Musique mesurée
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''Musique mesurée à l'antique'' () was a style of vocal musical composition in
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
in the late 16th century. In ''musique mesurée'', longer syllables in the
French language French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Nor ...
were set to longer note values, and shorter syllables to shorter, in a homophonic texture but in a situation of
metric Metric or metrical may refer to: * Metric system, an internationally adopted decimal system of measurement * An adjective indicating relation to measurement in general, or a noun describing a specific type of measurement Mathematics In mathema ...
fluidity, in an attempt to imitate contemporary understanding of Ancient Greek music. Although this compositional method did not attain popularity at first, it attracted some of the most famous composers of the time. Its basis in a desire to re-create the artistic
ethos Ethos ( or ) is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology; and the balance between caution, and passion. The Greeks also used this word to refer to ...
of
Ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cult ...
, especially in respect to text declamation, had a strong similarity to contemporary movements in Italy, such as the work of the
Florentine Camerata The Florentine Camerata, also known as the Camerata de' Bardi, were a group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals in late Renaissance Florence who gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de' Bardi to discuss and guide trends in t ...
which engendered the first
opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...
s, and brought about the beginning of the
Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
era in music.


History

Pieces written as ''musique mesurée'' were settings of the poetical form known as ''vers mesurés''. Beginning in the late 1560s in
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
, under the direction of
Jean-Antoine de Baïf Jean Antoine de Baïf (; 19 February 1532 – 19 September 1589) was a French poet and member of the '' Pléiade''. Life Jean Antoine de Baïf was born in Venice, the natural son of the scholar Lazare de Baïf, who was at that time French amb ...
, a group of poets known as the Pléiade attempted to recreate the metrical effect of ancient Greek and Latin poetry in French, using the quantitative principles of those languages. The attempt was more than an academic one: Baïf and his associates, horrified by the barbarity of the age, including the bloody religious wars which raged throughout the last decades of the century, sought to improve mankind by bringing back the ancient diction, which was believed to have had a positive ethical effect on its hearers. For this attempt they had the approval of the current king of France, Charles IX, and they met in secret to plan their musical revolution. Baïf, with the royal patent, founded the Académie de Poésie et de Musique in 1570, along with his intimate musical associate Joachim Thibault de Courville. Poet
Pierre de Ronsard Pierre de Ronsard (; 11 September 1524 – 27 December 1585) was a French poet or, as his own generation in France called him, a "prince of poets". Early life Pierre de Ronsard was born at the Manoir de la Possonnière, in the village of C ...
was also involved in the group. As originally planned, the members of the ''Académie'' would be in a hierarchy of two grades: first, the composers and singers, known as the ''professionnels'', and after that, the gentleman listeners, known as the ''auditeurs'', who were also to provide financial backing for the enterprise. Aside from this small group of aristocrats, no one else was invited. The concerts took place at Baïf's house in Paris: Charles IX himself, who provided much of the patronage, was often present. Some of the house rules have been recorded. There was to be no talking, or disturbances of any kind, during the singing, and anyone who came in late had to wait until the end of a piece to be seated – rather like modern concert-hall etiquette. Musicians were to rehearse every day, and no music was to be copied or taken away from the area of performance. The music was so closely guarded, at least during the early years of the ''Académie'', that no music of the originating composer – Courville – is known to have survived. The ''Académie'' was short-lived, and probably did not survive after 1573, the year of the death of Charles IX. Another similar group, the ''Académie du Palais'', which met at the
Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
after 1573 with the backing of the new king, Henri III, seemed to carry on some of the work of the previous group, but its aim seems to have been more to debate philosophical issues than to reform humanity through reviving Ancient Greek and Latin poetry and music. The activities, if any, of the original Académie after this time are poorly-documented: while the musicians continued to meet, it is not known if they met in a formal setting, as they had prior to the death of Charles IX. This was during a period of increasing religious turmoil, ending in the fighting in Paris in 1589, and the assassination of the king; associations of humanists such as the ''Académie'', which included both Catholics and Protestants, became increasingly difficult (Baïf, a
Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
, even wrote a sonnet in 1572 praising the
St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (french: Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy) in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations and a wave of Catholic mob violence, directed against the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants) during the French War ...
; Claude Le Jeune, a Protestant, was nearly murdered during the siege of Paris in 1589). Even though the original ''Académie'' had faded away within a few years of its founding, several prominent composers found the concept of ''musique mesurée'' to be so attractive as to make it their primary compositional method. The most famous of these was Claude Le Jeune, followed by Jacques Mauduit,
Eustache Du Caurroy François-Eustache du Caurroy (baptised February 4, 1549 – August 7, 1609) was a French composer of the late Renaissance. He was a prominent composer of both secular and sacred music at the end of the Renaissance, including '' musique mesurée'' ...
, Nicolas de La Grotte, and
Guillaume Costeley Guillaume Costeley ronounced Cotelay(1530, possibly 1531 – 28 January 1606) was a French composer of the Renaissance. He was the court organist to Charles IX of France and famous for his numerous ''chansons'', which were representative of the ...
.


