, when subjected to various formulas, transform into the names of Marguerite d’Ecosse and Le Bailli de Vermandois (i.e., Jamet de Tillay). Marguerite was the dauphine of France; she had an unhappy marriage with her husband, Louis, and died soon after being slandered to him by Jamet. The legal terminology in the song’s text may be meant to evoke Jamet’s position as bailiff. Perhaps Busnoys also intended his audience to appreciate the text ironically, enjoying the idea of the cute Bel Acueil in possession of decisive power. The song texts are in formes fixes, poetic/musical forms that dominated French songwriting from the 13th through 15th centuries. Each of the three forms (rondeau, ballade, and virelai) has a complex pattern of repetition in both text and music; sections that have the same poetic form also use the same musical material. “Bel Acueil” and “En voyant” are rondeaux; “Laissez Dangier” is a virelai. By Busnoys’s day, the forms had been used for centuries; if you listen carefully, you will hear the composer pushing the boundaries of the form; rather than writing a hard separation between the A and B melodies, he blends them together with lines that cross the border from one section into another. Other features of Busnoys’s style are also evident in these pieces. You will hear syncopated cross-rhythms and motivic imitation, as well as triadic harmonies and quasi-tonal harmonic progressions that anticipate the tonality of the Baroque Period. In addition, you will hear many examples of the long, wide-ranging melodic lines that made Busnoys famous in his day. Though challenging for the performer, these melodic lines are especially idiomatic to the human voice and represent a trend among 15th-century European composers toward expanded vocal ranges and independent voice parts. Our performance incorporates an additional challenge: Watch and listen carefully to Robbyan’s harp playing; Busnoys’s pieces call for notes not playable on this instrument with standard technique, so Robbyan stops the strings, a technique that is new to him.
Performed at St. Cecilia at the Tower VII on May 12, 2018 Performed by Kasha Alekseeva, Amelie d'Anjou, Robyyan Torr d'Elandris Roman de la Rose, by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, was an extremely popular and controversial book throughout the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. Christine de Pizan was outraged by it; Geoffrey Chaucer helped translate it into Middle English. Set in a dream world, it tells the story of the dreamer, who falls in love with a rose and tries to pick it; he is helped or hindered by characters who personify various concepts or forces relevant to a love affair. Our performance consists of three pieces by Antoine Busnoys with texts referring to these characters. The characters in these songs include: Amours (the God of Love): an archer god in the tradition of Eros and Cupid Bel Acueil (Fair Welcome): a sweet boy who is the personification of responsive love Dangier (Rebuff): the personification of rejection, sometimes portrayed as a guard dog Fortune: a whimsical force whose wheel can elevate or ruin people as she desires Male Bouche (Foul Mouth): a scandalmonger whose chief joy is ruining other people’s pleasure For the most part, the description of these characters in Busnoys’s song texts is compatible with how they appear in Roman de la Rose; however, a notable exception is the character of Fair Welcome in “Bel Acueil, le sergent d’Amours”. The original poem’s Bel Acueil is meek, charming, and compliant – at one point in the story he is locked in a tower, where he waits helplessly until the main character rescues him – but here, he is portrayed as stern, strong, and active. The epithet “sergent d’Amours” seems more appropriate for Dangier, and, in fact, another song found in the same manuscript does use the phrase to describe Rebuff. It seems likely that Busnoys, who uses anagrams and acrostics in many of his other texts, is playing with words here. The letters in “Bel Acueil le sergent d’Amours”, when subjected to various formulas, transform into the names of Marguerite d’Ecosse and Le Bailli de Vermandois (i.e., Jamet de Tillay). Marguerite was the dauphine of France; she had an unhappy marriage with her husband, Louis, and died soon after being slandered to him by Jamet. The legal terminology in the song’s text may be meant to evoke Jamet’s position as bailiff. Perhaps Busnoys also intended his audience to appreciate the text ironically, enjoying the idea of the cute Bel Acueil in possession of decisive power. The song texts are in formes fixes, poetic/musical forms that dominated French songwriting from the 13th through 15th centuries. Each of the three forms (rondeau, ballade, and virelai) has a complex pattern of repetition in both text and music; sections that have the same poetic form also use the same musical material. “Bel Acueil” and “En voyant” are rondeaux; “Laissez Dangier” is a virelai. By Busnoys’s day, the forms had been used for centuries; if you listen carefully, you will hear the composer pushing the boundaries of the form; rather than writing a hard separation between the A and B melodies, he blends them together with lines that cross the border from one section into another. Other features of Busnoys’s style are also evident in these pieces. You will hear syncopated cross-rhythms and motivic imitation, as well as triadic harmonies and quasi-tonal harmonic progressions that anticipate the tonality of the Baroque Period. In addition, you will hear many examples of the long, wide-ranging melodic lines that made Busnoys famous in his day. Though challenging for the performer, these melodic lines are especially idiomatic to the human voice and represent a trend among 15th-century European composers toward expanded vocal ranges and independent voice parts. Our performance incorporates an additional challenge: Watch and listen carefully to Robbyan’s harp playing; Busnoys’s pieces call for notes not playable on this instrument with standard technique, so Robbyan stops the strings, a technique that is new to him.