(Fr.).
A term used by French composers and publishers from 1571 to the 1650s to designate many secular, strophic songs sung at court. From 1608 until approximately 1632 these were the most important and numerous vocal compositions in France.
Airs de cour were composed either for four or five unaccompanied voices (a few examples are for six and eight voices) or for one voice usually with lute accompaniment. They were written for the entertainment of the king and his courtiers by the finest composers at court, all of whom were excellent singers. Nearly all airs were published first by the royal printers Le Roy & Ballard, later by Ballard alone, often in series of collections appearing over a number of years. From 1608 a number of airs in these collections were taken from the year's most successful ballets de cour.
In the preface to the first collection of airs de cour, Livre d'air de cours miz sur le luth par Adrian Le Roy (1571), Le Roy stated that he was presenting a light, simple type of song known previously as Vaudeville (or voix de ville). The collection contains 22 solo airs with lute accompaniment. Most of the texts are by Ronsard, but Sillac, Pasquier, Desportes and Baïf are also represented. 13 airs are arrangements of four-part vaudevilles from Chansons de P. de Ronsard, Ph. Desportes et autres mises en musique par N. de la Grotte (Paris, 1570). Le Roy took over intact the original superius voice, which predominates, and adapted the lute part from the other voices. The lute part of three airs de cour appears in two versions, one simple, the other ornamented. As in La Grotte's vaudevilles, the airs mix metres; there is a steady tactus, but the accents do not occur in a regular musical metre. The influence of musique mesurée is often clear. A few airs are in the form AAB, but most do not fall readily into sections, though motifs recur.
All the airs de cour that appeared during the rest of the 16th century were not solo but polyphonic. Collections of airs by Didier Le Blanc and Jehan Planson (1582 and 1587 respectively), though not specifically labelled de cour, fit into the tradition of such pieces on the basis of their similarity to the airs de cour of the next decade. Le Blanc collected 43 short, simple, strophic, mostly homophonic ametrical airs for four voices by several composers, and Planson's 38 airs are similar. The only difference lies in the strophe form: in Le Blanc's collection it is non-repetitive, in Planson's it is nearly always ABB. Another anthology of such pieces appeared in 1595 (Airs mis en musique à quatre, et cinq, parties: de plusieurs autheurs), and was followed in 1597 by two collections specifically entitled airs de cour by Denis Caignet and Charles Tessier respectively.
The major production of airs de cour occurred in the 17th century, mostly during the reign of Louis XIII (1610–43). Although that is when the greatest number of solo airs de cour appeared, polyphonic airs for four or five voices also abound, primarily in the four volumes edited by Pierre Guédron between 1608 and 1618 and the nine volumes edited by Antoine Boësset between 1617 and 1642. In addition, two collections were printed in 1610 and 1613, and others were composed by Macé (1634), Chancy (1635–44), François Richard (1637), Etienne Moulinié (5 vols., 1625–39) and Cambefort (1651–5). Sercy's Airs et vaudevilles de cour (1665–6) seem to be isolated late examples.
Between 1608 and 1632 Ballard brought out 15 volumes of Airs de différents autheurs avec la tablature de luth, anthologies of solo airs de cour accompanied by lute (facs. in Airs de différents autheurs mis en tablature de luth, Geneva, 1980–85); a number were sufficiently in demand to require second editions. In 1643, the last year of Louis XIII's reign, Ballard published the last book of solo airs de cour; here the editor and chief composer, Boësset, stated that all his publications of airs had been to amuse and satisfy the king, who had received them with love, the highest recompense. All the lute airs are simple, essentially syllabic, strophic and mostly ametrical songs. The vocal range rarely exceeds an octave. The harmony is tonal and simple. A number are arrangements of polyphonic airs from the collections listed above.
The texts, deriving from Italian pastorals, by authors such as Tasso and Guarini, translated by d’Urfé and others, are strictly symmetrical, with rhyming lines of six to 13 syllables and strophes of four to eight lines. Malherbe's concise modern diction and careful rhyme and verse patterns prevail. Despite the Italian sources of the texts, in no case does the music suggest the influence of contemporary Italian madrigals and monody. The composers include, besides Antoine Boësset and Guédron, the court musicians Moulinié, Jean Boyer, Bataille, Jean-Baptiste Boësset, François Richard, Auget, Rigaud, Vincent, Grand-Rue, Le Fegueux and Sauvage, most of whom published their own separate collections of airs.
