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Les Menus-Plaisirs du Roy

Wit and Devotion in “Spiritual Parodies”

1. « Surpris, ô Dieu, de Vos lumières » − spiritual parody by Jean l’Évangéliste d’Arras (from La Philomèle séraphique, 2nd ed., 1640, IV, Hymn LXXXV, on a score by François Richard, from his 1637 books of courtly songs).
2. « Belle Philis, en attendant vos noces » − anonymous vaudeville (taken from the Weckerlin manuscript [1st half of the XVIIIth century], Bibliothèque nationale de France, Music Department, ms. Weck., D. 152, f° 38).
3. « Baisant, un soir, une mignarde » − anonymous vaudeville (ms. Weck., op. cit., f° 65).
4. « Les Manches vertes » − anonymous tune (from an XVIIIth-century French version of “Greensleeves”).
5. « Au jardin de mon père, un nid d’oiseau y a » − anonymous vaudeville (ms. Weck., op. cit., f° 121).
6. « Les Genoux et l’esprit » − anonymous spiritual parody (from a score from François Richard’s 1637 books of courtly songs and lyrics from an anonymous manuscript [private collection]).
7. « Une jeune nonnette » − anonymous vaudeville (ms. Weck., op. cit., f° 5).
8. « François, mon séraphique père » − spiritual parody by Jean l’Évangéliste d’Arras (from La Philomèle séraphique, 2nd ed., 1640, IV, Hymn LXII, on a score by François Richard, from his 1637 books of courtly songs).
9. « La Fustemberg [Furstenberg] » − instrumental variations from Michel Corrette, La Belle Vielleuse, 1783.
10. « Oh ! que j’ai de contentement » − spiritual parody by Jean l’Évangéliste d’Arras (from La Philomèle séraphique, 2nd ed., 1640, I, Hymn LXXXII, on a score by François Richard, from his 1637 books of courtly songs).
11. « Messieurs, ayez mémoire » − anonymous vaudeville (ms. Weck., op. cit., f° 2).
12. « Jean des sots » − anonymous vaudeville (ms. Weck., op. cit., f° 104).
13. « Rondeau » − anonymous tune for viola da gamba (« Manuscrit de Foix » [early XVIIIth century], Bibliothèque municipale de Foix).
14. « Quelle est cette beauté » – spiritual parody by Jean l’Évangéliste d’Arras (from La Philomèle séraphique, 2nd ed., 1640, III, Hymn XVII, on a score by François Richard, from his 1637 books of courtly songs).
15. « Les Pèlerins de Saint-Jacques » − anonymous instrumental arrangement (« Manuscrit de Foix », op. cit.).
16. « La Sœur Luce » − vaudeville (score from a minuet by André-Joseph Exaudet and lyrics by Alexis Piron).

Les Menus-Plaisirs du Roy

Céline Scheen, soprano
Catherine Daron, baroque flute
Gail-Ann Schroeder, viola da gamba
Eriko Semba, viola da gamba
Ricardo Rodriguez Miranda, viola da gamba
Dimitri Dumon, percussion
Manuel Mohino, technical operator
Jean-Luc Impe, archlute and conductor

Wit and Devotion in “Spiritual Parodies”

Under the impulse of the Counter-Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church decided to appropriate the most popular among the secular songs of the time and to set them to new lyrics, thus creating so-called “spiritual parodies” that would be more conducive to meditation and more effective for devotions performed at home. In parallel, there emerged a mischievous or even licentious literature, revelling in stigmatizing the French clergy’s failings, while gently mocking the supposed lascivious desires of certain religious congregations.
Spiritual parodies…
The devotional melodies with newly-fitted (i.e. parodic) lyrics, which blossomed in France at the dawn of the Grand Siècle share various features with the vaudeville (1) : new words, for instance, are added to existing melodies and both genres aim at wide dissemination rather than creativity. Over and above the simple question of inventiveness, the aim was to rely on the best musical attributes to express and to spread the “truth” or “new ideas”, depending on whether religious or secular concerns were at stake.
The enthusiasm for inventing parodic texts brought together the casuists of the Counter-Reformation, political pamphleteers and dramatists alike, no matter whether it involved older or newer melodies, sacred or secular music, drama, or other artistic media. It either favoured wordly songs to elevate the soul or relied on short, unpretentious, but very effective tunes (known as fredons), to mock the nobility or, indeed, any religious or secular authority.

Si parfois quelque fredon,
Dans ce livre tu remarques,
Qui ressente son Guédron
Ou quelque bel air de marque,
Ou si quelque trait mondain
Ou quelque quinte huguenote
Se lance dans un refrain
Rencontrant la même note,
Tu dois être lors joyeux
Qu’ainsi fortune l’adonne.

Through those words, who better than Father Guillaume Marc (2)(1574-1638) could oppose the proselitizing ambitions of the Huguenots and justify the musical endeavour launched by the Catholics of the Counter-Reformation to imitate secular songs? Even airs de cour (courtly songs) were co-opted by the new fashion and offered to the public with new, sober lyrics that were more consistent with the wish for renewal in faith and ethics.
The mere superimposition of new lyrics onto a pre-existing vaudeville melodies might not seem to raise any insurmountable problems, since the simplicity of the tunes allowed for new lyrics to be grafted easily onto their regular musical structure. However, a similar process using airs de cour and their rather uncommon metrical formation too often led writers of new devotional texts to oversimplify and overstandardize that rhythmic specificity. Furthermore, such freedom and flexibility in the melody, emancipated from regular metrical constraints, conferred more feeling and more appeal upon vernacular music.
In consulting many anthologies of devotional parodies and comparing them with the musical notation of the original melodies by composers such as Antoine Boësset (1587-1643), Pierre Guédron (ca.1570-1620) and Étienne Moulinier (1599-1676)(3), it became clear that thinning out certain passages had led to significant alterations to the vocal lines. We have therefore chosen to retain the melodic and polyphonic models of the airs de cour in their original form.

