Adieu mes amours, song for 4 parts

• Date: ca. 1479 -1481
• Composer: Josquin Desprez
• Period: Renaissance (1450-1599)

Review

The Odhecaton (1501), the first book of music ever printed using Gutenberg's invention of movable type, contains a number of pieces by the prodigious Josquin Desprez. But another manuscript copied in Ferrara, perhaps as early as 1479-1481, suggests that Josquin had taken up the art of the French chanson much earlier, perhaps even before the age of twenty. Included in this earlier manuscript is his setting of the popular tune, Adieu, mes amours. The piece retains some of the textural complexity of his renowned predecessors Busnois and Ockeghem, and takes as its primary text a Middle French poem set in one of the venerable Formes Fixes (in this case a Rondeau). But at the same time, a harmonic freshness and formal daring pervades the setting in Josquin's hands.

Chansons in the "Fixed Forms" from the music of Guillaume de Machaut through most of the fifteenth century existed largely as vehicles for the poetic text -- although composers such as Busnois often wrote luscious music to undergird otherwise common sentiments. Josquin at first appears to be following in this tradition, placing the primary text in the upper voice and subordinating the lower three. But the Rondeau form of the principal text is no longer fixed and immovable in his hands; Josquin's music breaks the form and doesn't allow the expected musical repeats to occur -- the progress of the music itself dominates the text.

A further innovation in this piece lies in the lower two voice parts. Beneath the upper melody and the Contratenor voice's florid, almost instrumental, line, the Tenor and Bassus undergird the harmonic structure. But they do so while maintaining a strict canonic relationship. Furthermore, their music sets a second poetic text, in a different fixed form (Bergerette), but which begins with the same opening line: "Farewell, my love." ~ Timothy Dickey, Rovi

Albums with Complete Performances of the Work

Title	Date
Amours amours amours: Duos for lutes
Bella Imagine: Medieval and Renaissance Songs and Dances	2001
Chansons et Danceries (French Renaissance Wind Music)	1996
Devlaamse Polyfonie	1997
Devlaamse Polyfonie	1997
Janequin, Josquin Desprez, Gombert & others: Chansons
Josquin Des Prez	1995
Josquin Des Prez	1995
Josquin Desprez: Adieu, mes amours (Chansons)
Josquin Desprez: Adieu, mes amours; Chansons
Josquin Desprez: Missa "Ave maris stella"; Motets & Chansons	1993
Josquin Desprez: Missa D'ung aultre amer; Motets & Chansons	2007
Josquin Desprez: Missa Fortuna Desperata	2001
Josquin: Master of Musicians	2000
Les Fantaisies de Josquin	2011
Margarete Maximilian I.	2002
Millennium of Music, Vol. 1	2001
Music for Van Dyck	1997
Odhecaton A: Les Flamboyants	2001
Ottaviano dei Petrucci: Harmonice Musices Odhecaton
Ottaviano dei Petrucci: Harmonice Musices Odhecaton
The Art of the Netherlands	1997
The Art of the Netherlands	1997
The Art of the Netherlands	2010
The Essential Josquin des Prez	2007
Vous ou La Mort	2007

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Next:	Adieu mes tres belle (Das Buxheimer Orgelbuch, Folio 144)