Between 1615 and 1628 Ballard published eight volumes of monophonic airs de cour without any accompaniment. All appear unaltered but with accompaniment in the collections of Airs de différents autheurs avec la tablature de luth.
Airs drawn from ballets de cour seldom differ from the other airs. They were usually composed for a soloist accompanied by lute, but in a few cases there are polyphonic ballet airs which appear in alternative versions in polyphonic, voice-and-lute and monophonic collections. In many ballets the song served as an introduction to an act or as part of an entrée; in such cases it was sometimes limited to one strophe.
The airs were not always performed as written. The alternative versions of the accompaniment of three songs in the 1571 collection attest an improvisatory ornamentation of the lute part. The voice in solo airs can also be ornamented in ways often similar to Italian practice, as discussed by Mersenne: ‘Seconde partie de l'art d'embellir la voix’ in ‘Traitez des consonances’, Harmonie universelle, ii (Paris, 1636–7/R), 355ff; Bacilly: Remarques curieuses sur l'art de bien chanter (1668/R, 4/1681; Eng. trans., 1968, 135ff); and J. Millet: La belle méthode, ou L'art de bien chanter (Besançon, 1666/R). Bataille stated in the 1608 collection of lute airs that he was putting down only the simplest form of the song, no doubt so that less gifted amateurs could enjoy them, the professionals knowing how to apply ornaments.
The popularity of the air de cour spread well beyond the borders of Paris and France. Besides the airs published by Jean Mangeant in Caen (1608 and 1615), a number appeared in French in Germany in J.-B. Besard's Thesaurus harmonicus (1603) and in England in Tessier's Airs de cour (1597). Translations of French airs into English appear in Robert Dowland's A Musicall Banquet (1610) and Edward Filmer's French Court-Aires, with their Ditties Englished (1629). The tunes were frequently copied with totally new, vernacular texts in Holland. In France the airs were also borrowed with new, sacred texts in several multi-volume sacred collections: La pieuse alouette, La philomèle séraphique and François Berthod's Livre d'airs de dévotion.
After about 1650 the term air by itself was frequently used, most notably in 33 volumes of Airs de différents autheurs à deux parties (Paris, 1658–88). At the end of that century and in the next, air alone became synonymous with an aria in a French opera, while air sérieux designated a song similar to the earlier air de cour in text and musical structure. There are also airs à boire (see Air à boire). The vogue for airs de cour was succeeded in the 1630s by that for the Chanson pour boire and the chanson pour danser.
See also Air, §3.
MGG1 (‘Chanson’; K.J. Levy)
L. de La Laurencie, A. Mairy and G. Thibault, eds.: Chansons au luth et airs de cour français du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1934)
A. Verchaly, ed.: Airs de cour pour voix et luth (1603–1643) (Paris, 1961)
N. Fortune: ‘Solo Song and Cantata’, The Age of Humanism, 1540–1630, NOHM, iv (1968), 185–94
W. Müller-Blattau: ‘Vaudeville, Chanson und Air de cour’, Volks- und Hochkunst in Dichtung und Musik (Saarbrücken, 1968), 135–40
A. Cohen: ‘L'art de bien chanter (1666) of Jean Millet’, MQ, lv (1969), 170–79
D.L. Royster: Pierre Guédron and the ‘Air de cour’ 1600–1620 (New Haven, CT, 1972)
M.L. Hunt: Rhythmic Characteristics of the ‘Air de cour’ (Long Beach, CA, 1975)
J.O. Whang: From ‘Voix de ville’ to ‘Air de cour’: the Strophic Chanson, c. 1545–1575 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1981)
S.J. Cannedy, ed.: An Anthology of French Solo Song, Sacred and Secular, 1600–1701 (Austin, TX, 1986)
S.A. Potter, ed.: The Petit Motet in Parisian Printed Sources from 1647–1689 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1992)
JOHN H. BARON