Musical style

When ''musique mesurée'' first appeared, it was used mainly in French secular songs known as chansons. Most of the chansons written in the style were for five voices, unaccompanied, although instruments began to be used as accompaniment before long. Typically they consisted of a strophe and a
refrain A refrain (from Vulgar Latin ''refringere'', "to repeat", and later from Old French ''refraindre'') is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in poetry — the "chorus" of a song. Poetic fixed forms that feature refrains include the vi ...
; the refrain would have the same music each time it recurred. As composers realized the adaptability of the musical style to other forms, they began to employ it elsewhere, for example in sacred music, such as psalm settings. The texture of the music was almost uniformly homophonic, with all the voices singing essentially the same rhythm. The repeating pattern of longs and shorts, following the poetry, was irregular, leading to the perception to a modern ear of irregular meters. Occasional short melismas – decorative passages to ease the monotonous rhythm – appeared in many of the parts, especially in the work of Claude Le Jeune. Long and short syllables were invariably set in a 2:1 relation, for example quarter-notes on the longs and eighth-notes on the shorts. This was in order to mirror long and short syllables used in classical poetry, which in contemporary poetry would be stress accents. In modern notation, the meters would be irregular; often music in the ''musique mesurée'' is left unbarred in modern transcription, or given bar lines only at the end of phrases. In addition to their use of ancient metres, composers of ''musique mesurée'' also used later interpretations of classical musical modes in order to move the emotions of their listeners, as it was described in ancient Greek sources.''Music in the Western World: A history in documents''. Edited by Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin. United States, Schirmer, 1984


Influence

While ''musique mesurée'' was created and sung by a small group of people for a limited audience, and for the most part in secret, it was to have a profound effect on French music for the next hundred years. The '' air de cour'', the secular style of song which dominated the musical scene in France beginning in the 1580s, used the principles of ''musique mesurée'' with the difference that it usually used rhyming verse. In addition, even in the late 17th century, the influence of ''musique mesurée'' can be seen in the style of French recitative, both in
opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...
and in sacred music. Composers that continued using the methods of ''musique mesurée'' into the 17th century included Jacques Mauduit, who used it for creating large works for mixed vocal and instrumental forces, roughly in the
Venetian Venetian often means from or related to: * Venice, a city in Italy * Veneto, a region of Italy * Republic of Venice (697–1797), a historical nation in that area Venetian and the like may also refer to: * Venetian language, a Romance language s ...
style, and Eustache Du Caurroy, who used the method for psalm settings.
Marin Mersenne Marin Mersenne, OM (also known as Marinus Mersennus or ''le Père'' Mersenne; ; 8 September 1588 – 1 September 1648) was a French polymath whose works touched a wide variety of fields. He is perhaps best known today among mathematicians for ...
, in his '' Harmonie universelle'' of 1636–7, praised Du Caurroy as the finest practitioner of the style.


Media


References and further reading

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