… and spirituality in parodies!

If a vaudeville, in the mind of many, boils down merely to the lyrics, others tend to expand that notion to include the supporting melody or to discuss notions of versification or prosodic and lexical limitations within the text/music binary. We believe that the emergence of tensions derived from the confrontation of two powerful systems remains a determining factor in defining the vaudeville. The combination of a poetic structure and a musical dimension creates a confrontational dialectic inside which music is able to achieve such a level of autonomy that it may finally bear other meanings than those of the immediate lyrics it supports. The music proves capable of recalling various fields of meaning or impressions that may be closely associated at times with extraliterary entities − we shall call the “context” − through the reactivation of referents that have no actual link with the added lyrics (4).

Consequently, the use of vaudevilles relies on a complex alchemy combining the pleasure of recognizing a known tune with the effect of surprise after listening to new lyrics or to a specific song whose original lyrics are at odds with the dramatic, political, historical or social situation being parodied. Such continuous recycling of tunes was the constituent principle of a genre, which drew its creative force from a subtle balance between the quest for novelty and the constant presence of familiar clichés.
In this recording, the vaudevilles have been selected partly because of the content of their original lyrics; hence, the resulting parodic songs contain a jocular counterpart to the devotional life and its profuse hyperboles. That choice also aims at reflecting the taste of music lovers during the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, in light of the fact that they spent their entire life immersed in listening to, and writing, similar short tunes. Since such melodies were easy to memorize and to sing, they adorned the epigrammatic and political jousts of the Grand Siècle or could serve as mnemonics for kitchen recipes, and ultimately formed the basic musical fabric for the first opéras-comiques during the Age of Enlightenment.
Among the large number of songs satirising monks and young nuns during the Ancien Régime, I am particularly fond of those contained in the invaluable Weckerlin anthology (D. 152), kept in the Department of Music at the French National Library, in Paris. Behind its grim shelf-number, that document conceals a treasure-store of gaiety and jest. Carried along by marvellously-chiselled melodic contours, the lyrics unfold their innummerable verses to reveal impertinence and pertinence alike, but are more irreverent in nature than genuinely polemical or anticlerical. Some songs, such as « Messieurs, ayez mémoire », « Baisant, un soir, une mignarde », « Une jeune nonnette », etc., develop into stories with a fully-fledged plot and, for that reason, are performed here without cuts. Others, however, are only collections of independent stanzas, sometimes with different subjects, thus allowing for consistent, if arbitrary, amputations to be made, as in the case of « Belle Philis, en attendant vos noces », « Jean des sots », etc.
Besides the widespread popularity of all songs included in this recording, it is worthwhile noting that some of them became all-time hits over the years. The melody of « La Fustemberg » [La Furstenberg] was treated to multiple variations by the most skilful composers, such as Michel Corrette (1707-1795), whereas the famous minuet by André-Joseph Exaudet (1710-1782) served as the musical background for a selection of very unbridled lyrics. Among those is « La Sœur Luce », a masterpiece by Alexis Piron (1689-1773), in which the poet describes in minute detail, but without ever verging on vulgarity, a nun masturbating herself.
« Les Manches vertes » (“Greensleeves”) is a country dance found in many French manuscripts of the XVIIIth century. In reflecting upon the sumptuary edicts of the English Renaissance, it is difficult not to smile at the thought that, while each craft or social class had its own prerogatives with regard to colours of dress or the quality of ornaments, the colour green consistently remained the distinctive label of... prostitutes. Far from being an old love ballad rehashing passionate feelings to the ear of any willing listener, the song actually seems to have been drafted initially in the intimacy of a brothel!
We complete the recording with a few vaudevilles, such as « Les Pèlerins de Saint-Jacques », « Au jardin de mon père, un nid d’oiseau y a », etc., which appear to have been among the most popular in XVIIIth-century singing societies. Those joyful and slightly irreverent songs round off some devotional parodies written to music composed by François Richard (ca.1580-1650). In conclusion, we might say that the deep desires of the seraphic Philomela and of Colin’s “birdie” are only a cage apart...
Although François Richard, a lutanist at the French court, published only two books of courtly songs (1637), he composed many more, displaying great diversity in both content and form. Selecting from such musical delights was not an easy task and our choice was directed mainly by their polyphonic originality.
« Surpris, ô Dieu, de Vos lumières » is the devotional version of the more worldly song entitled « Angélique dont les merveilles », whereas « Les Genoux et l’esprit » is derived from « Amaranthe a des yeux » and « François, mon séraphique père » is the ‘edified’ transformation of one of Richard’s loveliest melodies: « Beaux yeux qui, sous votre empire ». Lastly, « Oh ! que j’ai de contentement » is the spiritual equivalent of « Depuis que les lois du devoir », while « Quelle est cette beauté » echoes « Les Yeux baignés de pleurs ».

(Jean-Luc Impe, Brussels, October 2009)




Les manches vertes



François, mon séraphique père



La Fustemberg



Quelle est cette beauté